The Bone Polisher

10 ~ Special Delivery

I surfaced out of a bad dream and into the knowledge that someone was in the house.

The house has only three rooms on the upper level: the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. The bathroom door opens directly into the bedroom, and the little room downstairs, the one whose roof serves as the sun deck, can be entered only from outside. That’s the whole house. The noise that had punched a hole in my nightmare had come from the kitchen.

Sunlight burned through the window: late morning. I inched my hand to the edge of the mattress and then beneath it until my fingers touched the handle of the nine-millimeter automatic I keep there. I pulled it out and hid my hand under the covers and let my eyes close most of the way, looking at the door through the rainbows the sunlight made against my eyelashes.

The living-room floor creaked and something clinked, like a couple of bottles being knocked together. Then a sharper sound, from the kitchen again, metallic this time. Under the covers, I snapped the automatic open and then shut again, forcing a bullet into the chamber. It was deafening.

The bedroom doorway darkened and Eleanor Chan stood there, a coffee mug in each hand. I kept my lids down and enjoyed the sense of looking at her when she didn’t know she was being observed, feeling the now-familiar knot in my abdominal muscles dissolve. She wore a pair of red UCLA gym shorts, an oversized gray T-shirt with dalmatians on it, and a pair of white knee-socks folded to midcalf. No shoes: Eleanor doesn’t believe shoes belong in the house. Her black hair was pulled back against the heat, held on top of her head with an elastic band strung through two little red plastic balls that matched her gym shorts. On anyone else it would have been too cute. Dark wisps of hair fell around her high cheekbones, and she lowered her head impatiently and blew them away.

“You’re a mess,” she said.

I opened my eyes. “You’ve known that for years.”

“You look like you walked into a windmill. The shoulder probably needs stitches, and the arm looks like it’s infected.”

“You saw my arm?” My arm was under the covers.

She regarded me from head to foot. “I saw everything. You were in a coma.”

“So much for vigilance,” I said. I reached over and put the gun back under the mattress. “Is one of those for me?”

She sat on the edge of the bed and I admired a smooth length of thigh. There’s something unwholesomely interesting about knee socks. Her lips pursed in disapproval. “If you think you can manage it after all that beer.”

“I only drank part of it. I poured the rest on the living-room floor.”

“So I saw,” she said, holding out one of the cups. “It’s a novel way to cut down.”

“Can you hang on to that for a minute? Sitting up is going to demand most of my attention.” I put my hands flat on the mattress beside me and heaved myself upward, feeling the muscles in my legs and stomach form a union and wave little neural signs in protest. “Jesus,” I said, staring at my cut arm. It was bright red.

“It’s Mercurochrome, you dolt,” Eleanor said. “I put some on your shoulder, too.”

“And I slept through it?”

“That’s not all you slept through,” she said.

This did not sound good. “What else?”

“You’ll find out.”

I took the coffee. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t suppose I am.”

“Why should today be different?”

She raised her eyebrows and sipped her coffee.

Normally I love Eleanor’s coffee, but the smell of it made my stomach heave rebelliously, and I turned it into a cough and blew on the cup.

“Told you so,” she said with some satisfaction. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”

I closed my eyes. “People keep saying that.”

She traced the cut on my shoulder with a light finger. “Maybe you should listen. There was a time, and I remember it more vividly than I’d like to, when you could go out and get minced and then come home and drink a case of beer, and you’d still wake up as fresh as a daisy.”

“ ‘Fresh as a daisy,’ ” I said admiringly. “I like that. Is that a New Age expression?”

“I have a New Age expression for you,” she said, “but I’m a lady.”

“And yet here you are in a man’s bedroom.”

“An invalid,” she said, “and I’m on an errand of mercy.”

“I was wondering about that.” She didn’t usually come over these days unless I called, and sometimes not even then.

“Why don’t you get dressed?” she asked. “If you can. And we’ll talk about it.”

“Whenever you say, ‘We’ll talk about it,’ I begin to perspire.”

She got up. “Well, perspire your way into the living room, and we’ll have a chat.”

I got more toothpaste on my chin than in my mouth, and I cut myself shaving, but other than that my ablutions were uneventful. The orange shirt I chose first clashed with my Mercurochrome, so I traded it for a loose robin’s-egg blue number with long sleeves to cover the damage and a pair of white drawstring pants Eleanor had brought me from the solo trip to Bali her first book advance bought her. It was eleven o’clock, and the air was hot enough to melt bacon fat.

Eleanor was sponging the back of the couch with a paper towel and muttering under her breath when I came into the living room. When she heard me she held up the paper towel accusingly. It was wadded and rust-brown with dried blood. “You need a full-time nurse,” she said. “Or a mobile hospital following you around.”

“Sorry,” I said. “If I’d known you were coming I would have bled outdoors.”

“You did.” She folded the towel over to present a clean surface and swabbed at the couch again. “You’re hell on furniture.”

I sat where the couch was damp. It felt cool. “Is this our chat?”

She avoided my eyes. “Where’s your coffee?”

“Why, Eleanor,” I said. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were stalling.”

“I made it, you can drink it.” She went into the bedroom and came out with the mug in her hand and stood over me until I’d forced some down and made appreciative noises. “I want you to know,” she said severely, “that I had nothing to do with anything your mother said.”

“I never thought you did. Not your style.”

“She called me a couple of days ago. Said she wanted some girl talk, said your father had been grumpy all week and she was bored.”

“He’s not much on girl talk even when he’s cheerful.” The second gulp of coffee tasted better.

“She has a right to worry about you, you know.”

“My God, what she went through,” I said, “giving me birth. Did you know I was born at three in the morning?”

“Of course I did. I’ve known that for years.”

I moved my arm experimentally. My shoulder hurt like hell. “I don’t know what time you were born.”

She looked down at the front of her T-shirt as though the dalmatians were a surprise. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” Her eyes came up to mine. “But you do know I’d never set anything up with your mother.”

“She wants us to get married,” I said, working the other arm. That shoulder hurt, too. “She says we’d have adorable children.”

“We would. Another genetic possibility goes unfulfilled.” She tugged at the bottom of the shirt, which was perfectly unwrinkled.

“We chose names once, remember?”

Eleanor picked up the wad of paper towels, which she’d dropped onto the table, and poked it experimentally with her forefinger. Water dripped from it. “We did a lot of things,” she said shortly. “Some of them were silly.”

“Some of them,” I said, “were pretty wonderful.” I reached up with the arm that hurt least and took her hand, paper towels and all. Her hand felt as if it had been in mine forever.

“I’m having a little problem,” I said.

She ran her nails over the skin on the inside of my wrist. “That’s evident.”

“You said it, that thing about there having been a time when I could get run over or whatever, and not lose the crease in my pants.”

She was watching me, looking past the tone and under the words. “Yes?”

“Well,” I said. “I’m scared.”

She put her fingers around my wrist and rotated my arm, bringing the long cut into view. “That’s probably a sign of good sense.”

“It’s not just that. I mean, it is just that, but why? Why now?”

“Simeon, you’ve spent so much time looking at other people’s lives that you’ve forgotten about your own. Not that you ever wanted to know anything about yourself. Ask yourself why, out of all the jobs in the world, you chose this one. I mean, talk about outward-directed. You bounce from one set of lives to another, putting together what’s broken if you can, trying to change things. And you think you don’t change. You’re impervious to it, when everyone else can tell from a hundred yards away that you’re not the same person you were five years ago, or even three. Somewhere along the way, the big penny dropped. You’ve figured out you’re going to die.”

“I always knew I was going to die.”

“Knowing it in your big fat head is one thing. You know it now in the center of your chest. And you know what that means? It means that life isn’t infinitely elastic, the way it was in your twenties. You can’t go back for retakes. You can’t fix it. You’re making choices you’re going to have to live with. And some of them, if you’ll pardon the candor, have been pretty stupid.”

“You and me,” I said.

“That’s one.”

I took her hand from my wrist and held it between both of mine. It felt cool, smooth, familiar, right. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about you and me.”

The door to the roof opened and Wayde walked in, stark naked.

“For example,” Eleanor said, withdrawing her hand.

“Yo, Simeon,” Wayde said on her way to the kitchen. “Your girlfriend is way cool.”

“I’m cool,” Eleanor said, watching Wayde’s rear end analytically. There were no visible flaws. “She and I have had a chat.”

“Can I have some of this Evian?” Wayde called from the kitchen. “I feel like a french fry.”

“Sure,” Eleanor said, looking at me. “He’ll never drink it. The alcohol content isn’t high enough.”

“Want some, Eleanor?”

“Thank you, dear.” She batted her lashes at me. “Doesn’t that sound maternal?”

“Do you still want kids?” I asked.

“Here we are.” Wayde twinkled into the room with two glasses of water and handed one to Eleanor. She had honey-colored hair above and below, an exemplary set of the usual biological accessories, and a navel that looked like Michelangelo had carved it on a good day. Eleanor eyed her appreciatively, as though she’d had a hand in the design.

“If I looked like you, I wouldn’t wear clothes either,” she said. “Would you, Simeon?”

“If I looked like her, you wouldn’t be here.”

“You guys are great,” Wayde said cheerfully. “I wish more old people were like you.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” Eleanor said between her teeth.

“It’s just the way I feel,” Wayde said with a radiant smile. “Thanks for the wawa.” She went back on the roof.

“Wawa,” Eleanor said thoughtfully.

“Oh, I forgot-” Wayde said, standing in the doorway, and there was a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” I said. “I’m dressed.”

“Very tastefully, too,” Eleanor murmured.

“Cool,” Wayde agreed. Not way cool, though.

“For an old guy,” I said, opening the door. Orlando stood there, offensively slender and disgustingly young and handsome in a lime-green tank top and a pair of baggies.

“On the way to the beach,” he said. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“The aging process,” I said. “Come on in. Have some of Eleanor’s memorable coffee.”

“Is Eleanor here? Great.”

Eleanor gave him her fondest, whitest smile. “Hi, Orlando. Don’t you look Californian.”

“Oh, my God.” That was Wayde. She stood in the doorway, staring at Orlando as though Apollo had risen from the carpet.

“And this is Wayde,” I said, a host to my fingertips. “Her clothes are on loan to the children of Bosnia.”

“Aren’t you pretty,” Orlando said.

“Some girls are,” I said, watching Wayde with fascination. She was blushing.

“I’ll just get dressed,” she said, backing onto the roof.

“Get dressed?” I asked.

“Not for me, I hope,” Orlando said. He turned to me. “Where have you been hiding? I called last night, but you weren’t home.”

“He was undergoing surgery,” Eleanor said.

His brow furrowed. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Having an arm removed,” I said. “But I thought better of it.” I pulled up my sleeve and showed him my orange forearm.

“I used to love the color of Mercurochrome,” Orlando said. “I painted my whole body once, when I was around six. Sonia about killed me.”

“Have you heard from them?” That was Eleanor, always first with the niceties.

“Actually, that’s why I called. Where’s the coffee?”

“Oh, boy,” Eleanor said to me. “Invite the lad in, offer him coffee, and then stand there showing off your wounds.”

“Hi, again,” Wayde said from the doorway. She was still naked. She looked down at herself and then up at Orlando. “My dress is really ugly.”

“It’s hard to imagine a dress that would be an improvement,” Orlando said gallantly.

“Gee,” Wayde breathed.

“Black, right?” said the creaking old man, from the kitchen.

“Fine,” Orlando said. “You’ve got a beautiful neck, you know?“

“Thanks,” I said.

“My neck?” Wayde asked, blinking.

“You should wear something with a little scoop in front, something to accentuate the line of your neck. I’ll bet it’s twice as long as mine.”

“Your neck,” Wayde said shyly. “Your neck is swell.”

“Don’t lead her on, Orlando,” I said, handing him one of my few matching cups and saucers.

“You doddering old poop,” Eleanor said reprovingly.

“You lack essential information,” I told her in a superior tone.

“I doubt things have changed that much,” Eleanor said. “Sit, Orlando, don’t wait for Simeon to invite you. Wayde, why don’t you come all the way in? We can see more of you that way. What’s the word from Hawaii?”

Orlando sat on the far end of the couch, haloed by the light through the window, and Wayde stood there and gaped. “You’ve got an attractive uvula, too,” Eleanor said.

“Huh?”

“Close your mouth, dear. You look hungry that way.”

“Sorry,” Wayde said, sitting on the floor. Her belly didn’t even wrinkle.

“Sonia called yesterday,” Orlando said. “It’s rained nonstop, and Al keeps hauling her out in it.”

“To do what?” Eleanor asked.

“Visit cops,” Orlando said. “The only thing Sonia’s seen is the inside of the hotel room and the Honolulu police station. Al brought letters from a bunch of L.A. cops, and he’s determined to meet everybody.”

“Poor Sonia,” Eleanor said sympathetically.

“No, she’s enjoying it. She’s as bad as Al, you know. She can’t wait to get to Maui, meet a whole new bunch of cops.”

“Who are we talking about?” Wayde asked.

“Orlando’s sister is a, um, policeperson,” Eleanor said. “Married to another policeperson.”

“My parents hate cops,” Wayde said. “They hate cops and politicians and the guys who own stores and everybody, and they’ve got these big love signs all over the house.”

“I talked to Al,” Orlando said. “I told him about that sheriff, that Spurrier, and Al said to stay away from him.”

“Who’s Spurrier?” Eleanor asked alertly.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

“Al said he was a motherfucker,” Orlando continued, the word sounding awkward in his mouth. “He’s been brought up for disciplinary action a bunch of times for pounding on people, especially queers.”

“ Orlando.” Eleanor sounded shocked.

He looked from her to me. “You didn’t tell her?”

Eleanor turned cool eyes to me. “Tell me what?”

“That I’m gay,” Orlando said, a bit defiantly.

A long hiss escaped Wayde. Her mouth was open, and she leaned forward, gazing at Orlando with a look of pure loss. Then she felt our eyes on her and sat up. “Way cool,” she said in a very small voice. I wanted to lean over and kiss the top of her head.

“When did you meet this Spurrier?” Eleanor asked, deciding for the moment to glide over Orlando’s revelation.

“After the wedding,” I said. “When was that, the day before yesterday?” It seemed like a week ago.

“I have to pee,” Wayde announced brokenheartedly. She got up and left the room.

“And why are you being told to stay away from this man?” Eleanor demanded.

“He beat Simeon up,” Orlando said.

“Is he the one you’re afraid of?” she asked.

“One of them,” I said.

“Orlando,” she said, “why don’t you and I go out on the roof and you can tell me what’s going on. Mr. Strong-but-Silent here is saving it for the third act.”

“Sure,” Orlando said promptly, standing up. So much for male bonding.

“And you,” she said to me, “can wash the cups and figure out what we’re going to do about lunch.”

“I thought I’d just eat some raw beef,” I said, getting stiffly to my feet. “And ladyfingers for Orlando and you girls.” I toted the coffee cups obediently into the kitchen and turned on the tap, getting the usual mysterious clanking noises before the water made its appearance. I was leaning against the sink, counting silently to twenty and waiting for the water to turn hot, when someone behind me said, “Knock, knock,” and I jumped about three feet and came down facing the door.

It was open, and Ike Spurrier stood in it.

“Guilty conscience?” he asked. A uniform, considerably taller than he, stood behind him, peering in at me as though the cabin were the Snake House at the Zoo.

“What do you want?”

“In the neighborhood,” Spurrier said, not bothering to make it sound true. He wore the same yellow tweed jacket, but today’s polo shirt was a particularly unappetizing shade of orange that emphasized the colorlessness of his eyes. He leaned forward and gave the kitchen and living room an uninterested once-over. Then he licked the red lower lip. “Guess being a gay detective doesn’t pay all that well, huh?”

“I’d ask you in,” I said, “but I don’t want to.”

“That so,” Spurrier said, coming through the door. “Well, don’t bother. I’m already in. Wally,” he said, “take a hike down the hill. Look around, see if there’s another door.”

The uniform didn’t move, so Wally was presumably someone else. Spurrier put both hands in his jacket pockets and smiled at me, the red lip stretching unappealingly beneath the mustache. “Hot, isn’t it?”

I could feel the edge of the sink pressed against my back, and I forced myself to step forward. “Do you have a warrant?”

“In this heat,” he said, “I’m surprised to see you in a long-sleeved shirt. I had you figured for a T-shirt kind of guy.”

I buttoned the cuff I’d opened when I showed Orlando my arm. “Did you.”

“Sure. All you buff guys, that the word? Buff? Like to show off your biceps. All that work in the gym, looking good for the other buff guys. Figured you for a formfit T-shirt.”

“How about that,” I said.

He focused on the door to the deck. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Who?”

“Got a lot of them, huh? I guess a buff guy like you would. Nordine. Where’s Nordine?”

“I haven’t got any idea.”

“There’s a room down the hill,” a male voice said from behind Spurrier. “No one there.”

“Well, he’s somewhere,” Spurrier said.

“I’m sure he is,” I said. “But he’s not here.”

“I really need to talk to old Christy,” Spurrier said confidingly. “This thing with Max-you remember Max.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You ought to turn that water off,” Spurrier said. “There’s a drought.” I reached behind me and twisted the tap without turning my back to Spurrier. “Somebody was in old Max’s house last night. Went right through the seals. Used a key, how about that? Bled all over the place, too.”

“What do you want, Sergeant?”

“In the neighborhood,” he said again. “Guy who bled like that must have got cut up pretty good. Maybe on the arms, what do you think? Well,” he said, turning his head, “look who’s here. Hey, Chiquito.”

Orlando came into the living room, giving Spurrier several hundred volts of pure disdain. “Has he got a warrant?” he asked me.

“Everybody wants to know about warrants,” Spurrier said. “You wouldn’t know where Nordine is, would you, sweetie?”

Orlando let a beat pass before he answered. “I’ve never met him.”

“And I thought it was a small world.” Spurrier took a hand from his pocket and tugged on his lip. “Well, I’ve got something he might want to hear about, in case you ever do. Tell him old Max’s index finger showed up in Boulder, Colorado, this morning.”

For a long moment no one spoke. Spurrier looked at us expressionlessly. Then Orlando put a hand against the back of my rocking chair and said, “I beg your pardon.”

“Special delivery.” Spurrier looked from him to me watchfully. “In a nice little ice pack. Along with a bunch of disgusting letters about what kind of guy he loved best in the whole wide world and some pictures. Cute pictures, too. Him and Nordine.”

“Sent to whom?” I asked.

“The newspaper.” He gazed at us, apparently thinking of something else. “Also a note suggesting it might make a good story. HOMETOWN BOY MAKES BOYS or something. Guess old Max was still in the closet back in Boulder.” Shaking his head, he came back to us and said, “Where you from?”

“Here,” I said. “I was born where I’m standing.”

Eleanor came through the door and headed for the kitchen, passing in front of Spurrier with an incurious look. “What about lunch?” she asked me, opening the refrigerator.

“My, my,” Spurrier said, aping surprise. “The fair sex.”

“His finger,” I said. “Why his finger?”

“You’re supposed to be a detective,” Spurrier said reprovingly. “So it could be printed, of course.”

“What’s this about a finger?” Eleanor asked, holding a bottle of Evian.

“Never you mind, little lady,” Spurrier said. “Although I’m not quite sure what the hell you’re doing here.”

“Me do laundy,” Eleanor said in a singsong voice. “Velly fast, velly good. Even that coat I can get crean. Who are you supposed to be?”

“So you see,” Spurrier said to me, “I’ve got to talk to Nordine. And I figure you’re the guy who can tell him so.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Christy,” I said.

“Hell, I know that.” Spurrier’s eyes opened in mock surprise. “Oh, I haven’t made myself clear. This more or less lets Nordine off the hook.”

“You’re a policeman,” Eleanor said.

“Here to protect you, my dear.”

“I’ll take my chances with the crooks,” Eleanor said. “Is your name Spurrier?”

“Why does it let Christy off the hook?” I asked.

“Because it’s happened before,” Spurrier said, speaking as he would to a very slow child. “Max isn’t the first.”

“Ah,” I said. It was happening too fast for me.

“So if you see him-” Spurrier began, and then he stopped short and his jaw fell open. Wayde ambled out of the bathroom, naked as the dawn, across the living room and out onto the deck. “Jesus,” Spurrier said to me when she was gone, “you’ll jump anything, won’t you?”

“Next time, Ike,” I said, leaning close to him, “come alone.”

His face went white. Both hands came up in front of him, balled into fists, and Eleanor stepped between us, holding out the bottle of Evian. “Would you like some water?” she asked. “You look hot.”

“You and I,” Spurrier said over her shoulder to me, “will have to have another talk. Our last one was obviously too brief.”

“Go away,” Orlando said from the living room.

Spurrier stared at him but spoke to me. “Tell Nordine,” he said, his voice thick and tight. “Tell him he can come out from under his rock.”

“Cheer up, Ike,” I said with a courage I didn’t feel. “You’ll get a chance to punch someone out yet.”

He glared at me and then turned quickly, pushing with his fingers on the chest of the cop behind him, and they were gone.

“Okay, Simeon,” Eleanor said flatly. “Tell us everything.”