Free Skin Deep by Timothy Hallinan Page B

asked Dixie.
    Dixie didn't look at me. "She's been around a while," he muttered.
    "There are worse things than no job," I said to Janie.
    "Simeon, she's been working for the fannies for seven years. Where do you go from there, CBS News? It's not like it was really journalism."
    "Point taken," I said. "Screw it anyway."
    I headed toward the door of the trailer. Big John shifted on the balls of his feet as I approached and uncrossed his arms. He looked vaguely alarmed.
    "John," I said, "beat it."
    "You," John said. A lot of people seemed to be calling me "you." "You beat it."
    "In a minute." I moved to the left and then sidestepped around him to the right, hearing him grunt as he grabbed at where I'd been. My hand was on the doorknob when his arm went around my throat. He hoisted me like an empty nylon suitcase, bent my spine nearly double, and dumped me over his hip. I landed in the dirt at his feet.
    "Get out of the way, John," I said, flat on my back. My words didn't seem as menacing as I'd meant them to be.
    "Hnuh," he said. It could have been a laugh. He leaned down over me. I grabbed a bunch of pebbles and dirt and threw them at him and heard them ricochet against the trailer. John grabbed my belt buckle and tugged me up like a sack of rice, and Dixie's pale hand landed on his shoulder.
    "Stop it," Dixie hissed at both of us. There wasn't much I could stop, but John dropped me back into the dirt and resumed his guardianship of the door. "Get up," Dixie said to me. "For Christ's sake, there are people over there. This isn't what Norman is paying you to do."
    "It isn't?" I got up and dusted my trousers. My heart was drumming wildly in my throat. "Then what am I supposed to be doing, Dixie?"
    "Not getting into the papers," Dixie said, looking wildly to right and left as though he expected the Associated Press to emerge from the bushes, cameras flashing. "There could be leaks here. She'll be okay, honest."
    I looked at John, who was glaring at me, and then back at Dixie. "You want to change places with her?" I asked him. I started back toward John, who gave me a low-wattage grin.
    "Do you want me to ask her?" Dixie demanded.
    "Yeah, Dixie," I said, trying without much success to grin back at John. "Let's see you ask her."
    Dixie gave me a schoolteacher's upraised index finger. "Stay here," he said. He advanced toward the door. "John," he said in an entirely different tone, "it's just me. I'm going to knock on the door. It'll be okay, John."
    John looked from Dixie to me and then stepped aside as Dixie climbed the step and knocked. "Betsi," he said.
    I used the moment to bend down and pick up some more pebbles and dirt, lobbing them at the trailer. If nothing else, I figured, the noise might scramble Toby's hormones. Dixie turned to glare at me, and the door opened from inside. Betsi peered out, her hair awry.
    "Betsi," Dixie said as though he were talking to the mentally disadvantaged, "do you want to come out?"
    She looked at him and then through him, and I took a step, and she looked at me and through me. She made a sound like a strangled garden hose and closed the door.
    "Okay?" Dixie asked me.
    "Dixie," I said, craning past John, "how do you sleep?" Three large men from the crew had materialized next to John.
    Dixie's features got very pinched, squeezed from both sides by a vise I couldn't see. "Welcome to Hollywood," he said. He stepped around John and walked past me, and I glanced at John and his new allies and calculated my chances twice. Both times they came up nil.
    I looked at Big John and at the closed door of the trailer that said TOBY VANE on it. "Jesus Christ," I said to Janie. "Has he always been like this?"
    "Not exactly," Janie said. "Most stars start out nice and then get awful. But not our Toby. He started out awful and then got monstrous."
    "But what's going to happen? He can't go on like this."
    "Sure he can," she said. "He's a star, remember?" Someone called her, and she walked back to the set. I stood