Grim Grinning Ghosts (Come Out To Socialize)

On the TV Fonzie is performing an exorcism and in the kitchen Healy wads up last week’s newspaper around a bundle of pumpkin guts. Holly waltzes past with a cardboard Ouija board tucked under her arm, followed by a troop of little friends in various states of commitment to the whole idea of costumes. One of them — a red-headed girl in a halfassed majorette costume — does a double-take when she spots the gun holstered under Jackson’s arm.

It’s hard to get in the Halloween spirit when it’s 70 degrees, palm trees, technicolor sunsets and clear skies as far as the eye can see. Healy shifts a little, adjusting his jacket as Holly’s blond head goes bouncing by.

“Hold up, hold up.” He waves an arm to bar her passage, inadvertently flashing the gun again in the process, and about six girls stumble to a stop behind her like a row of ducks. He recognizes some of the girls among their number, more or less, including the girl who’d been there the night Amelia Kuttner dropped in.

“Hi, Mr. Healy. We were just leaving,” Holly declares with a decisiveness clearly meant to be overheard. “Janet’s sister has a learner’s permit, so we’re going back to her mom’s place for pizza.”

“You know, Tuesday was a school night when I was your age,” Healy says,

Holly tilts her head and sticks out her chin, blond hair swinging. “You guys are going out tonight. I just saw dad washing the guts off his hands. What’s the job?”

“Just serving some papers. We’ll be home by the time you kids get back.”

If they’re lucky they’ll be back in time for M*A*S*H, early enough to stuff a few Rocky Road bars in a few neighborhood pillowcases and to congratulate themselves on a job well done. If they’re unlucky Holly may be picking the two of them up from county jail.

Holly is visibly reassured, though given the caliber of scumbag they’re serving papers to, it might be premature. “Okay, okay, great. Now can I go?”

“There’s going to be a lot of people behind the wheel after a few drinks tonight. Tell Janet’s sister to keep an eye out. This wouldn’t happen to be a boy-girl pizza party, would it?” He’s afflicted with sudden visions of a bunch of shithead high schoolers piled into a wood-paneled rumpus room to trade spit and stub out cigarettes in the shag carpeting.

“No boys, no booze. Nobody’s getting kidnapped. I promise.” She holds up her extended pinky. But Holly is smiling.

“Well, if you’re sure. Have a good time.”

The girls are out the door in a flash, sidestepping Holland’s lopsided jack o’ lantern. March’s artistic skills extend to carved gourds.

Who knows the kind of shit kids get up to these days. Jack has some kind of idea, from his own days throwing rocks at windows and raising seven different kinds of hell in the company of a swarm of brothers and cousins, but LA is different. For the grown-ups in residence above a certain tax bracket there’s a costume party Sid Shattack could be proud of in every neighborhood — plenty to mop up in the coming weeks, tracking down mysterious strangers and sorting out cases of mistaken identity fueled by open bars and domino masks —

Holland has emerged from the bathroom, rubbing at a razor-snagged spot on the edge of his jaw. He’s still committed to the idea of the electric razor, even when it makes him suffer.

“Jeez, quit giving my kid the third degree. It’s her last big Halloween, let her live a little.”

Which is not exactly the tune March was singing when they first met. If the past year has proven anything it’s that no power on God’s green earth — not gun-toting hitmen, not the charm of a stately dame, not the bottle and not the ten-ton pressure the Detroit auto industry is happy to apply to a small-timer PI with a two-man outfit — can keep Holland from putting Holly first. He and Jack just grew up in different eras, that’s all, with the war in between them. On different coasts.

“Read the papers some time. You think bad things don’t happen to kids on major holidays?”

Holly’s too old for razor blades in candy apples, not too young for bogus hippies and speed freaks and sleazy guys with panel vans. She’s a smart cookie, good at thinking on her feet, but some of the creeps out there — you never know. Jesus, you just never know.

“They’re just kids. They’ll be fine. Holly’s friends are good kids.”

“Even Janet?”

“They’re pretty good kids.

Holland looks a little like he’s wearing a costume, but the suit he has on is just new, that’s all — clearly he took the undercover part a little more seriously. People tend to forget Healy’s face, even if the impression he makes with a pair of brass knuckles doesn’t pass them by as easily —

But Holland’s something else. Holland’s a long drink of water, unruffled and unrumpled in a suit the color of a caramel apple. His mustache is trimmed up, and the cut over the bridge of his nose (picked up the other night getting clocked with a surfboard out in Hermosa Beach) has healed to a thin red seam. The look of it is rakish, and his crooked smile spreads when Healy’s done looking him over in carefully suppressed awe.

He has a briefcase, for God’s sake, a briefcase.

“You look good, Holland.”

March swings out his arms, somewhat sheepishly, to show off the cut of his suit. Ill-gotten gains, maybe, but their current successes all sort of skirt respectability and that’s the way the two of them have come to like it. On a good day it’s public service for big-hearted grannies and worried roommates, and other times they get to crack a few heads. They’ve gotten very good at cracking heads.

“And get this.” Holland bends down gracefully to tug up his pants cuff and there it is, a crisp-looking ankle holster for a formidable tiny handgun. Jack whistles, and Holland sweeps upright like an accomplished showman,

“You know, you’re never going to be able to draw that thing fast enough. Real cops only use ’em for backup.”

“I feel better knowing I have it, okay. It’s an insurance policy. And it looks great.”

The girls are gone by now. There’s nobody around to embarrass. Maybe Holly’s pals know the score or maybe they don’t. Holly got the picture about her dad and his new friend without needing to be told. Kids these days.

Holland slips his arm around Healy’s back. His leather jacket creaks a little as he shifts into the touch, the back of his head bumping against the wall, but Jack can’t even care — March smells sharp and spicy and distinctly sober for once, and he looks like a million bucks.

He wants to cover Holland’s mouth with his, he wants to be near him, if that’ll take off a little of the edge — this is the third Halloween without Holly’s mom in the picture, and Jack doesn’t know if she liked kids, considered collectively, or if she hated them — if she was the kind of woman who committed to paper cutouts of witches and sugary wax pumpkins and passed out boxes of full-size Hershey bars or if she turned off the porch lights and chainsmoked in the dark with earplugs in her ears. June never committed either way.

“You know, Jack,” March begins to say, but he doesn’t finish.

It’s a long, clean silver-screen kiss — not that Healy’s seen two men plant one on each other like this on celluloid, but it’s the kind of thing that should be exchanged on a studio set late at night with twinkling lights and music in the background. Up close Holland smells like pressed cloth and cologne and faintly like the inside of a pumpkin. The TV’s still on, and the Fonz is still performing an exorcism.

When they break from one another, Holland staggers back, groping for the remote control on the countertop. Over his shoulder, the image on the screen disappears in a blip.

The corners of his eyes are creasing, and his smile is crooked. “Are we square?”

Healy rubs at his mouth, oddly touched. “Square as we’ll ever be, March.

“Ready to crash another rich guy’s party?”

“Ready when you are.”