A Savage Place s-8 Page 10

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right now,” Samuelson said. He continued to stare past us. “Rafferty saw, or says he saw, Sam Felton make a payoff to a hammer named Franco. He told you. You started investigating. You hired Spenser here-”

  The lawyer interrupted. “The station hired Spenser.”

  Samuelson didn’t look at him. “-to keep you out of trouble.” He paused, looked sideways at me, said, “Nice job,” and went back to staring out the window.

  “Despite your warnings,” Samuelson continued, “Rafferty pushed Felton and turned up dead. You didn’t see any good reason to tell me that, and instead, you and Spenser came over here and questioned Felton until the same hammer, Franco-who had also beaten you up, and who had been following you around, and whom you saw no reason to mention to me-that hammer shows up here with a helper and tried to kidnap you, succeeded in kidnapping Felton while Spenser had the drop on him. And Spenser managed to staple the helper without shooting himself in the elbow. That about fit?”

  The lawyer said, “There are several aspects to that summary which imply-”

  I said, “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  The lawyer was portly, red-faced, and young, wearing a blue suit of European cut that didn’t go with his body and an open-necked white shirt that showed a lot of French cuff.

  “Now, listen, I can’t represent you if-”

  “You represent her,” I said. “Not me.”

  The sheriff’s man said, “Aw, for chrissake, counselor. Hush up.”

  The lawyer turned on him. “Now, just one minute, officer. If you think that you can get away with intimidation, you’ve picked the wrong lawyer.”

  Samuelson looked at the ceiling.

  The sheriff’s man said, “Intimidation. That wasn’t intimidation. When I intimidate, you’ll know it.”

  The lawyer said, “Are you planning to make a charge against these people, in clear violation of constitutional guarantees?”

  “I’ll charge them with being a pair of assholes,” Samuelson said, “and I’ll discuss with the D.A. whether I want to charge them with anything else. How about you, Bernie?”

  The sheriff’s investigator nodded. “The maid backs up as much of their story as she knows about. She told Lopez that the big one”-he nodded at me-“shoots very quickly.”

  “Swell,” Samuelson said, “We need another one of those out here.”

  “Are you looking for Sam Felton?” Candy said. Samuelson looked at Bernie, the sheriff’s man. They both looked at me.

  “You got any guesses where we might find Felton?” Bernie said.

  “Not where,” I said. “But I’ll bet on his condition.”

  Samuelson said, “Yeah. Worse than it would have been if you people had talked to me earlier.”

  “What makes you think they wouldn’t have burned him if you people got on his case?”

  “‘Cause we wouldn’t let them,” Samuelson said.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  The technician with the camera had packed it away in his tool kit and was leaning on the archway. From the hallway Lopez told Samuelson that he was going to take the maid to her sister’s to stay.

  Samuelson said, “Well, I’m going home and visit my wife. Don’t go anywhere, Spenser. I’ll want both of you downtown tomorrow to go through the mug hooks. I’ll talk with the legal guys and we’ll see. Miss Sloan is a reporter, and you were protecting her. Lemme say one thing though. To both of you. I don’t want even a smell of either one of you anywhere near any aspect of this case forever. You understand?”

  “I think you can count on that,” the lawyer said.

  “I better,” Samuelson said. “Because if I can’t, I’ll bury both of them. That, counselor, is intimidation.” He walked out of the room, and the technician and the sheriff’s man went with him. All that was left was the lawyer, Candy, me, and the other prowl-car cop who hung around to secure the house.

  “Can I give you a lift home, Candy?” the lawyer said.

  “No thanks, Keith, I’ve got my car. I’ll take Spenser.”

  “Okay, fine. Be careful what you say to anyone about this,” he said and looked at me.

  “Yes, we will, Keith,” Candy said. “Good night.” We all went out together and Keith drove off. I got into the MG beside Candy. We drove quietly and slowly back down the winding canyon roads toward Sunset.

  “Franco will be in the mug book,” I said to Candy. “Guys like him always are.”

  She was quiet, driving slowly through the dark emptiness of Beverly Hills.

  “Once we’ve got an I.D. on him, the cops will find him. They’re good at that.”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me. The top was still down on the MG, and the velvet dark night seemed very low over us.

  “Much better than we would be,” I said.

  There was a rich smell of flowers in the dark air as we went down Beverly Drive. It made me think of funerals. We crossed Wilshire, then Olympic, and pulled in under the entrance portico at the Hillcrest. There was a man to take the car. Duty before sleep. No music filtered down from the rooftop. Candy went into her room and locked the door behind her without a word. I went into mine. It was hot. I turned on the air conditioner and undressed in the dark. When I put my gun on the end table, I could still smell the faint odor of spent ammunition. I didn’t like it. Bubba probably hadn’t liked it either. If he’d smelled it. Which he probably hadn’t.

  Chapter 18

  WITH A LITTLE computer magic we I.D.‘d Franco in about five minutes. They had all the mug shots cross-indexed by names and pseudonyms and in various other ways, and when we fed in the various things we knew, the computer spit out five names. We looked at the five pictures and the third one was Franco. His full name was Francisco Montenegro. His last address was in Hollywood on Franklin Avenue. He was forty-one years old and had been busted six times, two jail terms. All his arrests were for muscle stuff: assault, extortion, twice for murder.

  We talked with Samuelson and a detective named Alvarez in Samuelson’s office.

  “I know Franco,” Alvarez said. “He is bad news. He used to be a collector for a loan shark named Leon Ponce, maybe still is. He’ll kill people for you, if you’ll pay him. Or break bones.” He looked at me. “You know the score, don’t you? He’s like a hundred other guys in this town or yours. Except he’s badder than most of them. You’re lucky. Most people bang up against Franco, they don’t come out ahead.”

  The phone rang on Samuelson’s desk. He answered, listened, said “Okay,” and hung up.

  “Franco don’t live on Franklin anymore,” he said. No one seemed surprised. “I called Boston this morning,” Samuelson said. “Talked to a homicide sergeant named Belson. He tells me you’re legitimate.”

  “Gee whiz,” I said.

  “I told him we probably had a case on you for suppressing evidence and asked him what he thought about prosecuting you. He said if it was him, he wouldn’t. Said you probably did the world more good outside than inside, but only barely.”

  “And what did the prosecutor’s office say?”

  Samuelson grinned. “Said they were too goddamn busy.”

  “So you’re taking Belson’s endorsement.”

  “Yeah.”

  The phone on Samuelson’s desk rang again. Samuelson said, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that figures. Okay, I’ll come out. Yeah.” He hung up and said, “They found Felton. In a Dumpster back of a Holiday Inn out in Westwood.”

  Candy said, “Dead?”

  Samuelson nodded. “I’m going out there now,” he said. “You’re a reporter. Want to come along?”

  Candy said, “Let me call the station for a cameraman.”

  Samuelson indicated his phone. “Dial eight,” he said. He looked at me. “That means you’ll be along too, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “If we see a clue anywhere, try not to step on it, okay?”

  “I’ll just be grateful to watch,” I said. “Try to learn a few advanced police te
chniques.”

  Candy got off the phone and off we went.

  The five levels above the lobby at the Westwood Holiday Inn, on Wilshire, are parking levels, open to the pleasant smell of flowers, with a waist-high wall around each level. You drive down an alley beside the hotel and up a ramp, and there you are. There is no attendant, no limitation on who can drive in. Behind the hotel was a small courtyard with a large Dumpster.

  Beyond the Dumpster was a high concrete wall, and beyond that, neat, tile-roofed, mostly stucco houses stretched away down to Santa Nionica and beyond. From any of the levels on the back of the hotel, you could see the tower of the Mormon temple building on Santa Monica with the statue of a guy on top of it who was either Joseph Smith or the angel Moroni. It could have been the last thing Sam Felton ever saw.

  Felton was where they had found him, spreadeagled, facedown in the Dumpster, dressed as we’d seen him, with some blood dried in the long hair at the back of his head. He was half submerged in trash.

  A black detective with a gray-tinged natural and a mustache talked with Samuelson. “I figure he was shot somewhere else, maybe up on one of the parking levels, and dumped in here. If I had to guess, I’d say he got thrown over the edge up there above the Dumpster. He’s sunk in pretty good. He must have landed with some impact.” The cop looked familiar to me, until I figured out he looked like Billy Eckstine.

  “Had a chance to talk with anybody yet?” Samuelson asked.

  “Hotel manager says no one reported anything unusual. He wasn’t on last night. The night man’s on his way in. Haven’t talked with the guests yet. Man:ycr sort of doesn’t want us to.” It couldn’t be Billy Eckstine, the voice was all wrong. Maybe if he sang a couple of lines of “I Apologize.” I decided not to ask. Nobody was that fond of me here to start with.

  “Don’t blame him,” Samuelson said. “We’ll do it anyway. Have the two guys from the black and white start at the top floor. You and your partner start at the bottom. Keep track of the rooms where no one’s there. We’ll want to see if they’ve checked out or if they’re coming back.”

  The black detective nodded and went off. A cameraman had showed up to meet Candy. He had a shoulder mounted camera and a big black shoulder bag and was dressed like he was on his way to a soup kitchen. Except for the on-camera people, I’d never seen anyone in television who didn’t dress like they got a discount at Woolworth’s.

  I followed Samuelson up to the first parking level while he began walking around looking at the parapet and the floor and occasionally squatting to look under cars.

  “Unless he used an automatic, there won’t be any spent shells,” I said. “And probably even then he would have picked them up.”

  Samuelson ignored me.

  “You’re right, though, that he wouldn’t have shot him in the car,” I said. “He’d want to avoid getting blood on the upholstery or powder burns or bullet holes. Incriminating.”

  Samuelson let himself down in a push-up position to look at the cement floor under a white Pontiac Phoenix with a rented-car sticker in the lower left corner of the windshield. He took a long careful look without getting his clothes dirty and stood back up. He brushed his hands off against each other and moved along the parking level. I followed him.

  On the third parking level Samuelson found a smear on the low parapet that could have been blood. Below they were getting Felton’s body out of the Dumpster. A plainclothes cop in a plaid jacket was watching them alertly. Samuelson yelled down to him.

  “Bailey, come up here.”

  The cop in the plaid jacket sprang into action. When he arrived, Samuelson pointed at the smear. “Find out if it’s blood,” he said.

  Bailey said he’d get right on it. Samuelson kept up his tour. I followed him. Out front, Candy was doing a stand-up in front of the Holiday Inn. The ragamuffin with the camera was about five feet out into Wilshire shooting her, and a cop in uniform was directing traffic around him.

  When we got to the top floor of the parking garage and Samuelson was through looking at it, he leaned his forearms on the parapet and stared out at Wilshire Boulevard. Off to the left behind some apartments and a neighborhood of small classy houses you could see UCLA sticking up here and there against the green hills.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “We told you all we knew last night,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said, “maybe not. But right now I’m interested in opinion. Boston tells me you’re a real hot shot. What do you think?”

  “I think a lot of what you think. That Franco hauled Felton out of there last night and brought him here and blew him away because Franco was confident Felton would spill everything he knew and some he could make up when folks got to chewing the fat with him, so to speak.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And I think Franco is an employee. He’s mean enough, but he’s small-time. The thing that Candy’s trying to uncover is big-time. Franco’s the kind of guy that will shake down whores and unconnected bookies and Mexicans with forged green cards.”

  Samuelson nodded. “So who employs him?”

  “Directly I don’t know. Indirectly I would guess the head of Summit Studios.”

  “Hammond,” Samuelson said. “Anything more than you told me last night?”

  “No,” I said. “He should have known about the offer from Felton either way. He said he didn’t. He was too helpful and too innocent and too outraged. He’s in it, I’ll bet you dinner at Perino’s.”

  “Make it Pink’s,” Samuelson said. “It’s what I can afford if I lose. What about Brewster?”

  “I don’t know. I only met him once. He could be involved. Any guy who got to where he is can’t be too meticulous about things.”

  “And who’s doing the extorting? Who’s the money going to?” Samuelson said.

  I shook my head. “This is your neighborhood, not mine. Any guesses? How about the guy Franco used to collect for?”

  “Leon Ponce? Naw. He’s too small-time. Shaking down an outfit like Summit, or Oceania… Leon hasn’t got that kind of connections. Or that kind of balls. This is a bib game operation.”

  Across Wilshire a woman in a pink robe came out onto the balcony of her apartment and watered her plants. She had a transparent plastic bag on her head. Probably just colored her hair.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. Samuelson looked at me.

  “Shaking down a major movie studio is a big deal, isn’t it,” I said.

  Samuelson nodded. “I just said that.”

  “But it’s not being run like a big-time operation,” I said.

  “For instance,” Samuelson said.

  “For instance it’s a goddamn mess,” I said. “They’ve beat up a TV reporter and murdered two people including a movie producer. I never heard of Felton, but he can’t be totally anonymous.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And sending a lumper like Franco around to collect cash from a producer on location? And being spotted? If the Mob owned Roger Hammond, would they work that way?”

  “No,” Samuelson said. “Nope, they’d have some stock in the company. They’d have credit transfers and paper transactions I don’t even know the names of, and it would take five C.P.A.‘s five years to figure out who was getting how much.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Maybe we been thinking too big,” Samuelson said.

  “Maybe Franco’s starting his own business,” I said. “Maybe that’s as high as it goes.”

  “What about that gut feeling about Hammond,” Samuelson said. “The dinner you were going to bet at Perino’s?”

  “I thought it was a chili dog at Pink’s,” I said.

  “That’s when I thought I’d lose,” Samuelson said.

  I shook my head. “Maybe I’m wrong on that. I’ve been doing this too long to think I don’t make mistakes. Hammond is guilty as hell of something. I don’t know what. But whether it’s got to do with Franco…” I shrugged.

  “Well,” Samuelso
n said, “we’ll start chasing paper. If Felton was paying Franco regularly, the money came from someplace. I’ll have someone start on that in the morning. I don’t think I’ve got enough to start digging into Summit’s books. All I got is your guess. I’m not sure the courts in California are willing to accept that.”

  “No wonder,” I said, “there’s a crisis in our courts.”

  Chapter 19

  CANDY AND I were lunching at the Mandarin in Beverly Hills with a guy named Frederics who was the news director at KNBS. Candy and Frederics both had minced squab. I was working on Mongolian lamb with scallions and drinking Kirin beer. Everything was elegant and cool, including Frederics, who was slicker than the path to hell. His dark hair was parted in the middle and slicked back. He had on a white-on-white shirt with a small round collar and a narrow tie with muted stripes and a white crocheted V-neck sweater tucked into tight Ralph Lauren jeans. The jeans were worn over lizard-skin cowboy boots. I was trying to figure out where he carried his money because no wallet would fit in his pants pocket.

  Frederics was drinking white wine with his squab. He took a sip, put the glass down, and said to Candy, “So, after talking with Mark Samuelson and others, the station management-and. I agree with them-feels that there’s really no further story, and no further danger to you. Mark says you agree with that, Mr. Spenser.”

  The minced squab was finger food, served in a lettuce leaf, that you picked up and nibbled. Candy nibbled on hers while I answered.

  “You’re not the Frederics of Hollywood, are you?”

  Slick as he was, Frederics was, however, not a kidder. He shook his head briefly. “Do you agree with Mark?” he asked.

  “Mark, huh?” I looked at Candy. She was still nibbling. “Yeah, I agree with Samuelson that she’s probably not in any danger. I’m not sure what I think about there being a story.”

  “Well, that’s a news judgment we’ll have to make,” Frederics said.