A Savage Place s-8 Page 8

  “I need this story,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, “but don’t think Samuelson is going to be easy. Cops hate coincidence. You’ve employed a detective from Boston for an unspecified investigation, and then your boyfriend gets killed.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. Wasn’t.”

  “That’s not the point. He was perceived as such. Samuelson isn’t going to be happy with the hypothesis that there’s no connection.”

  “That’s his problem,” Candy said. She was resting her chin on her folded arms, staring across the barrel of the camera, past me, at the blank off-white curtain that backdropped part of the set.

  “He’s being nice with you, and careful, because you’re in the media, and he knows you can cause him aggravation. But cops have a high aggravation tolerance, and if he has to, he’ll take the weight, as the saying goes. Then he can become your problem… and mine.”

  “I suppose it could be trouble for you.”

  “Suppressing evidence. Cops-and D.A.‘s and judges -disapprove of it generally.”

  “You can go back to Boston.”

  “While you do what?”

  “I need this story.” She wasn’t gazing at the offwhite backdrop now. She was looking at me.

  “Like the cops,” I said, “the bad guys walk a little more carefully around you than they might someone else. Killing a reporter makes a lot of waves. Remember the reporter that got blown up in Arizona?”

  She nodded.

  “So do they, and maybe they won’t kill you if they don’t have to. But if you’re running around making more waves than you’d make dead, then the logic seems inescapable.”

  “That means you think I should tell the police?”

  “No,” I said. “That means I’ll stay.”

  Chapter 14

  THAT NIGHT THERE was no dancing on the balcony. We ate a room-service dinner, in near perfect silence and went to bed early. What a difference a day makes. I lay on the bed in my room and watched an Angels game on television until I got tired. Then I switched everything off and went to bed. Sleep. Death’s second self.

  In the morning we went to Candy’s apartment to check her mail and listen to her phone-answering machine and get some clean clothes. The sun was bright off the pool and filled the room. There was a breeze. The faint movement of the pool made the light glance and quiver. Candy stood by her desk in the living room sorting through her mail. She had on a dark blue suit with gold piping. She punched on the phone recorder as she looked at the Mail, and Mickey Rafterty’s voice came up.

  “Candy,” it said, “where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to get you all day. I braced Felton and I know he’s scared. All we have to do is keep on the pressure, and he’ll crack. I’ll keep calling till I get you… I love you, babe.”

  Candy dropped the mail and slowly sank to her knees and put her arms around herself and began to rock slightly back and forth, sitting on her heels, her head hanging. I stepped over and shut off the recorder. Candy murmured something.

  I said, “What?” and bent over to hear her.

  She said, “A voice from the grave,” and gave a little snicker. “From the other side, through the magic of machines.” She snickered again. And then she was still and rocked.

  I squatted beside her on the floor and said, “Would you care for a hug or a comforting pat, or would that make it worse?”

  She shook her head, but I didn’t know if she was saying no to the hug or no, it wouldn’t make it worse. So I stayed where I was and did nothing, which I probably ought to do more of, and after a while she stopped rocking and put a hand on my thigh to steady herself and then stood up. I stood with her.

  “Poor little Mickey,” she said. “He acted so tough.”

  “He was tough,” I said. “He was just small.”

  “Big or small,” she said, “bullets would have killed him anyway.”

  The rest of the phone recordings had to be listened to. I was thinking how to go about it.

  “If I’d been a weathergirl,” Candy said, “Mickey’d be alive.”

  “You’ve had a bad time. You’re entitled to be silly,” I said. “But don’t do it too much. You know his dying wasn’t your fault.”

  “Whose fault was it?”

  “I guess most of the blame resides with the guy who burned him. I’d guess old fat Franco. A little of the blame is Mickey’s. He screwed around with stuff he didn’t know about. It’s a way to get hurt.”

  “Franco?”

  “Yeah, the fat guy that beat you up. His name’s Franco.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Learned from the blond guy I talked with at the Farmers Market.”

  “And you think he killed Mickey?”

  “You talked to Felton and got beat up by Franco. Mickey talked to Felton and got shot. Wouldn’t you guess Franco?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would seem the handle to all of this,” I said. “Old Franco.”

  “Handle?”

  “Yeah. We’ve spent all this time talking to people on whom we have nothing. We’ve already got Franco for kidnapping and assault. He’s probably hired help. So he has no reason to cover up for his employers if it costs him.”

  “I guess that’s so. But he’s not the one I want,” Candy said. She was starting to concentrate. The shock was receding.

  “Not finally,” I said. “But to get any tangle straightened out you have to find one end of the rope. Franco’s one end.”

  “Okay.” Candy was frowning with interest. “Okay. I’ll buy that. Now the problem is to find him.” She was drumming her fingers softly against her thigh. “You have any thoughts on that?”

  “How did you find him?” I said.

  “I didn’t. He found me.”

  “And Mickey?”

  “I see. He found Mickey too. I’d talked to Felton, and I’ranco showed up. Mickey talked to Felton and, we assume, Franco showed up again. Are you saying I should talk to Felton again and make a target of myself?”

  “You or me.”

  “It shouldn’t be you,” Candy said. “Mickey wasn’t your friend. You didn’t come out here to be a what, a-”

  “Sitting duck, clay pigeon, sacrificial lamb.”

  She nodded. “Any of those. No. It’s my job.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “No big macho talk about ‘man’s work’?”

  “Nope. In fact it makes no difference. I do it, and I have to protect me and you. You do it, and I have to protect you and me.”

  She stopped drumming her fingers and looked at me without expression for a moment. “Yes,” she said. She looked at me some more. “Yes, that’s true. I may not like it, but it’s the way it is. You can protect me a lot better than I can protect myself. I want to do it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I thought you would.”

  She walked to the glass doors and stared out at her blue pool. Her fingers were drumming again on her thigh.

  “You know, I’ve lived in this house three years and I’ll bet I’ve been in the damn pool twice.”

  “When this is over,” I said, “we’ll have a victory swim.”

  “When it’s over,” she said. Her back was still to me. “Christ, I wish it were over a long time ago.”

  I was quiet.

  “When I first came up with this story and started on it, I was so excited. Celebrity, advancement, money.” She shook her head and stared out at the pool. “Now I wish it were done. Now I have to finish it, and all it does is scare me.”

  “There’s no business like show business,” I said.

  She turned from the window.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I’d better learn to use that gun.”

  I went out to her car and got it out of the glove compartment and brought it back into her living room. She looked at it without affection. I pressed the release button and dropped the clip out. Then I ran the receiver back and popped a shell out of the chamber.

  “Had a rou
nd chambered,” I said.

  “If you’re going to teach me anything,” Candy said, “you’ll have to speak a language I understand.”

  “Sure. I just mean he had a bullet up in the chamber, ready to fire. Usually you would leave it in the magazine till you were ready to shoot. Safer that way.”

  “Are you saying, when they trailed us into the Farmers Market, they were ready to shoot us?”

  “Maybe, or maybe they were careless and stupid.”

  “Is it loaded now?”

  “No. Try it out.”

  She snapped the empty gun several times, aiming at the far wall. “The trigger’s not hard to pull,” she said.

  “Not the way you mean,” I said.

  “You mean, it’s hard to shoot someone?”

  “Can be.”

  “Is this all I do, point it and shoot?”

  “If it’s loaded and cocked, yes.”

  “Show me how to load it.”

  I showed her how to slide the magazine into the handle.

  “It’s heavier with the bullets,” she said.

  “A little,” I said.

  “If I pull the trigger now, will it go off?”

  “No. You’ve got to jack a round up into the chamber. Look.” I showed her how. “Now if you pull the trigger it will shoot.” I took it from her and took out the clip and ejected the chambered bullet and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with an empty click. Then I handed her the pistol.

  “Okay, you do it.”

  She put the magazine in, ran the action back, and looked at me. “Now I can shoot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I have to push the thing back every time I shoot?”

  “No. Only the first time. Then it does it by itself. After the first time you just keep squeezing the trigger. When it’s empty, the breech will lock open.”

  “What if I need more than, what is it, six shots?”

  “Yes. If you do, you can reload the magazine. But if you’ve fired six rounds and need more, you probably won’t have time to reload. I advise flight.”

  She practiced loading and cocking a couple of times. Then she pointed the empty gun and practiced a couple of clicks. “Am I doing it right?” she said.

  “Yeah. Try to shoot from close. Don’t waste time on shooting from very far. The gun’s not made for it, and neither are you. Shoot for the middle of the body. It allows the most margin of error. You might want to shoot with both hands, like this.” I showed her. “Or if it’s sort of a far shot, you might do it like this.” I showed her the target-shooting stance and told her how to let out the air, and not breathe, and squeeze the trigger. “All of that is unlikely,” I said. “What you’ll want to hit with the gun, if you need to, will probably be very close up and hard to miss. What you need to do most of all is remember you’ve got it, and be willing to use it. Keep in mind that they want to kill you.”

  “You’ve shot people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it awful?”

  “No. It’s fashionable to say so, but no. It’s not awful. Often it’s fairly easy. Not messy like stabbing or clubbing or strangling, that sort of thing. It’s relatively impersonal. Click. Bang. Dead.”

  “Don’t you mind?”

  “Yes, I mind. I don’t do it if I don’t have to. But I’ve never shot anyone when it wouldn’t have been a lot worse not to.”

  “Do you remember the first time?”

  “The time, not the person. It was in Korea. He was just a shape on a night patrol.”

  “And it didn’t bother you?”

  “Not as much as it would have if he’d shot me.”

  “It’s always in context for you, isn’t it?”

  “What. Right and wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that ethical relativism?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Can you shoot if you have to?”

  “Yes,” Candy said. “I believe I can.”

  Chapter 15

  WE WENT DOWN to the hall of justice the next afternoon and spent an hour and a half explaining to Samuelson that our investigation of the moving picture business had nothing to do with Mickey Rafferty’s death. I don’t think Samuelson believed it, but there was nothing much that he could do about it, and he knew it and he knew we knew it so he ushered us out after an hour and a half with a fair amount of grace. Candy drove us up over what was left of Bunker Hill and down to Fifth Street and then to Figueroa and then onto Wilshire.

  “I know it’s dumb,” I said, “but I kind of like downtown L.A.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. It feels more like a city is supposed to.”

  “I never come down here except for a story, but I don’t really like cities.”

  “You’re in the right place,” I said.

  We drove west on Wilshire past the big old Ambassador Hotel with its brown stucco cottages. Bobby Kennedy had been shot there, on the way out of the ballroom, after a speech.

  “I know Felton’s home address,” Candy said. “The first time I saw him, I went to his home.”

  “Want to cruise on up there and see if he’s home?”

  “Yes,” Candy said. “If he isn’t, we’ll wait.”

  I looked at my watch. Four thirty. “Maybe we should stop someplace and get a few sandwiches to go. In case it’s a long wait.”

  She nodded. In Beverly Hills we stopped at something that appeared to be a French delicatessen. I went in and bought cheese and bread and country paté and an apple and a pear and a bottle of red wine. They put all this in a paper bag that had a strawbasket design printed on the side, and I took it out, slipped it into the trunk, and got back into the passenger’s side beside Candy.

  “We’re armed and provisioned, baby. Let’s roll.”

  We turned up Beverly Drive, heading north toward the hills. Candy was quiet as she drove. Across Santa Nlonica I looked at the houses. They were close together and quite near the street, but looking down the driveways and peering around shrubs as we went past, I could see the depth of the lot. Ample room for pools and tennis courts and hot tubs and patios and croquet lawns.

  “What do you call the place where croquet is played?” I said to Candy.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is it a croquet field or a croquet court or what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My God, next thing you’ll tell me you don’t play polo.”

  She shook her head. I looked at the houses some more. They were often Spanish with a touch of Tudor. They frequently had both wood and stone siding, and the small lawns in front were consistently well tended. Palm trees were metronomically regular in their spacing and identity along the narrow border between the sidewalk and the street. And nothing moved. It looked like an empty set. No dogs sitting in the front yards with their tongues out looking at pedestrians. No cats. No children. No bicycles. No basketball rims on garages. No baseballs, tree huts. No squirrels.

  “Place looks like Disneyland after hours,” I said to Candy. “Deserted.”

  “Oh, yes. It always is.”

  “What are they doing in there,” I said, “watching a videotape of people living?”

  Candy smiled but not like she enjoyed it. “I guess so,” she said. “I never thought much about it.”

  We crossed Sunset. The Hills began.

  “That mansion still here on Sunset where the guy painted explicit genitals on the nude statues out front?”

  Candy nodded. “A realist,” I said.

  “Spenser,” Candy said, “I just don’t feel like making amusing conversation right now, okay? My friend is dead. I may be dead soon. I’m scared and sad and I don’t see how you can talk about nonsense as if nothing had happened.”

  “I could keen,” I said.

  She frowned. “Keen?”

  “You know, as in `keening and wailing and gnashing of teeth.‘ ”

  “You know you’re probably being cheery, but please don’t joke now. Let�
�s just be quiet.”

  “How about I just gnash a little bit. Very softly. You’ll barely hear me.”

  She smiled slightly.

  I said, very softly, “Gnash.”

  She smiled more and her shoulders shook slightly.

  “Gnash.”

  She laughed. “Okay. Okay. You are, in fact, as loony as I thought you were. We’re setting ourselves up like two worms on a hook, and you’re riding around saying ‘Gnash.’ ”

  We swung off Beverly Drive and into Coldwater Canyon. The road was steeper now, and when we swung onto Linda Crest, we began going up steeply in a series of reverse curves. Candy shifted up and down as the MG hugged the turns.

  “This is what it was born for,” I said.

  “This car? Yes. It’s always fun to drive it up here. I always feel like Mario Andretti or somebody.”

  “Better looking though.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam Felton’s house was the last one on the street. Beyond it the hills terraced back down toward L.A., and the city spread out below it. There was a stucco wall with an iron gate in it. When we rang, a voice came out of a small speaker in one of the gateposts.

  “Who’s calling, please?” it said.

  “Candy Sloan to see Mr. Felton.”

  “Mr. Felton is not home now. Would you leave a message?”

  “We’d prefer to come in and wait,” Candy said.

  “I’m sorry, that isn’t possible. I don’t know when Mr. Felton will be home. If you’ll leave a message, I’m sure he’ll be in touch.”

  “No thanks,” Candy said. A small sign beside the speaker said PROTECTED BY THE BEL-AIR PATROL. “We’ll wait.”

  There was a click from the speaker and then silence. Candy shrugged. “He’ll have to come in or go out sometime,” Candy said.

  “Back way?” I said.

  “Not in these hills,” Candy said. “You’d have to drive over someone’s roof.”

  I nodded. We waited. We ate our picnic. At ten of seven a dark green BMW sedan drove into a turn in front of Felton’s house and stopped. A man peered out at us through the front windshield.

  “Felton,” Candy said.

  He got out of the car and waddled toward us. “Something I can do for you?” he said.