A Savage Place (13 page)

“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,” Samuelson 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.”

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.

“Yeah.”

“So we’re taking you off the story, my love,” he said to Candy.

“It’s still there, John. It’s a story that we should be staying on. There’s more to it than the police think. Isn’t there, Spenser?”

“Of course he’d say so,” Frederics said. “His fee is in the balance.” He looked at me. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame you, but you’re hardly a disinterested observer.”

I asked, “Where do you carry your wallet?”

He said, “Excuse me?”

I said, “Your wallet. Where do you keep it? Your pants are too tight to carry it on your hip.”

He said, “Spenser, I invited you to lunch because Candy asked me to. I see no reason to be uncivil.”

“Yeah, of course. It’s just that you’re so damn adorable that I’m jealous. And maybe a little because she busted her ovaries on this thing, and you won’t let her clean it up.”

“That’s a business decision,” Frederics said. “And a matter of professional judgment.” He looked at Candy. “The judgment has been made and it’s final.”

I shut up. It was Candy’s career, not mine. She looked at the table and didn’t speak.

Frederics said to me, “We’ll pay you through this week. You’ve done good work and you deserve a bonus. Expenses, everything. Take a few days and have a good time before you go home.”

“I resign,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I resign. Now. Today. Now. This minute. I don’t work for you anymore.”

“You don’t want the money?”

“Boy, you do have news instincts, don’t you,” I said.

“You don’t want it?”

“That’s true,” I said.

We were all silent. At the end of the lunch Frederics asked Candy if she had a ride. She said she did. Then Frederics signed the check and we left. I never did see where he carried his wallet. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe if you’re that slick, you just signed everything. Somebody always had a pen.

Candy said, “You drive.”

I said, “You want to go someplace and get drunk?” She said yes.

I drove east on Wilshire to downtown and found a parking space on Hope Street. The whole way Candy was still silent. The wind ruffled her hair, and she stared straight ahead through the windshield.

I said, “There’s a bar on top of the Hyatt-Regency that’s nice.”

She nodded. We went into the fancy Hyatt lobby and took the elevator up. At a table by the window looking out over downtown L.A., Candy ordered a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. I had a Coors beer. I never cared for Adolph Coors’s politics, but I wasn’t sure I cared for anyone’s, and he made a nice beer. No carcinogens. To the southeast was an old skyscraper done in green stone, like Bullock’s on Wilshire, or the Franklin Life Building. Old L.A. Of course old L.A. was maybe 1936. Boston had been around for 306 years by then. On the other hand Rome had been around even longer. Perspective is all.

“What you going to do, babe?” I said to Candy.

“It’s there,” she said. “The story is there.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe. You yourself said Hammond was hiding something.”

“Yeah, but maybe what he was hiding isn’t what you’re looking for.”

“I know there’s something bad going down at Summit. I know it.”

“Woman’s intuition?”

She finished the bourbon. “Something,” she said. She didn’t smile.

“You going to look into it?”

The waitress brought us another round.

Candy drank some more Jack Daniel’s. “Maybe you and Samuelson are right about Franco and Felton. Maybe it was just a small-time shakedown. But then why kill him?”

“I don’t think killing was a big deal for Franco. Might just have been easier than not killing him.”

She shook her head. “No. If he was just doing a simple shakedown, why would Felton have called him? Why would Franco have killed him? He must have wanted something covered up.”

I nodded. Nondirective. Me and Carl Rogers.

“All we would have gotten if your theory is true would be evidence of blackmail. Killing Sam Felton would just make matters worse. Franco had to know he’d be the suspect. There’s no point being wanted for murder to avoid being wanted for blackmail.”

I nodded again. The waitress looked at Candy’s empty glass. Candy nodded. She looked at me. I shook my head. The waitress took Candy’s empty glass and went for a full one.

“So what he killed Felton for was to cover up something worse than a murder rap,” Candy said.

The waitress brought more bourbon. Candy drank some. She turned one hand up and raised her eyebrows at me. “What would be worse than a murder rap?” she said.

“Getting killed,” I said.

“Who would kill him?”

“The Mob.”

Candy took another sip of bourbon and swished it in her mouth with her cheeks sucked in while she thought about that. Then she swallowed and said, “Why?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know that the mob wants to kill him, but think about it this way. A murder rap means being wanted by the cops. If they catch you, they don’t usually shoot you. It happens. But not usually. They send you to trial, and it’ll take five years to get a conviction if you have any kind of lawyer. And then there’s practically no chance of a death penalty. And you might get out in a while for being a nice person. Nobody who’s ever been in the joint pretends it’s any fun, but it’s not the end. If you do something that the Mob doesn’t like, that is the end. They kill you and sometimes they aren’t neat about it.”

“So,” Candy said. She slurred the’s a little. “So you’re saying that Franco was doing something with Felton that he didn’t want the Mob to know about?”

“I’m saying, it’s an explanation. Killing Felton to keep the law from finding out something doesn’t make sense.”

Candy pursed her lips a little bit.

“On the other hand,” I said, “guys like Franco often don’t make sense. They don’t care about hurting people and they sometimes have funny ideas about their reputation or their self-respect. Sometimes they do illogical things.”

“Shelf-reshpect?”

“Sure. Lots of real creeps have self-respect. They just have a creepy version of it.”

Tears began to form in Candy’s eyes. Several of them began to trickle down her face. Her face was starting to crumple up, like a used napkin. She drank some more bourbon.

I said, “You want to get out of here?” She shook her head.

I said, “Then don’t cry. It is very unseemly in a public place to have a crying jag.”

She drank the rest of her bourbon. She signaled the waitress and pointed at the empty glass. Then she said to me. “I’m going to the ladies’ room and get it together. I won’t cry.” She had a little trouble pronouncing ladies. Then she got up and walked briskly away from the table.

“Another round, sir?” the waitress asked. I nodded. The lounge was nearly empty in midafternoon. It was very cool and still. Few places are more charming than a quiet cocktail lounge in the middle of the day with the ice tinkling in the glasses and the starched look of a bartender’s white shirt and the clarity of the beer in the glass with the bubbles drifting up. Soundless below, the noise shut off by glass and distance, the city seemed like something in a stereopticon. Here and there, where the developers had missed, the quintessential look of the twenties and thirties showed through, solid and full of confidence, a little rococo, a little imperial even-between the wars-hopeful even in Depression. Now it was being slowly blotted out by shiny surface, reflecting glass, gloss.

Candy came back from the ladies’ room with her makeup fresh and her mouth set in a look of fearsome self-control. She sat and sipped her bourbon. I raised my beer to her.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friend,” I said.

She smiled without enthusiasm.

“You want me to stick around,” I said.

“I can’t pay you.”

“It’ll count toward my merit badge in covert investigation.”

“I really can’t.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“You could move into my apartment,” Candy said. “It would save your hotel costs. You already have your ticket home, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’d pay for the groceries.”

“Christ,” I said, “I can’t afford to leave. It’s cheaper than going home.”

She sipped some more bourbon. With the glass still near her mouth she looked at me from under her eyebrows and said, “Besides, there could be certain house privileges.”

It came out pribleshes.

“There goes the merit badge,” I said.

CANDY AND I moved from the Hillcrest to her place on Wetherly Drive. Or I did. Candy was quite sloshed and did little more than stand and sway, first in my room while I packed, then in her room while I packed, then in the elevator while I hauled our luggage down, and in the lobby while I signed the bill. (I felt like John Frederics.)

“We’ll send that directly to KNBS, Mr. Spenser,” the cashier said.

I nodded as if I were used to that.

In the parking lot I had trouble getting all the luggage into the MG, but I managed with Candy sitting on one of her suitcases, and we drove off to West Hollywood.

Whatever the house privileges were, they weren’t forthcoming that evening, because by the time I got the luggage in from the car, she was zonked out on her bed with her clothes still on, lying on her back, snoring faintly. I hung up the stuff from her suitcase that would wrinkle if I didn’t. There was nothing to eat in the house, so I went up to Greenblatt’s on Sunset and got several roast beef sandwiches and some beer and some bagels and chive cream cheese and blackberry jam for breakfast. I brought it home and ate the sandwiches and drank the beer and read Play of Double Senses until eleven and went to sleep on the couch.

I woke up about six in the morning with the weight of the morning sun on my face. I could hear Candy moving about in the bathroom. I got up and went out to the pool and stripped down to the buff and swam back and forth in the pool for forty-five minutes until I thought I might drown. Then I got out and went in. Candy was back in her bedroom with the door closed. I went in the bathroom, showered off the chlorine, shaved, brushed my teeth, toweled dry, and got dressed.

I was in the kitchen grilling some bagels and percolating some coffee when Candy showed up. She looked as bad as she could, given where God had started her. And I was sure she felt worse than she looked.

“How are you this morning?” I said.

“I threw up,” she said.

“Oh.”

“What are you making?”

“Bagels,” I said, “and chive cream cheese and hot coffee…” Her face had a look of dumb anguish. “You don’t want any?” I said. “There’s blackberry jam and-”

“You bastard,” she said and went out of the kitchen. I sat at her dining-alcove table and had the toasted bagels with cream cheese and blackberry jam, alternately. Only a barbarian would eat chive cream cheese and blackberry jam on the same bagel.