A Savage Place Part 16

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

I drove east on Wils.h.i.+re to downtown and found a parking s.p.a.ce on Hope Street. The whole way Candy was still silent. The wind ruffled her hair, and she stared straight ahead through the winds.h.i.+eld.

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 skysc.r.a.per done in green stone, like Bullock's on Wils.h.i.+re, 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 gla.s.s. Candy nodded. She looked at me. I shook my head. The waitress took Candy's empty gla.s.s 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. n.o.body 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 gla.s.s. 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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 c.o.c.ktail lounge in the middle of the day with the ice tinkling in the gla.s.ses and the starched look of a bartender's white s.h.i.+rt and the clarity of the beer in the gla.s.s with the bubbles drifting up. Soundless below, the noise shut off by gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ny surface, reflecting gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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.

Chapter20.

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 cas.h.i.+er 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 G.o.d 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d," 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.

Candy sat in an armchair in the living room and looked out at her pool with her eyes squinted to slits.

"How about just coffee?" I said.

"No." She held her head quite still. "I need a c.o.ke, or... is there any c.o.ke?"

"No."

"Anything? Seven-Up? Tab? Perrier?"

"No. How about a gla.s.s of water?"

She s.h.i.+vered, and that seemed to hurt her head. "No," she said, squeezing the word out.

"How about I go up to Schwab's and get you some Alka-Seltzer?"

"Yes."

I finished my bagels and went out and got her the Alka-Seltzer. Then I poured another cup of coffee and sat on her couch with my feet on the coffee table. She drank her Alka-Seltzer. I read the L.A. Times. She sat still in the armchair with her eyes closed for maybe an hour, then got up and took two more Alka-Seltzer. "Two every four hours," I said.

"Shut up." She drank her second gla.s.s and went back to her chair.

I finished the coffee and the paper and stood up. She was still quiet in the chair with her eyes closed.

"Now," I said, "about those house privileges."

Without opening her eyes or moving anything but her mouth, she said, "Get away from me."

I grinned. "Okay, do we have any other plans for today?"

"Just give me a little time," she said.

"I'll call Samuelson and see if there's anything developed," I said.

She said, "Mmm."

Samuelson answered his own phone on the first ring. I told him who I was and said, "Do you mind if I call you Mark like John Frederics does?"

Samuelson said, "Who?"

I said, "John Frederics."

He said, "Who's John Frederics?"

I said, "News director? KNBS? Calls you Mark."

"TV newspeople are mostly turkeys," Samuelson said. "I don't know one from another. What do you want?"

I said, "Well, Mark-"

He said, "Don't call me Mark."

"Any sign of Franco Montenegro, Lieutenant?"

"No. And he should be easy, a stiff like him. He's gone. n.o.body on the street knows where."

"Would people talk about him?" I asked.

"I get the impression he'd be vengeful."

"Vengeful? Christ, you sn.o.bby eastern dudes do speak funny. Yeah, he's vengeful, but there's people on the street would tell on Dracula for a couple bucks, or a light sentence, or maybe I look the other way while they're scoring some dope. You know the street, don't you? They got a street in Boston?"