A Savage Place

by Robert B. Parker

  “Spenser,” I said. “Like in Edmund.”

  “I’m sorry, Spenser. Of course. I don’t mean to get sexist here. I’m just asking you for an opinion. You look like a guy’s been around, Spense. Can’t you talk some sense to her?”

  “Not my job,” I said. “If I were you though, I’d take her seriously.”

  “I’ll take her seriously,” Hammond said. “I’ll take you both seriously when you give me some evidence besides a goddamn ghost witness. Do you have any?”

  “I have enough to make me look for more,” Candy said.

  “To go fishing, you mean. If you had anything, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “But there is some,” Candy said. “I just haven’t dug it up yet, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, you bitch,” Hammond said.

  “Roger,” I said. “I signed the standard bodyguard’s contract, you know, to protect her against sticks and stones and broken bones. I’m not sure names are covered. My inclination, however, is to interpret the contract loosely.”

  “Spense, are you threatening me?”

  “I guess so, Rog. I guess I’m saying you shouldn’t call her names, or I will tie a knot in your Ralph Lauren jeans.”

  Hammond half rose with his hands flat on the desktop. He leaned forward, carrying his weight on his stiff arms, and said, “That’s it. This interview is at an end. And I fully intend to let the station manager and KNBS know just what kind of totally unprofessional job was done here today.”

  “His name is Wendall B. Tracey,” Candy said.

  “I know his name,” Hammond said.

  We were all on our feet now. Candy opened the door. We went out.

  Chapter 6

  As we walked back toward the car, Candy said, “Want a drink at the commissary?”

  “Is there a chance I’ll see Vera Hruba Ralston?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll go anyway. Maybe we’ll see a clue there.”

  We walked across an open area, past a sound stage and two buildings that looked like barracks, and there was the commissary. It was a pale low stucco building with a small flagstone veranda across the front, facing inward onto a small lawn among the buildings. Inside was a high ceiling, and around the walls, in living Technicolor, were painted a bunch of mythological-looking women with harps and such.

  “The nine Muses?” I said to Candy.

  “Could be,” Candy said. “I didn’t know there were nine.”

  “Same as a baseball team,” I said.

  “I could use a drink,” Candy said. “What would be good. How about a margarita?”

  “Salt may hurt.”

  “You’re right. I’ll have a martini.”

  I had a beer.

  “What do you think?” Candy said after she’d sipped at the martini. At the table next to us people I vaguely recognized were having drinks and sandwiches and laughing often. The cast of a television show, but I couldn’t remember which.

  “I think Roger’s lying.”

  “Why?”

  “Well,” I drank some beer and watched a starlet in a very tight dress sit down at a table to my right. She showed a lot of thigh as she slid into the chair. I’d seen her in a movie somewhere. A Western.

  “Well what?” Candy said.

  “Oh, I was admiring the presence of that actress.”

  “You were admiring the inside of her right thigh.”

  “See what Hollywood’s come to,” I said. “That’s what we call presence now.”

  Candy put the olive from her martini in her mouth and very carefully chewed it. She winced slightly.

  “It’s the brine it’s cured in,” I said. “It’ll nip you till you heal completely. Rinse it with a little martini.”

  “Why do you think Roger Hammond is lying?” Candy said.

  “You talked to Felton, right?”

  She nodded, running the martini around in her mouth.

  “There’s no way he wouldn’t have told Hammond that you accused him. If he were innocent, he’d tell Hammond, because he’d want his backing in cutting down the bad P.R. If he were guilty, he’d want to get his story told before you got to Hammond. He’d know either way that Hammond would be next on your list. Yet Hammond acted like he’d never heard the accusation. That’s not reasonable.”

  “Maybe Felton thought by having me beaten up, I wouldn’t go to Hammond, and the story would die right there.”

  “Possibly, but he’s still got to sweat the unidentified eyewitness. Scaring you off may not scare him off.”

  A plump blond woman in a purple dress and gold high-heeled shoes stopped at the table and leaned over Candy.

  “Candy, how are you? A hot news story?” She smiled and looked at me. “Or maybe a hot date?”

  “Agnes, good to see you. Sit down,” Candy said. “Let me buy you a drink. Spenser, this is Agnes Rittenhouse.”

  “How do you do,” Agnes said. “Aren’t you a manly-looking chap.”

  “It’s because my heart is pure,” I said.

  “Oh,” Agnes said, “how disappointing.” She sat down and ordered a piña colada. Candy and I had another round.

  “Agnes does publicity for the studio,” Candy said to me.

  “The pay isn’t much,” Agnes said, “but I get to keep all the men I can catch.”

  She was plump without being exactly fat. Just shapely on a larger scale. She had a Cupid’s-bow mouth and thin arching eyebrows that she must have plucked often. Her hair was brass-colored and she wore a lot of makeup.

  The waiter brought the drinks. “Anything I can help you with?” Agnes said. She drank half her piña colada in a swallow.

  “Maybe. Mr. Spenser is visiting me from the East and was interested in how a studio works. I wondered if there’s anyone we can talk to in the finance office. Who’s your chief finance officer?”

  “Are you a reporter too, Mr. Spenser? You’re too macho to be an accountant.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “I work for a sister station in Boston—same owner, Multi Media—and I’m out doing some soft stuff for the early news. You know, visits with the stars, a look inside the glamor capital of the world, how the movie business runs.”

  Agnes finished her piña colada and looked automatically for the waiter. “Well, big boy,” she said. “If you get tired of that and want to be a gigolo, I can promise you steady work.”

  “I’d probably have to get my nose straightened,” I said, “and brush up on my fox-trot. But while I’m doing that, could we get an appointment with your finance officer?”

  Agnes started to say something and stopped and looked over my shoulder. I turned, and Roger Hammond was there with three security guards in uniform.

  “You are not welcome here,” Hammond said to Candy.

  Agnes opened her eyes very wide. “Roger,” she said, “the media—”

  “She is not welcome,” Hammond said harder, looking at Agnes.

  “What are you afraid we’ll find out?” Candy said.

  “This is my studio. You are an unhealthy intrusion. Either you leave, or I’ll have you removed.”

  The security guard closest to Hammond was wearing sergeant stripes on his uniform. He was a fortyish black man with graying hair and a lot of scar tissue around his eyes. He was looking at me. I looked back. He had big hands, the knuckles enlarged some, and thick wrists. As he looked at me he licked his lips thoughtfully, the tip of his tongue just showing under a thick gray-speckled mustache.

  I looked at the other two guards. They were white, kids no more than twenty-two, and scrawny-looking. One had port-wine birthstains on his right cheek and neck. I could ignore them.

  The black man would be trouble.

  We looked at each other and he smiled slowly. Candy was saying to Hammond something about freedom of the press. Hammond was saying, “I want you out, I want you out.” Agnes had moved back slightly from the table and was watching it all, trying to edge around so she’d be standing wit
h Hammond. She kept looking at me and at the black guard and back at me. Her eyes were shiny.

  Most of the people in the commissary were turning now and looking over. Hammond turned to the black man and said, “Ray, escort them out.”

  Ray asked, “Him too?”

  “Of course.”

  “He ain’t no TV guy,” Ray said.

  “I know that,” Hammond said.

  “If he don’t want to go, I’m going to have to break things,” Ray said.

  “For heaven’s sake, Ray. There’s three of you,” Hammond said.

  Ray looked briefly at the other two guards. He looked at me. “They can take the woman,” he said. He stood easily, his hands relaxed, palms cupped slightly, one foot slightly forward of the other. I was still sitting. I said to Candy, “Are we going to resist?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m in the business of discovering news and reporting it. I do not wish to make it.”

  Agnes said to me, “You’re not in TV?”

  The black guard chuckled softly. Hammond said, “He’s a hired bodyguard, Agnes. A strong-arm man.”

  “Strong arm,” I said to the black man.

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “We all going?”

  “Roger, we’d better talk about this,” Agnes said. “Can I stop by your office?”

  “No,” Hammond said. He pointed a finger at Candy Sloan and then pointed the same finger at the commissary door. Dramatic. You could tell he was creative. Candy nodded at me. I got up slowly and as I did Ray moved just out of jab range with a small economical shuffle that made the movement barely noticeable. A waiter hovered uncertainly around us with a bill. Hammond took it and put it in his pocket, and the waiter ducked back and disappeared. We began to walk toward the door, Candy in front, then me, Ray beside me, the two guards behind him.

  “See that they leave the grounds,” Hammond said. “And see that they don’t come back.”

  “We’ll have to go dwell in the plains,” I said to Candy. “East of Eden.”

  “Sure,” she said. She didn’t look amused.

  We left the commissary. “You parked where?” Ray said.

  Candy told him.

  “You ever fight on the Coast?” Ray said to me.

  “Not this one,” I said.

  He nodded. “Figured you wasn’t local,” he said. “I never got East.”

  When we got to Candy’s MG, I held the door for her while she slid in. Ray and his assistant leaned against the side of a blue and gold studio security car parked up on the grass behind us. I went around and got in beside Candy. She started up, shifted, and off we went. The security car followed us to the gate, and then we were back out on Pico, heading east. Candy was silent.

  “Too bad,” I said. “I think Agnes was smitten with me.”

  “If you wear pants, Agnes is smitten with you,” Candy said.

  “Oh.”

  Candy glanced over and smiled. “Well, maybe she was more smitten with you than with others.”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  Chapter 7

  Candy turned left onto La Cienega.

  “Where now?” I said.

  “We’re going to see an agent I used to sleep with. He knows more about Hollywood, capital H, than anyone in town.”

  “Mind if I ask him how it was?” I said.

  “How what was?”

  “When he used to sleep with you.”

  “You find it shocking that I mention it casually?”

  “No, but it seems a little contrived.”

  “You mean a little too casually sophisticated?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was silent. I thought, peeking at her sideways, that she might have been blushing slightly. We crossed Olympic Behind us a blue 1970 Pontiac with a black vinyl roof came out of Olympic and turned up La Cienega. It passed a car and swung in behind us. It was still behind us at Wilshire. And it was still behind us at San Vincente.

  “Take San Vincente,” I said to Candy. “And go back onto La Cienega at Beverly Boulevard.”

  “No left turn,” she said.

  “Take it anyway,” I said.

  She turned onto San Vincente. “You doing some sight-seeing?”

  “Maybe. There’s a car behind us. I want to see if he’s following.”

  Candy checked the rearview mirror. “Old blue Pontiac?”

  “Yes.”

  We crossed the intersection at Third with the Pontiac still behind us. He had dropped back a little. There were two cars between us. San Vincente Boulevard slants northwest for a short way across the more conventional Los Angeles grid from Pico Boulevard to Melrose Avenue. It crosses La Cienega between Wilshire Avenue and Third Street. At Beverly we turned right and went three blocks east, then left, and we were back heading north on La Cienega. When we crossed Melrose, I checked behind us and the blue Pontiac was there.

  Candy looked at me.

  “Okay,” I said, “so someone is following us. It would be good to know who.”

  “What do you suppose he thought we were doing with that little maneuver on San Vincente?”

  “Unless he’s an idiot, he thought we had spotted him and were trying to make sure he was really following us.”

  “So now he knows we know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He doesn’t seem to care.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It might mean he’s going to make a move on us. It might mean he is so interested in what we’re doing that he doesn’t care about stealth. It might mean he’s a cop.”

  “A cop?”

  “Cops don’t give a damn about anything sometimes,” I said.

  “What shall we do?”

  “We need a place … go east on Melrose then down Fairfax to the Farmers Market.”

  The Pontiac stayed with us now, openly, no dodging behind cars; it was right behind us. I turned in my seat and rested my chin on my forearms and studied over the open rear deck of the MG.

  “There are two of them. Apparently they’ve dumped the Firebird and the van,” I said to Candy. “The one in the passenger seat is balding. He has a black mustache and goatee. It’s hard to tell while he’s sitting in the car, but he appears to be fat and strong. Does that sound familiar?”

  “Oh, my God,” Candy said. She cleared her throat.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “This time we’ve got them outnumbered.”

  “There’s two of them.”

  I looked at her and flexed my bicep in a physical-culture pose.

  “Oh,” she said, “I see what you’re saying. I’m sorry, but I’m scared. This time what if they mean to kill me?”

  “That’s what the Sound of the Golden West is paying me for,” I said. “When we get to the Farmers Market, pull in close to one of the doors and park, illegally if you need to. Just don’t waste any time. Then jump out and run inside, and go in the nearest ladies’ room. You know your way around in there?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Okay. The ladies’ room nearest the entrance we go in. Stay there till I yell for you. I’ll open the door and yell.”

  “You may be arrested as a Peeping Tom.” She sounded strained but she was trying.

  “You’ll swear my eyes were shut tight all the time,” I said.

  She smiled, though not very wide, and said, “Okay. While I’m hiding in the ladies’ room, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to consult with our groupies here. See if I can get a little information.”

  The Pontiac was drawing closer.

  “Move this thing faster,” I said to Candy. “I need a little space between us when we get to the Market.”

  The MG speeded up as we went down Fairfax. The Pontiac hung in behind us. “You can’t outrun it,” I said to Candy, “but this thing can outmaneuver it. Slip in and out of traffic a little.”

  “Spenser, I bought this because it was cute, not because it was hot. I don’t
know how to stunt-drive.”

  “Well, do what you can. I don’t want them to make a run at us right here on Fairfax.”

  She bit her lip and tromped down on the accelerator and jockied the little sports car in between a truck and a Lincoln that looked like a truck. The Pontiac edged out around the truck and then fell back in behind it. Candy passed the Lincoln on the inside and got honked at by a red-faced man wearing a pink shirt and smoking a cigar. We screeched into the parking lot on the north side of the Farmers Market, cutting across the traffic recklessly and causing several more horns to blow.

  The store section of the Farmers Market was a rambling white low building surrounded by parking lots just south of CBS Studios on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Third Street. There were cars parked all around the building, and Candy jammed the MG into the walkway leading to one of the entrances, and we jumped out and headed into the market. Just inside the door there was a stand selling barbecue and down the aisle from that was a sign that said RESTROOMS. I pointed at it, and Candy went for it at as brisk a walk as one could muster. I went with her till I saw her go in and then I faded behind a stand that sold Mexican food and moved down the aisles of food stalls and produce stands, watching the entrance where we’d come in. I saw the fat man. Candy was right. He was fat, but you weren’t fooled. He was strong too.

  He looked around. I moved down the aisle away from him, past a stand that sold blackberry pie, my mouth watering briefly, then I went past a Chinese-food concession and into the parking lot in front, around the corner from where we’d entered.

  The Pontiac was double-parked between the market and the souvenir shop that sold Mexican jewelry and leather cowboy hats and pictures of the Griffith Park Observatory sealed inside a transparent plastic square. Candy’s MG was sitting there in the walkway near it. People skirted it to get into the market, shaking their heads; a man suggested to his wife that the driver was an asshole. I felt he’d made his judgment on insufficient evidence.

  The driver of the Pontiac was standing leaning against the car with his arms folded on the roof. He was tall and blond with longish hair combed back in a stiff sweep. He had a dark tan and a thick mustache that turned up slightly at the ends. He wore a white shirt with epaulets and a pocket on the left sleeve. It was half unbuttoned. He had two slim gold chains around his neck. The bottom half was bleached white straight-leg cords worn over hand-tooled cowboy boots. His waist was narrow, but his upper body had the thickened look of a weight lifter.