A Savage Place

by Robert B. Parker

  “I like you. You need help. It’s help I can supply.”

  She looked at her watch. “My God,” she said. “It’s seven o’clock. Peter will be here in fifteen minutes.” She was out of the car and heading for the house in that peculiar female run that high heels produce.

  I went and sat in my rented Fairlane down the street on the other side and waited. I was thinking wistfully of the burrito I’d had for lunch, when Brewster arrived. He wasn’t in the Caddy. He was driving himself in a dark green Mercedes 450 SL.

  No one was with him. Why not? Why had he changed his pattern? Was he going to do something that he did not want witnessed? I was not pleased. Brewster didn’t seem to mind. He went up to the door at a brisk pace as if he didn’t care whether I was ever pleased by anything. In five minutes he came out with Candy on his arm. They got in the Mercedes and drove off.

  Chapter 25

  Off Sepulveda Boulevard, out toward the airport, visible from the street, there are some vestigial oil rigs—still pumping—reminders that all the money in L.A. didn’t come from movies.

  I tailed Brewster and Candy out there and onto a side road. The side road forked one hundred yards in from Sepulveda. Brewster took the left fork. Far down the road I saw his taillights stop and then darken. I took the right fork, went around a bend, parked, and headed back on foot.

  The oil pumps were all around now in the dim evening, making very little sound, unattended, rocking without apparent cause, slightly saurian. I went in among them, cutting across the small field toward the other fork where Brewster had parked. I could feel the tension skitter along my backbone and bunch in the muscles around my shoulders. This was no place to bring a date. Brewster was too old to go parking. I hadn’t seen a picnic basket.

  I moved carefully in the dark, trying to make no sound. I was in business clothes—a dark blue sweat shirt with the sleeves cut off, blue jeans, and dark blue jogging shoes. No bright colors. I’d left my Windbreaker in the car. I didn’t care if people saw my gun. In fact I rather hoped they would, and be impressed.

  The sounds of planes coming and going from LAX made a near, steady noise above us. So steady, it faded into background, and you only noticed it when it paused. I saw Brewster’s car. The lights were out. The doors were closed. I moved up very carefully behind it and looked in the window. It was empty. I stood stock-still and listened. The sound of airplanes. The sound of the wells pumping. The sound, faintly, of traffic on the San Diego Freeway beyond Sepulveda. No other sound.

  I crouched behind the car and tried to see in among the pumps. The stars were out, but there was no moon, and there wasn’t much light. There were no streetlights on this road, and no houses anywhere in sight. The steadily moving apparatus of the wells was alien and hostile in the darkness.

  I moved in among the oil rigs, placing each foot very carefully as I went. I listened after every step, but all I heard was an increasing wind. It made odd noises among the oil pumps as it came, hot and steady and affectionless, a bit eerie as it moved through the anachronistic machinery. The ground in the oil field was soft dirt, and as the wind stiffened, it picked up dust and moved it around. I began to move faster and less carefully. I was getting scared. Candy had been in there alone with Brewster too long. The wind was coming harder now, as if reinforcements had caught up with the advance breeze. It rattled loose cabling on the oil rigs. I began to run, dodging equipment as I did, trying to cut diagonally across the oil field so that I’d cover as much in one sweep as I could. Except I didn’t know the size or shape of the field and therefore didn’t know what a diagonal was. I was squinting against the blowing dirt. I had my gun in my hand. And I was trying to fight down the sense of urgency that was pushing up my throat. Clouds that must have ridden in with the wind began to gather over the stars, and the oil yard became even darker. I had to slow down. I could barely see the length of my footfall in front of me and I wouldn’t help Candy much if I ran head-on into one of the pumps. In places the footing was mucky and slippery, and there was a fetid smell that the wind was not able to drive away.

  As I moved in the darkness I noticed that there was scrub growth in parts of the oil field. When I was very close, I could see them and see how the wind made their shapes contort as their branches moved restively, like animals too long restrained. Then I heard the shots. The sound sat on top of the wind the way a bird sits on a power line. I whirled, looking for muzzle flash, and spotted some over to my left as more shots rode in on the wind. I ran toward them, my gun out. Two more shots. I banged into the superstructure of one of the pumps and spun around and staggered and kept my feet and kept going toward the spot where the memory of muzzle flash still vibrated in my mind. There was a brief flare of what must have been headlights swinging away, and then only the wind sound and the darkness. The wind had cooled, and there was thunder rolling to the west, and a new smell of rain in the air. I stopped for a moment and listened, staring toward the place where I’d seen the muzzle flashes and the headlights. Then lightning made a jagged flash, and I saw a car parked ahead of me. I moved toward it. I reached the car before the thunder caught up to the lightning.

  The car was a five-year-old Plymouth Duster. It was empty. I listened and heard nothing but the wind. The lightning flashed again. In front of the car was a wide cleared space, maybe for parking. I saw no people. The rain smell was stronger now, and the thunder came closer upon the lightning. The storm was moving fast. I opened the car door and reached in and, crouched behind the open door, I turned on the headlights.

  Nothing happened. Nothing moved. I went flat on the ground, it was gravel, and looked underneath the car. Nothing. I got up carefully and moved out from the car in a crouch. The headlights made a wide theatrical swash of visibility in the darkness. Twenty feet in front of the car was Franco Montenegro’s body and next to him was Candy’s.

  I went down on my knees beside her, but she was dead, and I knew it even before I felt for a pulse and couldn’t find it. She had taken a couple of bullets in the body. There was blood all over her front. Beside her on the ground her purse was open. The .32 was out. Unfired. She’d tried. Like I’d told her to. There was a small neat hole in her forehead from which a small trickle of dark blood traced across her forehead. I glanced at Franco. He had a similar hole. The last two shots I’d heard. The coup de grace, one for each. I sat back on my heels and stared at Candy. Despite the blood and the bullet hole she looked like she had. For something as large as it is, death doesn’t look like much at first.

  The lightning and the thunder were nearly simultaneous now, and small spatters of rain mixed with the wind. I looked at Franco. Near his right hand was a gun. I moved over and, without touching the gun, lowered myself in a kind of push-up and smelled the muzzle. No smell of gunfire. He lay on his stomach, his face turned to one side. Blood soaked the back of his shirt. With my jaw clamped tight I rolled him over. There was no blood in front. The bullet hadn’t gone through. He’d been shot from behind. Candy had been shot from in front. I got up and walked maybe fifteen feet back from Franco’s body. On the soft gravel of the parking area were bright brass casings. The shooter had used an automatic, probably a nine-millimeter. I walked back and looked down at Candy. The rain was beginning to fall steadily, slanted by the wind. Already some of the blood was turning pink with dilution.

  I looked around the parking area. There was nothing to see. I looked at Candy again. There was nothing more to see there either. Still, I looked at her. The rain was hard now, and dense, washing down on her upturned face. The wind was warm no longer. Candy didn’t care. My clothing was soaked, my hair plastered flat against my skull. Rain running off my forehead blurred my vision. Candy’s mascara had run, streaking her face. I stared down as the rain washed it away too.

  “Some bodyguard,” I said.

  Chapter 26

  I left her there in the rain with the headlights shining on her and walked back along the road to the fork and down the fork to my rented Ford. Brewster’s car w
as gone. I was as wet as if I’d fallen overboard. I got in and sat in my wet clothes and started the engine. I pulled back onto Sepulveda and then up onto the Freeway and drove back toward Beverly Hills. The rain slashing across the headlights made silvery translucent lines as it slanted past.

  There wasn’t much traffic. I made it back to Beverly Hills in fifteen minutes. At an all-night variety store I stopped and reported the murders. When they asked my name, I hung up and left. I ran the stop signs on Roxbury and drove up over the curb and onto Brewster’s lawn. I left the doors open and the motor running as I rang his front doorbell. No one answered. I backed off two steps and kicked the door in. The whole frame splintered on my third kick and I went in.

  Nothing moved. No lights came on. I moved through the living room to the kitchen, then the dining room, then the den, and four more rooms that I couldn’t name. No movement. I went up the front stairs two at a time and slammed in and out of rooms. Brewster wasn’t there. In what must have been his bedroom was a vast circular bed. I picked up one end and turned it over to make sure he wasn’t under it. He wasn’t. I clattered down the stairs and out the back door toward the chauffeur’s quarters. He wasn’t there either. When I came out of the garage, I saw a red light flashing. The Bel-Air Patrol, on the job. I hadn’t thought about the alarm system. I hadn’t thought about much but Brewster.

  I circled into the yard next door and walked down toward Roxbury Drive behind some shrubs. Lights went on in Brewster’s house. I came out in the front yard next door to Brewster’s house. A red and white private patrol car was parked near mine with the red light revolving on top. No one was in it. I walked past it to my car, got in, and drove away.

  With the accelerator to the floor I headed for Century City. I parked on the street and went for Brewster’s building on the run. It was still raining steadily. I hadn’t put on my jacket, and the shoulder holster was clearly exposed. I was also soaking wet. People stared.

  Brewster’s building was locked. I looked at my watch. Ten fifteen. It would be locked. I went around to the other side. No luck. I went down one of the muddy lawns that slanted down from the plaza and tried the parking garage. It was locked, covered with one of those vertical iron grates that swing up when you operate a push button in your car. I had no push button. I could get in, but the only means available would risk the cops. I didn’t want the cops. Yet.

  I went back and sat in my rented car and thought. There was no reason to rush. Candy was in no hurry. I didn’t even know if Brewster was in there. If he was, he’d have to come out sometime. If he wasn’t he’d have to go in sometime. I could wait.

  The rain was steady now; the wind that had brought it seemed to have died, but the rain was steady. It formed smooth, clear sheets as it ran down the windshield, and it made a steady, pleasant rattle on the roof of the car. Women coming from the restaurant, or the Century Plaza Hotel across the street, clutched skirts in tight against their legs as they crouched under umbrellas while their escorts stood manfully in the rain, often hatless, and hailed cabs. People moved hurriedly along, close to the buildings, as they always did in the rain, as if staying close to the artifice of civilization would ward off the elemental rain.

  Trouble with waiting here for Brewster was that I didn’t know which way he’d come in. But there was no place where I could locate myself where I would know. I’d just have to wait till they opened up in the morning and go in and take a look.

  By midnight there was no one walking around anymore in the rain at Century City. At a quarter past midnight a police cruiser pulled up beside me and one of the cops said through his rolled-down window, “You got a problem, sir?”

  I said, “Yeah, my car stalled and I think I flooded it. I’m letting it rest a couple minutes.”

  The cop said, “Okay. We’ll swing by in a few minutes. If you can’t start it, we’ll get you someone.”

  I said, “Thank you, Officer.”

  The patrol car pulled away. But they’d be back, and if I was still there, it could be aggravation. Some cops are dumb and some aren’t but none of them is naive. They’d be back to check my flooded-engine story.

  I started up the Ford and rolled down onto Santa Monica. I went east a little ways and pulled into the parking lot behind the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I parked under a sign that said GUESTS ONLY, put on my Windbreaker, and walked back up Santa Monica to Century City. I was standing in the shadow of the entry to the Oceania Building when the cruiser came back, slowed down near where I’d parked, and then moved on.

  The rain stayed with me all night. And even though it was Southern California summer, my teeth were beginning to chatter by the time the morning arrived. It came with a large gray light in the east but no visible sun, and the rain kept coming as if it always would. My clothes were damp against me and my eyes had the grainy feel of sleeplessness when the first of the day’s workers began drifting in. Restaurant workers, early, bleary-eyed, collars up, white pants showing beneath rainwear. Then office workers, secretaries looking fresh-made and smelling of perfume, arrived in time to start the coffee, then at a successful hour, the executives, newly shaved, their London Fogs just back from the cleaners’, their briefcases snapped tight against the weather—so their lunches wouldn’t get wet. I didn’t see Brewster.

  At nine I left my doorway and found a phone booth and called Oceania. I got through to the woman in Brewster’s outer office, the one who looked like Nina Foch.

  “Pete in?” I said in a deep wealthy voice.

  “No, sir. Mr. Brewster hasn’t come into the office yet.”

  I laughed. “The old fox has been out prowling all night, I’ll bet. When’ll he be in?”

  “I expect him at nine thirty, sir.” Nina sounded a little disapproving.

  “Well, when he comes in, tell him Ed’s in town, and I’ll call him later. Tell him I plan to whip his tail in racquetball as soon as he’s ready.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll tell him,” Nina said. Her disapproval was sharp now.

  I hung up and went back to my spot in the doorway.

  At nine forty-five I went into the Oceania Building, got in the elevator, and went up to Brewster’s office at the top. Several people in the elevator looked at me covertly. I looked like a man who’d been standing around in the rain all night. I did not look like a man who should be on his way up to the executive floor. What they didn’t know is that I never had.

  Chapter 27

  In Brewster’s outer office there were three men in expensive suits sitting near their real leather briefcases. There was also one woman in an expensive business suit with a real leather briefcase and a real leather purse. I headed for the door to Brewster’s office.

  Nina Foch was quick as a weasel. “May I help you, sir?” she asked and stepped from her desk to put herself between me and the door. Her eyes widened as she remembered me. I put one hand against her near shoulder and swept her away backhand. I was pumped up as high as I can get and I put more force into it than I needed. She sprawled across her desk and onto the thick carpeted floor beyond it in a swirl of beige slip and panty hose.

  I slammed Brewster’s door open and headed on through the small library. Silhouetted against the gray light from his full-wall window, Brewster was at his desk. The library was set up for some kind of conference with an easel near the inner door. My shoulder banged it as I went by, and it went over, spilling its charts across the floor.

  Simms was in the office with Brewster. He stepped in front of me as I came in, his hand going to his hip, under his coat. I hit him a left hook and a right cross and he went over backward, the half-drawn gun bouncing out of his hand and across the carpeting. Simms hit the couch, rolled half over, and landed on his right side on the floor. As I moved by him he grabbed at my ankle. I kicked loose of his hand and went for Brewster.

  Brewster was out of his chair and around the other side of the desk, trying to keep it between me and him. His eyes were wide and his face was very pale. His tan looked yellow. I went over
the desk after him the way you dive into surf and got hold of his coat with my left hand. He yanked back, and the struggle pulled me over the desk. I landed and came up the way you do out of a slide. Brewster pulled out of the jacket and headed for the outer office.

  Simms was on his hands and knees going for the gun. As I went after Brewster he reached it. I stomped on his hand with my left foot and swung my right knee against the side of his head. He went over and down and didn’t move. Brewster was through the library and into the outer office. I caught him at the door. I got a handful of his hair, yanked him back toward me, swung him past, and sent him sprawling back into the reception room. Two of the men had left. The businesswoman and the third man stood uncertainly. Nina Foch was on the phone. I yanked the cord out of the phone as I went by. Brewster was in a kind of crab-walk posture trying to scuttle one way or the other past me. The remaining businessman said, “Hey.”

  I ignored him. I got hold of Brewster by the shirt front and picked him up and pulled him up against me and then slammed him against the wall by the door to the library. Then I pulled him away and slammed him up against it again. His breath came out in loud grunts. The third businessman tried to grab me around the arms and pull me away. Without letting go of Brewster I said, “Get out of here. You don’t know what you’re into.”

  He tried to lock my arms down to my sides. Nina Foch had run out the door. I let go of Brewster and broke the businessman’s grip, and turned and hit him as hard as I could in the middle of his stomach. He said “Uff” and stepped back and doubled over and leaned against the door. Brewster tried to slip past me toward the door while that was happening, but I yanked him back and slammed him against the wall again. He pushed at my face with his hands. He wasn’t very strong. Again against the wall. Then I stepped away. He sagged a little when I let him go. I slapped him open-handed across the face with my left hand, then with my right. Then left again. Then right. He put his hands up and covered his head. I punched him in the stomach. He gasped and dropped his hands. I slapped him left and right again. Each time I hit him, there was a pop inside me like red flashbulbs, and the muscles in my arms and shoulders and chest seemed to take energy from the action. If I closed my fists, I knew I’d kill him. He tried to cover his head and belly at the same time, but it was too much area, and my next slap was so hard, it knocked him over. He doubled up on the ground. His knees to his chest. His hands over his head. I kicked him in the kidneys. He wriggled over, trying to get away and keep me from his kidneys, and he bellied up for a moment. I stomped him in the stomach. Simms appeared in the doorway behind Brewster. His right eye was beginning to shut, and there was a trace of blood at the base of his nose. But he had the gun out, and he was squinting at me. The businesswoman, who had been watching all this time without a word, said, “Jesus Christ,” and dove behind Nina’s desk.