A Savage Place

Chapter 9

“I WANT TO go to dinner,” Candy said, “and I want you to escort me.”

“I’ll risk that,” I said.

We went to The Palm on Santa Monica. The walls were covered with clumsy murals of show-biz celebrities in caricature. But my plate was covered with medium-rare butterflied lamb chops and asparagus with hollandaise.

I drank a little beer. “You have a plan?” I said.

“Keep talking and asking,” she said. She ate a scallop carefully. “That’s what investigative reporting is. Talking, asking; asking, talking.”

I nodded. “Who you going to ask and talk with next?”

“Somebody at Oceania.”

“Got a name?”

“No. Any suggestions?”

“Why not the president. Might as well get as close as we can to God.” I ate some lamb chop.

“I agree. We’ll do it tomorrow morning,” she said.

A man next to us-dark suit, white French cuffs, large oynx cuff links-said to the waiter, “Tell Frank I’m out here and tell him to give me that center cut he’s been saving.”

The waiter, an old man with no expression on his face, said, “Yes, sir. How you want that?”

The middle-aged man said, “How do I want it? Frank knows damn well how I want it. Barely dead.”

He raised both hands as if measuring a fish while he spoke.

The waiter said, “Rare. Very good, sir.” He went away.

The middle-aged man was with a smooth red-haired young woman in a low-necked green dress and a younger man in a gray three-piece suit and a striped tie. They were all drinking red wine.

“Wait’ll you see the piece of beef Frank’ll have for me,” the middle-aged man said. He looked around to see if I was impressed. He had a diamond pinkie ring on his right hand. “You shoulda had a piece, honey,” he said to the woman beside him. She smiled and said yes, she probably should, but she could never eat all that. The guy in the gray suit drank his wine rapidly.

I said to Candy, “Would it violate the terms of my contract if I told that guy to shut up about his goddamn roast beef?”

Candy smiled. “I think you’re just supposed to concentrate on protecting me. I think you’re supposed to give etiquette instructions on your own time.”

When we left, the middle-aged man was eating a piece of rare rib roast and talking with his mouth full about the weaknesses of French cooking, and the problems he’d had with it on his last trip to Europe.

With a little pull from the Sound of the Golden West we had gotten Candy, under a phony name, the room adjoining mine at the Hillcrest. As we drove, the streets in Beverly Hills were as still as an empty theater in the night. The lobby was deserted.

We were alone in the elevator.

At her door I took her key and opened the door first. The room was soundless. I reached in and turned on the light. No one was there. I opened the bathroom and looked behind the shower glass. I opened the sliding closet door. I looked under the bed. No one was there either.

Candy stood in the doorway watching me. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“Sure. Just because it’s corny to hide under the bed doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t do it.”

I slid open the doors to the small balcony. No one there either. I went to the door connecting my room with hers. It was locked. “Before you go to bed, remember to unlock this,” I said. “No point me being next door if I can’t get to you.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll unlock it now.”

“No,” I said. “Wait until I’ve checked out the room.”

“Oh,” she said. “Of course.”

“I’ll go over now. Lock the corridor door behind me and chain it. I’ll yell through the connecting door if it’s okay.”

She nodded. I went out, went into my room, and made sure it was empty. The connecting door was bolted from each side. I slid my bolt back and said, “Okay, Candy.”

I heard her bolt slip and the door opened. She was on the phone, the phone cord stretched taut across the bed as she had to reach to unbolt the door. As she opened the door she said, “Thank you,” into the phone and hung up.

“I just ordered a bottle of cognac and some ice,” she said. “You want a drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “Your place or mine?”

“This isn’t a pass,” she said. “I’d just like to sit on the balcony and sip some brandy and talk quietly. I’m a little scared.”

I thought about the balcony. We were seven floors up, on a corner; there was no balcony beyond us. The one next to us on the other side was mine. The ones on the next floor were directly above. It would be a hard shot. And you’d have to have been smart enough or lucky enough to get a room above us with the right angle. I said, “Okay, the balcony is good. But we’ll turn the lights off. No point in making a better target than we need to.”

The bellhop brought the bottle of Remy Martin, a soda siphon, two glasses, and a bucket of ice. I watched while Candy added in a tip and signed the bill. Then we shut off the lights and took the tray out onto the balcony.

Lights speckled the Hollywood Hills. There was a faint sound of music from the rooftop lounge above us. On Beverwil Drive a cab idled. I opened the bottle and poured two drinks over ice with a small squirt of soda. Candy took one and sipped it. She had kicked her shoes off and now she put her stockinged feet up on the low cement railing of the balcony. She was wearing a plum-colored wraparound dress, and the skirt fell away halfway up her thigh. I stood leaning against the doorjamb and watched the other balconies. Mostly.

“Tell me about yourself, Spenser.”

“I was born in a trunk,” I said, “in the Princess Theatre in Pocatello, Idaho.”

“I know it’s a corny question, but it’s still a real one. What are you like? How did you end up in such a strange business?”

“I got too old to be a Boy Scout,” I said.

I could smell flowers in the soft California evening. Candy sipped her brandy. The ice clinked gently in the glass as she rolled it absently between her hands. Mingled with the smell of flowers was the smell of Candy’s perfume.

“That’s not an entirely frivolous answer, is it?” she said.

“No.”

“You want to help people.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Makes me feel good,” I said.

“But why this way? Guns, fists, hoodlums?”

“Because they’re there,” I said.

“You’re laughing at me, but I will proceed. It’s why I’m a good reporter. I keep asking. Why not be a doctor or a schoolteacher or”-she spread her hands, the glass in one of them-“you get the idea.”

“Systems,” I said. “The system gets in the way. You end up serving the medical profession or public education. I tried the cops for a while.”

“And?”

“They felt I was too creative.”

“Fired?”

“Yes.”

Candy poured herself another drink. I squirted in some soda. “Are you attracted to violence?” she asked.

“Maybe. To a point. But it’s also that I’m good at it. And there’s a need for someone who’s good at it. Someone needs to keep that fat guy from smacking you around.”

“But what if you meet someone who’s better?”

“Unthinkable,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t unthinkable at all. You’re too thoughtful a man not to have thought of it.”

“How about unlikely then?”

“Maybe, but what happens? How do you feel?”

I took in a deep breath. “Talking about myself seriously has always seemed a little undignified,” I said. “But…” The cab on Beverwil got a fare. Must be going a long way. I had the feeling Beverly Hills closed at sundown.

“But what?” Candy said.

“But the possibility that you’ll meet somebody better is part of”-I gestured with my right land-“if that possibility didn’t exist,” I said, “it would be like playing tennis with the net down.”

Candy drank her brandy and soda and got another from the tray, and when she had the drink rebuilt, she looked at it. and then looked at me. She took a sip and then held the glass against her chin with both hands and looked at me some more.

“It’s a kind of game,” she said.

“Yes.”

“A serious game,” she said.

I was quiet. I poured a small splash of brandy in my glass and added a lot of ice and a lot of soda. Be embarrassing to pass out in front of the client.

“But why can’t you play that same game inside a system? In a big organization?”

“You’re talking about yourself now,” I said,

“Perhaps,” she said. The final’s slushed just barely. On the rooftop someone had apparently opened a window or a door. The music was louder, the Glenn Miller arrangement of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

“I can work in a system just fine,” Candy said.

“I imagine so,” I said.

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

We were quiet. The band on the roof was playing “Indian Summer.” The smell of flowers seemed to have faded. The smell of Candy’s perfume was stronger. My mouth was dry.

“Is dancing too systematic for you?” Candy said.

“No.”

She got up and reached out toward me, and we began to dance, moving in a small circle on the narrow balcony, with the music drifting down. With her shoes off she was considerably smaller and her head reached only to my shoulder.

“Are you alone?” she said, “Out here?”

“No, in your life.”

“No, I am committed to a woman named Susan Silverman.”

“Doesn’t that cut down on your freedom?” Candy rested her the head against my shoulder as we turned slowly in the darkness.

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s worth it.”

“So you’re not completely autonomous?”

“No.”

“Good. It makes you easier to understand.”

“Why do you need to understand me?” I said,

She took her right hand out of my left and slid it around to join her left hand at the small of my back. Unless I was willing to dance around with my left hand sticking out like a figure in a Roman fountain, I had nothing to do but put it around her. I did.

“I need to understand you, so I can control you,” Candy said.

“Your present technique is fairly effective,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I cleared my throat slightly, trying not to make any noise. “For the short run.”

“Throat a bit dry?” Candy said.

“That’s just my Andy Deyine impression,” I said. “Sometimes I do Aldo Ray.”

My throat felt tight, and there seemed to be more blood in my veins than I had begun the evening with.

She giggled softly, “Would you care to help me undress?” she said.

“Spenser’s the name, helping’s the game,” I said. I sounded like Andy Devine with a cold. I could feel that old red obliterative surge I always felt at times like this. The band on the roof was playing “The Man vibes. Love,” featuring someone, not Lionel Hampton, on vibes.

“There are two buttons,” Candy said. She took my hands in hers. “One here.” We continued to move slowly with the music, “One here.” She let the unbuttoned dress slide down her arms and drop to the floor behind her. There was moonlight amplified by some spillover from the hotel windows and the roof lighting

Her bra was the same plum color as her dress. “Three snaps,” she murmured. “Hooks and eyelets, actually, in a vertical line-”

The bra slid down her arms in front of her and fell to the floor between us. “The Panty hose while dancing will be a challenge,” I whispered.

I wasn’t being secretive. It was the best I could talk.

“Try,” she said. She stood almost still, her upper body moving slightly with the music. Her hands guided mine. It’s hard to be graceful removing panty hose. We didn’t fully succeed. But we got it done, and when I straightened, she wore only the gold around her neck. I felt oafishly overdressed.

“Now you,” she said.

“Always hard to know what’s best to do with a gun in this situation,” I wheezed.

We were both naked finally, dancing on the balcony. The gun lay holstered on the table beside the cognac bottle. If an assassin broke in I could reach it in less than five minutes.

“What’s that they re playing?” Candy said in my ear.

“ `I’ll Never Smile Again,‘ ” I said.

“I wish it were Ravel’s ‘Bolero,’” she said.

“At my age,” I croaked, ,you may have to settle for `Song of the Volga Boatmen.‘ “

“Pick me up.” she said. She was whispering now too. “Carry me to bed.”

Before I do, “ I said. ”This is what it is. It leads nowhere. It means nothing more than the moment.“

“I know. Pick me up. Carry me.”

I did, she wasn’t heavy.

I snagged the gun, too, from the coffee table and took it with me when we went into the bedroom.