A Savage Place

Chapter 14

THAT NIGHT THERE was no dancing on the balcony. We ate a room-service dinner, in near perfect silence and went to bed early. What a difference a day makes. I lay on the bed in my room and watched an Angels game on television until I got tired. Then I switched everything off and went to bed. Sleep. Death’s second self.

In the morning we went to Candy’s apartment to check her mail and listen to her phone-answering machine and get some clean clothes. The sun was bright off the pool and filled the room. There was a breeze. The faint movement of the pool made the light glance and quiver. Candy stood by her desk in the living room sorting through her mail. She had on a dark blue suit with gold piping. She punched on the phone recorder as she looked at the Mail, and Mickey Rafterty’s voice came up.

“Candy,” it said, “where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to get you all day. I braced Felton and I know he’s scared. All we have to do is keep on the pressure, and he’ll crack. I’ll keep calling till I get you… I love you, babe.”

Candy dropped the mail and slowly sank to her knees and put her arms around herself and began to rock slightly back and forth, sitting on her heels, her head hanging. I stepped over and shut off the recorder. Candy murmured something.

I said, “What?” and bent over to hear her.

She said, “A voice from the grave,” and gave a little snicker. “From the other side, through the magic of machines.” She snickered again. And then she was still and rocked.

I squatted beside her on the floor and said, “Would you care for a hug or a comforting pat, or would that make it worse?”

She shook her head, but I didn’t know if she was saying no to the hug or no, it wouldn’t make it worse. So I stayed where I was and did nothing, which I probably ought to do more of, and after a while she stopped rocking and put a hand on my thigh to steady herself and then stood up. I stood with her.

“Poor little Mickey,” she said. “He acted so tough.”

“He was tough,” I said. “He was just small.”

“Big or small,” she said, “bullets would have killed him anyway.”

The rest of the phone recordings had to be listened to. I was thinking how to go about it.

“If I’d been a weathergirl,” Candy said, “Mickey’d be alive.”

“You’ve had a bad time. You’re entitled to be silly,” I said. “But don’t do it too much. You know his dying wasn’t your fault.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“I guess most of the blame resides with the guy who burned him. I’d guess old fat Franco. A little of the blame is Mickey’s. He screwed around with stuff he didn’t know about. It’s a way to get hurt.”

“Franco?”

“Yeah, the fat guy that beat you up. His name’s Franco.”

“How do you know that?”

“Learned from the blond guy I talked with at the Farmers Market.”

“And you think he killed Mickey?”

“You talked to Felton and got beat up by Franco. Mickey talked to Felton and got shot. Wouldn’t you guess Franco?”

“Yes.”

“That would seem the handle to all of this,” I said. “Old Franco.”

“Handle?”

“Yeah. We’ve spent all this time talking to people on whom we have nothing. We’ve already got Franco for kidnapping and assault. He’s probably hired help. So he has no reason to cover up for his employers if it costs him.”

“I guess that’s so. But he’s not the one I want,” Candy said. She was starting to concentrate. The shock was receding.

“Not finally,” I said. “But to get any tangle straightened out you have to find one end of the rope. Franco’s one end.”

“Okay.” Candy was frowning with interest. “Okay. I’ll buy that. Now the problem is to find him.” She was drumming her fingers softly against her thigh. “You have any thoughts on that?”

“How did you find him?” I said.

“I didn’t. He found me.”

“And Mickey?”

“I see. He found Mickey too. I’d talked to Felton, and I’ranco showed up. Mickey talked to Felton and, we assume, Franco showed up again. Are you saying I should talk to Felton again and make a target of myself?”

“You or me.”

“It shouldn’t be you,” Candy said. “Mickey wasn’t your friend. You didn’t come out here to be a what, a-”

“Sitting duck, clay pigeon, sacrificial lamb.”

She nodded. “Any of those. No. It’s my job.”

“Okay,” I said.

“No big macho talk about ‘man’s work’?”

“Nope. In fact it makes no difference. I do it, and I have to protect me and you. You do it, and I have to protect you and me.”

She stopped drumming her fingers and looked at me without expression for a moment. “Yes,” she said. She looked at me some more. “Yes, that’s true. I may not like it, but it’s the way it is. You can protect me a lot better than I can protect myself. I want to do it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought you would.”

She walked to the glass doors and stared out at her blue pool. Her fingers were drumming again on her thigh.

“You know, I’ve lived in this house three years and I’ll bet I’ve been in the damn pool twice.”

“When this is over,” I said, “we’ll have a victory swim.”

“When it’s over,” she said. Her back was still to me. “Christ, I wish it were over a long time ago.”

I was quiet.

“When I first came up with this story and started on it, I was so excited. Celebrity, advancement, money.” She shook her head and stared out at the pool. “Now I wish it were done. Now I have to finish it, and all it does is scare me.”

“There’s no business like show business,” I said.

She turned from the window.

“Maybe,” she said, “I’d better learn to use that gun.”

I went out to her car and got it out of the glove compartment and brought it back into her living room. She looked at it without affection. I pressed the release button and dropped the clip out. Then I ran the receiver back and popped a shell out of the chamber.

“Had a round chambered,” I said.

“If you’re going to teach me anything,” Candy said, “you’ll have to speak a language I understand.”

“Sure. I just mean he had a bullet up in the chamber, ready to fire. Usually you would leave it in the magazine till you were ready to shoot. Safer that way.”

“Are you saying, when they trailed us into the Farmers Market, they were ready to shoot us?”

“Maybe, or maybe they were careless and stupid.”

“Is it loaded now?”

“No. Try it out.”

She snapped the empty gun several times, aiming at the far wall. “The trigger’s not hard to pull,” she said.

“Not the way you mean,” I said.

“You mean, it’s hard to shoot someone?”

“Can be.”

“Is this all I do, point it and shoot?”

“If it’s loaded and cocked, yes.”

“Show me how to load it.”

I showed her how to slide the magazine into the handle.

“It’s heavier with the bullets,” she said.

“A little,” I said.

“If I pull the trigger now, will it go off?”

“No. You’ve got to jack a round up into the chamber. Look.” I showed her how. “Now if you pull the trigger it will shoot.” I took it from her and took out the clip and ejected the chambered bullet and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with an empty click. Then I handed her the pistol.

“Okay, you do it.”

She put the magazine in, ran the action back, and looked at me. “Now I can shoot.”

“Yes.”

“Do I have to push the thing back every time I shoot?”

“No. Only the first time. Then it does it by itself. After the first time you just keep squeezing the trigger. When it’s empty, the breech will lock open.”

“What if I need more than, what is it, six shots?”

“Yes. If you do, you can reload the magazine. But if you’ve fired six rounds and need more, you probably won’t have time to reload. I advise flight.”

She practiced loading and cocking a couple of times. Then she pointed the empty gun and practiced a couple of clicks. “Am I doing it right?” she said.

“Yeah. Try to shoot from close. Don’t waste time on shooting from very far. The gun’s not made for it, and neither are you. Shoot for the middle of the body. It allows the most margin of error. You might want to shoot with both hands, like this.” I showed her. “Or if it’s sort of a far shot, you might do it like this.” I showed her the target-shooting stance and told her how to let out the air, and not breathe, and squeeze the trigger. “All of that is unlikely,” I said. “What you’ll want to hit with the gun, if you need to, will probably be very close up and hard to miss. What you need to do most of all is remember you’ve got it, and be willing to use it. Keep in mind that they want to kill you.”

“You’ve shot people?”

“Yes.”

“Is it awful?”

“No. It’s fashionable to say so, but no. It’s not awful. Often it’s fairly easy. Not messy like stabbing or clubbing or strangling, that sort of thing. It’s relatively impersonal. Click. Bang. Dead.”

“Don’t you mind?”

“Yes, I mind. I don’t do it if I don’t have to. But I’ve never shot anyone when it wouldn’t have been a lot worse not to.”

“Do you remember the first time?”

“The time, not the person. It was in Korea. He was just a shape on a night patrol.”

“And it didn’t bother you?”

“Not as much as it would have if he’d shot me.”

“It’s always in context for you, isn’t it?”

“What. Right and wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that ethical relativism?”

“I think so,” I said. “Can you shoot if you have to?”

“Yes,” Candy said. “I believe I can.”