A Savage Place

Chapter 17

SAMUELSON WAS STILL wearing his tinted glasses even though it was nearly midnight. Besides Samuelson there was a guy from the sheriff’s department and two uniformed cops and a lab technician with a camera and a lawyer that KNBS had sent over after Candy called in. One of the uniformed cops with a name tag that said LOPEZ spoke Spanish to the Mexican woman. Samuelson and the sheriff’s investigator spoke English to Candy and me. A lot of English.

Samuelson had his coat open and his hands in his hip pockets. The gesture exposed his service revolver, lmtt forward in its holster on the left side of his belt. Ile was looking past us through the far windows at the city lights, far below. Bubba had been hauled off by the coroner’s people. There was a white chalk outline of his body on the rug. There was a large dark bloodstain inside the outline.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right now,” Samuelson said. He continued to stare past us. “Rafferty saw, or says he saw, Sam Felton make a payoff to a hammer named Franco. He told you. You started investigating. You hired Spenser here-”

The lawyer interrupted. “The station hired Spenser.”

Samuelson didn’t look at him. “-to keep you out of trouble.” He paused, looked sideways at me, said, “Nice job,” and went back to staring out the window.

“Despite your warnings,” Samuelson continued, “Rafferty pushed Felton and turned up dead. You didn’t see any good reason to tell me that, and instead, you and Spenser came over here and questioned Felton until the same hammer, Franco-who had also beaten you up, and who had been following you around, and whom you saw no reason to mention to me-that hammer shows up here with a helper and tried to kidnap you, succeeded in kidnapping Felton while Spenser had the drop on him. And Spenser managed to staple the helper without shooting himself in the elbow. That about fit?”

The lawyer said, “There are several aspects to that summary which imply-”

I said, “Yeah, that’s about right.”

The lawyer was portly, red-faced, and young, wearing a blue suit of European cut that didn’t go with his body and an open-necked white shirt that showed a lot of French cuff.

“Now, listen, I can’t represent you if-”

“You represent her,” I said. “Not me.”

The sheriff’s man said, “Aw, for chrissake, counselor. Hush up.”

The lawyer turned on him. “Now, just one minute, officer. If you think that you can get away with intimidation, you’ve picked the wrong lawyer.”

Samuelson looked at the ceiling.

The sheriff’s man said, “Intimidation. That wasn’t intimidation. When I intimidate, you’ll know it.”

The lawyer said, “Are you planning to make a charge against these people, in clear violation of constitutional guarantees?”

“I’ll charge them with being a pair of assholes,” Samuelson said, “and I’ll discuss with the D.A. whether I want to charge them with anything else. How about you, Bernie?”

The sheriff’s investigator nodded. “The maid backs up as much of their story as she knows about. She told Lopez that the big one”-he nodded at me-“shoots very quickly.”

“Swell,” Samuelson said, “We need another one of those out here.”

“Are you looking for Sam Felton?” Candy said. Samuelson looked at Bernie, the sheriff’s man. They both looked at me.

“You got any guesses where we might find Felton?” Bernie said.

“Not where,” I said. “But I’ll bet on his condition.”

Samuelson said, “Yeah. Worse than it would have been if you people had talked to me earlier.”

“What makes you think they wouldn’t have burned him if you people got on his case?”

“‘Cause we wouldn’t let them,” Samuelson said.

“Of course not,” I said.

The technician with the camera had packed it away in his tool kit and was leaning on the archway. From the hallway Lopez told Samuelson that he was going to take the maid to her sister’s to stay.

Samuelson said, “Well, I’m going home and visit my wife. Don’t go anywhere, Spenser. I’ll want both of you downtown tomorrow to go through the mug hooks. I’ll talk with the legal guys and we’ll see. Miss Sloan is a reporter, and you were protecting her. Lemme say one thing though. To both of you. I don’t want even a smell of either one of you anywhere near any aspect of this case forever. You understand?”

“I think you can count on that,” the lawyer said.

“I better,” Samuelson said. “Because if I can’t, I’ll bury both of them. That, counselor, is intimidation.” He walked out of the room, and the technician and the sheriff’s man went with him. All that was left was the lawyer, Candy, me, and the other prowl-car cop who hung around to secure the house.

“Can I give you a lift home, Candy?” the lawyer said.

“No thanks, Keith, I’ve got my car. I’ll take Spenser.”

“Okay, fine. Be careful what you say to anyone about this,” he said and looked at me.

“Yes, we will, Keith,” Candy said. “Good night.” We all went out together and Keith drove off. I got into the MG beside Candy. We drove quietly and slowly back down the winding canyon roads toward Sunset.

“Franco will be in the mug book,” I said to Candy. “Guys like him always are.”

She was quiet, driving slowly through the dark emptiness of Beverly Hills.

“Once we’ve got an I.D. on him, the cops will find him. They’re good at that.”

I wasn’t sure she heard me. The top was still down on the MG, and the velvet dark night seemed very low over us.

“Much better than we would be,” I said.

There was a rich smell of flowers in the dark air as we went down Beverly Drive. It made me think of funerals. We crossed Wilshire, then Olympic, and pulled in under the entrance portico at the Hillcrest. There was a man to take the car. Duty before sleep. No music filtered down from the rooftop. Candy went into her room and locked the door behind her without a word. I went into mine. It was hot. I turned on the air conditioner and undressed in the dark. When I put my gun on the end table, I could still smell the faint odor of spent ammunition. I didn’t like it. Bubba probably hadn’t liked it either. If he’d smelled it. Which he probably hadn’t.