A Savage Place

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, facint; 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 mythologicallooking 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 pina 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 pina 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 pina 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 with 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.