A Savage Place Part 19

Chapter24.

I WENT WITH Candy to the studio in the morning. She drove. I looked around.

"I am going to stay as close as I can," I said. "Even if I'm spotted, it's better than you getting burned."

"You really think there's that kind of danger?"

"You betcha," I said. "Brewster may remember what he told you and if he does, you're a real threat to him."

"But he thinks I'm in love with him."

"After five days?" I said.

"He thinks everyone is in love with him anyway. He a.s.sumes conquest."

"I'll accept that," I said. "And I'm willing to concede that Brewster's not very smart. Tyc.o.o.ns often aren't, I've found. But they are also rarely sentimental. Even if he thinks you are permanently smitten with his wonderful self, what's he lose by having you shot?"

"Thanks a lot."

"It's not denigrating you. It's denigrating him. He doesn't cherish you. He doesn't cherish anything. He can replace you with some worshipful starlet later this evening if he needs to. He wouldn't differentiate." Candy was quiet.

"Think about it. What does he want from you?"

"s.e.x."

"Yeah, and what else?"

"Admiration. He wants me to tell him how masterful he is. He wants me to go ooh at how much money and clout and perception he has."

"And if he didn't have you to do that, what?"

"He'd get someone else."

"Is it your brains and wit and strength he needs?"

"No."

We pulled into the parking lot behind the station. "So what is it you give him?"

"I look good in public," Candy said. "I do good in bed. And I hang on his every word."

"How many other women in Hollywood could fill that role?"

"A trillion," Candy said.

"So be careful," I said. "And don't get into places I can't follow."

Candy nodded and we went into the studio.

There was a staff meeting scheduled for much of the morning, and I left Candy to deal with that. It was probably as deadly in its way as Brewster, but it wasn't the kind of deadliness I could ameliorate.

I took a cab from the station to a Hertz agency and rented a Ford Fairlane that looked like every third car on the road. The MG was too conspicuous now. It had been following Brewster too long. Driving back to KNBS, I stopped at a Taco Burro stand and had a bean and cheese burrito for lunch. With coffee. Authenticity is not always possible.

During the afternoon I drove down to Marineland with Candy. We met a camerawoman there, and Candy did a piece on a killer whale that had been born there during the week.

"Glamor," I said to Candy on the long ride back. "You show-biz folks lead lives of such glamor and sophistication."

She was driving. She said, "Do you really think Peter Brewster might try to kill me?"

"Yes."

We were going north on the Harbor Freeway. The road was made of large asphalt squares, and the wheels as they hit the intervaled seams made a kind of rhythmic thump.

"I'm scared," she said.

"Then why continue? Why not go to Samuelson with what you've got and let him take the weight for a while?"

"What have I got exactly?" Candy said.

"You know he's Mob-connected," I said. "You may have stumbled in by accident. Franco and Felton may have had nothing to do with it. But you're in. He's spilled that he's on the dirty side, and if he remembers that, you're already a danger to him."

The tires made their thump. With the top down the hot wind was a steady push on my face.

"I can't," Candy said. "I've invested too much. It means too much."

"You'd still break the story," I said. " 'Acting on a tip from newsperson Candy Sloan, police today...' It would read good," I said.

She was quiet. She pa.s.sed a sign that said TORRANCE. Traffic was heavy going the other way, coming out of L.A., going home for a beer and maybe water the lawn. Barbecue some ribs maybe. See what was on the tube later. Might be a ball game. Get the kids to bed. Turn up the air conditioning. Settle in and watch the Angels. Maybe another beer. Maybe before bed a sandwich, maybe a hug from the wife.

"I can't," Candy said. "I can't do it that way. It would be too girlie-girl. Would you turn it over to the police?"

"Not yet," I said.

"So you understand, perhaps, why I won't."

"Understand, yes. Approve, no."

"Even though you'd be the same way?"

"Just because I'm peculiar doesn't mean you should be. This is what cops draw their pay for. The smart way is to let them earn it."

"Stand on the sidelines and look pretty while the men play ball?"

"s.e.x is not at issue here," I said. "Danger is."

"If I don't follow this through, I add credence to what practically everyone thinks. You don't know what it's like in television. It's a male domain. All the decision-makers are male. And every G.o.dd.a.m.n one of them a.s.sumes I'm good for interviewing baby whales. Every G.o.dd.a.m.n one of them that I've ever met a.s.sumes, when the going gets rough, I'll tuck my skirts up and run."

"And you're going to prove them wrong."

"Absolutely," she said.

"Okay," I said.

We left the Harbor Freeway and headed north on the San Diego Freeway. It was nearly seven when we got to Candy's place. She parked and set the brake and looked at me.

"You'll stick, won't you?" she said.

"Yes."

"Even though I'm not paying you?"

"Yes."

"I could pay you a little bit each month for a year or so, maybe."

"I could give you one of those little payment books like the banks do," I said. "No money down, thirty-six easy payments. Budget Rent-a-Sleuth."

"I'm serious."

"I don't need the money," I said. "The station paid me fine."

We were still sitting in the car in front of her house. She was looking at me. "And you'll stay until it's finished?" she said.

"Yes."

"For no pay."

"Yes."

"And I'm not sleeping with you?"

"Despite that," I said.

"Why?"

"I like you. You need help. It's help I can supply."

She looked at her watch. "My G.o.d," 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.

Chapter25.

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 Wind.. breaker 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 hack 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 bra.s.s 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.

Chapter26.

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 was 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.