She carried a small silver purse and in it, I knew, was the Colt .32 I had taken from the late Bubba. We’d had a brief weapons drill about five o’clock, just before she started getting ready to go out. She hadn’t been too keen on it. It was heavy and made a lump in her purse.
“Why will I need it at Perino’s?” she had said.
“The soup may be cold,” I had said. And we had argued until she was in such a rush to start getting ready that she had given in.
She was laughing when she came out, her head thrown back a little toward Iirewster behind her. Apparently she hadn’t had to use the gun yet. She was holding his hand. The driver got out and held the door of the Caddy open for them, and they got in. The driver went around and got in and drove west on Wilshire. I U-turned and followed them. At ten o’clock on a Wednesday evening Wilshire Boulevard was so empty of traffic, you could have U-turned a nuclear Submarine without a problem. That made trailing them a little harder because there wasn’t much traffic to hide in. I dropped a long way back until a third car pulled in between us from a side street, and then I closed behind the third car.
Brewster lived on Roxbury Drive between Lomitas and Sunset in a big stucco and frame house with an arched portico on one side over the driveway. The Caddy went up through the portico, and I drove on past. I parked at the corner of Sunset and watched in the mirror. The Caddy didn’t reappear. I cruised back down Roxbury Drive and looked in under the portico. There was no sign of the Caddy. Must be around back. Probably had its own hangar.
I drove on down to Lomitas and parked around the corner and looked back at Brewster’s house.
I had a problem. Maybe several. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where a strange car can park for hours without a cop stopping by and looking in on you. And God only knew what would happen if the Bel-Air Patrol caught me. I could try to slip in and get a look at what was happening in Brewster’s house, but in this kind of neighborhood, and Brewster being that kind of guy, the place would be burglar-alarmed and electronically protected. Probably dragons in the moat.
I went around the block again. Three doors down from Brewster was a house with a flat-white front that looked like a pumping station for the Guadalajara Water District. It had several days worth of newspapers scattered on the front lawn. I pulled into the driveway and parked. There was no activity in the house. The newspapers were a giveaway. If there was somebody in the house, it was probably a burglar. I got out of the car and walked back toward Brewster’s. There were no lights showing in front. I walked briskly up the driveway, under the portico, and around back. The Caddy was parked on a brick turnaround near a garage that was built to look like a stable. It was empty. There was a second story to the garage, and in one of the windows a light shone. Chauffeur’s quarters. The vard rolled away to my left. No wider than a football-field, but at least as long. Down toward the other end zone was a swimming pool and some tennis courts and a cabana beyond them. Closer to me in the bright moonlight was a croquet lawn. At the far end of the house, on my right, a light shone in a corner room. I walked down toward it, trying to look like 1 was supposed to be there. I needed a clipboard. If you have a clipboard and three pens in your shirt pocket you can go anywhere and do anything and no one will bother you.
There were some flowery shrubs around that corner of the house. I slipped inside them and looked in the window. Candy and Brewster were on the couch. On a coffee table in front of them was a bottle of Gourvoisier, a siphon of seltzer, a bowl of ice, and two glasses. Candy and Brewster weren’t drinking. They were necking. On the couch. I blushed. The. necking got heavier. Inelegant. Not classy, like dancng on a hotel balcony. I looked away and leaned against the house. Now what? Candy didn’t seem to be in real danger unless Brewster was planning to feel her to death. But what about later? I looked back in the window. Candy was partially undressed. I felt like the photo editor at Hustler. I looked up at the moon. On the couch? I thought. Jesus Christ! The sophisticated superrich. I looked once more. They were naked. Making love. On the couch.
I had a full file of Dick Tracy crime-stoppers at home, but none of them that I could remember covered this. What would Allan Pinkerton do? What would I tell the Bel-Air Patrol if they put the arm on me here in the bushes? My palms felt a little sweaty. I squinted a little to blur things and took a quick peek. They were still at it. Private eye was one thing, Peeping Tom was another. I headed for the car.
I was still sitting in it in the driveway of the empty house at twenty minutes of four when the Caddy pulled out of the driveway and turned right. It turned right again at Sunset, and I could see it heading east on Sunset when I turned the corner as far behind it as I could get without losing sight. I couldn’t see who was in it, and it could have been a fake to lead me away, but the best guess was that it was taking Candy home. It was also the right guess.
I waited up on Sunset while the chauffeur opened the door and escorted Candy in. He came back out, got in the Caddy, went on down Wetherly, and disappeared around the corner on Phyllis. Then I pulled up in front of Candy’s house and parked.
Candy let me in on the first knock. “Were you behind me all the way?” she said.
“All the way,” I said. She looked about as she had when she left nine hours ago. Her lipstick was fresh. Her clothes were neat. Her hair was smooth. She smelled wonderfully of perfume and good brandy, and her eyes sparkled.
“I didn’t dare look for you. I saw you outside Perino’s but that’s all. It’s a funny feeling being shadowed.”
“That’s me,” I said. “The shadow. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.”
“He’s a really charming man,” Candy said. I nodded.
“He’s very sure, if you know what I mean. Very in-charge. He seems to have been everywhere. He seems to know everyone.”
“Who knows,” I said, “what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”
“I can’t even remember that program. I’ve just heard nostalgia records.”
I said, “So you like old Peter, do you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t like him at all. But he likes me and he thinks I like him, and I’m going to let him keep thinking so until I can nail him right to the floor.” As she spoke her face looked very flat and tight, and the cheekbones seemed more prominent.
I found a beer in the refrigerator and draped myself in Candy’s armchair and let one foot hang over the arm and drank some beer.
“Did you get a sense of what he was after?” Nice phrasing.
Candy nodded. “I think he’s trying to find out what I know.”
“He any good at it?”
“Not bad,” Candy said, “but I’ve been hustled by people who were better. Although most of them were just after my body.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry you had to sit around outside until four in the morning,” Candy said.
I shrugged.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I did in there until four in the morning?”
“I know already,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me. “I peeked in the window,” I said.
Candy turned red. “You watched?”
“Briefly,” I said.
She was very flushed now, “Did you see us… ?”
“Yeah,” I said. “For a minute.”
She was silent for a moment, “Well,” she said, “you didn’t see anything you hadn’t already seen, did you?”
“The angle was different,” I said.
Her, face got hard again, the way it had when she spoke of nailing Brewster.
“Turn you on?” she said.