“And,” I said.
“And some of that is true, but I’m a damn good reporter.”
“And the ass?”
She looked at me with the two lines deepening. “I wiggle that,” she said, “when I want to. And where.”
“Let me know the next time,” I said. “I’ll want to watch.”
Again she smiled. I realized she could make that smile with the consonant eye-sparkle whenever she wished. Along with it went a giggle this time. That, too, I realized, was something she could do or not when she wished.
We turned on to Pico, heading east. “The thing is,” Candy said, “that you need to understand that I’m in charge of the investigation. It’s my story. I want to play it out.”
“Sure,” I said.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’m too aggressive and pushy?”
“Yeah. You don’t need to be. But you don’t know that. No harm in it.”
“I’m in a tough business,” she said. “I’ve learned to be tough. It frightens some men.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Is there anything you’re dying to get off your chest?”
“Well,” I said. “While it is true that I can leap tall buildings at a single bound, and while, in fact, I am more powerful than a locomotive, it is not true that I am faster than a speeding bullet. If I’m going to protect you, we have to weigh risk and gain quite often.”
She nodded. “It’s disappointing though,” she said.
“What is?”
“That you’re not faster than a speeding bullet.”
“Think how I feel,” I said.
We swung into the entrance of the Beverly Hillcrest. “Take a shower,” she said. “Have a drink. Dinner in the room. Get rid of jet lag. Have a night’s rest. I’ll pick you up at eight thirty tomorrow morning, and you start working.”
“You’ll be okay tonight,” I said.
“I was all right last night.”
I got out. A servant took my suitcase. Everyone else watched Candy SIoan drive away. The folks at the Hillcrest didn’t seem too much more laid-back than I was.
Chapter 3
IF YOU LOOKED straight out from the small balcony outside my room at the Beverly Hillcrest, you could see the Hollywood Hills and the sign that said HOLLYWOOD, and the sparse high-rises along Sunset and Hollywood boulevards. If you looked down, you could see the parking lot and the side entrance to the hotel. In between the parking lot and the hills you could survey the immaculate, peculiar stillness of Beverly Hills.
I drank coffee and ate a slice of fresh pineapple and some whole wheat toast. It was seven in the morning. I had neglected to bring my silk robe with the velvet lapels and was forced to lounge on the balcony shirtless, wearing a pair of blue shorts and no shoes. My feet were pale and eastern-looking. Actually so was my chest. Humiliating. I finished breakfast. By seven fiftcen I had on my running shoes and a beige T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and I was heading north on Beverly Drive at an easy jog. The T-shirt had one of tluosc computer-printout pictures of Susan on it. We’d thought it was funny in a shopping mall last December. I figured the beige color would look like a tan froun a distance.
The streets were spotless and empty of foot traffic. The houses were predominantly SpanishTudor-Colonial-Modern, showing the influences of Christopher Wren, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Walter Disney. Across Wilshire I was into the heart of sleekness. Three short blocks at a faster pace and it was behind me. I was across Santa Monica Boulevard and back in residential elegance.
I ran up Beverly to the little park in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset, turned around, and ran back down Rodeo Drive. Huge palms with pineappley bark lined the streets. Back across both Santa Monicas. (Was there anywhere else, I thought, that had two streets running side by side with the same name? No, I thought. There wasn’t.) Rodeo Drive was even more epically chic than Beverly Drive. The names of internationally known hairdressers graced the windows of small buildings elegantly crafted of fake stone and make-believe stucco. People didn’t seem to get up early here. I was still nearly alone, and the shops were mostly closed. If I were an international hairdo superstar, I’d probably sleep in myself. I wondered if they all talked funny, or just the ones I’d seen on television. Maybe you have to talk that way or when you’re in New York, you can’t get into Studio 54.
I arrived back at the hotel at eight with a pretty good sweat worked up. At eight thirty I had showered the sweat off, shaved, and put on my best warmweather wardrobe. Summer-weight blue blazer, gray slacks, yellow Oxford shirt from Brooks Brothers, button-down collar worn without a tie, top two buttons open so I would look real Coast. In the breast pocket of the blazer I had a yellow silk show handkerchief; on the feet, cordovan loafers; on the right hip, a gun. I slipped into a pair of sunglasses I’d bought once in the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas. Then I checked the mirror. Should I unbutton the shirt two more buttons and wear a bullet around my neck on a gold chain? Too pushy. They might think I was an agent.
The phone rang. I answered. A man’s voice said, “Mr. Spenser?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Rafferty. I’m in the lobby. Candy Sloan asked me to come by and get you. She’s been hurt and wants to see you.”
“I’ll be right down,” I said.
“I’m driving a yellow Mazda RX7. I’ll be right outside the door.”
I went down the seven flights rather than wait for the elevator.
Rafferty was where he said he’d be. He was standing on the driver’s side with the door partially open, one foot in the car.
I got into the Mazda, and he slipped into his side, snapped it into gear, spun the car around in the driveway, and rammed it out of the driveway and onto Beverly Drive at a considerable rate.
“What happened?” I said.
“She got beat up.”
“Is she all right?”
“What do you mean, `Is she all right?” he said. “You ever seen anybody beat up?”
“How badly is she hurt?” I said.
“She’ll recover.”
“Who beat her up?”
“Ask her.”
We wheeled onto Santa Monica toward West Hollywood. Rafferty drove very economically and very fast. He was strong-looking, deeply tanned, with a Strong neck and muscular forearms. He wore a green Lacoste polo shirt, pale Levi’s jeans, and blue Tiger running shoes with green crosshatched striping. His face was chiseled and full of character, with a dimple in each cheek and one in the chin. He wore his hair longish and combed back. It was brown and sunlightened. In short he was manly and gorgeous. Except it was all in miniature. He couldn’t have been taller than five feet six, and he probably weighed a hundred and fifty.
I said, “It is kind of you not to burden me with information overload. Just looking at me, you could probably tell I need facts in very small doses.”
He slammed the car into a left turn where Santa Monica meets Doheny and we were going uphill on Doheny toward Sunset.
Without looking at me, he said, “Don’t fuck around with me, Jack, I’ve handled bigger guys than you.”
“And weren’t they surprised,” I said.
We turned off Doheny just below Sunset and onto Wetherly Drive.
“She wants to see you, so she’ll see you,” Rafferty said. “But anytime after that, you want to try me out, wise guy, why, start right in.”
I didn’t seem to have him intimidated.
We stopped in front of a small neat house among many small neat houses on Wetherly Drive. They built close together in L.A. A lot of good-looking vine that I couldn’t identify grew over the blank front of the house. We went down the narrow passage between this house and its neighbor. Rafferty unlocked the door and we went in. The floors were polished hardwood, to the right was a large living room. The back wall of the living room was glass and looked out onto a pool and a small cabana that occupied all there was of the backyard. The pool sparkled with blue water-clarified, filtered, and pH-balanced-and the effect in the living room was of space and nature in a remarkably small area. Candy Sloan half sat on the couch in front of the glass wall, her feet up, wearing a blue silk bedjacket with a mandarin collar. One eye was closed; her lip was badly swollen and showed the loose end of a stitch at one corner. There was a darkening lump on her forehead, above the good eye. When I came in, she moved her face slightly. I assumed she was smiling. The movement obviously hurt, and she stopped.