A Savage Place

by Robert B. Parker

  She frowned. “Keen?”

  “You know, as in ‘keening and wailing and gnashing of teeth.’ ”

  “You know you’re probably being cheery, but please don’t joke now. Let’s just be quiet.”

  “How about I just gnash a little bit. Very softly. You’ll barely hear me.”

  She smiled slightly.

  I said, very softly, “Gnash.”

  She smiled more and her shoulders shook slightly.

  “Gnash.”

  She laughed. “Okay. Okay. You are, in fact, as loony as I thought you were. We’re setting ourselves up like two worms on a hook, and you’re riding around saying ‘Gnash.’ ”

  We swung off Beverly Drive and into Coldwater Canyon. The road was steeper now, and when we swung onto Linda Crest, we began going up steeply in a series of reverse curves. Candy shifted up and down as the MG hugged the turns.

  “This is what it was born for,” I said.

  “This car? Yes. It’s always fun to drive it up here. I always feel like Mario Andretti or somebody.”

  “Better looking though.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam Felton’s house was the last one on the street. Beyond it the hills terraced back down toward L.A., and the city spread out below it. There was a stucco wall with an iron gate in it. When we rang, a voice came out of a small speaker in one of the gateposts.

  “Who’s calling, please?” it said.

  “Candy Sloan to see Mr. Felton.”

  “Mr. Felton is not home now. Would you leave a message?”

  “We’d prefer to come in and wait,” Candy said.

  “I’m sorry, that isn’t possible. I don’t know when Mr. Felton will be home. If you’ll leave a message, I’m sure he’ll be in touch.”

  “No thanks,” Candy said. A small sign beside the speaker said PROTECTED BY THE BEL-AIR PATROL. “We’ll wait.”

  There was a click from the speaker and then silence. Candy shrugged. “He’ll have to come in or go out sometime,” Candy said.

  “Back way?” I said.

  “Not in these hills,” Candy said. “You’d have to drive over someone’s roof.”

  I nodded. We waited. We ate our picnic. At ten of seven a dark green BMW sedan drove into a turn in front of Felton’s house and stopped. A man peered out at us through the front windshield.

  “Felton,” Candy said.

  He got out of the car and waddled toward us. “Something I can do for you?” he said.

  “Mr. Felton, it’s Candy Sloan, KNBS, remember? I spoke with you before about movie racketeering.”

  “I remember. I thought that was finished.”

  “There’s been some new developments, Mr. Felton. I’ll need to discuss them with you before we broadcast them.”

  “I don’t believe I know this gentleman,” Felton said.

  “Mr. Spenser is helping me with the investigation,” Candy said.

  Felton nodded at me. I said, “Glad to meet you.”

  Felton looked at the gate and then looked at us and then looked at his car. If he opened the gate to go in, would we go in with him? It would be embarrassing to get back in the car and drive away. Could he stall till the Bel-Air Patrol galloped by? He looked at me again. There was nothing he could do with me. I was twenty years younger and four inches taller. He opted for dignity.

  “Come on in,” he said. “We’ll have a drink and I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “Thank you,” Candy said.

  Felton unlocked the gate with a key that hung on a retractable key chain, attached to a clip on a big wide Western-style belt. He had a large stomach, and the belt was cinched right across the middle so that there was an unseemly bulge both above and below the belt. The belt held up some brand-new baggy jeans and was supplemented by wide red suspenders. Glamorous. He had on a white collarless shirt with a pleated front. His hair was shoulder length. On his feet were sandals. No socks. He held the gate open, and we went through and preceded him up the path. At the front door he used a different key, and then we were inside.

  The house was cool, elegant, and expansive, gleaming with brass and ebony, filled with Oriental objets d’art, with parqueted and marble floors and floor-to-ceiling windows providing a view from almost every room.

  An aging Mexican woman in a green housedress and a white apron appeared in the foyer. She stood quietly by an arched entry that appeared to lead into a dining room.

  “What will you drink?” Felton asked us.

  “White wine,” Candy said.

  “Beer,” I said.

  Felton spoke to the woman in Spanish. She smiled and disappeared.

  “Come on in the living room,” Felton said. “We can get comfortable and then we can talk.”

  There was an enormous black marble fireplace in the far wall of the living room. On either side were French doors, thinly curtained, through whose translucence the lights of Los Angeles glittered in the gathering evening.

  Candy and I sat together on a huge white couch highlighted with bright green satin casual pillows. I tucked two behind me to keep from sinking into the quagmire of cushions. The Mexican woman brought in a large silver tray. On it were a glass of white wine and a bottle of Carta Blanca beer and a glass, and what I took to be a glass of tequila on a saucer with a wedge of lime and a small dish of salt with a silver spoon beside it. She placed the tray on a low glass coffee table and smiled and left.

  I poured my beer. Felton picked up the lime wedge, sucked on it, put a little salt on his hand, drank the tequila and lapped the salt. He smiled. “The only way to go,” he said. Jolly.

  Candy sipped her wine. I drank some beer.

  Felton said, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll wash my hands and then we can talk.”

  Candy said, “Of course.”

  Felton left the room. The Mexican woman came back in with a fresh glass of tequila and a fresh lime and smiled at us and left.

  The room was still. There were Oriental rugs on the floor. Opposite me, on a tapestry that ran from floor-to-ceiling, an Oriental warrior on a horse gazed into a distant valley where peasants worked fields with water buffalo. My beer was gone. Would the Mexican woman know without being told? Would she simply appear without a sign? No. No one appeared.

  “Do you suppose he’s run off,” Candy said.

  I shrugged. Candy drank some wine. Then Felton came back. He kicked off his sandals, picked up his second tequila, and polished it off with some more lime and salt. Then he sat cross-legged on another large white couch across from us. The Mexican woman appeared in the door. Felton spoke again in Spanish, and she disappeared.

  “Now,” he said, “how can I help?” He leaned forward slightly. It was as far as he could, and rested his elbows on his thighs. The Mexican woman brought me another beer and Felton another tequila.

  Candy said, “Do you know Mickey Rafferty?”

  There was a bowl of popcorn on an end table beside Felton. He took a handful. “Rafferty,” he said and put some popcorn in his mouth. He chewed the popcorn.

  “Sure,” he said, “doesn’t he do stunt work?”

  “Not anymore,” Candy said. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God. Really? What happened? Was it a stunt?”

  “No,” Candy said, “he was shot to death in his room at the Marmont.”

  Felton raised his eyebrows and formed a silent wow with his lips.

  We were quiet. Felton ate some more popcorn. He ate rapidly, taking a handful and pushing it all into his mouth with his flattened palm. He drank his tequila.

  “Isn’t that terrible,” he said. “Isn’t that terrible. Awful.”

  “Can you tell us anything about it?” Candy said.

  Felton’s upper lip looked a little moist. It might have been tequila. But it might have been sweat. He ate some more popcorn.

  “How on earth could I tell you anything?”

  “I have information,” Candy said, “that you were the last person he saw before he died.”

&nb
sp; There was a little moisture now on Felton’s forehead. It wasn’t tequila. He looked at his watch.

  “That’s insane. I barely knew him. I hadn’t seen him for weeks. I wouldn’t remember if I had seen him. I’ve never had two words with him.”

  I thought about him looking at his watch.

  “No,” Candy said. “I know better.”

  I thought about him leaving after we got here to wash his hands.

  “Now listen, Candy, I know you think I’m involved in some crazy shakedown, but this is going too far. I’m willing to help. I know you’ve got a job to do. But …” He gestured futilely with both hands.

  I slid my gun out of the hip holster and held it in my right hand down between the couch cushion and the arm of the couch. Felton didn’t see me. He looked at his empty tequila glass. Then he looked toward the front hall.

  “I mean are you saying I killed him?”

  Candy had no expression on her face. She stared straight at Felton.

  “You probably didn’t kill him,” she said. “Did you have it done?”

  Felton slapped both hands palm down on the tops of his thighs. “For God’s sake, that’s enough,” he said.

  Candy continued to look at him. I continued to keep the gun concealed down between the cushions. Felton looked toward the front hall again and his hopes were realized. Franco had arrived.

  Chapter 16

  He was definitely fat, probably two hundred and fifty on a frame no more than five feet nine. On the other hand Vasili Alexeyev is fat too. The thought was not comforting. Franco was balding and he hadn’t fought it. What was left was cut very short, so that he seemed to be balder than he was. The Vandyke was black and so was the mustache. He was wearing a flowered shirt and green knit slacks and dark brown moccasins. The shirt hung outside the pants. Probably to hide a gun. Or maybe he thought it was elegant. I looked at Candy. Her face was frozen, without expression. She looked at Franco and was perfectly still.

  Behind Franco was the blond charmer I had rousted in the parking lot at the Farmers Market. He’d never wear a flowered shirt. He wouldn’t let it hang outside. He’d hide his gun in a shoulder rig under an unstructured linen jacket with the collar turned up.

  I looked at Felton. It was as if he didn’t have to pretend anymore and his glands could relax. His face was now shiny with sweat, and some had beaded on his upper lip. His expression was a mixture of gratitude and terror.

  Franco looked at Candy and said, “Well, well, news-birdie. You thought I didn’t mean it last time?”

  Candy was quiet. There was a faint sense of a foreign accent in Franco’s voice, too dim to identify, merely the echo of a distant birth.

  “Huh?” he said. “Did you think I didn’t mean it?”

  “I thought you meant it,” Candy said.

  “Then what are you doing here, birdie, huh? If you thought I meant it, what are you doing here?”

  “My job,” Candy said. There was no affect in her voice.

  Franco looked at his helper. “How about that, Bubba. Her job, you hear that? She’s doing her fucking job. Huh? You like that, Bubba?”

  “Yeah,” Bubba said. “Yeah, that’s good.”

  Felton said, “What are you going to do, Franco?”

  Franco looked at him for a moment and shook his head. “Look at the sweat,” he said. “Give fat a bad name, guys like you.”

  Felton wiped his hand over his face. “Well, what’re you?” he said.

  “You called us,” Franco said. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “They were talking about me killing Rafferty,” Felton said.

  Franco made a sound between a grunt and a laugh. “You ain’t got the ’nads to kill anything, except maybe a quart of tequila,” he said. Then he looked at Candy and said, “Come on, you and your date take a ride with us.”

  Candy looked at me. I said “Nope.”

  Franco looked at me for the first time. “I wasn’t asking,” he said. “Get moving, huh?”

  I said “Nope” again. It had a nice rhythm to it.

  Bubba had moved a little to Franco’s right, but neither showed a weapon yet. That’s one of the mistakes tough guys make. They overrate how tough they are. They aren’t careful.

  I took the gun out from the cushions and pointed it at them. No harm in being careful. I said “Nope.”

  Franco and Bubba looked at the gun. So did Felton. His face got sweatier. Candy didn’t move. She seemed inside a kind of deep stillness.

  “We have here,” I said to Candy, “persuasive evidence of complicity between Felton and Franco, and of course the legendary Bubba. Bubba is on hourly wage, I suspect, and doesn’t count for much. But I think we could make something pretty good out of Franco and old Sammy.”

  “What can we really prove?” Candy said.

  “We can prove Franco beat you up. We can prove when we came here to talk with Sam Felton about Mickey, he called Franco, and Franco came and attempted to remove us. The threat of force was clearly implied.”

  “I want it all,” Candy said.

  “Cops can get it all if we give them this,” I said. “Old Sam here will melt like butter on a flapjack when Samuelson gets him down to the Hall of Justice. So would Bubba, but he probably doesn’t know anything.”

  “Don’t get to feeling too good about that gun, huh?” Franco said. “I seen guns before. It ain’t going to buy you all that much.”

  “If you do anything incautious,” I said, “it can buy you the farm.”

  Candy seemed not even to hear Franco. She barely heard me. She was way inside somewhere. “I want it all,” she said again. “I want to get it myself.”

  “You’ve got enough,” I said. “You’ve broken it, let the cops clean up. They’re good at it. They’ve got the personpower for it.”

  She didn’t even smile at “personpower.” No one else did either. No accounting for people’s sense of humor. She was looking right at Franco now. “Did you shoot Mickey?” she said.

  Franco made a small grin. “Sure,” he said.

  “You shot him?”

  “Yes. I just said so, huh?”

  Bubba edged slightly more to the right.

  I said, “Don’t do that, Bubba. I’m good with this. I’ll drop you where you stand.”

  Franco said, “And while you’re shooting him, what do you think I’ll be doing, huh?”

  I said, “I can drop him and you before you can clear the piece. You made one mistake coming in here with your hands empty. Don’t make another one.”

  Candy said, “You can’t shoot him, Spenser. He’s our key to the whole story.”

  I said, “Yes, I can. We’ve still got Felton,” and then everything went to hell. The Mexican woman walked in through the archway and stopped next to Franco when she saw the gun. Franco stepped behind her. I raised my gun. Candy said “No,” and pushed at my arm. Franco was around the corner of the archway. Bubba had his gun out. I yanked my arm free of Candy and shot Bubba twice and shoved Candy down on the sofa and sprawled over her facing the archway. The Mexican woman was crouched on the floor near the archway. Felton was still cross-legged on the opposite couch, body bent as close to double as he could get, both hands over his head. Bubba had fallen backward to the floor. The smell of gunshot was in the room but no sound. The hum of central air conditioning filled an otherwise soundless void. Candy was motionless beneath me.

  Then Franco’s voice came from behind the archway. “Come on, Felton,” Franco said. “Get off the couch and walk over here.”

  Felton kept his hands clutched over his head and looked up in my direction.

  “Come on,” Franco said again. “He won’t shoot. He needs you alive, don’t you, boyfriend. You kill him and you got nothing. Besides, I can blast the Mex from here and not even move. So we’ll trade. Felton walks and you get the Mex, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything. I kept the gun on the entryway. I took a quick check on Felton from the corner of my eye. I didn’t think he was a threat,
but I hadn’t counted on the Mexican woman either.

  Franco said, “Get your fat ass out here, Felton, and now. Or you want to stay with them?”

  “No,” Felton said. His voice was squeaky. “No. I’m coming.” He got off the couch and scurried fatly over to the archway and through.

  Franco said, “We’re leaving now, boyfriend. I’m backing out behind Felton. He’s fat enough even for me. You have to kill him, huh? To get to me. Then what you got?”

  I didn’t speak. I could hear Candy’s breath coming a little short beneath me. I could smell her perfume too, now that the shooting fumes were beginning to thin. I heard shuffling sounds recede down the front hall, then the front door opened and closed. I didn’t move. Franco could open the front door and shut it without leaving, and when I came charging through the archway, he could cut me in half.

  Candy said in a muffled voice, “You’re smothering me.”

  I eased off of her and stood out of line of the archway, beside the couch.

  Candy said, “Have they gone?”

  I put my finger on my mouth and shook my head. “I guess so,” I said loud enough for Franco to hear me. I moved over beside the archway and waited. The Mexican woman crouched where she had been. Candy stayed down on the couch. Then I heard the front door open again and shut. And silence. A double fake? Faintly I heard a car door slam. No double fake. I rolled around the corner of the archway in a crouch. Franco could have sent Felton out to start the car. The hall was empty. I opened the front door and watched the taillights of a car disappear up the street. I went back into the living room.

  With considerable emphasis I said, “Son of a bitch.”

  “I shouldn’t have hit your arm,” Candy said.

  “True. But you didn’t have much chance to think.” I was looking down at Bubba. There was blood on his chest and his eyes were wide and silent.

  “I was afraid I’d lose the story,” she said.

  “I know.” No more hanging out at Venice Beach, Bubba. No more pumping iron. No more suntan oil and choker bathing suits.

  “But I risked your life for it,” Candy said.

  “Part of the job description,” I said. The Mexican woman was standing against the wall by the archway watching us.