A Savage Place (4 page)

“Oh, come on,” Candy said. “It’s not that bad.”

We stopped at a light at Cahuenga Boulevard. A young black man with a haircut like Dorothy Hamill’s crossed in front of us. He wore lipstick and mascara. He wore tight pink pants and spike heels, and his fingernails were long and painted silver. With him was a thin blond boy with a tank top and short shorts and translucent shoes with four-inch spikes. He, too, was wearing makeup and jewelry. He carried a small beaded clutch purse. The black kid blew me a kiss. The blond boy yanked at his hand and whispered something, and they hurried across the street.

The light changed, Candy slipped into gear, and we moved on. Behind the thin gray line of buildings and sidewalks the Hollywood Hills rose to the north, green with trees, dotted with color, and beyond them, looking sere, the San Gabriel Mountains. The old Pacific wilderness, barely at bay. We turned left onto Fairfax and headed south past CBS and the Farmers Market, across Wilshire, with the May Company on the corner. Had Mary Livingstone really worked there?

We crossed Olympic and turned right onto Pico. Along Pico there were a lot of kosher markets. Then we slipped up over a hill and down past a Big Boy burger stand and turned into the gate at Summit Studios. Candy showed her press card to the guard at the gate and asked for Roger Hammond. The guard went into his shack to call and came out in a minute and waved us through. To the right of the gate as we drove in was a Victorian street full of false fronts and, beyond that, the superstructure of an old elevated train. Candy turned left past a sound stage and parked in a slot marked VISITORS in front of a two-story building with a balcony across the front.

Summit Studios looked sort of like one of those permanent fairgrounds with a large number of small nondescript buildings scattered about inside a fence. None of the buildings were very new and most of them needed a paint touch-up.

We went up the stairs at one end of the balcony and walked halfway down the length of the building to a door with a plaque that said ROGER HAMMOND in simulated-oak Formica. We went in. A rather elderly secretary told us to sit on the couch, Mr. Hammond was on the phone long-distance.

I looked at Candy. “Long-distance,” I said soundlessly. She nodded and smiled. “I’ve never met anyone, when I came to interview them, who was on the phone making a local call,” she said softly.

The secretary went back to work. Some phones rang. She answered them. After about ten minutes Roger Hammond appeared at the office door to the left of the secretary and said, “Candy Sloan. I love you on the news.”

We stood up.

“Come on inside,” Hammond said. “I’m sorry as hell to make you wait. But I was talking long-distance.” I smiled. Candy introduced us. Hammond shook my hand firmly and about half a second longer than he should have. He was a slim, sandy-haired, Irish-looking guy, with a fine lacework of broken veins on his cheeks that looked like a healthy color if you weren’t observant. He had a widow’s peak with the hair receding substantially on either side of the peak, and the hair was cut short without sideburns. He was dressed Designer Western with boots, dark blue jeans, and a plaid shirt, half unbuttoned. His belt was a wide one of hand-tooled leather with silver mountings. It matched his boots.

“You in TV, Spenser?” he said.

“No.”

“Oh?”

“Spenser’s helping me on a special assignment, Mr. Hammond. We’re looking into the charges of labor racketeering in the film industry.”

“I’d heard you were doing a series on that, Candy. Or at least that it was on the boards. Have you got anything yet?”

“I got beaten up several days ago.”

“My God, you didn’t. Hell, you did, didn’t you. I can see the marks, now that you mention it and I’m really looking. God, Candy, that’s terrible.”

“I’ll recover.”

“And Spenser,” Hammond said. “That’s where you come in, isn’t it? You are her bodyguard.”

I shrugged.

“Sure you are. You’ve got the build for it. You look like a guy can handle himself. You stay close to this big guy, Candy.”

Candy smiled and nodded. “What can you tell me about labor racketeering in the industry, Mr. Hammond?”

“Roger,” he said. “Call me Roger.”

Candy smiled again and nodded. “What can you tell me?”

Hammond shrugged widely, bringing his hands, palms up, to shoulder level, elbows in. “I wish I could, Candy, but I can’t. I don’t know a damn thing. I’ve never encountered any. I’ve heard rumors, you know, in the industry, but nothing firsthand.”

“I’ve got an eyewitness that said a producer on one of your movies handed an envelope of cash to a thug on the set.”

Roger looked at Candy Sloan for a moment. Then he pressed his hands together beneath his chin and touched the underside of his chin with his fingertips. He rocked back in his high-backed executive swivelchair and gazed at the ceiling. Then he let the chair come forward until his elbows rested on the desk. He dropped his eyes level again at Candy, and with his fingertips still touching his chin, he said, “Candy, that’s bullshit.”

Then he pointed the still-pressed fingertips at her for emphasis.

Candy shook her head. “No, Roger. It’s not bullshit. I have the eyewitness. The producer was Sam Felton. The movie was Savage Cycles. Are you telling me you know nothing of this?”

Roger was shaking his head. “Candy, Candy, Candy,” he said. “This is bad.” He was shaking his head and moving his hands in time with the shake. “This is no good, Candy. This is lousy yellow journalism. Are your ratings that bad?”

“Roger, I’ve got the eyewitness. Now, I certainly wanted to give you a chance to comment before we go on the air with this.”

“Candy, you haven’t got anything,” Roger said. “You got a new director who’s third in the market and he’s scared for his job, that’s what you got. Nobody in my organization is paying anybody anything. That’s my statement. You have an eyewitness, bring him out. Who is it?”

Candy shook her head.

Roger nodded. “Yeah. I thought that’s the way it would be, Candy. You have an eyewitness, but he has no name. You and Joe McCarthy.” He unpressed his hands and made a repelling gesture, as if to brush away a swarm of gnats.

Candy smiled brightly at him and was silent. He was silent. I was silent. Roger stared at Candy and then glanced at me and then stared at Candy some more. He pressed the hands back together again and rested his chin on them, the fingertips against his mouth. Candy’s legs were crossed and her knees were very handsome. So was the line of her thigh beneath the white skirt. Sexism.

“If you have a witness, Candy,” Roger said, “I’d like to confront him, or her. If you have real evidence of wrongdoing in my organization, you owe it to me to level with me.”

“I think there’s danger to the witness,” Candy said.

Roger was aghast. He pointed both thumbs at his own chest. “From me? Danger from me? Who the hell do you think I am?”

“So you deny any knowledge of labor racketeering, payoffs, kickbacks, whatever, in Summit Studios,” Candy said.

“Absolutely,” Roger said. “Categorically. And let me say this, Candy. I resent very much the implication that I might be guilty of complicity. There are libel laws, and I’m going to be talking with our legal people.”

“Sam Felton had to get the money frorn somewhere,” Candy said. “I assume he wasn’t paying out of pocket. Could you put me in touch with your financial officer, Roger? Treasurer, comptroller, whatever you call him here.”

“For God’s sake, I will not. Candy, this has gone far enough. I’ve tried to cooperate, but you are not willing to be reasonable. You come in here and make wild charges and ask for the name of our treasurer.” He looked at me, leaning forward a little. “Spender, what the hell am I going to do with her?”

“It’s not just that you got my name screwed up,” I said, “it’s how you enlisted me in your cause. What are we sensible guys going to do with this silly broad. That’s where you lost me.”

“Geez, I’m bad with names,” Hammond said. “I must have misunderstood, what is your name again?”

“Spenser,” I said. “Like in Edmund.”

“I’m sorry, Spenser. Of course. I don’t mean to get sexist here. I’m just asking you for an opinion. You look like a guy’s been around, Spense. Can’t you talk some sense to her?”

“Not my job,” I said. “If I were you though, I’d take her seriously.”

“I’ll take her seriously,” Hammond said. “I’ll take you both seriously when you give me some evidence besides a goddamn ghost witness. Do you have any?”

“I have enough to make me look for more,” Candy said.

“To go fishing, you mean. If you had anything, you wouldn’t be here.”

“But there is some,” Candy said. “I just haven’t dug it up yet, is that what you’re saying?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, you bitch,” Hammond said.

“Roger,” I said. “I signed the standard bodyguard’s contract, you know, to protect her against sticks and stones and broken bones. I’m not sure names are covered. My inclination, however, is to interpret the contract loosely.”

“Spense, are you threatening me?”

“I guess so, Rog. I guess I’m saying you shouldn’t call her names, or I will tie a knot in your Ralph Lauren jeans.”

Hammond half rose with his hands flat on the desktop. He leaned forward, carrying his weight on his stiff arms, and said, “That’s it. This interview is at an end. And I fully intend to let the station manager and ICNBS know just what kind of totally unprofessional job was done here today.”

“His name is Wendall B. Tracey,” Candy said.

“I know his name,” Hammond said.

We were all on our feet now. Candy opened the aoor. We went out.

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?”