A Savage Place (18 page)

Simms was still groggy, and it made him slow. I stepped sideways and hacked the gun out of his hand. It hit the carpet near Brewster, and I scooped it up and stuck it in my hip pocket. As I straightened, Simms hit me a lunging, looping punch high on the head that jarred. I hit him twice with my left hand and one very hard right. He went back three steps. I went after him and knocked him backward into Brewster’s office. He fell against Brewster’s desk and slid down. I went back for Brewster. The businessman I had hit had some guts. He was still half doubled over but he hadn’t left. He tried to grab my arm, and I threw him away from me. I reached down and brought Brewster back up against the wall again. Saliva drooled out of his mouth. His lip was cut and his nose was bleeding. I slapped him again.

Then something was behind me, and I hunched up and moved my head and something hit me hard on the top of my left shoulder. I let Brewster go and turned and saw a couple of Oceania security types in powder-blue uniforms. They had nightsticks. One of them had just hit me and was about to do it again. I caught his down-swinging right arm on my left forearm and hit him a right uppercut, and as he grunted and stepped back I slid my left hand along his arm and yanked the nightstick out of his hand. I hit him and then his buddy with the nightstick. One of them went down, the other one backed up, parrying with his stick. I hit him again, this time in the stomach and, when his guard came down, across the side of the head. He went down too. I grabbed hold of Brewster and pulled him up and walked him tippy-toe and backward into his private office and shut the door and locked it. I was seeing everything through a slightly reddish haze, but my head seemed as clear as mountain air, and all of the things that were happening seemed to have been happening at half speed, like a slow-motion movie, so that, despite the slight reddish haze, the whole sequence had gone forth with a wordless and almost stately clarity.

I took my gun out and pressed the barrel against his upper lip directly under his nose where there was a slight indentation. He was wavering so, I had to hold his shirt with my left hand to keep him upright. I pressed the gun barrel harder against his upper lip.

My voice came out very softly, and it seemed very far from me. I said, “Here’s what I think happened, Peter. I think you arranged to meet Franco out there in the oil field and you had Simms, and maybe somebody else, set up there early, and then you brought Candy out there and, being an efficient executive, you had Simms, and whoever, kill both of them on the spot. Two birds with one stone, you might say. That took care of anyone who seemed to threaten you. And then you came back and had a nice evening and a good sleep and came in here bright-eyed and bushytailed to greet another business day.”

As I spoke he was trying to shake his head, but the pressure of the gun barrel under his nose made it hard, and so his head trembled laterally a bit. It was as close as he could come. To my right Simms was sitting up, his back against the couch.

“There’ll be a hundred cops here in a minute, buddy,” Simms said. His voice sounded slightly warped.

“The better to take you to the pokey, bright eyes,” I said. “You burned Franco and the girl, didn’t you?” Simms just sat and looked at me.

“Didn’t he?” I said to Brewster.

Brewster said “Un-uh” and tried again to shake his head. I banged him in the upper lip with the gun barrel.

“Didn’t he,” I said.

“Un-uh.”

I banged his upper lip again. Tears began to slide down his cheeks. “I followed you out there,” I said. “I know you killed her. I won’t mind shooting you right through your upper teeth. I liked her.”

“Simms shot her,” Brewster said. “He was just there to protect us from Franco, but he went crazy and shot her.”

“How about that, Rollie,” I said.

Simms looked at Brewster with disgust. “You got it right the first time,” he said.

Someone tried the door to Brewster’s office and then knocked. A voice said, “This is the police. Open the door.”

I raised my voice. “If anyone comes in here, I’ll blow both of these lizards apart.”

There was silence. Then another voice said, “My name is Sergeant Eugene Hall. I’m going to call you on the phone in there, and we can talk. There’s nothing we can’t work out.”

I said, “No. Not yet. I have a call to make. After that I’ll talk with you. Call here in five minutes.”

“Sure,” Hall said. “No hurry. Just be easy.”

I picked up the phone and got Information and called KNBS, and got John Frederics, the news director

WHEN I TOLD Frederics what I wanted, he said, “I’ll come myself,” and hung up. Maybe I had underrated him.

Brewster’s lip was swelling, one eye was closing, blood still snuffled out of his hose. While I was talking, he had slid to the floor and now sat with his back against the window wall, his feet straight out in front of him. Simms had gone the other way. He was sitting on the couch now. There was a large bruise on his temple. He seemed to be missing a tooth. I noticed that there was a cut on the knuckles of my left hand.

Brewster said, “What are you going to do?” He had trouble speaking clearly.

I said, “You are going to confess on camera to the murder of Candy Sloan.”

Brewster said, “What if I don’t?”

I said, “I’ll kill you.”

“There’s cops out there.”

“Yeah, and how bad will they feel about you taking the jump when I tell them why?”

The phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Yeah?” A voice said, “This is Gene Hall. What kind of a deal can we make?”

I said, “You know a homicide cop named Samuelson?”

Hall said, “Sure.”

“Get him,” I said. “Tell him I’ve got the people who killed Sam Felton, and Candy Sloan, and Franco Montenegro. Tell him he can have them, but I want a little time to do something I have to do.”

“Who you got in there? Secretary’s so excited, I’m having trouble understanding her.”

“I got Peter Brewster, who’s the head of this company, and Rollie Simms, who’s the chief of security.”

“And what’d you say your name was?”

“Spenser.”

“Okay. You want to stay by this phone so we can keep in touch?”

“Call anytime,” I said and hung up.

Brewster and Simms sat as they had. I said to Brewster, “In a few minutes a guy from KNBS will be here with a cameraman. He’s going to come in and interview you. You are going to give him a statement that I am going to type out for you right now.”

I pulled an IBM Selectric typewriter over near me on its typing table, turned it on, and began to type with one finger while I held the gun toward Simms. Brewster had given up, but Simms was of sterner stuff.

The phone rang. I stopped typing and picked it up. “Gene Hall again, Spenser. Guy from KNBS-TV out here says you wanted him to come in?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Send him in.”

“Well, there’s a problem. You got two hostages now, I’d rather not add to the total.”

“I don’t blame you. I’ll swap you one of mine. I’ll send Simms out if you let the TV people in.”

“That’s still three for one,” Hall said.

“Yeah. They tell you what we have in mind?”

“They told me what you told them.”

“You been in touch with Samuelson yet?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’s on his way.”

“Okay. Why don’t we sit tight until he gets here, then I’ll talk with him.”

“Okay by me, Spenser,” Hall said. “Anything we can get you in the meantime?”

“Why do I think you guys will be less pleasant once I turn over Brewster and Simms?”

“Hey, no problem. You’ve been straight with us. We’ll be straight with you. All we want is everything to go smooth. You want any coffee or anything?”

“No, thank you, Eugene,” I said. I hung up and typed some more. In about three minutes the phone rang. I said, “Yeah?”

A voice, not Eugene’s, said, “Spenser, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Samuelson?”

“Who’d you expect it to be, Barbara Walters?”

“One always has one’s hopes,” I said.

“What’s going on?”

“You find Candy Sloan and Franco?”

“Yeah.”

“Brewster and Simms shot them. Brewster’s connected. Franco was trying to shake him down, and Candy was still trying to solve the thing. So Brewster put them both away at the same time.”

“And you got Brewster in there?”

“Yes, and Simms. Simms probably pulled the trigger. Brewster wouldn’t have the balls. But he called it.”

“And you want the TV guys in there?”

“Yeah. You need an explanation?”

“No,” Samuelson said. “I don’t. Okay. We let them in, and I come too, and when it’s over, you surrender them and you to me.”

“You know why I want it this way,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. I hung up the phone. I took the typescript out of the typewriter. I handed it to Brewster. “When the TV people get set, you read that the way I wrote it. If you don’t I’ll shoot you six times.”

“What’s the difference,” Brewster mumbled. “I read this, and the state will kill me.”

“Not you,” I said. “They haven’t done away with anyone out here in years. They probably have never done away with anyone as connected as you. You got all kinds of clout, Brewster. You could be back on the street in a few years. You can get into court and claim you were coerced. It might work. If you read that, you got lots of chances. If you don’t, you have none. Look at me when I am speaking. Look at me. You know I’ll do it.”

Brewster stared at me with his eye and a half. He nodded. I walked over to the door and unlocked it and opened it up. I stayed out of the line of fire when I did. You can’t tell when some SWAT cop will forget it’s not television. Samuelson came in first, wearing his tinted glasses and looking relaxed. Frederics followed, not a hair out of place, gleaming and perfectly groomed. Behind him came a scruffy bearded black guy with a camera on his shoulder and a large shabby black bag hanging from a shoulder strap. Last came a young woman who was obviously having a scruff contest with the black man. She had equipment slung around over a man’s shirt, jeans, and moccasins, and she carried a long pole with a microphone on it.

Samuelson went to the other side of the room and stood near Simms. Simms was looking at the floor. Frederics nodded at me.

I said to Brewster, “Get up.” I had the gun held out full-length and shoulder level, pointed at him. A little drama doesn’t hurt. Brewster got wearily to his feet. The black man muttered “Jesus” as he looked at Brewster’s face.

Samuelson looked at me. “He was difficult to subdue,” I said.

“I can tell,” Samuelson said.

Frederics looked at his associates. “We ready?” They both nodded. The soundwoman took the mike off its extender and handed it to Frederics. He looked at the camera. Then he said, “This is John Frederics. I’m speaking to you from the offices of Oceania Industries at Century City, where an apparent hostage situation is in progress. The resolution of that situation requires that one of the hostages, Peter Brewster, the president of Oceania, read a statement. Mr. Brewster.”

The cameraman moved the camera onto Brewster. Frederics held the mike in front of him. I kept the gun steady. Brewster was leaning against his desk, a little wobbly, but upright. He had my typescript in his hand. He read:

“A reporter from KNBS, Candy Sloan, through persistently good investigative reporting, finally uncovered the fact that I have been engaged in Mob-related criminal activity. She was about to report her story. To prevent that, I had her killed by a man named Rollie Simms. If it had not been for Candy Sloan, I would never have been caught.”

There was silence. I brought the gun down, reversed it, and held it out, butt first, toward Samuelson. He reached around behind the soundwoman and took it and dropped it in his side pocket. Brewster simply stood where he was. Frederics brought the mike back to his own face, the camera shifted slightly. “Right now in this room there is silence. A colleague is dead. This is John Frederics for KNBS News.” He stood still for another moment, then made a safe sign with his hands. He looked at me for a moment. “It’ll be on the air as soon as I get it back to the studio,” he said.

I nodded. He nodded his head toward the door, and the three TV people left. The soundwoman was last and she looked back at me as she went. Her eyes were wet.

“Okay,” Samuelson said. “Let’s go downtown.”

IT WAS 11:03 P.M. in downtown Los Angeles. Since I’d come in about twelve hours ago with Samuelson, I had talked with three detectives, two assistant D.A.‘s, a sheriff’s investigator, a homicide captain, the chief of detectives (who called me “a bush-league fucking hot dog”), the department public relations officer, a guy from the mayor’s office (who said something about “civic responsibility” that I didn’t fully follow but seemed to be in substantial agreement with the chief of detectives), and a lawyer who KNBS had sent over to protect my constitutional rights, the same one they’d sent before. Now I was in Samuelson’s office with the door closed, drinking maybe my eighty-third cup of really despicable black coffee and watching the latenight news with Samuelson on a nine-inch TV on top of a file cabinet in the left corner of the room.

On the screen Frederic, the news director, looking bigger and more natural, was sitting on the edge of a desk in what was obviously the KNBS newsroom, speaking directly into the camera.

“Every reporter covers stories of sudden death,” he was saying. “But for all of us at KNBS News this has been a different story. This time the victim was one of us.”

Samuelson was coatless, his tie was hanging unknotted, his shirt was unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up above the elbows. He had his feet up on the corner of his desk as he watched, and he drummed with the fingers of his left hand softly on the desktop. I sipped some coffee. I didn’t want it, but there wasn’t anything else to do while I watched.

“KNBS feature reporter Candy Sloan was killed last night in the course of an investigation that linked motion picture industry figures to organized crime,” Frederics said. I looked at myself in the dark window behind Samuelson’s desk. My clothes had dried on me in complex wrinkles, my hair was stiff and angular. I had a two days’ growth of beard, and I hadn’t slept for a couple of days. I looked like a doorman at the drunk tank.