“Of course.”
“He ain’t no TV guy,” Ray said.
“I know that,” Hammond said.
“If he don’t want to go, I’m going to have to break things,” Ray said.
“For heaven’s sake, Ray. There’s three of you,” Hammond said.
Ray looked briefly at the other two guards. He looked at me. “They can take the woman,” he said. He stood easily, his hands relaxed, palms cupped slightly, one foot slightly forward of the other. I was still sitting. I said to Candy, “Are we going to resist?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m in the business of discovering news and reporting it. I do not wish to make it.”
Agnes said to me, “You’re not in TV?”
The black guard chuckled softly. Hammond said, “He’s a hired bodyguard, Agnes. A strong-arm man.”
“Strong arm,” I said to the black man.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “We all going?”
“Roger, we’d better talk about this,” Agnes said. “Can I stop by your office?”
“No,” Hammond said. He pointed a finger at Candy Sloan and then pointed the same finger at the commissary door. Dramatic. You could tell he was creative. Candy nodded at me. I got up slowly and as I did Ray moved just out of jab range with a small economical shuffle that made the movement barely noticeable. A waiter hovered uncertainly around us with a bill. Hammond took it and put it in his pocket, and the waiter ducked back and disappeared. We began to walk toward the door, Candy in front, then me, Ray beside me, the two guards behind him.
“See that they leave the grounds,” Hammond said. “And see that they don’t come back.”
“We’ll have to go dwell in the plains,” I said to Candy. “East of Eden.”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t look amused.
We left the commissary. “You parked where?” Ray said.
Candy told him.
“You ever fight on the Coast?” Ray said to me.
“Not this one,” I said.
He nodded. “Figured you wasn’t local,” he said. “I never got East.”
When we got to Candy’s MG, I held the door for her while she slid in. Ray and his assistant leaned against the side of a blue and gold studio security car parked up on the grass behind us. I went around and got in beside Candy. She started up, shifted, and off we went. The security car followed us to the gate, and then we were back out on Pico, heading east. Candy was silent.
“Too bad,” I said. “I think Agnes was smitten with me.”
“If you wear pants, Agnes is smitten with you,” Candy said.
“Oh.”
Candy glanced over and smiled. “Well, maybe she was more smitten with you than with others.”
“I thought so,” I said.
Chapter 7
CANDY TURNED LEFT onto La Cienega. “Where now?” I said.
“We’re going to see an agent I used to sleep with. He knows more about Hollywood, capital H, than anyone in town.”
“Mind if I ask him how it was?” I said.
“How what was?”
“When he used to sleep with you.”
“You find it shocking that I mention it casually?”
“No, but it seems a little contrived.”
“You mean a little too casually sophisticated?”
“Yeah.”
She was silent. I thought, peeking at her sideways, that she might have been blushing slightly. We crossed Olympic. Behind us a blue 1970 Pontiac with a black vinyl roof came out of Olympic and turned up La Cienega. It passed a car and swung in behind us. It was still behind us at Wilshire. And it was still behind us at San Vincente.
“Take San Vincente,” I said to Candy. “And go back onto La Cienega at Beverly Boulevard.”
“No left turn,” she said.
“Take it anyway,” I said.
