“Hello, Zeke.”
“Come on in.”
She followed him down the corridor; I followed her. When we got to his office, she introduced me. We shook hands. He had a strong grip, but I was holding back.
He smiled at me. “A little old, I think, to be with the Rams,” he said. “Stunt man?”
“Sort of,” I said.
Candy said, “Spenser is helping me on an investigative series we’re doing.”
The office was on the first floor and had a little bay window framed with gray drapes that looked out onto Sunset and people on the sidewalk. There were several autographed pictures of actors on the wall and a bookcase liquor-cabinet-stereo set up along one side of the room. Besides a desk with two phones there were two more of the leather-and-wood sitting room chairs. Zeke was behind his desk, we sat in the chairs. The walls were pale gray, the rug was charcoal.
“Candy.” Zeke folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward slightly. “How can I help?”
“I need to know some things about Summit Pictures and Roger Hammond.”
Zeke kept his hands folded and leaned back in the chair. The movement slid his hands to the edge of the desk.
He said, “Oh?”
“I need it, Zeke. This is important to me.”
“Tell me about it.”
She did, everything, except the name of her eyewitness. Zeke sat motionless and looked right at her as she talked.
“And if you break this thing open, it will mean a lot to your career,” he said when she was through.
“Absolutely,” Candy said. “More air time, more feature stuff, more hard-news assignments, maybe a shot at the networks, who knows. I know that it’s still hard for a woman to push her way up through the men in the news business. And if I can’t handle a real story when it starts to break, it will be much harder.”
Zeke nodded. He looked at me. I had my arms crossed and was watching the occasional pedestrian go by on Sunset.
“That explains the big fella here,” Zeke said.
“He’s a bodyguard,” Candy said. “He’s not doing the investigating for me.”
“No skill-work,” I said, “just heavy lifting.”
Zeke nodded. He tucked his lower lip under the edge of his mustache and sucked down on his upper lip. “An agent doesn’t make it out here by gossiping to the press about studio heads,” he said.
“I know. It’s background. I’ll never quote you,” Candy said.
Zeke sucked on his upper lip some more.
“It’s not just the career, Zeke,” Candy said. “It’s… the fat son of a bitch beat me up. Dragged me into a van and punched and slapped me and threw me out on the Ventura Freeway like an empty Coke can.”
The tall woman with the gray suit stuck her head in the door.
She said, “Excuse me, Zeke, but we’re going to screen those clips that Universal sent over.” She talked with her teeth clenched and without moving her lips. She was like someone Central Casting had sent over to play an Ivy League executrix. I looked at Candy. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking hard at Zeke. Zeke looked at his chronograph. He looked at Candy.
“Go ahead without me, Mary Jane, I can’t leave right now.”
One point for old Zeke.
“Want us to reschedule?” the executrix said.
Zeke shook his head and made a slight dismissal gesture with the first three fingers of his right hand.
“I’ll give you a file memo of my reaction, Zeke,” she said, and pulled her head out of the room. Zeke unclasped his hands and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“I’m ass-deep in file memos from Mary Jane,” he said.
“She got lockjaw?” I asked.
“No,” Zeke said. “She went to Smith.”
“What about Summit Studios, Zeke?” Candy said.
He nodded at the door. “Could you close that for me,” he said. I got up and closed it.
“And Roger Hammond,” Zeke said when the door was closed.
Candy nodded.
“I have heard,” Zeke said, “that Hammond got into a lot of fiscal difficulty about five years ago and that somebody in a West Coast Mob family bailed him out.”
“Who was the mobster?”
“I don’t know.”
