point is to keep you from the cops.”
“I need this story,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “but don’t think Samuelson is going to be easy. Cops hate coincidence. You’ve employed a detective from Boston for an unspecified investigation, and then your boyfriend gets killed.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. Wasn’t.”
“That’s not the point. He was perceived as such. Samuelson isn’t going to be happy with the hypothesis that there’s no connection.”
“That’s his problem,” Candy said. She was resting her chin on her folded arms, staring across the barrel of the camera, past me, at the blank off-white curtain that backdropped part of the set.
“He’s being nice with you, and careful, because you’re in the media, and he knows you can cause him aggravation. But cops have a high aggravation tolerance, and if he has to, he’ll take the weight, as the saying goes. Then he can become your problem… and mine.”
“I suppose it could be trouble for you.”
“Suppressing evidence. Cops-and D.A.‘s and judges -disapprove of it generally.”
“You can go back to Boston.”
“While you do what?”
“I need this story.” She wasn’t gazing at the offwhite backdrop now. She was looking at me.
“Like the cops,” I said, “the bad guys walk a little more carefully around you than they might someone else. Killing a reporter makes a lot of waves. Remember the reporter that got blown up in Arizona?”
She nodded.
“So do they, and maybe they won’t kill you if they don’t have to. But if you’re running around making more waves than you’d make dead, then the logic seems inescapable.”
“That means you think I should tell the police?”
“No,” I said. “That means I’ll stay.”
Chapter 14
THAT NIGHT THERE was no dancing on the balcony. We ate a room-service dinner, in near perfect silence and went to bed early. What a difference a day makes. I lay on the bed in my room and watched an Angels game on television until I got tired. Then I switched everything off and went to bed. Sleep. Death’s second self.
In the morning we went to Candy’s apartment to check her mail and listen to her phone-answering machine and get some clean clothes. The sun was bright off the pool and filled the room. There was a breeze. The faint movement of the pool made the light glance and quiver. Candy stood by her desk in the living room sorting through her mail. She had on a dark blue suit with gold piping. She punched on the phone recorder as she looked at the Mail, and Mickey Rafterty’s voice came up.
“Candy,” it said, “where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to get you all day. I braced Felton and I know he’s scared. All we have to do is keep on the pressure, and he’ll crack. I’ll keep calling till I get you… I love you, babe.”
Candy dropped the mail and slowly sank to her knees and put her arms around herself and began to rock slightly back and forth, sitting on her heels, her head hanging. I stepped over and shut off the recorder. Candy murmured something.
I said, “What?” and bent over to hear her.
She said, “A voice from the grave,” and gave a little snicker. “From the other side, through the magic of machines.” She snickered again. And then she was still and rocked.
I squatted beside her on the floor and said, “Would you care for a hug or a comforting pat, or would that make it worse?”
She shook her head, but I didn’t know if she was saying no to the hug or no, it wouldn’t make it worse. So I stayed where I was and did nothing, which I probably ought to do more of, and after a while she stopped rocking and put a hand on my thigh to steady herself and then stood up. I stood with her.
“Poor little Mickey,” she said. “He acted so tough.”
“He was tough,” I said. “He was just small.”
“Big or small,” she said, “bullets would have killed him anyway.”
The rest of the phone recordings had to be listened to. I was thinking how to go about it.
“If I’d been a weathergirl,” Candy said, “Mickey’d be alive.”
“You’ve had a bad time. You’re entitled to be silly,” I said. “But don’t do it too much. You know his dying wasn’t your fault.”
“Whose fault was it?”
“I guess most of the blame resides with the guy who burned him. I’d guess old fat Franco. A little of the blame is Mickey’s. He screwed around with stuff he didn’t know about. It’s a way to get hurt.”
“Franco?”
“Yeah, the fat guy that beat you up. His name’s Franco.”
“How do you know that?”
