I drove east on Wilshire to downtown and found a parking space on Hope Street. The whole way Candy was still silent. The wind ruffled her hair, and she stared straight ahead through the windshield.
I said, “There’s a bar on top of the Hyatt-Regency that’s nice.”
She nodded. We went into the fancy Hyatt lobby and took the elevator up. At a table by the window looking out over downtown L.A., Candy ordered a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. I had a Coors beer. I never cared for Adolph Coors’s politics, but I wasn’t sure I cared for anyone’s, and he made a nice beer. No carcinogens. To the southeast was an old skyscraper done in green stone, like Bullock’s on Wilshire, or the Franklin Life Building. Old L.A. Of course old L.A. was maybe 1936. Boston had been around for 306 years by then. On the other hand Rome had been around even longer. Perspective is all.
“What you going to do, babe?” I said to Candy.
“It’s there,” she said. “The story is there.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. You yourself said Hammond was hiding something.”
“Yeah, but maybe what he was hiding isn’t what you’re looking for.”
“I know there’s something bad going down at Summit. I know it.”
“Woman’s intuition?”
She finished the bourbon. “Something,” she said. She didn’t smile.
“You going to look into it?”
The waitress brought us another round.
Candy drank some more Jack Daniel’s. “Maybe you and Samuelson are right about Franco and Felton. Maybe it was just a small-time shakedown. But then why kill him?”
“I don’t think killing was a big deal for Franco. Might just have been easier than not killing him.”
She shook her head. “No. If he was just doing a simple shakedown, why would Felton have called him? Why would Franco have killed him? He must have wanted something covered up.”
I nodded. Nondirective. Me and Carl Rogers.
“All we would have gotten if your theory is true would be evidence of blackmail. Killing Sam Felton would just make matters worse. Franco had to know he’d be the suspect. There’s no point being wanted for murder to avoid being wanted for blackmail.”
I nodded again. The waitress looked at Candy’s empty glass. Candy nodded. She looked at me. I shook my head. The waitress took Candy’s empty glass and went for a full one.
“So what he killed Felton for was to cover up something worse than a murder rap,” Candy said.
The waitress brought more bourbon. Candy drank some. She turned one hand up and raised her eyebrows at me. “What would be worse than a murder rap?” she said.
“Getting killed,” I said.
“Who would kill him?”
“The Mob.”
Candy took another sip of bourbon and swished it in her mouth with her cheeks sucked in while she thought about that. Then she swallowed and said, “Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know that the mob wants to kill him, but think about it this way. A murder rap means being wanted by the cops. If they catch you, they don’t usually shoot you. It happens. But not usually. They send you to trial, and it’ll take five years to get a conviction if you have any kind of lawyer. And then there’s practically no chance of a death penalty. And you might get out in a while for being a nice person. Nobody who’s ever been in the joint pretends it’s any fun, but it’s not the end. If you do something that the Mob doesn’t like, that is the end. They kill you and sometimes they aren’t neat about it.”
“So,” Candy said. She slurred the’s a little. “So you’re saying that Franco was doing something with Felton that he didn’t want the Mob to know about?”
“I’m saying, it’s an explanation. Killing Felton to keep the law from finding out something doesn’t make sense.”
Candy pursed her lips a little bit.
“On the other hand,” I said, “guys like Franco often don’t make sense. They don’t care about hurting people and they sometimes have funny ideas about their reputation or their self-respect. Sometimes they do illogical things.”
“Shelf-reshpect?”
“Sure. Lots of real creeps have self-respect. They just have a creepy version of it.”
Tears began to form in Candy’s eyes. Several of them began to trickle down her face. Her face was starting to crumple up, like a used napkin. She drank some more bourbon.
I said, “You want to get out of here?” She shook her head.
I said, “Then don’t cry. It is very unseemly in a public place to have a crying jag.”
She drank the rest of her bourbon. She signaled the waitress and pointed at the empty glass. Then she said to me. “I’m going to the ladies’ room and get it together. I won’t cry.” She had a little trouble pronouncing ladies. Then she got up and walked briskly away from the table.
“Another round, sir?” the waitress asked. I nodded. The lounge was nearly empty in midafternoon. It was very
