bullet hadn’t gone through. He’d been shot from behind. Candy had been shot from in front. I got up and walked maybe fifteen feet back from Franco’s body. On the soft gravel of the parking area were bright brass casings. The shooter had used an automatic, probably a nine-millimeter. I walked back and looked down at Candy. The rain was beginning to fall steadily, slanted by the wind. Already some of the blood was turning pink with dilution.
I looked around the parking area. There was nothing to see. I looked at Candy again. There was nothing more to see there either. Still, I looked at her. The rain was hard now, and dense, washing down on her upturned face. The wind was warm no longer. Candy didn’t care. My clothing was soaked, my hair plastered flat against my skull. Rain running off my forehead blurred my vision. Candy’s mascara had run, streaking her face. I stared down as the rain washed it away too.
“Some bodyguard,” I said.
Chapter 26
I LEFT HER there in the rain with the headlights shining on her and walked back along the road to the fork and down the fork to my rented Ford. Brewster’s car was gone. I was as wet as if I’d fallen overboard. I got in and sat in my wet clothes and started the engine. I pulled back onto Sepulveda and then up onto the Freeway and drove back toward Beverly Hills. The rain slashing across the headlights made silvery translucent lines as it slanted past.
There wasn’t much traffic. I made it back to Beverly Hills in fifteen minutes. At an all-night variety store I stopped and reported the murders. When they asked my name, I hung up and left. I ran the stop signs on Roxbury and drove up over the curb and onto Brewster’s lawn. I left the doors open and the motor running as I rang his front doorbell. NO one answered. I backed off two steps and kicked the door in. The whole frame splintered on my third kick and I went in.
Nothing moved. No lights came on. I moved through the living room to the kitchen, then the dining room, then the den, and four more rooms that I couldn’t name. No movement. I went up the front stairs two at a time and slammed in and out of rooms. Brewster wasn’t there. In what must have been his bedroom was a vast circular bed. I picked up one end and turned it over to make sure he wasn’t under it. He wasn’t. I clattered down the stairs and out the back door toward the chauffeur’s quarters. He wasn’t there either. When I came out of the garage, I saw a red light flashing. The Bel-Air Patrol, on the job. I hadn’t thought about the alarm system. I hadn’t thought about much but Brewster.
I circled into the yard next door and walked down toward Roxbury Drive behind some shrubs. Lights went on in Brewster’s house. I came out in the front yard next door to Brewster’s house. A red and white private patrol car was parked near mine with the red light revolving on top. No one was in it. I walked past it to my car, got in, and drove away.
With the accelerator to the floor I headed for Century City. I parked on the street and went for Brewster’s building on the run. It was still raining steadily. I hadn’t put on my jacket, and the shoulder holster was clearly exposed. I was also soaking wet. People stared.
Brewster’s building was locked. I looked at my watch. Ten fifteen. It would be locked. I went around to the other side. No luck. I went down one of the muddy lawns that slanted down from the plaza and tried the parking garage. It was locked, covered with one of those vertical iron grates that swing up when you operate a push button in your car. I had no push button. I could get in, but the only means available would risk the cops. I didn’t want the cops. Yet.
I went back and sat in my rented car and thought. There was no reason to rush. Candy was in no hurry. I didn’t even know if Brewster was in there. If he was, he’d have to come out sometime. If he wasn’t he’d have to go in sometime. I could wait.
The rain was steady now; the wind that had brought it seemed to have died, but the rain was steady. It formed smooth, clear sheets as it ran down the windshield, and it made a steady, pleasant rattle on the roof of the car. Women coming from the restaurant, or the Century Plaza Hotel across the street, clutched skirts in tight against their legs as they crouched under umbrellas while their escorts stood manfully in the rain, often hatless, and hailed cabs. People moved hurriedly along, close to the buildings, as they always did in the rain, as if staying close to the artifice of civilization would ward off the elemental rain.
Trouble with waiting here for Brewster was that I didn’t know which way he’d come in. But there was no place where I could locate myself where I would know. I’d just have to wait till they opened up in the morning and go in and take a look.
By midnight there was no one walking around anymore in the rain at Century City. At a quarter past midnight a police cruiser pulled up beside me and one of the cops said through his rolled-down window, “You got a problem, sir?”
I said, “Yeah, my car stalled and I think I flooded it. I’m letting it rest a couple minutes.”
The cop said, “Okay. We’ll swing by in a few minutes. If you can’t start it, we’ll get you someone.”
I said, “Thank you, Officer.”
The patrol car pulled away. But they’d be back, and if I was still there, it could be aggravation. Some cops are dumb and some aren’t but none of them is naive. They’d be back to check my flooded-engine story.
I started up the Ford and rolled down onto Santa Monica. I went east a little ways and pulled into the parking lot behind the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I parked under a sign that said GUESTS ONLY, put on my windbreaker, and walked hack up Santa Monica to Century City. I was standing in the shadow of the entry to the Oceania Building when the cruiser came back, slowed down near where I’d parked, and then moved on.
The rain stayed with me all night. And even though it was Southern California summer, my teeth were beginning to chatter by the time the morning arrived. It came with a large gray light in the east but no visible sun, and the rain kept coming as if it always would. My clothes were damp against me and my eyes had the grainy feel of sleeplessness when the first of the day’s workers began drifting in. Restaurant workers, early, bleary-eyed, collars up, white pants showing beneath rainwear. Then office workers, secretaries looking fresh-made and smelling of perfume, arrived in time to start the coffee, then at a successful hour, the executives, newly shaved, their London Fogs just back from the cleaners‘, their briefcases snapped tight against the weather-so their lunches wouldn’t get wet. I didn’t see Brewster.
At nine I left my doorway and found a phone booth and called Oceania. I got through to the woman in Brewster’s outer office, the one who looked like Nina Foch.
“Pete in?” I said in a deep wealthy voice.
