Mickey shrugged. “Mostly stunts though, so far,” he said.
“You live here?” I said.
He shook his head. “Right now I’m living up in the Marmont, got a nice housekeeping setup there.”
“On Sunset?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Place looks like the castle of a low-income Moor?”
Rafferty grinned. “Yeah. That’s the place, I guess. I been there a year or so. I’m looking for a place maybe in the Hills somewhere.” He looked at Candy. “Or here, a‘ course. I’d move in here in a minute.”
Candy would have smiled softly if she could. As it was, she just looked at the carpet.
“Candy’s sort of old-fashioned,” Rafferty said. “We been going around together for a while, but she still won’t move in with me or”-he made a wobbling motion with his hand-“vice versa.”
“I go with other men too, Mickey,” Candy said. He looked at the carpet this time.
I said, “Who you got for an eyewitness on this thing?”
Candy nodded her head slightly toward Rafferty. “You?” I said.
“Yeah,” Rafferty said. “Me. I saw the goddamn payoff. I was-”
I put my hand up, palm out. “I’ll want to know every detail, but not yet. Are you it?”
“It? Yeah, I’m it. I saw the whole thing.”
“I mean, is there any other witness?”
“Sure. Sam Felton, the slug he paid.”
“Will either of them talk?”
Candy said no.
“So Mickey is your only talking witness?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him. “And you’re going to look out for her?” I said.
“I’m not scared of them,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “The limpest pansy in the world can get a gun and put you away without perspiring.” Rafferty shrugged. “I’m not scared,” he said again.
“So,” I said to Candy. “I am sitting here with everything you’ve got on the Mob payoffs.”
“Well, I have a lot of people to talk with,” she said.
“But if a bomb went off in this room right now, the investigation would be over, wouldn’t it?”
She and Rafferty looked at each other. “Wouldn’t it?”
“The station would follow up,” Candy said.
I breathed deeply. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Mick, I assume you go first.”
“We were shooting a movie on location out in the valley,” Rafferty said. “Bike picture called Savage Cycles, and I see Felton talking with a guy. I’m behind one of those little commissary trucks, having a Coke and a donut, you know, and they don’t really notice me.”
“What did the guy look like?” I said.
“Fat guy, bald, had a little beard-you know, a Vandyke-but strong-looking, you know? Hard fat.” I looked at Candy.
“Sound familiar?”
“Maybe,” she said.
Rafferty looked back and forth between us. “What did I miss?” he said.
“You were out in the kitchen looking at the sink,” I said. “It sounds like the guy that poured it on Candy last night.”
“Him?” Rafferty’s eyes widened and his mouth thinned. “That fat fuck?” He opened his mouth to say something else, realized he had nothing to say, breathed in instead, and shut his mouth.
“We’ll file that information,” I said. “Who’s Sam Felton?”
“Producer. Studio is Summit.”
“And you saw him talking to a fat man?”
“Yeah and the fat guy said, `Here I am.‘ And Felton says, `Here’s your money. Same as last week?’ And the fat guy says, `Absolutely.‘ He says, `I don’t jack up the price. I don’t do business that way. You make a deal, you stick with it.’ And Felton hands him an envelope, and the fat guy takes it and folds it over and puts it in his hip pocket without looking. And Felton says nothing else. Just stands there. So the fat guy says, ‘See you next week. Same time, same station,’ and gives him a kind of little salute. You know, like this.” Rafferty touched his forehead and flipped his hand away. “Like, `ta-ta,‘ you know?”
“Yeah. Did you see what he drove away in?”
