'Easy segue,' I said.
'This is ridiculous, you never heard of me? I produced Malibu Madness last year. I did a two-hour, for-cable syndication, Don Ho's Hawaii. It's playing all over the country.'
'And the country's better for it,' I said. 'Sometime after she got out of Pomona Detox, Angela Richard moved back to the Boston area, changed her name to Lisa St. Claire, and married a Boston cop named Frank Belson.'
'Man, this is ragtime. I don't know anything about this broad.'
'After they'd been married maybe six months, she disappeared. And I'm looking for her.'
'You a cop?'
'Sure,' I said. 'If you're a movie producer. Tell me what you can about Angela.'
We were speaking softly. Just a couple of workout buddies gassing, maybe talking a little deal, the project's yours, baby, you run with it, I'll take a little up front for a finder's fee. Woody stood up from the bench.
'I think this conversation is over, pal. I don't have time to talk hip-hop with some wiseass I don't even know.'
'Oh, okay, Woody,' I said. 'I'll talk to these other nice folks.'
I turned toward a young woman with a tight body and rippled stomach who was doing dips on a Gravitron.
'Did you know Woody used to be a pimp?' I said.
She looked at me blankly for a moment.
'Hey,' Woody said. 'Hey, hey, hey.'
'Shame he went downhill from there,' I said to the young woman. 'Now he's a producer.'
'I don't know him,' the young woman said. 'And I'm trying to get a workout here.'
Woody took my arm and steered me toward the vestibule between the two aerobics studios, where sleek people cavorted frantically near the front of the class in front of instructors wearing microphones and urging them on. In the back rows of both studios the action was a little more sedate and nowhere near as graceful.
'Lemme tell ya, I don't appreciate you saying things like that about me to people. I'm here to tell you I don't appreciate it one little bit.'
A well-known actress with big breasts and thin legs walked by in a candy-striped thong leotard and went into one of the aerobics classes. She got in the back row and jumped around clumsily without too much regard for what the instructor was doing up front.
'Elwood,' I said. 'You stop pretending you weren't a pimp, and I'll stop telling people you were.'
'That's a damn ugly word,' he said. 'You know that. Pimp is a nasty word. And I'll tell you something, I'm getting damned tired of hearing you use it.'
'You knew Angela Richard, did you not?'
'So why don't you buzz out of here right now before I maybe get kind of mad.'
I could feel myself smiling. I tried not to. I didn't want to hurt Woody's feelings. But I couldn't help it. I raised my forefinger in a wait-a-minute gesture, walked back into the exercise area, took the pin out of the slot and put it in the lowest spot on the stack. I didn't bother to see how much weight it was. Most machines went up to about 275. I took off my beautifully tailored black silk tweed jacket with the fine cognac windowpane plaid in it that I'd recently ordered from a catalog, and hung it carefully on a curl machine nearby. I adjusted my gun on my right hip so I wouldn't lie on it and got on the bench and took hold of the handles and pushed up the whole stack and let it down and did it nine more times. Breathing carefully, keeping form. Then I got up and readjusted my gun and put my coat back on, and walked back out into the vestibule between the aerobic studios and gave Woody a big friendly smile.
'That doesn't mean anything,' Woody said. 'I've seen guys can do more than that.'
'Sure,' I said. 'Me too. Let's talk about Angela Richard.'
The young woman on the Gravitron got off and walked toward the triceps machine. As she passed the bench press station, she checked the weight and glanced covertly at me, only a flick of a glance at the weight and at me, but it was enough. I knew she was mine.
'I came out here with her,' Woody said. 'We were in high school together and we took off in the middle of senior year in my uncle's car and came to LA.'
'What high school?'
'Haverhill High.'
'Haverhill, Mass.?' I said.
'Yeah.'
'By golly,' I said. 'Isn't it a small world, Elwood. You and she going to break into pictures?'
'Yeah.' He shrugged. 'We were kids. Angela was a real knockout, we figured she'd make it easy and I could manage her. You know? Even then I was a guy could put things together.'
'So you lived for a while out in Venice.'
Woody looked a little surprised.
'Yeah, and we weren't getting anywhere in legit films at first, so we did some adult films.'
'Porn,' I said.
'Yeah. Sixteen millimeter stuff, and then we came up with a really clever gig, for Angela to be a strip tease disc
