“Really?”
“Yes. If I’d parked there, he’d have shot me.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, really,” she said. “News people get a break, and they should.” She turned the air conditioning up. I was glad.
“Mmm.”
“Want the scenic route or the expressway?”
“Where we going?”
“The Beverly Hills was booked and so was the Beverly Wilshire. But I got a nice room at the Beverly Hillcrest. It’s where the station always puts people. It’s on the south edge of Beverly Hills. Beverwil Drive at Pico.”
“Up back of the Beverly Wilshire about six blocks,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right. You have been here before.”
I sucked down my upper lip and said, “I’ve been everywhere before, sweetheart.”
She giggled. “Bogie?” she asked. I said, “That’s the way it is, kid.” She said, “That’s awful.”
I said, “You should hear my Allan Pinkerton impression.”
She shook her head. “Freeway or scenic,” she said.
“Why not go up Sepulveda for a while,” I said. The landscape was sere and hostile, naked-looking under the oppressive sun. I always felt a little exposed in Southern California.
I said, “Do you see my function as predominantly protective or predominantly investigative?”
“Protective, I think. I’m a good investigator. I need someone to keep people from inhibiting the investigation.”
“Okay,” I said. “If I see a purloined letter lying about, I assume you won’t mind if I mention it.”
“I’d be grateful,” she said. “But you wanted to know the priorities.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You’re not going to go into a male funk on me, are you?” she said.
“It’s the only funk I’m capable of,” I said.
“I mean, you’re not hung up about me saying I’m probably as good an investigator as you are?”
“No.”
“I’m good at my job,” she said. “Everyone thinks you get by on TV by wiggling your ass off-camera and saying everything with a bright smile on-camera.”
“And,” I said.
“And some of that is true, but I’m a damn good reporter.”
“And the ass?”
She looked at me with the two lines deepening. “I wiggle that,” she said, “when I want to. And where.”
“Let me know the next time,” I said. “I’ll want to watch.”
Again she smiled. I realized she could make that smile with the consonant eye-sparkle whenever she wished. Along with it went a giggle this time. That, too, I realized, was something she could do or not when she wished.
We turned on to Pico, heading east. “The thing is,” Candy said, “that you need to understand that I’m in charge of the investigation. It’s my story. I want to play it out.”
“Sure,” I said.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’m too aggressive and pushy?”
“Yeah. You don’t need to be. But you don’t know that. No harm in it.”
“I’m in a tough business,” she said. “I’ve learned to be tough. It frightens some men.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Is there anything you’re dying to get off your chest?”
“Well,” I said. “While it is true that I can leap tall buildings at a single bound, and while, in fact, I am more powerful than a locomotive, it is not true that I am faster than a speeding bullet. If I’m going to protect you, we have to weigh risk and gain quite often.”
She nodded. “It’s disappointing though,” she said.
“What is?”
“That you’re not faster than a speeding bullet.”
“Think how I feel,” I said.
We swung into the entrance of the Beverly Hillcrest. “Take a shower,” she said. “Have a drink. Dinner in the
