"Cops don't give a d.a.m.n about anything sometimes," I said.

"What shall we do?"

"We need a place... go east on Melrose then down Fairfax to the Farmers Market."

The Pontiac stayed with us now, openly, no dodging behind cars; it was right behind us. I turned in, my seat and rested my chin on my forearms and studied over the open rear deck of the MG.

"There are two of them. Apparently they've dumped the Firebird and the van," I said to Candy. "The one in the pa.s.senger seat is balding. He has a black mustache and goatee. It's hard to tell while he's sitting in the car, but he appears to be fat and strong. Does that sound familiar?"

"Oh, my G.o.d," Candy said. She cleared her throat.

"It's okay," I said. "This time we've got them outnumbered."

"There's two of them."

I looked at her and flexed my bicep in a physical culture pose.

"Oh," she said, "I see what you're saying. I'm sorry, but I'm scared. This time what if they mean to kill me?"

"That's what the Sound of the Golden West is paying me for," I said. "When we get to the Farmers Market, pull in close to one of the doors and park, illegally if you need to. Just don't waste any time. Then jump out and run inside, and go in the nearest ladies' room. You know your way around in there?"

"Oh, sure."

"Okay. The ladies' room nearest the entrance we go in. Stay there till I yell for you. I'll open the door and yell."

"You may be arrested as a Peeping Tom." She sounded strained but she was trying.

"You'll swear my eyes were shut tight all the time," I said.

She smiled, though not very wide, and said, "Okay. While I'm hiding in the ladies' room, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to consult with our groupies here. See if I can get a little information."

The Pontiac was drawing closer.

"Move this thing faster," I said to Candy. "I need a little s.p.a.ce between us when we get to the Market." The MG speeded up as we went down Fairfax. The Pontiac hung in behind us. "You can't outrun it," I said to Candy, "but this thing can outmaneuver it. Slip in and out of traffic a little."

"Spenser, I bought this because it was cute, not because it was hot. I don't know how to stunt-drive."

"Well, do what you can. I don't want them to make a run at us right here on Fairfax."

She bit her lip and tromped down on the accelerator and jockied the little sports car in between a truck and a Lincoln that looked like a truck. The Pontiac edged out around the truck and then fell back in behind it. Candy pa.s.sed the Lincoln on the inside and got honked at by a red-faced man wearing a pink shirt and smoking a cigar. We screeched into the parking lot on the north side of the Farmers Market, cutting across the traffic recklessly and causing several more horns to blow.

The store section of the Farmers Market was a rambling white low building surrounded by parking lots just south of CBS Studios on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Third Street. There were cars parked all around the building, and Candy jammed the MG into the walkway leading to one of the entrances, and we jumped out and headed into the market. Just inside the door there was a stand selling barbecue and down the aisle from that was a sign that said RESTROOMS. I pointed at it, and Candy went for it at as brisk a walk as one could muster. I went with her till I saw her go in and then I faded behind a stand that sold Mexican food and moved down the aisles of food stalls and produce stands, watching the entrance where we'd come in. I saw the fat man. Candy was right. He was fat, but you weren't fooled. He was strong too.

He looked around. I moved down the aisle away from him, past a stand that sold blackberry pie, my mouth watering briefly, then I went past a Chinesefood concession and into the parking lot in front, around the corner from where we'd entered.

The Pontiac was double-parked between the market and the souvenir shop that sold Mexican jewelry and leather cowboy hats and pictures of the Griffith Park Observatory sealed inside a transparent plastic square. Candy's MG was sitting there in the walkway near it. People skirted it to get into the market, shaking their heads; a man suggested to his wife that the driver was an a.s.shole. I felt he'd made his judgment on insufficient evidence.

The driver of the Pontiac was standing leaning against the car with his arms folded on the roof. He was tall and blond with longish hair combed back in a stiff sweep. He had a dark tan and a thick mustache that turned up slightly at the ends. He wore a white shirt with epaulets and a pocket on the left sleeve. It was half unb.u.t.toned. He had two slim gold chains around his neck. The bottom half was bleached white straight-leg cords worn over hand-tooled cowboy boots. His waist was narrow, but his upper body had the thickened look of a weight lifter.

I walked up behind him, stepping softly. "Are you Troy Donahue?" I said.

He turned his head slowly and looked at me. His skin glowed with a healthy tan. He smelled of Brut and hairspray. There was wax on his mustache. "f.u.c.k off," he said.

I hit him a firm left hook that tilted his chin back and followed with a right cross that knocked him flat on his back. When he got his eyes focused, I had the barrel of my gun just touching the tip of his nose.

I said, "This is a public place, Troy. Soon somebody will call the cops, and they'll come and it will be awkward. So you tell me real quick why you were following me or I'll blow a hole in the middle of your face."

"I ain't Troy Donahue," he said.

"You're not Albert Einstein either, I guess. But quick"-I shoved the gun against his nose, bending the tip of it in on his upper lip-"why were you following me?" I thumbed the hammer back. There was no need to. It was a double-action piece, but the gesture always looked good.

"I'm day labor, man," Troy said. "I just got hired to drive and help out if there was a ha.s.sle."

"Who hired you?"

"Him." Troy pointed with his eyes. "Franco, the fat guy."

"Franco what?"

"I don't know, you know how a guy is. You see him around, you just know his name."

"Franco his first or last name?"

"I don't know."

A ways off I heard a siren. I put the gun back under my coat, got in the Pontiac, started up, and drove away. In the rearview mirror I saw Troy get up and head toward the market. On the seat next to me was a Colt .32 automatic, half-hidden under a newspaper.

I rammed the Pontiac between a wine-tasting shop and the rear of the Market, out across Third Street, through the lot of a shopping center and out onto a side street that led down toward Wilshire. About a block past the shopping center was a kind of a housing development that spread out around a central circle. I parked there, put on my sungla.s.ses, took off my jacket, pulled my shirttails out to cover my hip holster, and stuffed the Colt in my belt in front under the shirt. I went down a little side street and came out on Fairfax. I folded my coat and put it down on the gra.s.s along the sidewalk, then I walked back up toward the Farmers Market. My experience with eyewitnesses told me that I had concealed my ident.i.ty all I needed to. They'd seen a neat man in a gray jacket with no shades. I was now a sloppy man with his shirt out and no jacket wearing sungla.s.ses. I came in the Market from the Third Street side. It wasn't very busy. I didn't see the fat man. The police siren would have made him fade. His buddy Troy had probably cut through the Market and screwed into the neighborhood south of Third. There was some activity around the doors on the far side of the market. That's where the cops would be: What happened? There were these guys fighting, one had a gun. Where are they now? I don't know. One drove away. What did they look like? Short. Tall. Fat. Thin. Blond. Black. Old. Young. Who called? I don't know. Smell.

I get to the door of the ladies' room, pushed it partway open, and yelled, "Hey, Candeee."

She came out before I stopped yelling. "For G.o.d's sake what's going on?" she said.

"I'll tell you later. Go get your car. If a cop speaks to you, smile at him. Show him your press credentials. Ask what's going on. Wiggle your a.s.s at him if you feel that's appropriate. Then, when you can, drive down Fairfax, toward Wilshire. I'll be walking along. Stop and I'll get in, and I'll explain while we go see that agent you used to sleep with."

She gave me a hard look but did what I told her.

Chapter8.

I GOT my jacket back. It was right where I left it and I had it slung debonairly over one shoulder when Candy Sloan pulled up to the curb and honked her horn once. I got in.

"Any trouble?" I said.

"No. One of the police recognized me and just said I shouldn't park there. I smiled and wiggled and off I went."

"Good,"' I said, "Let's go see your priapic agent."

"Why don't you let up on that," Candy said. "I regret the remark."

I nodded. Candy turned east on Wilshire and we went past the L.A. County Museum of Art and the La hrea Tar Pits. At La Brea Avenue Candy turned north.

"What was all the excitement about? What happened to the men who were following us?" Candy said. I told her about Troy Donahue and the fat man. I also got my shirt tucked in and the Colt stored in the glove compartment of the MG.

"Know how to use one of those?" I said.

"No."

"I'll show you. It might be useful knowledge."

She took in a deep sigh and let it out. "I suppose so. Whose gun is that?"

"I took it away from Troy."

"Isn't it awfully small?"

"Yes."

Straight up La Brea the Hollywood Hills rose like a clumsy flat in an amateur play. We turned left on Sunset, and drove west toward Beverly Hills. Below us Los Angeles stretched out flat and far. The modern skysc.r.a.pers downtown around Figueroa and sixth streets caught the lowering slant of the afternoon sun and glistened above the herd of low California buildings that filled the L.A. basin. I'd never seen an urban place where the contours of the natural land were still so visible, where the memory of how it was remained so insistent.

Sunset got quite flossy down toward the West Hollywood-Beverly Hills line: small stucco buildings with gla.s.s and bra.s.s and limned oak decor, restaurants with fake antique doors, boutiques, two-story bungalows with the names of production companies and agents in gold leaf on the doors, an occasional high rise.

Past Robertson, near the top of Doheny, Candy pulled into an open meter. It was only a short walk to Hamburger Hamlet. We'd lunched early. I could claim it was time for high tea. I looked at Candy. She seemed sort of grim. I figured my high tea suggestion wouldn't seem businesslike to her. I suppressed it.

"In downtown Boston," I said, "you can never find a parking meter open."

"That's true in downtown Los Angeles too," she said. "But I'll bet you could in the Boston equivalent of Beverly Hills."

"The Boston equivalent of Beverly Hills is a shopping mall in Chestnut Hill," I said. "They have a parking lot."

We walked to a two-story white building with a small canopied entrance that looked like a funeral parlor. Across the top of the canopy it said: THE MELVIN ZEECOND AND TRUMAN FINNERTY AGENCY.

"Here," Candy said. We went in. There was a receptionist on a switchboard just inside the door in a small hallway, behind a gla.s.s part.i.tion.

"I'm Candy Sloan," Candy said to the receptionist. "Is Zeke in?"

The receptionist asked us to take a seat in the foyer. We did. The foyer was oval shaped. Big enough for two upholstered gray couches and four or five leather-covered wooden-armed chairs. There were copies of Daily Variety and People magazine on a coffee table in front of one of the couches. The ceiling was slightly domed and some fluorescent bulbs along the bottom of the dome behind some molding lighted the place indirectly. The place had been recently painted, and in spots along the molding the painters hadn't sc.r.a.ped the previous paint adequately.

Several corridors ran off of the foyer, and I could see offices opening off of them. Everyone I could see seemed to be talking on the phone. A secretary in a green dress with the skirt slit to the thigh came out of one of the corridors and said, "Miss Sloan?"

Candy said, "Yes."

"Zeke's on the phone long-distance," the secretary said. "He'll be with you as soon as he can."

I grinned at the dome. "How quickly they forget," I murmured.

Candy said, "Just shut up."

The secretary said, "I beg your pardon."

Candy said, "I was talking to him. We'll wait." The secretary and her slit skirt swished off down the corridor.

"Long-distance," I said.

"Shut up."

"Probably if it were a local call, he'd hang right up and be out here."

"Shut up."

"Probably be swirling a little white Bordeaux in a silver wine bucket."

"Champagne," Candy said.

We were quiet. No one else was in the waiting room.

I had the feeling everyone else called up. The waiting room was probably for deliveries.

A tall woman with prominent teeth and a three-piece gray suit hurried through the foyer and leaned her head into the open door of the office nearest us down the right-hand hallway. With the suit she was wearing a poppy shirt with a small pin-collar and a narrow black knit tie. She hurried back across the foyer. Then a man appeared in the middle corridor and said, "Candy, honey, this is terrific."

He was tall and slim and had-snow-white hair and a youthful face with a black mustache. He was darkly tanned and-wore a glen plaid suit and vest with a black shirt open at the throat. He might have been forty or he might have been sixty. A small tangle of white hair showed at the V of his shirt. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a gold ring with a red stone.

"h.e.l.lo, Zeke."

"Come on in."

She followed him down the corridor; I followed her. When we got to his office, she introduced me. We shook hands. He had a strong grip, but I was holding back.

He smiled at me. "A little old, I think, to be with the Rams," he said. "Stunt man?"

"Sort of," I said.

Candy said, "Spenser is helping me on an investigative series we're doing."

The office was on the first floor and had a little bay window framed with gray drapes that looked out onto Sunset and people on the sidewalk. There were several autographed pictures of actors on the wall and a bookcase liquor-cabinet-stereo set up along one side of the room. Besides a desk with two phones there were two more of the leather-and-wood sitting room chairs. Zeke was behind his desk, we sat in the chairs. The walls were pale gray, the rug was charcoal.

"Candy." Zeke folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward slightly. "How can I help?"

"I need to know some things about Summit Pictures and Roger Hammond."

Zeke kept his hands folded and leaned back in the chair. The movement slid his hands to the edge of the desk.