“I guess they were serious,” she said. She barely moved her mouth. Her voice was normal and seemed out of place, issuing from the battered face.
“Anything broken,” I said.
“No.”
“How about the body? Ribs? Anything?”
“They just hit me in the face,” she said. “Messed it up.”
I nodded. Rafferty had gone to the alcove off the living room and poured coffee from an electric percolator on the sideboard. To his right I could see a stand-up kitchen.
“I should’ve been here,” he said.
“It didn’t even happen here, Mickey,” she said. “We’ve been through this. Let’s not do it again.”
“How about the bozo you hired.” Rafferty tossed his chin at me. “Him. Where the hell was he?”
“Mickeyl” she said. The force of her saying it made her wince.
He drank some coffee and was quiet, but the cords in his neck were still taut.
I said, “Tell me about it.”
She said, “After I dropped you off, I went back to the station. I had to tape a three-minute insert for the six o’clock news. Right after I got through taping, I got a call from someone named Danny. He said he had something hot on the series I’d been doing and wanted to meet me. He wouldn’t talk on the phone and said he was being followed. He said he’d meet me in Griffith Park in the zoo parking lot. He said he’d be driving a black van with orange flames painted on it and Nevada plates.”
Talking was a bit of an effort for her. She stopped.
“And you went, goddammit, by yourself,” Rafferty said. “Why in hell didn’t you call me?” He had set his coffee down on the dining table and was grinding his right fist into his left palm as he talked.
“I’m a reporter, Mick,” she said. “I am not just a goddamn talking head that reads somebody else’s stuff off the crawl.”
“You’re also my woman,” he said.
“No, Mickey. I’m my woman.”
With his teeth clenched Rafferty said, “Shit,” walked into the small kitchen, leaned his hands on the counter, and stared into the sink. The position made his shoulders hunch up.
I walked over to the percolator and poured some coffee into a mug. “Then what?” I said. I sipped some coffee. It was weak.
“I went to Griffith Park. The van was there. I got out of my car and walked over to it. A man got out of the back of the van. I walked over to him and he shoved me into the back, came in after me, and the van started up. While it drove around, the man in the back beat me.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Yes. He said, `I’m not going to kill you this time, I’m going to mess up your face.‘ And he hit me. And he said, `If you keep snooping around, I’ll kill you.’ And then he hit me some more. I covered up as much as I could, but he was much stronger.”
“And?”
“And after about ten minutes they dumped me out on the Ventura Freeway and drove off. I never lost consciousness.”
“Who found you?”
“Highway patrol. They took me to the hospital and then I got in touch with Mickey, and he came and brought me home.”
“Cops get a statement from you?”
“Yes.”
“Description of the guy?”
“Yes.”
“License number?”
“Yes. But they didn’t seem too excited. Said it was probably stolen for the occasion.”
I nodded. “Tell me about the guy.”
“Short, fat, very strong, balding, black mustache and goatee, tattoos on the knucklcs ot one loand and here,” she indicated the crotch of her thumb and forefinger, “on the other.”
“hnow what they said?”
“Jesus Christ.” Rafferty had returned from the kitchen. “How is she supposed to remember what they said. The guy’s punching her.”
I looked at him for a moment. “Mickey,” I said, “if you keep annoying me at my work, I’m going to make you wait in the car.”
“Try it, you bastard. You won’t make me do nothing.”
“Mickey,” Candy said, stretching out the last vowel. “He has to ask. That’s what I hired him for. You’re just making it harder.”
“Not as hard as I can make it,” Mickey said. “You shouldn’t have hired him in the first place, big-deal eastern hotshot. He don’t know his ass from a freeway out here.”
“Mickey,” I said.
“You got me,” he said to Candy. “You don’t need him.”
“Mickey,” I said a little stronger.
“Sure he’s big, but how quick can he move. How far will he go. He don’t care about you. He’s just a fucking employee.”
A tear started down Candy Sloan’s cheek. Then another one.
I asked, “Mickey, do I have to prove it?”
He didn’t say a word, but he raised his right hand toward me and beckoned me with it slowly, moving his feet slightly as he did so, into a kind of right-angled balance, the left foot pointed at me.
Candy said, “Jesus Christ.”
I said, “Listen, Mick. I know what’s bothering you. It would bother me. It would bother me even more if I was a subcompact, but there’s no point to this.”
He gestured at me again, his left arm a rigid diagonal across his body, his knees bent.
“I weigh fifty pounds more than you do. I used to be a fighter. I am good, and more than that, it’s what I do. I am a professional. Nobody your size has ever come close.”
He slid, almost skittered across the room, and snapped a short chop at the side of my neck where it joins the shoulders. I hunched up the muscle and took the chop. It was good but it was a welterweight chop. He was out of his division.
I pushed out a slow right-hand punch that missed his head by a foot. He pounced on the arm, turned his hip into me, and tried to throw me. I didn’t let him. I kept the arm bent so he couldn’t work against my elbow and braced my front leg so he couldn’t pivot me over his hip. He heaved into his throw and nothing happened. We stood in strained counterpoise for a minute. Then, with my left hand, I took a good hold on his belt at the small of his back and lifted his feet off the ground. At the same time I forced my right arm back in against his neck until I could get a grip on his shirt front. He tried to spin loose, but with his feet off the ground he didn’t have a lot of traction. I shifted my feet, arched my back a bit, took a deep breath, and jerked him up over my head, holding him horizontal to the floor. The ceiling in the living room was just high enough.
“Mick,” I said, trying to keep my voice easy, as if there was no strain to it, “either we agree to be pals, or I fire you through that window.”
I don’t think I pulled off the no strain part. “Quick,” I said. My arms felt a little trembly. He wasn’t as heavy as a barbell, but he wasn’t as nicely balanced either.
“Yes,” he said.
I set him down on his feet. He was very flushed, and his breathing was quick and short. He stared at me without any sound but the quick breathing. His eyes were very wide. His nostrils seemed flared and pale. One eyelid trembled.
I waited.
The breathing eased slightly, and he nodded his head, the nods getting smaller and smaller. “Yeah,” he said.
I waited.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You can take me.” He inhaled big, once. “No way you can’t take me.” He put out his hand.
I took it. It was hard but small, like him.
Chapter 4