A Savage Place Read Online Free

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
    RAFFERTY AND I drank several more cups of the weak coffee, and Candy drank a little fruit juice through a straw in one corner of her mouth, and I tried to find out everything I could about the both of them and movie racketeering.
    “I’m a stunt man,” Mickey told me.
    “And he gets a lot of speaking parts too,” Candy said.
    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?