A Savage Place Read Online Free Page B

They don’t care if it hurts. They don’t care if. it’s fair. They care about you being dead and silent. These are people you’re supposed to be scared of.”
    “You be scared of them,” Rafferty said. “I got no time for any more goddamn lectures.” He looked at Candy Sloan. “I’ll be around. You need me, I’ll be there.” He left the room, walked down the short hall, opened the door, went out, and shut it behind him. Firmly.
    Candy and I were quiet. The living room seemed to take on the blue clarity of the pool outside. Candy said, “He’s been small all his life.”
    “I know,” I said.
    The walls of the house were thick and stuccoed. No sound came through them. There was only the faint purr of central air conditioning somewhere inside. A single leaf drifted onto the surface of the pool and turned slowly.
    “What now?” Candy said.
    “Now you rest and I watch you. When you’re better, we’ll keep that appointment you broke today.”
    “You and I?”
    “You and I.”

Chapter 5
    CANDY WAS a quick healer. I sat with her for two days while the swelling subsided and the cuts began to heal. I cooked soup for her and whatever I could find in her kitchen for me. The first night I made pasta with fresh vegetables in a thin cream sauce. After that it was downhill. Candy didn’t have a rich larder, and by the end of the second day I was reduced to crackers and peanut butter with a side of instant coffee. Nights I slept on the couch; days I read whatever she had handy; Rachel Wallace’s new book, Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Redbook, a collection of essays by Joan Didion. I wished I’d brought my copy of Play of Double Senses with me. It would have impressed the hell out of Candy. I could let drop that it was by the president of Yale, and she’d think I was learned. However, the book was in my suitcase at the Beverly Hillcrest along with my clean shirt and my toothbrush. Candy had a razor, so I was clean-shaven, but my breath was beginning to tarnish my teeth.
    Late morning of the third day, I was doing sit-ups with my back on the floor and my feet on the couch when Candy came out of her bedroom dressed, with her hair combed and a good job of makeup that covered a lot of the damage. I was looking at her upside down. She looked very good.
    “I’m ready,” she said.
    “For what?”
    “For Roger Hammond, for getting you a real meal, for going out and getting back to work. Not necessarily in that order.”
    “No,” I said. “Definitely not in that order. First the decent meal.”
    She smiled, sort of. “Okay,” she said. “It’s late enough to make it brunch, maybe. Do you always sleep that way?”
    “Sit-ups,” I said. “Isolates the stomach and saves the back.”
    “I thought you were supposed to keep your legs straight.”
    “You were wrong.”
    She smiled again, sort of, favoring the side where the stitches still pulled. I got up.
    “How many do you do?”
    “A hundred.” I put the gun and holster back on my belt, got my blazer off the back of a chair, and slipped into it. My yellow shirt was in trouble, and my pants were baggy. “How about we go to my hotel while I get a change of clothes and a brush of tooth and then off to some elegant Hollywood bistro for an early lunch.”
    She nodded. “I’ll call a cab. I left my car in Griffith Park.”
    The cab took us to the Hillcrest, where I showered and shaved and brushed my teeth and put on clean clothes and left the others to be cleaned. I had switched to a light gray blazer, charcoal slacks, white shirt, black and red paisley pocket handkerchief.
    “Tie?” I said to Candy Sloan.
    She looked as scornful as she could without pulling her stitches.
    “I’ll try to find a place that requires one before you leave, so you won’t have brought one out here in vain.”
    “I brought several,” I said. “Keeps me in touch with my roots. Where shall we eat?”
    “I can’t eat much. Is there any place you’ve heard of you’d