Free A Savage Place by Robert B. Parker Page A

stood looking at us he had the suitcoat open and his hands on his hips. Truculent.
    “Are you Grumpy, Sneezy, or Doc?” I said. Candy started to giggle and swallowed it.
    “You, I know,” he said, looking at Candy, hands still on his hips, the double-vent suitcoat flared out behind him. “You, I don’t,” he said to me. “Who are you?”
    “I asked you first,” I said.
    “If I don’t like you, you got troubles,” he said.
    “Aw, hell, I shoulda guessed. You’re Grumpy.” Candy put her head down and her shoulders shook.
    It wasn’t a giggle. She was laughing. Amber Glasses looked at me for another ten seconds, then turned and went through the door.
    Candy’s face was pink, and her eyes were bright when she looked at me. “Spenser,” she said, “you’re awful. Who do you suppose he was?”
    “Security,” I said. “I’ll bet my album of Annette Funicello undies on it.”
    “You made that up,” Candy said.
    “Wait and see,” I said.
    “No, I mean the part about Annette Funicello.”
    “Oh, yeah,” I said. “But a man’s only as good as his dream.”
    We waited perhaps five more minutes. Then a soft chime sounded at Nina Foch’s desk. She picked up a white and gold phone that looked like it came from the Palace of Versailles. She listened and then put the phone down.
    “You may go in now,” she said. She didn’t like saying that either.
    The rug as we walked toward the door was deep enough to lose a dachshund in. I opened the door for Candy. It was hung so precisely that it seemed weightless. Candy took a deep breath.
    I said, “I’m right beside you, babe.”
    She smiled and looked at me briefly and nodded. “I’m glad you are,” she said. Then we walked through the door.

Chapter 11
    WE WERE IN a room lined with bookshelves. There was leather furniture around and, on a round mahogany table in the middle of the room, a large globe. At the other end of the room was another door. It was open. The room beyond the open door seemed very bright. Candy preceded me. Sneezy, Grumpy, and Doc were sitting on a long couch to our right. The wall opposite the door was all glass, and the long green view of the L.A. Country Club below was a dazzler. In front of the wall, at right angles to the couch, was a desk about the size of Detroit. Behind it sat a man with large white teeth and dark hair flecked with gray. His face was deeply tanned. He wore a dark blue pin-striped suit with a vest that had lapels. His tie was an iridescent gray-blue tied in a small knot under a white pincollar. He looked like the centerfold in Fortune.
    He said, “You’re Miss Sloan. I’ve seen you on the news. And your associate?”
    Candy said, “Mr. Spenser.”
    “I’m Peter Brewster,” he said. “This is Tom Turpin, our director of corporate public relations.” He gestured at the guy with the glen plaid and the shabby shoes. “And Barrett Holmes, our legal counsel”-the gymnast with the dimpled chin. “And Rollie Simms. Mr. Simms is our director of corporate security.” I grinned at Candy. “Since I understand you are about to level an accusation, I thought it would be prudent to have these gentlemen witness it. Barrett, if it’s actionable, I’ll want you to take steps immediately.”
    I said to the trio on the couch, “Excuse me, but which one of you three guys speaks no evil?” Brewster gave me a basilisk stare.
    He said, “I have very little time for humor.”
    I said, “But an awful lot of occasion.”
    He gave me that stare again.
    Candy said, “Mr. Brewster, I have information that organized crime has infiltrated Summit Studios: Do you have any comment on that?”
    “Shouldn’t you take that question to Roger Hammond at Summit?”
    “I have.”
    “And his response?”
    “He had us put off studio property.”
    Brewster nodded. “The nature of your information?”
    “I can’t give you details, but I have an eyewitness.”
    “To what?”
    “To a transaction involving Summit personnel and a