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facint; inward onto a small lawn among the buildings. Inside was a high ceiling, and around the walls, in living Technicolor, were painted a bunch of mythologicallooking women with harps and such.
    “The nine Muses?” I said to Candy.
    “Could be,” Candy said. “I didn’t know there were nine.”
    “Same as a baseball team,” I said.
    “I could use a drink,” Candy said. “What would be good. How about a margarita?”
    “Salt may hurt.”
    “You’re right. I’ll have a martini.” I had a beer.
    “What do you think?” Candy said after she’d sipped at the martini. At the table next to us people I vaguely recognized were having drinks and sandwiches and laughing often. The cast of a television show, but I couldn’t remember which.
    “I think Roger’s lying.”
    “Why?”
    “Well,” I drank some beer and watched a starlet in a very tight dress sit down at a table to my right. She showed a lot of thigh as she slid into the chair. I’d seen her in a movie somewhere. A Western.
    “Well what?” Candy said.
    “Oh, I was admiring the presence of that actress.”
    “You were admiring the inside of her right thigh.”
    “See what Hollywood’s come to,” I said. “That’s what we call presence now.”
    Candy put the olive from her martini in her mouth and very carefully chewed it. She winced slightly.
    “It’s the brine it’s cured in,” I said. “It’ll nip you till you heal completely. Rinse it with a little martini.”
    “Why do you think Roger Hammond is lying?” Candy said.
    “You talked to Felton, right?”
    She nodded, running the martini around in her mouth:
    “There’s no way he wouldn’t have told Hammond that you accused him. If he were innocent, he’d tell Hammond, because he’d want his backing in cutting down the bad P.R. If he were guilty, he’d want to get his story told before you got to Hammond. He’d know either way that Hammond would be next on your list. Yet Hammond acted like he’d never heard the accusation. That’s not reasonable.”
    “Maybe Felton thought by having me beaten up, I wouldn’t go to Hammond, and the story would die right there.”
    “Possibly, but he’s still got to sweat the unidentified eyewitness. Scaring you off may not scare him off.” A plump blond woman in a purple dress and gold high-heeled shoes stopped at the table and leaned over Candy.
    “Candy, how are you? A hot news story?” She smiled and looked at me. “Or maybe a hot date?”
    “Agnes, good to see you. Sit down,” Candy said. “Let me buy you a drink. Spenser, this is Agnes Rittenhouse.”
    “How do you do,” Agnes said. “Aren’t you a manly-looking chap.”
    “It’s because my heart is pure,” I said.
    “Oh,” Agnes said, “how disappointing.” She sat down and ordered a pina colada. Candy and I had another round.
    “Agnes does publicity for the studio,” Candy said to me.
    “The pay isn’t much,” Agnes said, “but I get to keep all the men I can catch.”
    She was plump without being exactly fat. Just shapely on a larger scale. She had a Cupid’s-bow mouth and thin arching eyebrows that she must have plucked often. Her hair was brass-colored and she wore a lot of makeup.
    The waiter brought the drinks. “Anything I can help you with?” Agnes said. She drank half her pina colada in a swallow.
    “Maybe. Mr. Spenser is visiting me from the East and was interested in how a studio works. I wondered if there’s anyone we can talk to in the finance office. Who’s your chief finance officer?”
    “Are you a reporter too, Mr. Spenser? You’re too macho to be an accountant.”
    “Yes, I am,” I said. “I work for a sister station in Boston-same owner, Multi Media-and I’m out doing some soft stuff for the early news. You know, visits with the stars, a look inside the glamor capital of the world, how the movie business runs.”
    Agnes finished her pina colada and looked automatically for the waiter. “Well, big boy,” she said. “If you get