Thin Air

"Hi it's Woody. I'm probably out putting something together. But I'll be back soon, so leave a message, baby, and we'll talk."

I said, "My name is Spenser. I have something that will interest you about Angela Richard. Call me at the Westwood Marquis Hotel."

Then I hung up. It had to be him. How many Pontevecchios could there be who were likely to call themselves Woody? I went and looked out the window.

It was a clear bright day in Los Angeles. Clear enough to see the snowcaps on the San Gabriel Mountains. Mostly the caps were smogged in, but today they looked as clean and crisp as new linen. In the distance between the mountains and me was a complicated, often angry seethe of people simmering beneath the Southern California casual they wore like makeup. It was that juxtaposition of how it used to be with how it had turned out that made LA so interesting and so sad a place, I thought.

Behind me the key scratched in the door latch. It would be Susan and it would take her a while. Susan had some sort of key and lock handicap. The key scratched again, and the knob twisted. I waited. I used to make the mistake of opening the door for her to save her the struggle, but it made her mad. She wanted to conquer the handicap. In the time I'd known her she'd made no progress. The key turned the wrong way, and I heard the deadbolt snick into place. The knob turned futilely again. Then silence. I heard the key slide out of the lock. I smiled. I knew she was starting over. I looked back out the window. Below my window a formation of feral green parrots swept past above the olive trees, heading for the botanical gardens that ran up Hilgard Avenue alongside UCLA Medical Center. There was some more lock activity behind me and then the door opened and Susan came in.

"I knew you could do it," I said.

"It's not nice to make fun of a lock-challenged person," Susan said.

"Forgive me," I said. "I'm trying to be supportive."

"Why do you suppose I have so much trouble with locks?"

"Probably relates to your lack of a penis," I said.

She had on black spandex tights and a lavender leotard top, which was soaked dark with sweat. Her bare arms were strong and slender with a hint of muscle definition. She had on a white headband to keep her hair out of her eyes, and her face glistened with sweat. I thought she looked beautiful.

She said, "Oink," and walked across the room. She bent toward me from the waist, so as not to drip on me, and gave me a small kiss on the mouth.

"I'm a sweatball," she said. "I've got to shower."

While she was showering, Woody Pontevecchio called me back.

"Who's this Angela Richard you mentioned?"

"You remember her," I said, "back around 1985."

There was a silence on the phone. I looked at the mountain peaks. In the bathroom, I could hear the shower ru

"I don't know what you mean," Woody said finally.

"Of course not," I said. "I'd like to meet you somewhere and explain myself."

Again there was a pause. Out the window I could see a helicopter rise slowly from the UCLA helipad, cant in the odd way that helicopters have over the pad, and then move off above the rooftops of Westwood Village. Through the closed window, in the air-conditioned room, the sound of it was distant and small.

"Sure," Woody said. "Come to my club. Sports Club LA, you know it? On Sepulveda just south of Santa Monica Boulevard. Ask somebody on the desk to find me. Everybody at the club knows Woody."

"Be there in half an hour," I said.

Chapter 22

Sports Club LA is about the size of Chicopee, Mass., but slicker. There was valet parking, a snack bar, a restaurant, a sports equipment shop, a unisex hair salon, a pool the size of Lake Congamond, a full-sized basketball court, handball courts, a weight-training room with pink equipment exclusively for women, two aerobics studios, a coed weight room big enough to train the World Wrestling Federation, a vast onslaught of Stairmasters, exercycles, Gravitrons and treadmills and, swarming over the equipment, a kaleidoscope of tight buns barely contained by luminous spandex.

The cutie at the front desk said of course she knew Woody, and wasn't he a trip, and took me straight to where he was on the second floor, in the coed gym. I felt as if I were wading in a sea of pulchritude. Like a rhinoceros lumbering through a swarm of butterflies.

"Here's Woody," the cutie said.

Woody was sitting on a bench, at a chest press machine catching his breath. He had on rainbow striped spandex shorts and a spaghetti strap black tank top. His thick blond hair was, perfectly cut, brushed straight back and held in place by a folded black kerchief knotted into a sweat band. He was ta

"Lemme just do this third set," he said, "then we can chat."

He lay back on the bench and pressed up 150 pounds ten times, carefully exhaling on each press, doing the exercise slowly and correctly. When he was through he sat back up and checked himself covertly in the mirror while he patted his face with a small towel and wiped the bench off. Then he turned and smiled a big wide perfect smile, crinkling his eyes very slightly. "So, Spense, what's the deal?"

"Your first name Elwood?" I said.

"Yeah, is that a kick? My old man wanted to be a WASP."

"I'm looking for a woman named Angela Richard," I said.

"I'm looking for any woman I can get," Woody gri

"She was a hooker once," I said. "You used to be her pimp."

"Excuse me?"

"You turned Angela Richard out," I said. "Ten, twelve years ago. She got busted for hooking. You got busted for living off the earnings. Sheriff's department grabbed you."

"You are tripping, dude. I'm a movie producer."

"Easy segue," I said.

"This is ridiculous, you never heard of me? I produced Malibu Madness last year. I did a two-hour, for-cable syndication, Don Ho's Hawaii. It's playing all over the country."

"And the country's better for it," I said. "Sometime after she got out of Pomona Detox, Angela Richard moved back to the Boston area, changed her name to Lisa St. Claire, and married a Boston cop named Frank Belson."

"Man, this is ragtime. I don't know anything about this broad."

"After they'd been married maybe six months, she disappeared. And I'm looking for her."

"You a cop?"

"Sure," I said. "If you're a movie producer. Tell me what you can about Angela."

We were speaking softly. Just a couple of workout buddies gassing, maybe talking a little deal, the project's yours, baby, you run with it, I'll take a little up front for a finder's fee. Woody stood up from the bench.

"I think this conversation is over, pal. I don't have time to talk hip-hop with some wiseass I don't even know."

"Oh, okay, Woody," I said. "I'll talk to these other nice folks."

I turned toward a young woman with a tight body and rippled stomach who was doing dips on a Gravitron.

"Did you know Woody used to be a pimp?" I said.

She looked at me blankly for a moment.

"Hey," Woody said. "Hey, hey, hey."