by Ross Thomas
Although not cheap, the hotel was comparatively inexpensive and much favored by foreign and domestic journalists, promoters, actors and the occasional aging mercenary who thought his life story would make a wonderful movie.
The lobby, panelled in something that imitated oak, offered a variety of couches and easy chairs that were upholstered in a good grade of dark brown Naugahyde. On the walls were large prints of middle European landscapes and in the air was one of Los Angeles’s classical FM stations with the volume turned down so low it sounded more like murmur than music.
The cashier’s cage was protected by bulletproof plastic and behind the unbarred reception counter stood a melancholy-looking man in his forties. He wore a thick black mustache and the resigned air of someone who has learned nine languages and now wonders why he went to the bother.
The house detective—renamed the security executive by the hotel—
was a moonlighting Beverly Hills police sergeant who passed by Overby twice without giving him more than a glance. This may have been because Overby sat in one of the lobby’s two armless straight chairs, feet and knees together, a dark gray fedora in his lap and the rest of him clothed in black shoes that had to be laced up, white shirt, dull gray tie and a double-breasted blue pinstripe suit he had bought off the rack in London. It was a carefully chosen costume that would stamp Overby as a foreigner, possibly a northern European, until he opened his mouth.
The someone who Overby thought might prove useful was a stout, medium tall man with three chins. He had just collected his mail and Wall Street Journal at the reception desk and was thumbing through four or five envelopes when Overby came up from behind and tapped him on the right shoulder.
The man froze—if only for an instant—then spun around on curiously small feet. He wore the same surprised jolly smile he would wear if encountering his oldest and dearest friend. Much of the smile Voodoo, Ltd. —80
stayed in place as he stuck out his right hand and said, “What the fuck d’you want?”
Overby returned the smile, shook the hand, let it go and said, “They send you The Wall Street Journal here, Dickie—and also your monthly Amex bill. That means you’ve been living here awhile. It also means you’ve been back in town long enough to maybe know something I need to know.”
Richard Brackeen, 42, shoved his mail down into the right outside jacket pocket of his beautifully tailored black suit, secured The Wall Street Journal under his left armpit and clasped his hands across a wide expanse of belly. A dove-gray vest, decorated with a gold watch chain that featured a Phi Beta Kappa key, made the mound of belly look even larger than it was.
Hands still clasped, jolly smile still in place, Brackeen rocked back on his heels and inspected Overby with small eyes that had the color and sheen of quicksilver.
“Who the hell’re you supposed to be, Otherguy? Somebody who barely caught the last flight out of Baghdad?”
Overby flashed his hard white smile in answer, then said, “Tell me what I want to know, Dickie, and you get three hundred. For telling me you know fuck-all, one hundred.”
“I heard you were in Mesopotamia—or maybe it was Trans-Jordan.”
“And here I am in L.A. Well?”
The jolly smile went away so the mouth could purse itself into something almost resembling a rosebud. The three chins bobbled up and down in a thoughtful nod and Richard Brackeen said, “Let’s go get some refreshment.”
The Hotel Bridges’s bar was called The Toll Booth. It offered indifferent lighting, low tables and soft fat chairs. At 5:20 P.M. It was three-quarters full and the noise of the drinkers had already risen from a hum into something that approximated a chant.
Seated at a corner table, his back to the wall, Brackeen called the pretty young cocktail waitress “Love” as he ordered a martini, specifying not only the brand of gin but also the vermouth. Overby asked for a bottle of Mexican beer and said any brand would do.
When the waitress came back, she served the drinks, collected from Overby, grinned at her tip, turned to Brackeen and asked, “When d’you start shooting, Dickie?”
“Tuesday.”
“You said you thought there might be a part for me.”
Brackeen looked up at her and frowned, as if running past promises through his mind. The frown vanished when he said, “Only thing not cast is a small role in the third scene. You want it, it’s yours.”
“What do I play?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —81
Brackeen was losing interest. “Ever been in a real orgy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess.”
“Was it sometimes with guys and sometimes with girls and sometimes with both?”
She nodded.
“Well, the only difference’ll be is that this is a period orgy and you have to wear a costume—for about ten seconds.”
“What d’you mean ‘period orgy’?”
“I mean historical. In this case, Roman.” Brackeen had now lost all interest in the woman and was sipping his martini.
“But it could be a break, couldn’t it?” she said with no trace of conviction.
“Of course,” Brackeen said in exacdy the same tone.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Leave your right name, phone, address and Social Security number in my hotel box.”
“Thanks, Dickie.”
Brackeen nodded, the cocktail waitress left and Overby said, “I thought those guys from back east in Chicago had moved in and moved you out.”
“I let them have the features, that’s all. Who needs the overhead?
Now I go right from videotape into cassettes and sell strictly mail-order. I run ads in the stroke books and I’ve also set up several nice little 900-number dial-a-porns.” The discussion of business cheered Brackeen and his jolly smile reappeared. “And I’ve also become a devout follower of the cardinal business rule, Otherguy: lower the wages and raise the profits.”
“Sounds good.”
Brackeen shrugged. “Sufficient unto my needs.”
“Suppose,” Overby said, “you wanted to get lost for a few days or a week or maybe even a month or two?”
“Who from—the cops?”
“Or maybe from the back-east-in-Chicago guys.”
“I’d go to Mexico—a little place just south of La Paz where nobody speaks anything but Spanish, including me.”
“Suppose you didn’t speak anything but English English?”
“Accent and all?”
Overby nodded.
“You’re not talking about going to ground in some one-room studio in Palms with maybe a freezer full of frozen pizzas, a microwave and a TV set?”
Overby shook his head.
Voodoo, Ltd. —82
“Full service?”
Overby again nodded, then drank some of his beer.
“Well, the only place in the L.A. area I know of is Colleen Cullen’s.
Know her?”
“I think somebody told me her wrapping’s come loose.”
“She’s a partisan, Otherguy, and all partisans are a bit touched.”
“What’s she offering these days—other than room and board?”
Brackeen looked up, as if to think about what his answer should be, then nodded to himself and said, “Say you need a fully automatic personal weapon to protect hearth and home? Or say you want to get into Canada rather quickly, but without troubling the bureaucracy? Or suppose you find something that fell off a truck—perhaps three dozen TV sets—but don’t know what to do with them? For a fair price and minimum fuss, the person to see is Miss Colleen Cullen.”
“She prejudiced?” Overby said.
“Who isn’t? But prejudiced against whom?”
“The British.”
“Hates the British.”
“Think she’d do business with them anyway?”
“As always, Otherguy, prejudice exits when profit enters.”
A thoughtful look settled on Overby’s face. “Would she take their money and
then maybe . . . you know?”
“Betray them?” Brackeen said.
Overby’s reply was a slight shrug.
“She’s a well-regarded businesswoman and to do what you seem to want her to do could put her reputation at risk.”
“How much?”
“To do what you’re hinting at? She’d want top dollar.”
Overby reached into his shirt pocket, brought out three $100 bills that had been folded in half. He let Brackeen see them, then folded them again, covered the money with his palm and slid it across the table. Overby’s hand was still covering the money when he said,
“Three hundred for Colleen Cullen’s phone number and address.”
“Like me to write them down?”
“Just tell me what they are,” Overby said. “Twice.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —83
Seventeen
The offices of Jack Broach & Co. were just south of Wilshire on the west side of Robertson Boulevard and a few blocks north of where Jane Fonda once had her aerobic studio. Broach’s company occupied all three floors of a small U-shaped building that was covered by a veneer of carefully chosen used bricks that featured oozing mortar, long dried. A fine stand of jacarandas shaded a courtyard paved with slate and decorated with a gurgling three-tier Mexican tile fountain whose small carefully hand-lettered sign boasted, “I Use Only Recycled Water.”
Whoever designed the Broach Building had been fond of small Roman arches, because Georgia Blue passed beneath three of them to reach the blond receptionist. After Blue gave her name and stated her business, the receptionist murmured into a telephone, then smiled at Blue and said Mr. Broach would see her presently. Georgia Blue tried but failed to recall the last time she had heard an American substitute
“presently” for “soon.”
After declining the receptionist’s offer of coffee, tea or Perrier, Blue waited in a chrome and leather chair, unconsciously plucking at the hem of the dark gray Anne Klein dress she had bought at Neiman-Marcus earlier that day with much of the $1,000 in walking-around money Booth Stallings had given her. She then had spent most of what was left on a pair of Joan & David black pumps and was surprised to learn she now wore a 7-A shoe instead of a 7-AAA, which was her size when she had entered the Mandaluyong prison.
Blue wore the new shoes and dress out of Neiman’s, using a shopping bag to carry away the outfit she had bought at Rustan’s department store in Manila. Just before reaching the parking lot where she had left her rented Ford, she dropped the shopping bag into a trash bin.
After waiting sixteen minutes in the Jack Broach & Co. reception area, Georgia Blue got to watch a female motion picture star of the second or third magnitude make an unescorted exit. Two minutes later a young black kid of 22 or 23, wearing a T-shirt, raggedy jeans and $13,000 worth of Rolex on his left wrist, was ushered to the exit by two white males in their thirties who tried very hard not to look as if they were fawning over him.
And finally there was the face that made the nineteen-minute wait almost worthwhile. For it was a face from her childhood, but one now thickened and lined and crimsoned by age and sun and probably too Voodoo, Ltd. —84
much whisky. The golden hair had thinned and turned white, although the walk was still that same slithering lope and the back had stayed rake-handle straight. The old actor glanced at Georgia Blue, caught her staring at him, gave her his crooked, slightly mad grin—which he should have copyrighted—then winked at her and was gone.
Jack Broach rose, wearing a smile, and quickly came around the desk that could have taken some eighteenth-century French craftsman at least a year to build. But it was not until he was completely around the desk that Broach greeted her warmly by name and urged her to try the couch that was placed beneath what he called “the three little Daumiers.”
Blue turned, gave the three pen-and-ink sketches a glance, turned again and sat down. Once they were seated, she on the couch, he in a too-tall wingback chair, Broach said, “Instead of answering your questions, I’ve almost decided either to hire you or talk you into signing a representation contract.”
“How sweet,” Blue said, much as she might have said “bullshit.”
Broach touched his forehead just where his widow’s peak began and said, “That streak—it’s real, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“It must be, because you don’t need it.”
Georgia Blue smiled slightly, waiting for the next question.
Broach’s right hand again strayed to his hairline. “How long did it take to turn? A year? A month? What?”
“Overnight,” she said.
“Good God, what happened?”
“I was sent to prison. In the Philippines.”
Broach seemed more fascinated than shocked. “For what?”
“For five years.”
“I mean—”
She didn’t let him finish. “They said I killed someone. I said I didn’t.
My sentence was commuted a few days ago.”
“Not exactly a pardon, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“And before all that?”
“I was a Secret Service agent.”
“I didn’t think they had woman agents.”
“Neither did the Treasury most of the time.”
“And now you’re working for my client.”
“I work for Wu and Durant.”
“Wudu, Limited,” he said. “Catchy.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —85
“Easy to remember anyway.”
“They must have hired you right out of jail.”
“They had someone waiting for me as the prison gates swung wide.”
“Then you must’ve known them before.”
“Not necessarily—although I did. Know them before.”
Broach leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers under his nose and studied her for several seconds. Then he folded the steeple, put it away and said, “Know what I do for a living? I provide intensive care for ailing egos. And it’s extremely rare to run across one that apparently doesn’t need any.”
“What about Ione Gamble’s ego?”
“Remarkably sturdy.”
“What do you do for her mostly?”
“I offer advice.”
“Did you advise her to hire hypnotists?”
“That was her defense counsel’s suggestion, although I went along with it.”
“Did you meet them—the Goodisons?”
He nodded.
“And?”
Jack Broach leaned forward with a new and rather earnest expression that Georgia Blue decided was his standard you-can-trust-me-on-this look.
“I’m in the talent business,” he said. “I find it. Nurture it. Package it. Sell it. And sometimes I have to decide when it’s no longer marketable. That makes me an assessor of sorts. And my first assessment of Hughes and Pauline Goodison was that they were standard star fuckers with a short line of bullshit. By the end of my one and only hour with them and Ione, I’d reassessed them as two very sick fucks.”
“You told Gamble that, of course?”
“I couldn’t quite bring myself to second-guess her defense counsel.”
“Howard Mott.”
Broach nodded.
“He recommended the Goodisons?”
“More or less.”
“Either he did or he didn’t.”
“Mott heard about them,” Broach said, “then checked them out and hired them through a most reputable London agency. Everyone Mott talked to in London assured him the Goodisons were a blue ribbon pair.”
“Who recommended Mott to Gamble?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —86
“She asked me to find her the best criminal defense lawyer in the country. I ran five of them past her and she chose Mott. I told her she’d made a wise choice.”
“You still believe that?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“Sure you do,” she said. “You recommended Mott—among others.
Ione Gamble retains him. He hired the Goodisons and suddenly everything goes to hell. My question is: do you still think she was smart to pick Mott?”
“Smart has nothing to do with it. Ione feels comfortable with Howie Mott. She trusts him. He’s also a damn fine lawyer with impressive credentials.”
“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Why?”
“They usually stick up for each other.” Blue paused, looked slowly around the large room, as if pricing its contents, then came back to Broach with another question. “What do you do for Ione Gamble besides give her advice?”
“I’m her best friend.”
“What’s it cost her to have you as best friend? I don’t want the dollar amount, just the percentage.”
“I’m her agent, business manager and personal attorney. For that she pays me twenty percent of her gross income. My friendship is free.”
“You handle her investments?”
Broach nodded.
“Is she broke, comfortable, rich—what?”
“Her net worth today would have made her rich ten years ago. Now it just makes her extremely comfortable.”
“What caused the breakup between her and William Rice the Fourth?”
“No idea.”
“Guess.”
“If Ione can’t guess, I sure as hell can’t.”
“Anything wrong with her?” Georgia Blue asked. “By that I mean is she psychotic, HIV-positive, drug-addicted, sexually deviant, alcoholic or suffering from any mental or physical maladies that could affect her career?”
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
“Blackmail,” Georgia Blue said. “Well, is she?”
“No.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —87
“Think she killed him—Rice?”
“No.”
“Who do you think did?”
“No idea. None.”
“Why do you think the Goodisons did a flit, bolted?”
“If they did, I again don’t know why.”
“If you were the Goodisons and wanted to vanish, where would you go?”
