by Ross Thomas
“After you tell us about the Goodisons.”
Colleen Cullen drank some of her bourbon and water, tossed black hair out of her eyes and said, “They rolled up unannounced and Voodoo, Ltd. —96
unexpected right out front two weeks ago tomorrow in a big old black limo.”
Georgia Blue gave Overby a triumphant half-smile. He ignored it and said to Cullen, “Okay. They get out of the limo. Then what?”
“They say the secret password.”
“Which is what?”
“Five thousand a week.”
“For both of them?” Georgia Blue said.
“Each.”
“Christ!” Blue said.
“That’s with full board, sis.”
“What else do they get for ten thousand a week?” Overby asked.
“Guaranteed money-back privacy.”
Overby nodded comfortably, as if he found the price high but not excessive. “How often do the deputies drop by?”
“Every other Tuesday.”
“And go away with what?”
“A thousand each—and that thousand each’s still gotta be paid even if I’m empty.”
“Okay,” Georgia Blue said. “The Goodisons check in. Then what?”
“They stay in their room for three days—even take their meals there. The TV’s going twenty-four hours a day, nothing but MTV shit, although it ain’t loud. It’s sort of like they wanted background noise.
But it sure wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sounds they made humping away on the bed.”
“Why’d they use their real names?” Overby said.
“With those limey accents? Shit. The second they open their mouths, I go, ‘Lemme see some passports.’ “
“They tell you they were brother and sister?”
“Said they were married. I think, Sure you are, kiddies. You just happen to have the same noses, mouths, eyes and ears. But if kinfolks wanta fuck each other, it’s none of my business, so I call him Mr.
Goodison and her Mrs. Goodison—at least ‘til they say they want me to call them Hughsie and Paulie.”
“Was there a phone in their room?” Overby asked.
“Only one phone in the whole house and it’s locked up.”
“They ever ask to use it?”
“Once.”
“They get any calls?”
“Be hell to pay if they did.”
“When did they turn off the TV and the MTV noise?” Blue said.
“Who says they did?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —97
“I’m guessing.”
“They turn it off at the end of the third day and never turn it back on. They come out of their room that night and start getting friendly—
too friendly. First him. Then her. Then both of ‘em together. Touchy-feely stuff. They like to shuck off their clothes, too. He’s finally down to nothing but Jockey shorts and she forgets to put on anything but a little old bra and panties and for all the good they did, she might as well’ve left them off. I don’t mind a three-way now and then but not with those two sickos. I’d as soon jump into bed with a snake and an alligator. So I posted me some new rules.”
“Which were what?” Georgia Blue asked.
“Rule One: Keep Your Hands off the Landlady. Rule Two: Cocks and Pussies Must Be Covered at All Times.”
“What’d they do?” Overby said.
“They just giggled and I don’t see much of ‘em after that except at meals ‘til the morning they left.”
“A week ago tomorrow?”
“That’s right,” Cullen said.
“They tell you they were leaving?” Georgia Blue asked.
Cullen shook her head. “They just came downstairs with all their stuff. One big old leather suitcase and two weekend carryalls made out of canvas or that new stuff mountain climbers use. And they’re all dressed up, too—except they look like they’re all dressed up—know what I mean?”
Overby nodded.
“So I come out with something like, ‘Ya’ll leaving so soon?’ And Hughes, he turns all serious and says they’re sorry, but it’s time to move on—or some such shit. Then he says he’s wondering if I might sell him some personal protection and I say I don’t carry condoms.”
Cullen grinned. Overby grinned back. But Georgia Blue said, “Go on.”
“Well, Pauline blows up. She starts yelling that I’m too fucking dumb to know the difference between guns and condoms. I tell Hughes the longer she hollers the higher the price. He hauls off and knocks her down and while she’s down on her butt, still howling at me, Hughes and I dicker over two hardly used Chief Specials that wind up costing him seven-fifty apiece and would’ve been only five hundred apiece if Pauline hadn’t thrown her fit.”
Overby nodded thoughtfully and said, “How much’d two thirty-eights cost us?”
“Six hundred each.”
“We’ll think about it,” he said, then asked, “How did they leave?”
“In that same old black limo with the same driver.”
“Then it was prearranged,” Georgia Blue said.
Voodoo, Ltd. —98
“Had to be and where’s my money?”
“You don’t know where they went?”
“I didn’t ask, they didn’t say.”
“Okay, Colleen,” Overby said. “Here’s the deal. You already got one thousand. We’ll pay you another thousand for what you told us about the Goodisons. We’ll pay you a third thousand for two pieces—
providing they’re in good shape. And we’ll also pay you a thousand for the limo’s license number. That all adds up to four thousand, just like I said.”
“What makes you think I know the license number?”
Overby shrugged. “You do or you don’t.”
“Well, why the hell not?” Cullen said, rose and reached for the shotgun but Georgia Blue’s hand was faster. “Better leave that here,”
she said.
Cullen thought about it, then shrugged and left through a door at the rear of the parlor. While she was gone, Georgia Blue took the two shells from her purse and reloaded the shotgun, snapped it back together and cocked both hammers.
When Colleen Cullen returned five minutes later, a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver dangled upsidedown by its trigger guard from each forefinger. She stopped and stared at the shotgun Georgia Blue aimed at her.
“You gonna do me, Slim?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Still staring at Georgia Blue, Cullen went slowly to the table and carefully placed one of the pistols on it. Overby picked it up. Cullen then put the other pistol on the table, again looked at Georgia Blue and asked, “Now what?”
“The license number,” Georgia Blue said.
After Colleen Cullen rattled it off, Georgia Blue uncocked the shotgun, broke it open, removed the shells, put the shotgun on the table and said, “Pay her, Otherguy.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —99
Twenty
In his role as a Malibu newcomer, Booth Stallings spent nearly two hours that same afternoon and early evening introducing himself to his somewhat dumbfounded neighbors or their completely dumbfounded Latina maids.
He was invited in three times; told to go away twice; had two doors slammed in his face; experienced cool brief chats on four thresholds, and once was listened to politely, if with total incomprehension, by a vacationing woman from Düsseldorf who spoke only German except for the phrase “Okay, swell,” which she used over and over again, smiling all the while.
The neighbors who did talk to him knew nothing pertinent about the late William A. C. Rice IV—at least nothing they would confide to Stallings—until he rang the bell of the duplex direcdy across the highway from the house where Rice had died.
The man who opened the door of the two-story canary-yellow duplex was at least 74 or 75. He was also barefoot and wore a short green terry-cloth bathrobe and apparendy nothing else except a cigarette, aviator sunglasses and the amber drink he held in his left hand.
Still, Stallings thought there was something vaguely familiar about the craggy face with the cigarette stuck in the left corner of the wide bitter mouth.
The cigarette jiggled a little when the man spoke before Stallings could even say hello. “You really think they’ll send you to Hawaii for two weeks?”
“Who?”
“The crew chief who’s got you out peddling magazine subscriptions door-to-door old as you are.”
“Not selling anything, friend,” Stallings said with what he trusted was a reassuring and even ingenuous smile. “The name’s Booth Stallings and I’m just paying a friendly call on account of I’m your new neighbor.”
“Which house?”
“The one right across the street that belonged to poor Mr. Rice.”
The man nodded, removed the cigarette, had a reflective swallow of his drink, stuck the cigarette back in place and said, “Billy Rice was a lot of things, but poor sure as shit wasn’t one of ‘em.”
“Knew him pretty well, did you?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —100
“You a drinking man?”
“I have to confess I am.”
“Well, come on in and I’ll pour us one and you can get acquainted with the neighborhood’s friendliest neighbor, Rick Cleveland.”
There was a brief, not quite imperceptible, pause before Cleveland stuck out his right hand. It was as if he were hoping Stallings would match the name with the face. After grasping the hand, Stallings took a chance and said, “Hell, you’re in pictures.”
There was a slight nod followed by a small relieved smile as Cleveland, turning to lead the way into the living room, said, “Yeah, but I haven’t worked much for a couple of years.”
Suspecting it was more like ten years than two, Stallings said, “Been in Malibu long?”
“Since fifty-one and in L.A. Since thirty-seven,” Cleveland said, picking up a half-empty bottle of Vat 69 from a marbletop table.
“Scotch okay?”
“Fine.”
“Water?”
“Some.”
“You need ice?”
Since none was visible, Stallings said, “Got out of the habit.”
Once he had his drink, Stallings turned to the large window that offered a view of the Pacific Coast Highway, the Billy Rice house and, when he went up on his toes, a very small slice of the Pacific Ocean.
“View’s better upstairs,” Cleveland said as he eased down into a gray club chair. Stallings chose the low pale blue couch in front of the window, tasted his drink, gave his host another neighborly smile and said, “You must’ve seen some changes.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I go back to the Flood—or to GWTW
anyway. Remember all those young southern bloods hanging around Scarlett in the first few scenes? Well, I was the one who got to say,
‘You’re welcome, Miss O’Hara,’ or maybe it was, ‘You’re welcome, Miss Scarlett.’ Can’t even remember which now. But who the hell cares?”
“Film buffs maybe?”
“Fuck ‘em.”
After another polite swallow of his drink, Stallings said, “See much of your late neighbor?”
Cleveland put out his cigarette and lit a new one before replying. “I sued the son of a bitch for ruining my view. But he had a fix in with both the county and the Coastal Commission and I found out pretty quick that only damn fools sue anybody who’s sitting on top of a billion bucks.”
“You guys weren’t too friendly, then.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —101
“I went to see him in his Century City office when I learned how high he planned to build his goddamned house. He told me to talk to his lawyers. That was our first and last conversation.”
Stallings glanced over his shoulder at the Rice house. “Ever been inside it?”
“Nope.”
“Not the coziest place I ever stayed.”
“Then why’d you rent it?”
“The outfit I work for’s based in London and they’re thinking of expanding to L.A. The two principal partners thought they might need to do a little entertaining. That’s why I snapped up a two-month lease on the Rice house—because it looks like it was designed for a never-ending party.”
“Well, he did give a lot of ‘em,” Cleveland said. “But you’d never know it. There wasn’t any noise to speak of because the partying was all done on the beach side. And you couldn’t complain about the parking or the traffic because he always had a valet service that drove the guest cars off and hid ‘em someplace. But I used to see her car parked in the courtyard. A lot of times it’d be there all night.”
“Whose car?”
“Ione Gamble’s—the one who shot him, God bless her.”
“Think she really killed him, do you?”
“She sure as hell had the opportunity. Had two of ‘em, in fact.”
“Why two?”
“I don’t sleep so good anymore,” Cleveland said and reached for the bottle of Vat 69 to top up his drink. After adding at least one and a half ounces, he put the bottle back on the marbletop table. “And even when I do get to sleep, I have to get up every couple of hours or so and go pee because of my goddamn prostate. Well, when I’m standing there peeing in the upstairs John, which takes forever, I like to look out the bathroom window at the ocean because it’s always more interesting than looking down at what I’m doing or trying to do, right?”
Stallings nodded sympathetically.
“So I’m standing there peeing New Year’s Eve about eleven-thirty when I notice her car parked in Rice’s courtyard. She’s got one of those fancy new Mercedes roadsters that sell for close to a hundred thousand a pop. But I don’t think anything about it and head on back to the bedroom for my traditional New Year’s Eve celebration, which means lying up in bed with a bottle and watching strangers making damn fools of themselves on TV. Then about twelve-thirty, after I’m fairly sure I’ve made it through another year, I gotta go take another leak. And that’s when I notice it.”
“Notice what?” Stallings said.
“That her car’s gone. Ione Gamble’s.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —102
“So?”
“So I thought it was kinda funny she didn’t stick around for New Year’s Eve or, if she did, only spent half an hour of the new year with her former fiancé. But what the hell. It wasn’t any of my business so I went back to bed. Then around five in the morning, I have to pee again. And there’s her car back, its horn tooting away. Then she pops out of it and yells something I can’t hear. And that’s when she goes inside the house either to shoot him or make sure he’s really dead.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Stallings. “How’d you see all this at night? Did Rice keep his outside lights on like I do as a kind of burglar insurance?”
“He didn’t just have his regular lights on. He had all his Christmas lights on, too.”
“What’d the cops say?”
“When?”
“When you told ‘em what you just told me?”
“Nothing. They wrote it all down and then wanted to know how much I’d had to drink New Year’s Eve and if maybe it wasn’t time I started going to meetings again.”
“Couldn’t it have been somebody else that first time?” Stallings said.
“I mean somebody else driving a car just like hers?”
Cleveland shrugged. “That’s exactly what the cops said and I’ll tell you what I told them. The odds are a hundred to one against it.”
There was a silence that Stallings finally broke with a final question.
“So what do you think’ll happen to her?”
“What do I think or what do I hope?”
“Either one.”
“I hope they give her a medal,” Rick Cleveland said. “But I don’t much think they will.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —103
Twenty-one
During what Georgia Blue later called the Colonel Sanders Seminar, Booth Stallings’s report on the old actor’s two sightings of Ione Ga
mble’s roadster caused what should have been a stunned silence.
And it would have been if a heavy surf hadn’t been hammering the beach just below the huge living room where Wu, Durant, Overby, Blue and Stallings were dining on $73 worth of Kentucky fried chicken.
Booth Stallings, the designated provisioner, had bought the chicken at the local franchise and served it without apology just before Wu and Durant reported on their hypnotism session with Ione Gamble.
This was followed by Georgia Blue and Otherguy Overby with reports on their respective meetings with Jack Broach, the agent, and Richard Brackeen, the dirty-movie man. Blue and Overby then spelled each other in the telling of their joint encounter with Colleen Cullen at her lie-low bed-and-breakfast inn.
Stallings made his report last, smiled at its effect, dipped a hand into a bucket of chicken, withdrew a drumstick and gnawed it while waiting to see who reacted first.
It turned out to be Artie Wu, who, after shifting around in the big dark red leather chair, cleared his throat and asked, “You say this Mr.
Cleveland’s an actor?”
His mouth still full of drumstick, Stallings only nodded.
“How old is he?”
Stallings chewed some more, swallowed and said, “About ten years older than I am, which places him right on senility’s front stoop.”
“And you also say the sheriffs investigators weren’t as much interested in what Mr. Cleveland said as they were in how much he’d been drinking?”
“The guy’s a pacer, Artie. I’d guess he didn’t drink much more the night he saw Ione Gamble’s car twice, if he did, than he would any other night.”
“His memory’s unimpaired, then?”
“I didn’t say that. He admits he can’t exactly remember his one line to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. But he told me to an inch how high this house is and to a penny what it cost him to sue Rice because of it.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —104
Durant had been standing at the huge window, staring at the lights of Santa Monica. He turned, dropped a chicken bone into an empty KFC bucket and said, “Maybe you didn’t take Ione Gamble back far enough, Artie.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” Wu said.
“But maybe the Goodisons did,” said Georgia Blue, who again was seated on the long couch with Stallings, a bucket of chicken between them.
