by Ross Thomas
Wu looked at her, smiled slightly and said, “Is there more, Georgia?”
She first patted her mouth with a paper napkin, then said, “Pure speculation.”
Wu sighed. “Pure or impure, let’s have it.”
“Okay. Ione Gamble told you she didn’t let the Goodisons hypnotize her, right?”
Wu nodded.
“Did you find it difficult to put her into a deep trance?”
“No.”
“Let’s say the Goodisons are as adept as you are.”
“Let’s say they’re more so.”
“Then can we assume the Goodisons might’ve hypnotized Gamble during their second session with her—the one where nobody else was present—without her realizing or remembering it?”
Wu only nodded.
“And while in a deep trance could she have told them about her two trips to Rice’s house—providing, of course, there really were two trips?”
“Let’s pretend there were,” Durant said.
Georgia Blue agreed with a nod. “All right. On her first trip, she’s already smashed. She shoots Rice after an argument, goes home, drinks some more and passes out. When she wakes up, she’s suffering from a blackout and remembers nothing—except that she’s still mad as hell at Billy Rice.” Georgia Blue looked at Wu again. “Is that possible?”
“Barely.”
“Then it’s also barely possible that Gamble gets so mad at Rice all over again that she drives back out here, shoots the Chagall instead of Rice, finds him dead, but still doesn’t remember shooting him earlier.
She dials 911, blacks out for the last time and wakes up remembering nothing.”
“You’re guessing that the Goodisons, at their second session with her,” Durant said, “got every word down on tape, right?”
Georgia Blue nodded. “Maybe even on videotape.”
Durant turned to Wu. “Well?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —105
Artie Wu examined the high living room ceiling for a long moment.
“Ione’s extraordinarily easy to hypnotize. As for them taping it—” He broke off, brought his gaze down and looked at Durant. “But you weren’t talking about that, were you?”
“No,” Durant said. “Because if they did hypnotize her, they damn well taped her.”
“If we assume they did tape her,” Georgia Blue said, “then we’d better assume the Goodisons are going for blackmail.”
“Blackmail’s just their first bite,” Overby said. “They’ll probably send her a copy of the part of the tape where she doesn’t talk about anything but shooting the painting and finding Rice dead. That’s the tease. Then they’ll send her the part where she tells how she blew Rice away. Okay, it’s not admissible evidence. But it could sure get the cops busy. So she agrees to pay and the Goodisons take her for every last dime including her house.”
“But they don’t stop there, do they, Otherguy?” Durant said.
“Course not. All blackmailers are greed freaks. They never know when to quit because it’s all so easy, so . . . effortless. Once the Goodisons squeeze Gamble dry, they’ll try and peddle a copy of their tape to one of the supermarket tabloids. And if they’ve also got her down on videotape, like Georgia says—you know, with a camcorder—
they can try and peddle that to one of the sleazoid TV shows and millions can watch a hypnotized Ione Gamble tell how she shot and killed her billionaire novio last New Year’s Eve. By then, the Goodisons oughta be medium rich.”
“That how you’d work it, Otherguy?” Durant asked.
Overby gave Durant a carefully chilled stare. “That’s how guys both you and I know’d work it.”
“We should hope that much of what both Georgia and Otherguy suggest is true,” Wu said with a small wise gentle smile that Booth Stallings thought some of the smarter saints might envy.
Overby’s answering smile was two parts knowing and one part wicked. “They don’t get it yet, Artie.”
“I think Georgia does—don’t you, Georgia?”
“Sure.”
“Quincy?”
Durant only nodded.
“Booth?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“When the Goodisons attempt to blackmail Ione Gamble,” Wu said,
“which I now believe they will, what’s the first thing she’ll need?”
“Money?” Stallings said.
“She’ll also need an intermediary,” Wu said.
Stallings nodded. “A go-between.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —106
“Who do you have in mind?” Durant asked.
“Georgia, of course,” Wu said, sounding surprised that anyone would ask.
“Of course,” Durant said, his voice flat and toneless.
“Get to the good part, Artie,” Overby said. “The money part.”
“It’s occurred to me,” Wu said, “that Wudu, Limited, of Berkeley Square, London, should let it be known it’s in temporary residence in Malibu and anxious to acquire searing, shocking and even salacious true-life tapes—video preferably, but audio in a pinch—for a worldwide, multilingual, exposé-type TV show. For the right tape, it’s prepared to pay what? Up to a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Why not pounds?” Durant said.
“Better yet.”
“What’re you going to do, run an ad in The Hollywood Reporter?”
Stallings said.
“I think we should depend entirely on word of mouth,” Wu said.
“And I can think of no one better to serve as our town crier than Otherguy. Any objections?”
Overby sent a glare around the room that encountered no resistance. The glare quickly disappeared, replaced by his familiar hard white grin.
“But please remember this,” Wu said. “We’re being paid to find the missing Goodisons, who obviously don’t want to be found. If Georgia’s theory is correct, and again I’ll say I think some of it is, the Goodisons will try to blackmail Ione Gamble. If they do, they’ll have to deal with one of us as the go-between. If they try to sell tapes, audio or video, we’ll’ve already made what I hope is a preemptive bid—and again they must deal with us. Would anyone like to add or ask something?”
“Who does what?” Durant said. “Spell it out.”
Wu closed his eyes briefly, then nodded at something, which Booth Stallings guessed was the order of battle. After opening his eyes, Wu looked at Georgia Blue. “As I said, Georgia, you’ll be Ione Gamble’s go-between. But until you’re needed for that job, you’ll continue looking into the life and times of Jack Broach. Otherguy, for now, will be our town crier and the putative buyer of whatever the Goodisons have to sell. Quincy and I will follow up on a couple of things, including the license number of the limo that carried the Goodisons off.”
“That leaves me,” Stallings said.
Wu gave Stallings a smile of genuine affection. “You’ll be our Mr. X, Booth—the secretive emissary from the mysterious Mr. Z, who’s retained Wudu, Limited, to scour the world for sensational videotapes.”
“In other words, I sit by the phone and wait for somebody to try and sell me something,” Stallings said.
Voodoo, Ltd. —107
“The answering machine can take care of that,” Wu said. “What we need is a utility chameleon—someone who can step in and play any role at a moment’s notice. I think you’re ideal. Any objections?”
“None,” Stallings said, “as long as you don’t ask me to handle a juvenile part.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —108
Twenty-two
The tiny frame house on the eastern edge of Venice sat on a twenty-five-foot lot and the 1982 black Cadillac limousine, parked out front, looked longer than the lot was wide. The limousine license plate read,
“LUXRY 3,” implying that there might be a fleet of them. The implied claim was supported by a small, nicely painted wooden sign that was nailed to a porch pillar. It advertised “Luxury Limos” and listed a phone number that was as large as its name.
The small front yard was split by a concrete walk that left enough room on the right for some grass and five ruthlessly pruned rosebushes. The other half of the yard, the left half, was dominated by an ancient bougainvillea that had swarmed up and over the small front porch and onto the roof as if intent on devouring the chimney.
The bougainvillea concealed much of the roof but the part still visible revealed old composition shingles of a faded green. The rest of the house had been painted not long ago in two shades of yellow—a very pale shade for the clapboard siding and a much darker shade for the trim. Durant thought the house looked both cozy and bilious.
He got out of the Lincoln Town Car on the passenger side and Wu got out from behind the wheel. After they reached the porch, they heard a telephone begin to ring inside the house. Durant knocked.
When no one came to the door and the phone rang for the ninth time, Durant gave the brass doorknob a halfhearted twist and was surprised to find it unlocked.
The door opened directly into a living room. The ringing phone was on a small gray metal desk in the room’s far left corner. Between the front door and the phone was a Latino in his late twenties or early thirties who lay on a braided oval rug with his throat cut. Durant stepped over the man, took out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the still-ringing phone.
“Luxury Limos,” Durant said.
There was a silence until a woman asked, “Carlos?”
“He can’t come to the phone right now,” Durant said in what he discovered was rusty Spanish. “Any message?”
The woman hung up.
Artie Wu was now on the other side of the desk, turning the pages of a black-bound ledger with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “His logbook,” he said without looking up. “All of February’s missing.”
“Let’s go,” Durant said.
Voodoo, Ltd. —109
Wu nodded and closed the ledger with the pen.
Durant again stepped over the dead man, but Wu knelt beside him.
The man wore dark blue pants, well-polished black loafers, a white shirt and a black clip-on bow tie. Both tie and shirt were soaked with blood. A small leather-bound notebook or diary peeked out of the shirt’s pocket. Wu fished it out, wrapped it in a handkerchief and shoved it down into his hip pocket. He then rose and hurried out the front door, followed by Durant, who paused only long enough to smear the inside and outside doorknobs with his handkerchief.
Just as they reached the Lincoln they saw a dark-haired woman hurry out of a house that was across the street and four or five doors up. The house was a brown twin of the yellow one that served as headquarters for Luxury Limos. The woman wore jeans, a white Tshirt and white sneakers. From a distance she could have been either 20 or 30 but she moved as if she were 20.
As Wu and Durant hurried into the Lincoln, the woman started racing toward the yellow house. Just as the Lincoln pulled away she reached the giant bougainvillea and stopped, staring at the accelerating Lincoln. In its rearview mirror, Artie Wu saw her lips move and assumed she was memorizing the car’s license number.
“Who rented this thing?” he asked Durant.
“Booth.”
“Call him and ask him to report it stolen.”
“Where should we lose it—a shopping mall?”
“Why not?”
They found a parking space on the fourth level of the Santa Monica Place mall at Third and Broadway, which was only a short walk to the edge of the continent. They rode escalators up and down until they found a floor that featured a string of ethnic-food stands where Wu bought two cups of espresso and carried them over to a table Durant had claimed.
After Wu sat down, he took out the handkerchief-wrapped notebook that had “1991” stamped in gold on its black leather cover. The handkerchief had soaked up virtually all the blood and Wu used a paper napkin to wipe away what little was left. He then wadded his handkerchief up into the paper napkin, enclosed both in yet another napkin, rose and dropped everything into a nearby trash bin.
Wu sat back down, opened the notebook and began turning pages.
Durant sipped his espresso and decided it was too weak. Wu reached for his cup, sipped it, went back to the notebook and murmured,
“Good coffee.”
Durant rose. “I’ll go call Booth.”
Wu nodded, completely absorbed by the notebook.
Voodoo, Ltd. —110
Durant finally found a bank of pay telephones only to discover he no longer remembered what it cost to make a call. Was it a quarter or thirty-five cents? He dropped in three quarters and tapped out the Malibu number with its 456 exchange. When Stallings answered on the third ring, Durant identified himself and said, “We have to lose the Lincoln.”
“What d’you want me to do?”
“Call the rental agency—which one is it?”
“Budget.”
“Tell them it was stolen last night and you just discovered it missing.”
“Where’d you lose it—just out of curiosity?”
“On the fourth level of the Santa Monica Place mall with its windows up and doors locked.”
“Then they’ll find it this afternoon,” Stallings said. “Want me to rent you another car?”
“Get something grander—since Artie might have to put in an appearance as the mysterious Mr. X.”
“I’m Mr. X,” Stallings said. “He’s Mr. Z. What about a Mercedes—a big one?”
“Perfect,” Durant said.
When Durant returned to the table, he found Wu sitting with his clasped hands resting on the leather-bound notebook. “Booth’s getting us another car,” Durant said. “A Mercedes.”
Wu nodded and said, “His name was Carlos Santillan. He would’ve been thirty-one in May. He owed seventy-six thousand on his house, around twenty-six hundred on that old Cadillac, and both monthly payments amounted to around nine hundred and something. He was single but the person to be notified in case of accident or death is Rosa Alicia Chavez, whose address is just four doors up from his house on the other side of the street. She must be the woman who came running to see what’d happened. Miss Chavez is twenty-six.”
“How do you know?”
“He wrote her birthday right after her address and phone number.”
“He write everything down?” Durant asked.
“His car and house were insured by Allstate. He banked at Security Pacific. He was a 1978 graduate of SaMoHi.”
Durant frowned, then nodded. “Santa Monica High School.”
“He was five-eleven,” Wu continued, “weight one-sixty-one, had brown hair, brown eyes, and was scheduled to have his teeth cleaned in two weeks.”
“He did write it all down,” Durant said.
“Everything. A week ago yesterday he had an appointment to pick up Mr. And Mrs. Goodison at Cousin Colleen’s Bed and Breakfast Inn Voodoo, Ltd. —111
in Topanga Canyon. There’s nothing in his notebook about where he was to take them. I don’t think he knew.”
“Maybe he talked to somebody about them?” Durant said. “God knows they’re weird enough.”
“By somebody, you mean Rosa Alicia Chavez.”
Durant nodded.
“If we tried to talk to her, she’d yell for the cops,” Wu said. “At least I hope she would.”
“Did his notebook list any organizations he belonged to—a union, business association, maybe a fraternal order?”
“You mean one that might provide his survivors or heirs with a small death benefit?”
“Say, two thousand dollars,” Durant said.
“I think the ILOA might,” Wu said. “That’s the Independent Limousine Operators Association, which just this moment sprang into existence.”
“Who d’you think—Otherguy?”
“Otherguy could handle it nicely,” Wu said. “But Booth would do even better. He’s older and more, well, grandfatherly, although I don’t think he’d appreciate the description.”
“Sure he would,” Durant said. “Booth likes be
ing the oldest. He’s got fifteen or twenty years on us and Otherguy and a lot more than that on Georgia. And although he enjoys being the in-house patriarch, the real reason he likes hanging out with us is because he thinks we’re all fellow anachronisms.”
“The hell he does,” Wu said. “You ever think of yourself as an anachronism?”
“No, but some days I do feel kind of quaint.”
“Yes, well, some days so do I.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —112
Twenty-three
The first thing Georgia Blue had done that morning, even before she drank any coffee, was call the Department of Motor Vehicles and use a cold formal tone and some Secret Service jargon to demand and receive the name and address that belonged to the LUXRY 3 license plate.
She handed the information to Durant, who had just poured his first cup of coffee in the late William Rice’s elaborate kitchen that was almost large enough for a small hotel. Durant looked at the slip of paper, grunted his thanks and headed for the deck, where he could drink the coffee alone without having to talk to anyone.
Blue found a Thermos in a kitchen cupboard, poured two cups of coffee into it, picked up a mug and carried both mug and Thermos into her bedroom. She drank one cup of coffee, showered, ran a comb through her hair, which had grown nearly half an inch since the Philippines, and again put on the Anne Klein dress and the Joan & David shoes. She then sat on the bed next to the telephone, poured her second cup of coffee, picked up the phone and tapped out a number she had written down the night before.
After the call was answered by a cheery “Jack Broach and Company,” Georgia Blue said, “My name’s Margo Dawson and I’m a vice-president with the Mitsu Bank in Beverly Hills. The reason I’m calling is to find out if we might land some of Jack Broach’s business.”
“You’d have to talk to our comptroller, Mr. Corrigan.”
“Is he in?”
“He usually gets in around nine-thirty.”
“Maybe you could give me a hint. Is Mr. Corrigan happy with your present bank?”
“I guess so. Sure.”
