by Ross Thomas
“Over thirty years.”
She nodded gravely and said, “I thought it must be something like that.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —121
Twenty-five
It took Otherguy Overby less than half an hour to win nearly $500 at the draw poker club in Gardena. He won by playing what he thought of as “sullen style”—never speaking other than to say “three cards” or
“fold” or “raise ten” or “call.” He also kept looking over his left shoulder.
The player to his right was a fiftyish woman with a 30-year-old body and a face that too much sun had baked into a filigree of fine lines.
She wore a blue tank top and a Dodgers baseball cap with the bill turned sideways to the left. After Overby looked over his shoulder for what could have been the sixteenth time, she said, “You expecting reinforcements?”
“A guy’s supposed to meet me here.”
“Way you’re squirming around, he must owe you a bundle.”
“I’m looking to pay, not collect—if he ever shows up.”
The woman lowered her voice and leaned toward Overby. “If you’re really hurting, I can give you a number.”
Overby scowled at her. “I look like a doper?”
“Who mentioned dope? But come to think of it you do look like every narc I ever saw.”
Overby made his scowl go away. “I buy home videos.”
They played two more hands before the woman asked, “Home videos of what?”
“Of people doing things they shouldn’t.”
“You mean sex stuff?”
Overby glared at her again. “What’s with you, lady? First I’m a doper. Then I’m a narc. And now you’ve got me in the porn business.”
She leaned closer to him and whispered, “What about a video of a couple trying to drown their four-month-old baby?”
Overby’s glare changed into a speculative gaze. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” the woman said and gathered up her chips.
She said her name was Cheyne Grace. She spelled Cheyne and told Overby it was pronounced like Shane, the old movie, or Shayne, the old detective.
“What old detective?” Overby asked.
Voodoo, Ltd. —122
“Michael Shayne, private eye. What’s his name, Lloyd Nolan, used to play him in pictures.”
Overby stirred his coffee for almost fifteen seconds, looked over his left shoulder and said, “Tell me about the baby-drowning video.”
“This guy I know says he knows somebody who saw it.”
“Maybe I oughta talk to him—this guy you know.”
“I’m sort of his agent.”
“Sort of?”
“Okay, I’m his agent. You wanta talk to him, you talk to me first.”
Overby nodded, looked over his shoulder again, leaned toward the woman, lowered his voice and said, “Okay. Here’s how it works. I represent a guy I’ll call Mr. Z—okay? Mr. Z is outta London—in England—and he’s putting together a TV show for worldwide syndication. It won’t need any actors and hardly any voice-over because everything’ll explain itself. That’s because it’ll all be home videos of real shock stuff.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Like the one Mr. Z paid a hundred thousand pounds for.”
“What’s that in American?”
“About a hundred and eighty thou.” He looked over his shoulder again and dropped his voice into a confidential murmur. The woman leaned toward him. “There was this murder that happened in London two years ago,” Overby said. “A guy comes home from a business trip to the States and finds his wife and mother-in-law with their heads chopped off.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “You got all that on tape?”
Overby sighed, looked over his shoulder again and said, “Of course we haven’t got it on tape. What we’ve got is a home-video tape of the killer confessing and then turning on the gas and sticking his head in the oven. We left his confession pretty much the way it is but edited the oven scene down to six or seven seconds—just long enough to make impact.”
“Who was it?” she asked.
“Who was what?”
“The killer?”
“Yeah, well, it was the husband. He was in Washington, D.C. Bought or stole himself an American passport, flew the Concorde both ways, chopped their heads off with an ax and got back to Washington before anybody knew he was gone. Then he flew economy-class back to London thirty-six hours later, discovered the bodies and called the cops. Perfect crime, perfect alibi.”
“Why’d he kill ‘em?” Cheyne Grace asked.
Overby decided to go with the standard motive. “Money, what else?
His mother-in-law was kind of rich and his wife was her only heir. So Voodoo, Ltd. —123
he kills the mother-in-law first, makes his wife fix them both something to eat, then kills her an hour later. The autopsy proves the mother-in-law died first and that means her daughter inherits everything. So the husband inherits it all from his dead wife. The mother-in-law left a real nice little place down in Torquay near the water and that’s where the husband taped his confession and then stuck his head in the oven.”
“How much did he inherit?” Cheyne Grace asked.
“It was about four hundred thousand pounds,” Overby said after deciding to make it less than a million.
“Who’d you buy the confession tape from?”
Overby smiled for what he thought must be the first time in three hours. “That’s confidential.”
She nodded her understanding, then said, “That drowning-the-baby thing. I just made that up.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, but this guy I know does know lots of weird people, know what I mean?”
Overby only nodded.
“So how do we contact you—in case he’s got something?”
Overby recited the 456 number of the William Rice house. “Four-five-six,” Cheyne Grace said, impressed. “That’s Malibu.”
“It’s Mr. Z’s place,” Overby said. “But don’t ask for him, ask for Mr.
X.”
“That’s you, isn’t it—Mr. X?”
Before Overby could reply a big hand landed on his left shoulder. He jumped, then looked up and around at a man who was well over six feet tall and wore a tightly belted tan bush jacket, dark aviator glasses, a pigskin hat with its brim turned down and a beard that had been growing for at least three days.
The man spoke in a low rumble that was half-accusation, half-threat.
“You said you’d be alone, man.”
“I am,” Overby said.
“Then who the fuck’s that?”
Overby looked at Cheyne Grace and shrugged an apology. “You mind?”
“No,” she said, rising quickly. “Not at all.”
When she was gone, the man sat down at Overby’s left and said,
“She’s still watching us.”
“Good.”
“How’d I do?”
“You were perfect.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —124
“I tried to put a lot of menace into that second line: ‘Then who the fuck’s that?’ I started to say, ‘Then who the fuck’s she?’ but that sounded too stilted, don’t you think?”
“It was exactly right,” Overby said, reaching into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. “She still watching us?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going to give you an unsealed brown envelope. Inside is three hundred in twenties. I want you to count it, but inside the envelope. Take your time. Then I want you to give me a nod.”
“Just a nod?” the man said. “No line?”
“No line.”
“I think I can put a lot into that nod.”
“I know you can,” Overby said and handed him the brown envelope.
At 1 P.M. Overby treated himself to a pre-lunch martini at a Manhattan Beach bar and grill he had once frequented when financial reverses in 1985 had forced him to become “House-sitte
r to the Stars.” The fortyish bartender-owner slid the drink over and said, “I got a little something that might interest you, Otherguy.”
“Yeah, what?”
With his elbows now on the bar, the owner looked left, right, then at Overby. “Some London TV biggie’s in the market for videotapes—
homemade stuff. I hear he’s offering fat money.”
“You mean homemade porn?” Overby said, looking at his watch. It was 1:05 P.M. And exactly two and a half hours since he’d left the poker club in Gardena.
“More like true confession stuff is what I hear,” the owner-bartender said. “Stuff like, ‘I killed the wife, the kids and the dog and now I’d like to show you where I buried them.’ “
“I’d watch that,” Overby said.
“All you really need is a camcorder and a script.”
“And maybe an actor,” Overby said.
“You want the phone number?”
Overby nodded.
The owner wrote it down on a beer coaster and slid it to Overby. He glanced at it and saw it was the 456 number at the Rice house in Malibu.
“Ask for Mr. X,” the owner-bartender said. “And don’t forget I’m still paying dues to SAG.”
Overby tucked the coaster away in a jacket pocket and said, “You done anything lately?”
“Got a commercial coming up next week.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —125
“I may be in touch,” Overby said, finished his martini, placed a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and left.
Voodoo, Ltd. —126
Twenty-six
At 11 A.M. that day, Georgia Blue had called Jack Broach to suggest they have lunch. He quickly agreed and recommended a currently popular Alsatian restaurant on Sunset in Beverly Hills. After they agreed to meet at 1 P.M., Broach called a prospective client and cancelled their lunch date. This caused the prospective client, a moody actor, to accuse Broach of fickleness. Since the actor’s career was going nowhere, Broach cheerfully pled guilty to the charge and hung up.
Arriving at the Alsatian restaurant fifteen minutes late, Georgia Blue gained an immediate audience as she followed the maitre d’ to Broach’s table. Most men looked at her face, most women at her clothes. Then all of them, or nearly all, noticed the white streak of hair and the long sure stride and her obvious indifference to their curiosity.
They were still watching when she reached Broach’s table. By then Broach had decided that the stares and speculation were worth more than all the commissions he might have earned from the moody actor, who hadn’t worked in eight months anyway.
Georgia Blue didn’t apologize for being late. After she was seated, Broach asked if she would like a drink. She asked for a glass of the house red, if there was such a thing. When the drinks came, she glanced at the menu and ordered the special cassoulet, which Broach guessed was at least three thousand calories. He ordered soup and salad.
After the waiter left, she sipped her wine, smiled at Broach and said,
“Did that nice Mr. Davidson at Security Pacific call you?”
Broach nodded.
“I hoped he would.”
Suspecting he was supposed to ask why, Broach decided not to ask and see whether silence would provoke elaboration. It didn’t. Instead, Georgia Blue sipped more wine, glanced around the room and said,
“Some of them look familiar. Should they?”
“A few of them.”
“I haven’t seen a movie in five years. Did I miss much?”
“It depends on what you like.”
“Ironic ones with lots of talk.”
“You haven’t missed anything.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —127
“What do you like about your business, Mr. Broach?”
“The money. The deals. And now and then the people and the product.”
“I take it you’re still Ione Gamble’s best friend?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Then you should know I’m to be her go-between.”
“You’ll go between what or whom?”
“Between her and whoever’s going to blackmail her.”
Broach leaned back in his chair and studied Georgia Blue. Finally, he said, “If there were any blackmail attempt, I’m sure she would’ve talked to me about it.”
“She doesn’t know about it yet.”
“Who do you think or suspect is going to blackmail her?”
“Hughes and Pauline Goodison.”
“And what exactly would you do as Ione’s go-between?”
“Buy back stuff that could ruin her reputation and destroy her career.”
“Then you have my blessing.”
“Good. Now we can talk about money.”
“The money to pay the blackmailers.”
“Yes. That money.”
“If the Goodisons are the blackmailers, you’re talking to the wrong guy. You should be talking to Enno Glimm.”
“Because he’s guaranteed to indemnify her against any damage or loss the Goodisons might cause?”
“That’s what the contract says.”
“But we only suspect the Goodisons are the blackmailers,” Georgia Blue said. “What if they’re not? What if they’re perfectly innocent?”
“Then why did they disappear?”
She shrugged. “Maybe something or somebody made them disappear. Until you prove the Goodisons are the blackmailers, I don’t think Mr. Glimm will pay anything.”
“Which means Ione will have to come up with the money.”
Georgia Blue nodded.
Jack Broach tasted his drink for the first time, then set it aside as if he had no intention of picking it up again. “How much money are you talking about?”
Staring at his left eye, Georgia Blue said, “I’d guess a million.”
“That’s why you paid my bank a visit, right?”
She then began an examination of his right eye and said, “We need to know if there’s enough to make the payoff.”
“And is there?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —128
“Mr. Davidson was very circumspect.”
“Do you think there’s enough?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She ended her eye examination, drank the rest of her wine, smiled at him and said, “The Daumiers. In your office. I mean the fake Daumiers. The moment I spotted them I wondered why a guy like Jack Broach would hang fake Daumiers on the wall. My answer: he had to sell the real ones because of hard times in Hollywood.” She rested her elbows on the table, leaned toward him a few confidential inches, smiled again and said, “You are broke, aren’t you, Jack?”
“Am I?”
She straightened, shrugged and looked over his right shoulder at something that might have been halfway across the room. “I could sniff around some more. But to save time I could also have Howard Mott tell Ione Gamble that he needs a financial statement of her assets, liabilities and cash on hand.”
There was a long silence before Jack Broach said, “Why the warning?”
She stared at him with complete indifference. “Self-interest.”
“Go on.”
“Let’s try a worst-case scenario,” she said. “Suppose the blackmailer—singular or plural—demands a million. Ione Gamble agrees to pay and turns to you for the money—or, more precisely, for the money she’s entrusted to you. What then?”
“It’s your scenario.”
“You tell her you’ll have to sell or hock everything to come up with a million. She says fine, do it. Could you raise a million, Jack—in cash?”
Broach said nothing.
“Well, could you raise—say, three hundred thousand? I think you could. So what you do is raise the three hundred thousand and tell Ms. Gamble the million’s ready for the go-between. You then hand me the three hundred thousand and I eventually hand you or Ione Gamble the incriminating material along with a guarantee that the blackmailer or blackmailers won’t ever bother her again.”
“What i
f they ask for less—say a half a million?”
“The price is still three hundred thousand. I don’t haggle.”
“What good is your guarantee?” he said. “I’m no criminal defense lawyer, but the best of them tell me blackmailers never know when to quit.”
“They do when they’re dead,” said Georgia Blue.
Voodoo, Ltd. —129
Twenty-seven
The two-room, $350-a-day suite Howard Mott had rented was on the fifth floor of a ten-story hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The suite’s living room, now turned into an office, afforded a view of the ocean and the long, long narrow strip of green grass lined with tall palms that was called Palisades Park.
Often encamped beneath the palms was an assortment of throwaway people, whose current euphemism was “the homeless.”
These consisted in part of the deranged, the jobless, the muddled, the addicted, the dispossessed, the senile—plus a variety of other mendicants who ranged from journeyman panhandlers to novice bums.
Santa Monica, a notoriously softhearted town, had at first pitied and tolerated its homeless, even supplying them with shelter and hot meals. But the city was wearying of its burden and now hoped, maybe even prayed, that its permanent underclass would migrate elsewhere, ideally to some spot far, far away such as Wyoming or Alaska or even Palm Springs.
As Wu and Durant turned the corner of Broadway and Ocean Avenue, heading for Mott’s hotel, they were set upon by a band of alms seekers. After he and Durant ran out of money, Wu ducked into a bank and returned with fifty dollars in one-dollar bills. He gave roughly half of them to Durant and by the time they reached Mott’s hotel six blocks later, Wu had three ones left; Durant had none.
Howard Mott guided Wu and Durant past his two secretaries, who were busy at their word processors, and into the bedroom, where Booth Stallings sat, drinking coffee, on the edge of the remaining twin bed.
“Want some?” Stallings asked, indicating his cup.
Before Wu or Durant could answer, Mott said, “I think they’d prefer a beer, right?”
Durant said, “If it’s no problem.”
“It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” Mott said. “Maybe three.” He left the bedroom, carefully closing the door behind him.
