Voodoo Ltd qd-3

by Ross Thomas

  “What he did,” she said, ignoring Durant and speaking directly to Wu, “was sign the check, add a twenty percent tip, smile and say,

  ‘We’ll have to do this again very soon.’ ”

  “When did the lunch begin and when did it end?” Wu asked.

  “It didn’t begin until one-fifteen because I was late and it ended at two.”

  “Where’d you go then?” Durant said.

  “Shopping. I bought some things at Saks and some jeans and a sweatshirt at the Gap. I also stopped at a store in Santa Monica and bought a pair of blue Keds. Then I drove home, arriving here around four forty-five or four-fifty. Otherguy was already here.”

  “Did you tell him about Jack Broach?” Durant asked.

  “Not a word,” Overby said.

  Stallings was still frowning at Georgia Blue when he said, “If I got it right, you offered to kill the blackmailers, singular or plural; retrieve the stuff they were blackmailing Gamble with, and provide both of these services for a flat fee of three hundred thousand dollars, right?”

  “Wrong,” she said.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —156

  “Let me, Georgia,” Artie Wu said. “What she did, Booth, was exactly what I asked her to do: check Jack Broach out all the way. What she discovered is that he and his agency are in rotten financial shape. Just how rotten we can judge from his reaction, or lack of reaction, to Georgia’s intriguing suggestion. He didn’t reject it out of hand. He expressed no indignation. He didn’t even remind her that, as a lawyer, he’s an officer of the court—nor did he threaten her with the cops. To me, his silence speaks or even shouts of interest—although an understandably wary interest because he may’ve suspected a setup or entrapment or even that Georgia was wearing a wire.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Artie,” Overby said. “You or Quincy told me Broach handles all of Gamble’s money, right? I mean he’s her agent, business manager and personal attorney. He looks after her investments, pays her bills—credit cards, charge accounts, insurance premiums, mortgage payments, utilities—everything—and maybe even keeps her personal checking account topped up at around five or ten thousand dollars. In fact, she doesn’t have to even think about money.

  I mean ordinary money. All the money she has to worry about is if they’re going to pay her two, three or five million to act in their next picture. Right?”

  Wu nodded.

  “Let’s suppose Broach has made some bad investments for her and maybe even for himself. Say he shorted some stocks and now has to cover his shorts. Or maybe he’s even dipped into Gamble’s assets to get himself out of some other kind of bind. But he wasn’t worried about it because his number one client was about to star in and direct a megabucks picture and marry its billionaire producer and never worry about money again—not that she’s had to worry about it lately.

  Then all of a sudden Billy Rice is killed and Gamble is arrested and Jack Broach finds himself scrambling to raise money for bail and lawyers and hypnotists. And to top it off, here comes some blackmailer demanding a million or so. The only one not pressing him for money yet is Gamble herself. So when Georgia comes up with her goddamned elegant no-risk plan that offers him a chance to write off seven hundred thousand of what he borrowed from Gamble—okay, stole—

  he doesn’t say yes, he doesn’t say maybe, but he sure as hell doesn’t say no.”

  Booth Stallings, wearing a frown, stared at Georgia Blue and said,

  “I’m really curious about Broach’s reaction to your offer. How’d he take it? Like it was merely another offer from some reputable member of the nation’s burgeoning service economy?”

  Artie Wu smiled and said, “What did you say to him, Georgia? You must’ve rehearsed it.”

  “He said he was no criminal defense lawyer, but the best of them had told him that blackmailers never quit. All I said was, ‘They do when they’re dead.’ And that’s when our lunch came to its sudden end.”

  Voodoo, Ltd. —157

  “Perfect,” Wu said. “Absolutely perfect.” He looked at his watch.

  “Booth and I can discuss ethical nuances in the morning. But it’s getting late and Quincy and I still must meet with Enno Glimm and Ms. Arliss. Then at eight tomorrow morning Oil Drum, our putative blackmailer, is due to call. Perhaps we should gather at, say, seven for breakfast.” He looked at Stallings. “What may we expect in the way of breakfast, Booth?”

  “Coffee, juice and Egg McMuffins.”

  “Excellent,” said Wu as he rose.

  “Before we go,” Durant said, “I have two questions for Georgia.”

  She hesitated, then shrugged, and Durant said, “What made you suspect Jack Broach was broke or nearly so?”

  “I spotted three fake Daumiers hanging in his office.”

  Durant nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good answer. My other question is: why tell us about the offer you made him? If you hadn’t, you might’ve walked away with three hundred thousand tax free.”

  “No matter what I say, Quincy, you won’t believe it.”

  “That’s also a very good answer,” Durant said.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —158

  Thirty-three

  They decided to walk the three quarters of a mile or so from the Rice house to their meeting with Enno Glimm at the Malibu Beach Inn.

  They walked because Wu claimed it would burn off most of the Chinese dinner’s calories. He then confided that after the meeting with Glimm he planned to replenish the burned-off calories with two Big Macs, a small chocolate milkshake and possibly an order of French fries.

  Durant was only half listening to Wu’s thoughts on diet when he noticed the black sedan parked one hundred feet or so up from the Rice house. He noticed it not because of its make, model or color, but because long ago he had decided you should give long odds that four grown men sitting in a parked car at night are intent on either arrest, robbery or mayhem.

  The sedan’s four doors flew open when Wu and Durant got within ten feet of the car’s left front fender. Four white males all dressed in black stepped out. None was more than 30 and all wore matching black pants, running shoes and sweatshirts. Even their baseball caps were black.

  When Wu and Durant reached the car, the two who had emerged curbside took up posts to Durant’s left. The second pair had popped out of the car on the street side and hurried around its front, heading for Wu. When they drew near, Artie Wu smiled and said, “Buenas tardes, señores,” which caused the closer man to hesitate just long enough for Wu to kick him in the testicles. The man hissed and bent over, clutching himself.

  Durant, his eyes on the other pair, turned parallel to a knife thrust, grabbed the knife hand by the wrist, found the key nerve with a thumb and squeezed. The man yelled, dropped the knife and sank to his knees. Durant released the wrist, kicked the man in the head, scooped up the switchblade and threw it at the second man, who was trying to tug something from his right hip pocket.

  The hilt of the switchblade struck the man in the chest, then fell to the concrete with a clatter. The man looked down, as if to make sure the knife blade really wasn’t embedded in his heart. Before he could look up, Durant slammed his cupped palms against the man’s ears.

  Openmouthed now and screaming silently, the man dropped to his knees, curled up on the sidewalk and began to whimper softly, hands to his ears.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —159

  Durant spun around to find the first of Wu’s would-be assailants still cradling his testicles and crooning to himself. The other one was struggling to breathe because of the massive forearm that had been clamped around his neck from behind.

  “If you talk, you breathe,” Wu said, loosening the hold slightly.

  The man gasped three times first, then said some guy’d hired them for $500 each to wait outside the beach house in the car for a real tan tall guy and a big fat Chinaman to come out.

  Wu increased the pressure on the man’s throat, asked, “Then what?”—and relaxed the hold.

  The
man sucked in more air and used it to say, “If you drove off in a car, we were gonna follow and force you over and, you know, maybe mess you up a little.”

  “A little or a lot?”

  “Maybe a little more’n a little.”

  “Who was he—the guy who hired you?”

  The man said he didn’t know, honest to God he didn’t. Wu increased the pressure, eased it and asked, “How’d he pay you?”

  “He said the money’d be in the glove compartment of the car and the car’d be in the parking lot of a Carl’s Junior—the one at La Brea and Santa Monica where all the kiddy fags hang out.”

  “How’d he tell you?”

  “On the phone, how else? He said the car was hot and we could keep it, lose it, whatever.”

  “When did he call you?”

  “Real late this afternoon—around six.”

  “How long were you going to wait outside the beach house?”

  “Till two A.M. Then we could split and try again tomorrow night for another five hundred each in another hot car the guy said he’d find us.”

  Wu removed his forearm, pointed the man at the black Caprice and said, “Take off. All of you. But when he calls again, tell him the Chinaman knows who he is.”

  “So who is he?” Durant asked as they watched the black sedan pull slowly away from the curb.

  “The same guy who killed the Goodisons this afternoon and tried to run over Booth and me,” Wu said, turned and resumed walking toward the Malibu Beach Inn.

  “You didn’t see the driver this afternoon,” Durant said as he fell into step.

  “No, but it was the same car—same make, model, color, everything

  —and I made the logical conclusion.”

  Voodoo, Ltd. —160

  “More of a logical leap,” Durant said. “How many black Chevrolet Caprices do you think GM turned out last year?”

  “More than they sold probably.”

  “Which is still plenty because it’s very anonymous, very comfortable and much favored by cops, cabbies and old folks who like a mushy ride. Too bad you didn’t get the license number in Oxnard.”

  “Why too bad?”

  “Then we could be sure it was the same car.”

  “What good would that do, if it’s a stolen car?”

  “It would at least prove your powers of observation.”

  “I see no need to prove anything,” Wu said and increased his pace.

  The only noticeable change in Enno Glimm was the garish green and red Hawaiian shirt he wore, tails out, over pants that seemed to belong to a blue pinstripe suit. Glimm sat in an easy chair in the sitting room of his two rooms on the inn’s third floor. To his left on a couch was Jenny Arliss, wearing white duck pants and a navy-blue Tshirt. Wu and Durant, after a perfunctory greeting from Glimm, chose a pair of matching armchairs.

  Once they were seated, Glimm said, “This place hasn’t got a restaurant.”

  “You can send out for a pizza,” Durant said.

  Glimm ignored the suggestion. “Okay. Let’s hear it. What’ve you done right so far?”

  “So far,” Wu said, “we’ve discovered the murdered bodies of Hughes and Pauline Goodison—thus completing the task you set for us, which essentially was, ‘Find the Goodisons.’ “

  Jenny Arliss murmured, “My God.”

  All Glimm did was rise, move to the window and pull a drawn curtain back just far enough to peer out at the miles-away lights of Santa Monica. While staring at them, he said, “They claim there’s a hell of a daytime view from here. Too bad I won’t get to see it.” He let the curtain go, turned to Arliss and said, “Get us on the next flight to New York.”

  “I think we should hear the rest first,” she said.

  “Make the fucking reservations,” Glimm said, went back to his chair, sat down, aimed his pale gray gaze at Wu, then at Durant, and said, “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  It took them thirty-six minutes to tell it. During the first seven minutes, Jenny Arliss spoke quietly into the room’s telephone, then interrupted Wu to tell Glimm she had made first-class reservations for them on a 1 A.M. flight that would get them into Kennedy at 9:30 A.M.

  with a 12 noon connection to Heathrow. Glimm only nodded and told Wu to keep talking.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —161

  By then, Wu was describing his hypnosis of Ione Gamble. Glimm listened silently to everything, asking no questions, not even when Durant described their discovery of the murdered limousine driver, Carlos Santillan. Or the possible bankruptcy of Jack Broach & Co. Or even the failed four-man attack on him and Durant not ten minutes before they arrived at Glimm’s suite. During all but the first seven minutes of the joint recitation, Jenny Arliss made rapid shorthand notes in a spiral notebook. Durant assumed it was a verbatim account.

  After Wu and Durant finished, there was a long silence until Enno Glimm asked, “How much?”

  “How much what?” Durant asked.

  “How much’ll the blackmailer ask for those tapes the Goodisons made and he stole?”

  “Probably a million,” Durant said. “That’s almost the standard asking price. People can comprehend it. Divide it easily. And it’s still just enough to make them believe it’ll solve all their problems—even though it’s no more than three hundred thousand was in seventy-three.”

  Glimm snorted something in German that sounded derisive, then went back to English. “You say Gamble didn’t kill what’s his name, Billy Rice?”

  “We don’t believe she did,” Durant said.

  “But the Goodisons’ tapes say she did.”

  “We think they’ve been doctored.”

  “You think?”

  “Suspect,” Durant said.

  “Well, Christ, if they were doctored, can’t you and Howie Mott prove it?”

  “Not until we get our hands on them,” Wu said. “And if Ione Gamble doesn’t buy them, the blackmailer will probably sell them to the news media that dote on sleaze. If the tapes are printed or broadcast before her trial—the blackmailer claims to have her on both audio- and videotapes—the publicity could affect the trial’s outcome, regardless of the tapes’ accuracy or their inadmissibility as evidence.”

  “She willing to pay the miiiion?” Giimm asked.

  “Providing she can raise it,” Durant said.

  Glimm looked at his right hand, nodded more to himself than to the others, then asked, now looking at his left hand, “But you say this guy, Jack Broach, might’ve lost all her money and his, too, right?”

  “We think so,” Durant said.

  Glimm stopped looking at his hands, rose, went back to the window and again peered out at the lights of Santa Monica. He stared at them for nearly a minute before he turned, looked first at Wu, then at Durant and asked, “You two wanta make some more money?”

  Voodoo, Ltd. —162

  “How much more?” Durant asked.

  “Another five hundred thousand U.S.”

  “We’re interested,” Wu said.

  “Okay. You’ll get the extra five hundred thousand, on top of what we’ve already agreed to, if you do two things. One: you keep me out of it. I’m not just talking no stain now. I mean no connection whatever.

  And two: get Ione Gamble off the hook. Prove she didn’t kill what’s his name, Rice.” He then looked at Jenny Arliss and said, “Tear up all your notes and burn ‘em.”

  Arliss nodded, closed her notebook, put away her ballpoint pen, looked at Durant and said, “I think we should hear a bit more about your Georgia Blue. From what you’ve said, she seems to be your weak link.”

  “She’s my responsibility,” Durant said.

  Artie Wu smiled slightly and nodded several times, the way he almost always did when shocked or surprised. No one seemed to notice except Durant.

  “The way you guys told it,” Glimm said, “your Ms. Blue could gum up the works.”

  “She’s the best there is,” Durant said. “And that makes the risk worthwhile.”

  “You’re
saying she’s the best woman?” Jenny Arliss asked.

  “She’s the best anybody,” Durant said.

  “How long’ve you known her?”

  “Seventeen or eighteen years.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Thirty-six or -seven.”

  Arliss’s left eyebrow rose. “A teenage girlfriend?”

  Artie Wu slipped into the conversation before Durant could answer.

  “I agree with Quincy that Georgia’s the best there is. I must also stress that it was my decision that she join us. And that makes me equally responsible for her actions.”

  “Except neither of you trust her around the corner, do you?” Glimm said and chuckled. He had nearly chuckled during his first visit to Wudu, Ltd., in London, and Durant had then wondered how it would sound and suspected it would be a dry scratchy noise—like something small and vicious trying to claw and bite its way out of a cardboard box. He now discovered he was right.

  The chuckle over, Glimm said, “Don’t worry. I’ve hired guys just because they’re the best—even though I wasn’t sure I could trust ‘em.

  It’s probably why I hired you two.”

  “How kind,” Artie Wu said.

  “We got a deal?” Glimm said as if he already knew the answer.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —163

  Durant nodded first. A moment later, so did Wu.

  Looking almost satisfied, Glimm turned to Arliss and said, “Call down to the desk and tell ‘em we’re checking out and to get us a limo.”

  He turned back to Wu and Durant to study them carefully for almost thirty seconds before he rose, gave them a farewell nod and their final orders: “Do it right.” Enno Glimm then disappeared into the adjoining bedroom.

  Durant rose and went over to Jenny Arliss just as she put down the phone. He held out his hand and said, “I’ll take the steno book.”

  She handed it to him, then asked, “You don’t really trust anyone, do you?”

  “Not often.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Voodoo, Ltd. —164