by Ross Thomas
“Who is he?” Goodison demanded, his voice almost cracking on the
“he.”
“Who said anything about a he?” Ione Gamble said and hung up.
When Durant returned to the kitchen, she was again seated at the table, head bowed, hands folded in front of her, the bowl of soup shoved to her right.
“You were fine,” Durant said as he sat down, picked up the spoon and tasted his soup again. “In fact, you were perfect.”
She looked up. “Really?”
“Absolutely perfect.”
She looked around the kitchen curiously, as if seeing it for the last time. “I’ll have to sell it.”
“What?”
“The house.”
“Why?”
“You heard him. If I don’t buy, they’ll sell to Mr. X or Y or Z—
whoever. To the sleazoids. And I can’t raise a million cash unless I sell the house.”
Durant had two more spoonfuls of soup, nodded appreciatively, then said, “The Goodisons won’t sell to anybody else and you’ll never pay them a dime.”
Ione Gamble, dry-eyed and skeptical, stared at Durant for moments before she pulled her soup bowl back and began eating hungrily.
Voodoo, Ltd. —139
Moments later she looked up at him, frowned, then grinned and said,
“Why the fuck do I believe you?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —140
Twenty-nine
Artie Wu remembered the Oxnard of nearly thirteen years ago as a small, agriculturally dependent city with a predominandy Mexican flavor and a Japanese mayor. But after he and Booth Stallings paid gruff calls on four of the city’s twenty-four motels, Wu read a tourist leaflet and discovered Oxnard had transformed itself into a diversified business center that boasted industrial parks, a new museum of muscle cars from the fifties and sixties and an almost new passenger train depot, which Booth Stallings claimed was the only passenger train depot built in the United States since 1940.
It was around 4 P.M. When they reached the ninth motel. Wu was wearing a blue blazer, khaki pants, a white shirt open halfway down his bare chest and, on his feet, plain-toed black oxfords with white socks. Stallings had suggested a cheap gold chain to go with the open shirt but Wu said he didn’t want to soften his image. Stallings himself wore a gray suit, white shirt and a dark gray tie with maroon polka dots.
After they got out of the rented Mercedes at the ninth motel, Stallings said, “I’m damn near out of business cards.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Wu said and led the way into the motel office.
Redundantly named “The La Paz Inn,” the motel was independently owned, fairly new, and offered a small coffee shop, an equally small swimming pool and, Wu guessed, about three dozen units. Behind the reception counter was a stocky man in his late fifties with thin silky gray hair, bifocals and the suspicious pursed mouth that many motel owner-operators seem to acquire after only a year or so in the business. The man stared at Wu for a moment, dismissed him as a potential lodger and turned to Stallings, who was now leaning on the counter.
“Help you?” said the man in a twangy voice that dared Stallings to sell him something.
“Hope so,” Stallings said and handed over one of the last business cards that claimed he was Jerome K. Walters, executive vice-president of the Independent Limousine Operators Association.
The man read the card, handed it back and said, “Don’t get much call here for limos.”
Stallings straightened, glanced around the room, nodded understandingly and said, “Didn’t think you would. But that’s not why Voodoo, Ltd. —141
we’re here.” He looked around the room again, then leaned toward the gray-haired man and used a soft conspiratorial tone to say, “We’re here on an in-ves-ti-ga-tion.” Stallings pronounced each syllable of investigation lovingly, as if he liked the word’s sound.
The man behind the counter frowned. “Investigation of what?”
“One of our owner-operator members, a fine young man of Mexican descent, drives a couple up here from L.A. Just before the couple checks into a motel—not yours—they give our member twenty dollars to go buy ‘em a bottle of drinking whisky.”
“So?”
“So our fine young man, glad to be of service, heads for the nearest liquor store. But when he comes back with the booze, the couple’s skedaddled. Never checked in. And that leaves our fine young man stuck with a two-hundred-and-thirty-five-dollar tab he’d run up driving them all over L.A. And then on up here.”
“That’s one pitiful story,” the man said.
“The thing is, Mr.—?”
“Deason.”
“The thing is, Mr. Deason, my organization’s bound and determined to put a stop to this sort of thing. We want to prosecute those two thieves—and that’s what they are, thieves—to the full extent of the law. But cops don’t get too excited about some Mexican limo driver who’s been stiffed for a couple of hundred bucks. So we in the ILOA are offering a five-hundred-dollar cash reward for any information leading not to the arrest and conviction of this thieving pair, but just to their present whereabouts.”
“They got names?” Deason asked.
“Yes, sir, they do. Their real names are Hughes and Pauline Goodison.”
Deason looked down at the counter, then up at Stallings, shook his head regretfully and said, “Never registered ‘em.”
“In their late twenties or early thirties?” Stallings said. “Both blond and look a lot alike on account of they’re brother and sister but claim they’re man and wife? Talk with a real strong English accent?”
Something changed in Deason’s face. His eyelids drooped and his pursed mouth formed a crafty smile just before he said, “British accents, you say?”
“English. British.”
“Both kinda tall and skinny and blond?”
“Exactly.”
“What’ll you do with ‘em?”
“Me and my associate here, Mr. Chang, will pay ‘em a call. We’ll ask for a full refund of the fare they stole. Then we’ll make sure they settle their bill with the innkeeper. You. Then we’ll put ‘em in that Voodoo, Ltd. —142
black Mercedes out there and give ‘em a fast ride to the police station.” Stallings paused. “In other words, Mr. Deason, we’ll make a citizen’s arrest.”
“What about the five-hundred-dollar reward?”
“It’ll be paid on the spot. Cash. No receipt required.”
Behind closed lips, Deason ran his tongue back and forth across the front of his lower teeth. Artie Wu decided it was part of a decision-making process.
“Room four-twenty-four,” Deason said. “Been here since last Friday.
Registered as Mr. And Mrs. Reginald Carter of Manchester, England.
Don’t know what they came in, but they didn’t have a car and I never like the look of that. Had one big suitcase and two small carryalls.
Nothing else. But listen, I don’t want no damage. They paid me three days cash in advance and I just want the rest of what they owe me and the reward you promised. Once you ride off with ‘em, you do what you please.”
“I wish everyone was as public-spirited, Mr. Deason,” Stallings said and turned to Wu. “Pay the man, Mr. Chang.”
Wu scowled. “I think we oughta wait and see if they’re really in four-twenty-four. I think he oughta give us a key. I think we oughta surprise ‘em. And if they’re the ones, then I think we oughta give him his five hundred.”
Stallings nodded in judicious agreement. “Mr. Chang here has had himself a whole lot of experience in stuff like this. So maybe you oughta give him the key to four-twenty-four like he says.”
Deason made no reply. Instead, he ran his tongue over the front of his lower teeth again, half turned, took a key from a slot, placed it on the countertop, stepped back quickly and said, “I don’t want nothing busted up, understand?”
Wu picked up the key, examined it suspiciously, examined Deason the same way, scowled again and
said, “You mean you don’t want none of the furniture busted up, right?”
“Especially the TV set,” Deason said.
“Don’t worry,” said Artie Wu, aimed a nod at the door and told Stallings, “Let’s go get this crap over with.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —143
Thirty
Artie Wu would later say that the car was a black Chevrolet Caprice sedan. Booth Stallings would later say that although he could identify any American car manufactured between 1932 and 1942, he could no longer tell one postwar car from another. But he agreed with Wu that the black car had been a sedan and that the low-in-the-sky, 4:12 P.M.
February sun had splashed a blinding reflection across the car’s windshield, making it impossible to identify the driver who tried to run them down.
The car had backed out of a space at the bottom of the motel’s U-shaped layout as Wu and Stallings walked toward unit number 424.
They paid little attention to the car until it picked up speed and veered toward them at 30 miles per hour, according to Wu, and 50 miles per hour, according to Stallings.
They went to their left, but so did the black Caprice, and it was Stallings who first leaped between two parked cars, tripped, fell and landed mostly on his hands and knees. After Wu’s great leap to the left, he stumbled over Stallings, fell, but bounced up and hurried out from between the parked cars to catch a brief glimpse of the black Caprice as it turned right and disappeared down the street.
Wu hurried back to Stallings and helped him to his feet. “Break anything?” Wu asked.
“Bruised some ego. You get the license?”
“No.”
“Think it was them—the Goodisons?”
Wu shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
As they continued toward the bottom of the motel’s U, Stallings wrapped a handkerchief around his left hand, which he had skinned on the asphalt. When they reached 424, neither was surprised to find that the black sedan had backed out of the space directly in front of the unit.
Although Wu had the room’s key in his hand, he said, “Let’s knock first.”
“What for?”
“Never hurts to be polite.”
Stallings knocked on unit 424’s lime-green door with his undamaged right hand. When there was no response, he stepped back to let Wu Voodoo, Ltd. —144
open the door with the key. Wu went in first. Stallings followed, closed the door behind him and sniffed the room’s air.
“Smell it?”
Wu only nodded.
“Exploded cordite,” Stallings said. “That means somebody pulled a gun and shot at somebody. And if somebody got hit and killed, the next thing we’ll smell is loosened bowels. Ever since the war, whenever I smell cordite, the next thing I expect to smell is shit. And somehow I know if I go through that bathroom door over there, I’ll smell ‘em both, cordite and shit, together again.”
“Then stay here while I look,” Wu said.
“Death, cordite and shit don’t bother you, Artie?”
“Not as much as your babbling.”
“My mouth runs when I’m nervous. Not scared. Just nervous. When I’m scared, I clam up.”
“Stay here,” Wu said, crossed the room, opened the bathroom door, looked inside, turned and said, “You’d better come look.”
Stallings saw the woman first. She was huddled in the southwest corner of the shower stall, her knees drawn up to her chest. She wore a white blouse, black jeans and tan sandals on bare feet. There was a small neat hole just above the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were open.
The man was scrunched up against the bathroom wall between the sink and the toilet. His hands lay in his lap. His face was turned up toward the ceiling. There was a neat hole in his left temple and his eyes were also open. So was his mouth.
“They do look alike, don’t they?” Stallings said.
“Very much.”
Stallings, who had been holding his breath, sniffed twice, then began breathing through his mouth. “God, I hate that smell.”
“Don’t leave any prints,” Wu said.
“Hadn’t planned to,” Stallings said, then asked, “Now that we’ve found them, what next?”
“Let’s see what else we can find.”
Two minutes later, Stallings discovered a crumpled-up computer-produced receipt in a wastebasket beneath four empty diet Coke cans.
He lifted the empty cans out with a handkerchief, picked up the receipt with his fingers, smoothed it out, read it and handed it to Wu.
The receipt was from an Oxnard company called The You Store. After deciphering it, Wu said the Goodisons apparently had rented a store-and-lock compartment for a month at a cost of f 106.50. They had paid cash. The number of their storage space was 3472.
“Think that’s where they stashed the tapes?” Stallings asked.
“Probably.”
“Think they’re still there?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —145
“Probably not.”
“So how do you figure it?”
“The same way you do, Booth. The shooter killed one of them, then promised not to shoot the last one left if he or she would tell where the tapes were hidden. The one still alive told all and was shot dead.”
“Then the last words of the last one left weren’t words, just numbers.”
“Maybe not,” Wu said. “Maybe the last words were ‘Please don’t’ or
‘Please don’t kill me’ or just ‘Please.’” He turned toward the motel room’s door and said, “Let’s go.”
“What about the dead folks?”
“We’ll stop by the office, pay Deason his five hundred and tell him that the Goodisons—what’d they call themselves?”
“Mr. And Mrs. Reginald Carter.”
Wu nodded. “That the Carters must have stepped out. We’ll also tell him to call us at that fake number on our business card when the Carters return.”
“The shooter killed the young limo driver, right?” Stallings said. “He made the kid tell him where he’d driven the Goodisons, then cut his throat.”
“What makes you so sure the shooter’s a he?” Wu said.
As they drove through east Oxnard toward The You Store, using directions Stallings had extracted from a sullen gas station attendant, the same thought occurred to them simultaneously.
“The driver of that black car—” Stallings began.
“Knew us,” Wu said. “One of us anyway.”
“Unless he thought we were cops.”
“We don’t look like cops. You’re too old and I’m too, well, too exotic
—especially with my shirt open halfway to my navel.”
“Undercover vice cops maybe?” said Stallings hopefully.
“Okay. We’re vice cops. You’re pretending to be the aged John and I’m pretending to be the fat Chinese pimp who’s steering you toward an afternoon of sensual delight with a couple of thirteen-year-old demi-virgins. If whoever was in the black Chevy thought that, he’d’ve driven right past us. But he didn’t and that means what?”
“That he not only knew us, but we also know him. Or one of us does.”
“Or her,” Wu said.
“I keep forgetting the ladies,” Stallings said. “Even though the size of the wounds back at the motel are small enough to suggest what a sexist would call a lady’s gun.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —146
“Probably a twenty-two- or a twenty-five-caliber revolver—which is also a favorite of the professional shooter.”
“Why not a small semiautomatic?”
“No shell casings. I looked.”
“Maybe he or she picked them up,” Stallings said. “There were only two.”
Wu sighed. “Maybe.”
Stallings glanced out the passenger window, saw the street number of a machine shop and said, “It should be two blocks up on the right.”
“Good.”
“How do we play it?”
“Just follow my lead,” Wu said.
Before t
hey got out of the Mercedes, Wu borrowed Stallings’s necktie and put it on. Stallings kept his own shirt buttoned all the way up, at Wu’s suggestion, and unzipped his fly—also at Wu’s suggestion.
The You Store office was in a small mobile home. The storage spaces themselves were metal shipping containers, almost the size of boxcars and painted in gaudy reds, blues, greens and yellows. Wu guessed the containers occupied at least two acres.
Taking Stallings by the left hand, Wu led him up three steps and into the mobile home office. A young redheaded woman stared up at them from behind a gray metal desk. Wu smiled at her reassuringly, let go of Stallings’s hand, turned to inspect him and murmured, just loudly enough for the woman to hear, “Frank, you forgot to zip.”
Stallings giggled, looked down, zipped up his pants and, when Wu turned toward the woman with an apologetic smile, zipped them down again. The woman pretended not to notice.
Still smiling at the woman, Wu said, “Good afternoon.”
She didn’t return the smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’m the Reverend Dudley Chang of the Roundhill Methodist Church and I’d like to rent storage space for one of the members of my congregation who’ll be going away to—uh— rest for a while. He’s Mr.
Jeffers here. Mr. Frank Jeffers. While he’s—away, he’d like to store his belongings.”
“Leakproof,” Stallings said. “Gotta be leakproof. Ratproof, too. Don’t wanta find rat shit all over everything when I come back.”
“Do you have space available?” Wu asked with a faint embarrassed smile.
“Depends on how much you need,” she said. “We only rent whole containers. They’re each eight by eight by forty and provide twenty-five hundred and sixty cubic feet. If you’ve got a lot of stuff, they’re fine.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —147
“I got sixty-five-fucking-years’ worth of stuff, little lady,” Stallings said.
“He can use an entire container,” Wu said. “But there’s a small problem.”
“How small?”