by Ross Thomas
“Mr. Jeffers believes in numbers.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t get it.”
“Numbers, little lady,” Stallings said. “Numbers control our lives, direct our destinies, determine our future. Use the right numbers and you’ve got it made. I’ve used numbers all my life and they never let me down yet.”
This time Wu’s smile was one of sincere apology. “We understand your containers are numbered?”
“Yeah. They are. So?”
“The number he wants is the same number of his combination lock in junior high school.”
“Three right, forty-seven left, two right,” Stallings chanted. “Three right, forty-seven left, two—”
“Please, Frank,” Wu said. Stallings fell silent, hung his head and stared at his shoes.
“The number he wants, if it’s available, is thirty-four seventy-two. I do hope you’ll be able to indulge him.”
“How long’s he want it for?” she asked.
“Till two thousand twenty-six,” Stallings said. “When I hit a hundred.”
“Six months,” Wu said.
The woman turned to her computer, tapped out some numbers, studied them briefly, turned back to Wu with a cool smile and said,
“You’re in luck. Three-four-seven-two just came vacant this afternoon.”
Wu turned to Stallings with a broad smile. “Hear that, Frank? It’s available. Old three right, forty-seven left, two right.”
Stallings gave him a sly look. “Wanta see it first. Wanta make sure everything’s all hunky-dory.”
“Zip up, Frank,” Wu said, turned back to the woman and whispered,
“How much for six months?” He put a finger to his lips. She nodded and wrote a number on a pad, then turned it around so Wu could read it. The number was $100 per month plus tax.
After glancing at Stallings, who was now engrossed in pulling his zipper up and down, Wu reached into a pocket, brought out some crumpled bills and handed the redheaded woman $700.
Wu whispered, “I’ll pick up the change later.”
She used a whisper to ask, “What’s wrong with him?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —148
Wu smiled sadly and whispered, “Just age.”
She handed over a key along with a photocopy map of the container’s location and, no longer concerned that Stallings could hear her, said, “I’ve got a granddaddy just like that.”
The color of the storage container was green and there was nothing in it. Stallings and Wu wandered around inside for a few minutes, but there was nothing to see, nothing to pry into. When they came out, Stallings said, “Well, what d’you think, Reverend?”
“Two things,” Wu said. “One, Ione Gamble’s going to be hearing fairly soon from whoever was driving that black Caprice. And two, you’d better zip up your pants.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —149
Thirty-one
Otherguy Overby, seated in the late Billy Rice’s big port-wine leather chair, picked up the console phone just before its third ring, said hello and heard an electronically distorted male voice say, “Mr. X, please.”
“Lemme get to the other phone,” Overby said and sent a look and a nod to Georgia Blue, who rose from the long living room couch and hurried into the kitchen. Overby, staring at his watch, noted that the time was exactly 5:03 P.M. When he heard her pick up the kitchen’s wall phone. It was then that Overby said, “That’s better,” into his own phone and, in turn, was treated to a bass chuckle that, sounded like tired thunder,
“Put somebody on the extension, did you?” said the man with the distorted bass voice. “Well, that’s fine. Means you’re careful.”
Overby made no response and let the silence build. While waiting, he decided the caller’s altered voice sounded as if it were coining from the bottom of a steel oil drum. The caller was in no hurry to end the silence because it went on and on until the reverberating voice finally said, “I hear you’re interested in videotapes.”
“Depends,” Overby said.
“On what?”
“On quality.”
“What’s the quality market’s top price?”
“For prime stuff,” Overby said, “up to a hundred thousand pounds—
about a hundred and seventy-five or eighty thousand U.S.”
“Listen,” the distorted voice said.
First, there was a very soft click—much like the sound a mercury light switch might make. Then a male voice with a pronounced British accent said, “Tell me your name.”
A woman’s voice that to Overby sounded either sleepy or tired said,
“Ione Gamble.”
After a too-long pause, which Overby blamed on incompetent splicing, the British-accented male voice asked, “When you learned Billy Rice wasn’t going to marry you or let you star and direct his Bad Dead Indian picture, how did that make you feel?”
There was only a slight pause this time before the woman’s voice said, “I wanted to kill him.”
“Did you?” the male voice asked.
Voodoo, Ltd. —150
“Yes,” said the woman who claimed she was Ione Gamble.
After a final soft click, the caller’s distorted voice rumbled up out of the oil drum again. “Like the quality?”
“Seemed a little short.”
“That’s just a taste, a sniff,” said Oil Drum, which was the name Overby had now given him. “I’ve got forty-nine and a half minutes of stuff just as rich. Maybe even richer. Interested?”
“Could be,” Overby said, “if it’s really on video and not just audiotape and I get to screen it first.”
“I’ll get back to you,” Oil Drum said.
“When?”
“Eight tomorrow morning. By then I’ll’ve figured out a way to set up a screening.”
“What if I gotta get in touch with you before that—in case something comes up?”
Oil Drum chuckled again. “Nice try,” he said and broke the connection.
Georgia Blue waited for Overby to hang up before she replaced the kitchen wall phone and returned to the living room. She was wearing the jeans and a white sweatshirt she had bought that afternoon during a seven-minute shopping spree at the Gap on Wilshire in Santa Monica. On her feet were a pair of sockless dark blue Keds that were also new.
Overby was frowning at the phone console when Blue sank cross-legged to the floor, looked up at him and said, “How’re you going to work it?”
“What?”
“The fuck-him-over.”
“Won’t be easy. Not old Oil Drum.”
“Oil Drum,” she said. “I like it. Why d’you think he altered his voice?
Because he thought you might be taping him?”
“Or that I might recognize it.”
“Did you?”
“No. Did you?”
“No,” she said. “But it must’ve been Hughes Goodison’s voice asking Gamble those questions. And that could mean the tapes’ve been sold or stolen or the Goodisons have taken in a new partner.”
Overby frowned. “He didn’t even mention blackmail, did he, Oil Drum?”
“No.”
Overby frowned again, obviously concentrating until the frown disappeared, replaced by his hard white grin. “If I was them, the Goodisons, I know what I’d do. I’d collect as much as I could from Ione Voodoo, Ltd. —151
Gamble and then use somebody else, somebody like Oil Drum, to peddle the videotape to the highest bidder.” He nodded comfortably at the scheme and said, “Very rich and very nice. It’s got, you know, symmetry.”
“Oil Drum would handle both the blackmail and the videotape sale?”
Georgia Blue asked.
“Sure.”
“Then the Goodisons would never see a dime, would they?”
“Of course not,” Overby said. “They’re amateurs and too much money’s up for grabs. What they should’ve done is got in and out for a quick two hundred and fifty K. If they’d done that, they could already be spending it somewhere n
ice.”
“What did you think of the tape?” she asked.
Overby shook his head dismissively. “It’d been doctored by somebody who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. Take that question Goodison asked Gamble about how she felt after Rice dumped her and she said she wanted to kill him. Then Goodison asks,
‘Did you?’ and she says, ‘Yes.’ That was all spliced together by somebody in a hurry.”
“They must have something else they’re banking on.”
“Sure they do,” Overby said. “They got the videotape. Audio’s simple. If you know what you’re doing, you can make it say damn near anything. But video’s different because it’s lip-synched and then there’re the expressions and eye movements and body language and all that to worry about. But if you find yourself a real good cutter, the best, you can still do a hell of a lot with videotape.”
Georgia Blue stared up at him. “You already have it all planned out, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The Otherguy angle.”
Overby examined her for several moments before he shook his head.
“Not this time, Georgia.”
“Bullshit.”
Overby shifted in his chair and studied her some more before he said, “How long’ve we known each other?”
“Half my life.”
Overby ran the years through his mind, added them up, then nodded in agreement. “I’m gonna give you some advice and that’s something I seldom do because I don’t like it when people give it to me. Okay?”
She shrugged.
“If you’re thinking of setting up a sideshow, Georgia, that’s fine—as long as it doesn’t affect my cut. Just make sure you don’t get Durant pissed off at you. All that stuff you pulled in Manila and Hong Kong’s still eating at him and he’s just waiting for you to give him an excuse.
Voodoo, Ltd. —152
If you get him really pissed off, even Artie can’t stop him. So if you’re considering a solo, think about Durant.”
“I’ve had five years to think about—”
She broke off because Booth Stallings came into the living room, followed by Artie Wu. After a quick glance around, Wu asked,
“Durant’s not back yet?”
“Not yet,” Overby said.
“He still at Ione Gamble’s?”
“Far as I know.”
Wu went to the phone, picked it up, looked at Overby and said,
“What’s her number?”
Overby took a three-by-five-inch card from his shirt pocket and ran a forefinger down a list of a dozen or so neatly pointed names. When he came to Ione Gamble’s, he read it off. Without repeating the number, Wu dialed it.
Ione Gamble rolled over, picked up the bedside telephone on the fourth ring and said, “Yes?”
“This is Artie Wu. Is Quincy Durant still there?”
“I’ll see,” she said, covered the mouthpiece with a palm, looked to her left and said, “Artie Wu.”
“Right,” Durant said, rose naked from the bed, went around it, took the phone from Gamble and sat down on the bed, his back to her. She ran a gentle forefinger over the thirty-six crisscrossed scars on his back, wondering how and where he had got them and decided to ask him someday.
Instead of saying hello into the phone, Durant said, “I was just leaving.
“Good,” Wu said. “We have some news.”
“So do I.”
“Then perhaps you might share it with us.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Durant said, hung up the phone, turned to Gamble and kissed her. When the long kiss ended, she said,
“Thanks for all the comfort and solace.”
“Is that what it was?”
“That’s sometimes what sex is between friends.”
“Between good friends anyway.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “I’d say we were pretty good friends by now.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —153
Thirty-two
At the 26-foot-long, 459-year-old oak refectory table where the late Billy Rice’s guests had once dined, the five current residents of his beach house were gathered around $81.56 worth of Mandarin-style, MSG-free Chinese food that Booth Stallings had ordered from The China Den, a Malibu restaurant-carryout that years ago, according to Overby, had been called The China Diner.
Artie Wu, who had never cared for Chinese food, was the first to finish. He pushed his plate away, lit a cigar and began a report on his and Booth Stallings’s visit to Oxnard. When he described how the black Chevrolet Caprice sedan had tried to run over him and Stallings, Georgia Blue and Durant stopped eating.
And after Wu said, “Booth and I then found Hughes and Pauline Goodison shot dead in their motel bathroom,” Overby, who was enormously fond of Chinese food, put down his chopsticks. Only Booth Stallings continued to eat, using a spoon to scoop up the last of his shrimp with lobster sauce.
Wu answered the quick hard questions that followed and then told of the trip he and Stallings had made to The You Store, where they found nothing. There were more questions, which Wu patiently answered, before he looked around the table and asked, “Okay. Who’s next?”
“Me, I think,” Overby said and gave a nearly verbatim account of his phone call from Oil Drum, whose disguised voice had offered to sell him a videotape of Ione Gamble confessing to the murder of Billy Rice.
After Overby finished, Wu asked, “Your friend Oil Drum said he’d call back tomorrow morning?”
“Eight sharp.”
Durant turned to Wu and said, “What time did you and Booth find the Goodisons?”
“Around four-fifteen, wasn’t it, Booth?”
“Probably a minute or two earlier.”
“Maybe at four-thirteen exactly?” Durant said.
“Maybe,” Stallings said. “Why?”
“Because I’m looking for something extraordinary or peculiar and I’m not finding it. Exactly one hour earlier, at three-thirteen, is when Ione Gamble got a call from Hughes Goodison, offering to sell her Voodoo, Ltd. —154
almost exactly the same stuff that Otherguy’s new phone pal, Oil Drum, now wants to sell him.”
“Then you heard the conversation between Gamble and Goodison?”
Wu said.
“On her extension.”
“She agreed to pay, I hope?”
“She told Goodison she needed time to raise the money and he gave her four days.”
“Let’s get all the times straight,” Wu said—again to Durant. “You picked up Gamble when?”
“We left her house at about twenty ‘til two and arrived at the dental surgeon’s at two straight up. Her wisdom tooth was out by two-twenty. It took another ten or fifteen minutes for the Pentothal to wear off in the recovery room. But before it did, I decided to find out how effective a truth serum Pentothal really is and asked her if anyone’d borrowed her car New Year’s Eve. Or if she’d gone out to Billy Rice’s house twice that same day and night. Or if she’d shot him.
She answered no to everything.”
“Why’re you so sure it was exactly three-thirteen when Goodison called Ione Gamble?” Wu said.
“Because when I picked up the extension I looked at my watch,”
Durant said.
Wu decided to examine the ceiling. “Goodison calls Gamble at three-thirteen and is dead by four-thirteen.” He brought his gaze down.
“Can any of you make something out of that?”
When no one spoke, Wu looked to his left and said, “You’re next, Georgia.”
Her face was expressionless and her tone neutral when she said,
“Jack Broach’s company is nearly bankrupt.”
Artie Wu leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, clasped his hands across his belly, smiled contentedly and, around his cigar, said, “There’s more, I trust.”
“There is,” she said. “I checked with Broach’s bank first and they’re not happy with his business. Then Broach and I had lunch in B
everly Hills. During lunch I told him why I thought he was almost broke and, after the coffee came, I made a suggestion.”
“I bet you did,” Durant said.
“Let her tell it,” said Overby.
After a shrug from Durant, Georgia Blue stared directly at him and said, “When I finished telling Broach why I thought he was broke, I asked him what would happen if Ione Gamble told him to raise, say, one million in cash to pay off a blackmailer. Could he or couldn’t he, yes or no? He said nothing, not a word, which didn’t really surprise me. So I said all right, if he couldn’t raise a million, could he raise three hundred thousand? If yes, he could tell Gamble that the million Voodoo, Ltd. —155
in cash was ready for her go-between, me. In exchange for the three hundred thousand, I offered to hand over all incriminating blackmail material along with a personal guarantee that the blackmailer, singular or plural, would never bother her again. Broach said he didn’t have much faith in such guarantees because he’d always heard that blackmailers never quit. I said they do when they’re dead.”
There was a long silence. During the silence, Otherguy Overby’s slight smile widened into his white hard grin. Durant stared at her without expression—except for the thin compressed line his lips made.
Artie Wu nodded several times, as if to himself. Booth Stallings poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea, added sugar and drank it down, staring at Blue over the rim of the cup.
Ignoring them all, Georgia Blue picked up her chopsticks and used them to transfer the last dim sum to her mouth. She chewed slowly, almost thoughtfully, swallowed, put the chopsticks down and used a napkin to pat the corners of her mouth. She then leaned back in her chair, smiled politely, as if there had been a lull in the conversation and she was now waiting for someone to say something interesting.
Artie Wu ended the long silence with a question. “What was Mr.
Broach’s reaction?”
“I’ve been hoping he would’ve called Ione Gamble by now,” Blue said. “Or her lawyer, Mr. Mott. Or maybe even you. Apparently, he hasn’t.”
“Come on, Georgia,” Durant said. “Did he say, ‘That’s one hell of an idea, Ms. Blue’—or ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and don’t want to know’—or even, ‘You’d better watch your mouth, lady’?”