By the third week in January of 1991, Ione Gamble had been indicted for the murder of William A. C. Rice IV and released on bond. An assistant Los Angeles County attorney had argued for a bail bond of at least $2 million but the county Superior Court judge in Santa Monica had instead set it at $200,000 and defended his decision with a rhetorical question: “With a face known throughout the world, where can she possibly skip to and where can she possibly hide?”
Gamble was now concealed, if not hidden, in her 35-year-old, thirteen-room mission-style house on Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica. She lived there alone, except for the Salvadoran couple in the garage apartment and her six cats, three dogs and a housebroken flop-eared rabbit who spent most of his waking hours hopping up and down the staircase.
Gamble was up in the second-floor study she called her office, discussing criminal defense lawyers with Jack Broach, her combination business manager, agent and personal attorney. Broach was a product of UCLA (’68), Boalt Hall (71) and the William Morris Agency (’73-’79). Like many entertainment industry agents in their mid-forties, he resembled a meticulously groomed character actor who would be perfect to play either a young lean-jawed President or an aging lean-jawed fighter pilot.
The office-study had three walls of bookshelves, filled mostly with novels and biographies, and one wall of glass that offered a view of Santa Monica Canyon, some mountains and also the Pacific Ocean. Gamble was seated behind her 1857 Memphis cotton broker’s desk and Broach was in a nearby businesslike armchair.
After sipping some bottled diet Dr Pepper through two paper straws, Gamble said, “So far I’ve talked to the Massachusetts Unitarian, the Wyoming Jew, the Texas Episcopalian and the New York Baptist. Comes now the Washington what?”
“I’m quite sure he’s not a Muslim,” Broach said.
“Tell me about him — the guy from Washington.”
“I called him,” Broach said, “just as I called all the others and said, in effect, ‘Hi, there, I’m the best friend and personal attorney of Ione Gamble and she needs the best damn criminal lawyer alive. You interested?’ The other four said, Gosh, yes, but the guy in Washington said, ‘Not especially.’ As usual, I was impressed by the unimpressed.”
“He’s good though — the one from Washington?”
“He’s not as well known as the others, but the legal minds I revere most say he’s top gun.”
Gamble frowned. “Is ‘top gun’ your cliché or theirs?”
“Mine. I use clichés because everybody understands them. That’s why they’re clichés.”
Gamble sipped more diet Dr Pepper and said, “You think I should pick him, don’t you — the guy from Washington?”
Broach shook his head. “I think you should pick the one you trust and respect most.”
“What about like?”
“Like’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Will he ask me if I killed Billy?”
“I don’t know.”
Ione Gamble looked at the ceiling, as if notes for her next remarks Were written there. She was still looking at it when she said, “I liked the Jew and respected the Baptist and trusted the Episcopalian — despite his shit-kicking Texas ways — but the Unitarian seemed consumed by the notion that he and I’d finally wind up in bed.”
“Is there something wrong with optimism?”
Her gaze came down.
“Help me, damnit.”
Broach shook his head. “You’ll know — or your instinct will.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
They heard the two-note front door chimes. Broach rose and said, “He’s here. I’ll go down, bring him up, introduce you and be on my way.”
“Do I look all right?”
Jack Broach didn’t bother to reply.
Ione Gamble, wearing jeans, a checked shirt and scuffed Timberlands over bare feet, was standing at the glass wall, staring out at ocean and canyon, when Broach came back with the Washington lawyer. She turned and found him to be a medium-tall man in his forties who wore a very expensive but ill-fitting dark blue suit along with plain black shoes, a white shirt and a muted tie. He had extraordinarily long arms, a face that seemed to have been put together from odds and ends, and the wisest black eyes she had ever seen. As Gamble looked into them she found herself engulfed by an intense feeling of relief.
Jack Broach said, “Ione Gamble, Howard Mott.”
Gamble smiled and walked toward Mott, her right hand outstretched. “I very much hope you’ll be my lawyer, Mr. Mott.”
Howard Mott took the cool dry hand, smiled back and said, “Let’s see whether you still feel that way after we talk.”
Mott had arrived at 11 A.M. And at 12:45 P.M. They sent out for a giant cheese and pepperoni pizza. The Salvadoran housekeeper-cook served it in the office-study along with a bottle of beer for Mott and another diet Dr Pepper for Gamble.
Mott took a polite bite of the pizza, chewed, swallowed, drank some beer and said, “Tell me how you met him.”
“Billy Rice?”
Mott nodded and had another bite of pizza.
“You know who he was, don’t you? I mean, before?”
“Before Hollywood? Yes, but tell me who you think he was.”
“He was the Kansas City Post,” she said.
“The paper Hemingway didn’t work for.”
“It was also one of the first newspapers to go into radio in the twenties and TV in the late forties. It wound up owning three TV and four radio stations around the country, six small dailies, a farm magazine, a block-long printing plant and a big chunk of downtown Kansas City. Ninety percent of the stock in all this was owned outright by William A. C. Rice the third, who was the grandson of William A. C. Rice the first, the one who’d started it all. When Billy the third died, everything went to Billy the fourth.”
“When did the third die?” Mott asked. “Ten years ago?”
“Twelve,” she said. “Billy the fourth hung onto everything for eight years, then sold out in early eighty-six at the top of the market. He walked away with at least a billion, maybe more. Then he moved out here and announced he was an independent motion picture producer and, with a billion or so in the bank, everybody said, ‘That’s right, you are.’ ”
“Is that when you met him?”
She nodded. “He had an office in Century City — just him, a secretary and a story editor.”
“That was when — eighty-six, eighty-seven?”
“Late eighty-six — a month after my thirtieth birthday, which makes me thirty-four, going on thirty-five, if you don’t want to bother with the math.”
Mott only smiled and drank more beer.
“I also got drunk and blacked out on my thirtieth birthday,” she said, making it a statement of fact rather than a confession.
“Why?”
“For an actress, thirty means you’re no longer on the ascent but’ve reached the plateau where you’ll stay, if lucky, till you hit forty and start the descent, which is sometimes slow and sometimes fast, very fast.”
“Thirty’s awfully young,” Mott said. “But so is forty, for that matter.”
“But forty-five isn’t and that’s why I used every trick I knew to get directing jobs. That meant guesting on TV sitcoms and episodic action-adventure stuff — but only if they’d let me direct. And that’s how I served my apprenticeship.”
“I get the impression that directing to you is something like an annuity.”
“Look. I still intend to act when I’m forty-five and fifty-five and sixty-five, if I live that long, although the roles will get fewer and fewer. But a good director can get work at almost any age.”
“You decided all this at thirty?”
“Sure,” she said. “For an actor, thirty’s still young. He’s just getting rid of the last of his baby fat and for the next twenty-five or thirty-five years he can go on playing leads opposite actresses who’re twenty-five and thirty and forty. But do you know any fifty-five-year-old actresses who’re doing love scenes with thirty-year-old actors — unless it’s some kinky incest story? I’ll give you an hour to name one.”
“Is Ann-Margret fifty-five yet?” Mott said, picking up the last slice of pizza.
Gamble began a smile that turned into a grin. “You a fan of hers?”
“Merely a preservationist,” Mott said and bit into his pizza.
“Well, anyway, that’s why I got drunk on my thirtieth birthday and why I haven’t had more than three beers and eight glasses of wine since — until the thirty-first of December.”
“Let’s go back to your first meeting with Mr. Rice.”
“Okay. He had this office, as I said, in Century City. He’d called Jack Broach and Jack’d called me and suggested I give it a go. So I ride the elevator up to the what — the thirty-fifth floor? — where I’m ushered into this okay-but-nothing-special office, where Billy turns on the charm and hands me a screenplay based on Lorna Wiley’s novel, The Milner Sisters.”
She looked at Mott apprehensively until he said he’d read it. After a small relieved sigh, she said, “So after somebody brings in the coffee, Billy says, ‘I want you for this.’ Well, both sisters are great parts, but Louise is the plum, so I ask, ‘Which do I play — Louise or Rose?’ And guess what he says?”
“I can’t.”
“He says, ‘I think the director should make that decision and since you’ll be directing, the decision is yours.’ And right about then I thought I ought to fall in love with Billy Rice, the prick.”
“So far, he sounds fine.”
“So far. Well, we make The Milner Sisters and it gets great reviews and doesn’t make a dime. But Billy doesn’t seem to care and plunks down a one-hundred-thousand-dollar option on some god-awful techno-thriller, then pays another million for a screenplay, exercises his option on the novel — another one point four million — and hires himself a twenty-four-year-old British MTV director. I’m to play Mavis, the gutsy heroine who walks and talks like a fella, opposite dumb old Niles Brand, who’s getting five million plus points. Well, the whole thing costs thirty-eight million and it’s a hit and a half. I win the L.A. Film critics award and get nominated by the Academy and don’t win, but who the hell cares except me?”
“Then what?”
“Then Billy asks me to marry him. This is around the first of last year. And I, the eternal klutz, say sure, Billy, love to, and we set the wedding date for December thirtieth. In the meantime, Billy buys The Bad Dead Indian, which has been on the NYT bestseller list for thirteen months. It cost him two million. Cash. No options. He spends another million or so on writers and announces that his bride-to-be will not only star in this sixty-five-million-plus epic of the Old West with dumb old Niles Brand, but she’ll also direct it. Still with me, Mr. Mott?”
“You make it exceedingly clear.”
“Then it’s Christmas Eve, a little more than a month ago. Billy issues what the newsies call a ‘terse’ three-line press release that says he’s not going to marry Ione Gamble after all and she’s not going to direct or star in his wonderful picture about native Americans either. And this is all one big goddamn surprise to me.”
“Had you signed either a contract for the picture or a prenuptial agreement of any kind?”
“Jack Broach was still negotiating the movie deal. And when Billy’d hinted at a prenuptial agreement, I told him I wanted a marriage, not a merger, which wasn’t original, but he didn’t seem to’ve heard it before.”
“Why do you think Rice changed his mind?”
“I don’t know. I never spoke to him again. At least, I don’t think I did.”
“But you tried.”
“I must’ve called him a couple of hundred times but never got through. Then on New Year’s Eve, the day after our cancelled wedding day, I started drinking. I drank all day, slept a little, woke up and drank some more. Then I remember getting into my car with a pint of vodka and heading for a showdown with Billy at his place in Malibu. But I don’t remember anything else until the deputies woke me up at the beach house with Billy lying there dead on the floor.”
“You blacked out?”
“Yes.”
Mott leaned back on the couch with the chintz slipcover and studied Gamble, who was now across the coffee table from him, perched on the edge of the businesslike armchair. “Then this was your second blackout,” he said. “What do you know about them?”
“Until I saw a doctor, I only knew they were plot twists for soap operas. Need a conflict? Give her a blackout. Or amnesia. The doctor told me blackouts are a form of alcohol-produced amnesia common to alcoholics and some binge drinkers. He said that hypnotism’s been used to regain memory lost by blackouts. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. But if I wanted to try it, he could recommend several very well qualified hypnotherapists. I told him I’d think about it.”
“Did you?”
“Sure. I thought about it. I also thought about what would happen if I confessed to something embarrassing or incriminating — maybe even to Billy’s murder. If the hypnotist had it down on audiotape, he could sell it for a whole lot of money. If he’d videotaped it, he could sell it for God knows how much.”
“He’d also go to jail.”
“Not if he claimed somebody broke in and stole it from him. I remember Watergate — well, part of it. They did something like that then, didn’t they?”
“Not quite.”
“But there’s one more thing he could do with the tape that nobody’d ever have to know about,” she said. “He could sell it to me, which, I believe, is called blackmail.”
She gave Mott the small cool smile that debaters use after making a telling point. Mott scratched the back of his left hand and said, “What if I could find you a hypnotherapist whose discretion is guaranteed? Would you be interested in trying to regain your memory of that night?”
Gamble frowned. “It’s important, isn’t it? My memory?”
“Extremely so.”
“You know any hypnotists?”
“I know of somebody who does.”
“You mean that’s his business — supplying hypnotists for wives and girlfriends who get drunk, black out, do in their husbands or boyfriends, but remember fuck-all about it?”
Mott smiled. “He supplies extremely well-qualified, extremely discreet professionals to perform any number of extremely delicate tasks.”
She stared at him, frowned again and said, “Do all those extremelys mean you’re going to be my lawyer?”
“If you like.”
“Okay. As my lawyer, what d’you recommend?”
“A discreet and well-qualified hypnotist.”
“Then you’d better go ahead and call your jobber — whoever he is.”
“His name is Glimm,” Howard Mott said. “Enno Glimm.”