Voodoo, Ltd.

Twenty

In his role as a Malibu newcomer, Booth Stallings spent nearly two hours that same afternoon and early evening introducing himself to his somewhat dumbfounded neighbors or their completely dumbfounded Latina maids.

He was invited in three times; told to go away twice; had two doors slammed in his face; experienced cool brief chats on four thresholds, and once was listened to politely, if with total incomprehension, by a vacationing woman from Düsseldorf who spoke only German except for the phrase “Okay, swell,” which she used over and over again, smiling all the while.

The neighbors who did talk to him knew nothing pertinent about the late William A. C. Rice IV — at least nothing they would confide to Stallings — until he rang the bell of the duplex directly across the highway from the house where Rice had died.

The man who opened the door of the two-story canary-yellow duplex was at least 74 or 75. He was also barefoot and wore a short green terry-cloth bathrobe and apparendy nothing else except a cigarette, aviator sunglasses and the amber drink he held in his left hand. Still, Stallings thought there was something vaguely familiar about the craggy face with the cigarette stuck in the left corner of the wide bitter mouth.

The cigarette jiggled a little when the man spoke before Stallings could even say hello. “You really think they’ll send you to Hawaii for two weeks?”

“Who?”

“The crew chief who’s got you out peddling magazine subscriptions door-to-door old as you are.”

“Not selling anything, friend,” Stallings said with what he trusted was a reassuring and even ingenuous smile. “The name’s Booth Stallings and I’m just paying a friendly call on account of I’m your new neighbor.”

“Which house?”

“The one right across the street that belonged to poor Mr. Rice.”

The man nodded, removed the cigarette, had a reflective swallow of his drink, stuck the cigarette back in place and said, “Billy Rice was a lot of things, but poor sure as shit wasn’t one of ’em.”

“Knew him pretty well, did you?”

“You a drinking man?”

“I have to confess I am.”

“Well, come on in and I’ll pour us one and you can get acquainted with the neighborhood’s friendliest neighbor, Rick Cleveland.”

There was a brief, not quite imperceptible, pause before Cleveland stuck out his right hand. It was as if he were hoping Stallings would match the name with the face. After grasping the hand, Stallings took a chance and said, “Hell, you’re in pictures.”

There was a slight nod followed by a small relieved smile as Cleveland, turning to lead the way into the living room, said, “Yeah, but I haven’t worked much for a couple of years.”

Suspecting it was more like ten years than two, Stallings said, “Been in Malibu long?”

“Since fifty-one and in L.A. Since thirty-seven,” Cleveland said, picking up a half-empty bottle of Vat 69 from a marbletop table. “Scotch okay?”

“Fine.”

“Water?”

“Some.”

“You need ice?”

Since none was visible, Stallings said, “Got out of the habit.”

Once he had his drink, Stallings turned to the large window that offered a view of the Pacific Coast Highway, the Billy Rice house and, when he went up on his toes, a very small slice of the Pacific Ocean.

“View’s better upstairs,” Cleveland said as he eased down into a gray club chair. Stallings chose the low pale blue couch in front of the window, tasted his drink, gave his host another neighborly smile and said, “You must’ve seen some changes.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I go back to the Flood — or to GWTW anyway. Remember all those young southern bloods hanging around Scarlett in the first few scenes? Well, I was the one who got to say, ‘You’re welcome, Miss O’Hara,’ or maybe it was, ‘You’re welcome, Miss Scarlett.’ Can’t even remember which now. But who the hell cares?”

“Film buffs maybe?”

“Fuck ’em.”

After another polite swallow of his drink, Stallings said, “See much of your late neighbor?”

Cleveland put out his cigarette and lit a new one before replying. “I sued the son of a bitch for ruining my view. But he had a fix in with both the county and the Coastal Commission and I found out pretty quick that only damn fools sue anybody who’s sitting on top of a billion bucks.”

“You guys weren’t too friendly, then.”

“I went to see him in his Century City office when I learned how high he planned to build his goddamned house. He told me to talk to his lawyers. That was our first and last conversation.”

Stallings glanced over his shoulder at the Rice house. “Ever been inside it?”

“Nope.”

“Not the coziest place I ever stayed.”

“Then why’d you rent it?”

“The outfit I work for’s based in London and they’re thinking of expanding to L.A. The two principal partners thought they might need to do a little entertaining. That’s why I snapped up a two-month lease on the Rice house — because it looks like it was designed for a never-ending party.”

“Well, he did give a lot of ’em,” Cleveland said. “But you’d never know it. There wasn’t any noise to speak of because the partying was all done on the beach side. And you couldn’t complain about the parking or the traffic because he always had a valet service that drove the guest cars off and hid ’em someplace. But I used to see her car parked in the courtyard. A lot of times it’d be there all night.”

“Whose car?”

“Ione Gamble’s — the one who shot him, God bless her.”

“Think she really killed him, do you?”

“She sure as hell had the opportunity. Had two of ’em, in fact.”

“Why two?”

“I don’t sleep so good anymore,” Cleveland said and reached for the bottle of Vat 69 to top up his drink. After adding at least one and a half ounces, he put the bottle back on the marbletop table. “And even when I do get to sleep, I have to get up every couple of hours or so and go pee because of my goddamn prostate. Well, when I’m standing there peeing in the upstairs John, which takes forever, I like to look out the bathroom window at the ocean because it’s always more interesting than looking down at what I’m doing or trying to do, right?”

Stallings nodded sympathetically.

“So I’m standing there peeing New Year’s Eve about eleven-thirty when I notice her car parked in Rice’s courtyard. She’s got one of those fancy new Mercedes roadsters that sell for close to a hundred thousand a pop. But I don’t think anything about it and head on back to the bedroom for my traditional New Year’s Eve celebration, which means lying up in bed with a bottle and watching strangers making damn fools of themselves on TV. Then about twelve-thirty, after I’m fairly sure I’ve made it through another year, I gotta go take another leak. And that’s when I notice it.”

“Notice what?” Stallings said.

“That her car’s gone. Ione Gamble’s.”

“So?”

“So I thought it was kinda funny she didn’t stick around for New Year’s Eve or, if she did, only spent half an hour of the new year with her former fiancé. But what the hell. It wasn’t any of my business so I went back to bed. Then around five in the morning, I have to pee again. And there’s her car back, its horn tooting away. Then she pops out of it and yells something I can’t hear. And that’s when she goes inside the house either to shoot him or make sure he’s really dead.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Stallings. “How’d you see all this at night? Did Rice keep his outside lights on like I do as a kind of burglar insurance?”

“He didn’t just have his regular lights on. He had all his Christmas lights on, too.”

“What’d the cops say?”

“When?”

“When you told ’em what you just told me?”

“Nothing. They wrote it all down and then wanted to know how much I’d had to drink New Year’s Eve and if maybe it wasn’t time I started going to meetings again.”

“Couldn’t it have been somebody else that first time?” Stallings said. “I mean somebody else driving a car just like hers?”

Cleveland shrugged. “That’s exactly what the cops said and I’ll tell you what I told them. The odds are a hundred to one against it.”

There was a silence that Stallings finally broke with a final question. “So what do you think’ll happen to her?”

“What do I think or what do I hope?”

“Either one.”

“I hope they give her a medal,” Rick Cleveland said. “But I don’t much think they will.”