Voodoo, Ltd.

Twenty-two

The tiny frame house on the eastern edge of Venice sat on a twenty-five-foot lot and the 1982 black Cadillac limousine, parked out front, looked longer than the lot was wide. The limousine license plate read, “LUXRY 3,” implying that there might be a fleet of them. The implied claim was supported by a small, nicely painted wooden sign that was nailed to a porch pillar. It advertised “Luxury Limos” and listed a phone number that was as large as its name.

The small front yard was split by a concrete walk that left enough room on the right for some grass and five ruthlessly pruned rosebushes. The other half of the yard, the left half, was dominated by an ancient bougainvillea that had swarmed up and over the small front porch and onto the roof as if intent on devouring the chimney.

The bougainvillea concealed much of the roof but the part still visible revealed old composition shingles of a faded green. The rest of the house had been painted not long ago in two shades of yellow — a very pale shade for the clapboard siding and a much darker shade for the trim. Durant thought the house looked both cozy and bilious.

He got out of the Lincoln Town Car on the passenger side and Wu got out from behind the wheel. After they reached the porch, they heard a telephone begin to ring inside the house. Durant knocked. When no one came to the door and the phone rang for the ninth time, Durant gave the brass doorknob a halfhearted twist and was surprised to find it unlocked.

The door opened directly into a living room. The ringing phone was on a small gray metal desk in the room’s far left corner. Between the front door and the phone was a Latino in his late twenties or early thirties who lay on a braided oval rug with his throat cut. Durant stepped over the man, took out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the still-ringing phone.

“Luxury Limos,” Durant said.

There was a silence until a woman asked, “Carlos?”

“He can’t come to the phone right now,” Durant said in what he discovered was rusty Spanish. “Any message?”

The woman hung up.

Artie Wu was now on the other side of the desk, turning the pages of a black-bound ledger with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “His logbook,” he said without looking up. “All of February’s missing.”

“Let’s go,” Durant said.

Wu nodded and closed the ledger with the pen.

Durant again stepped over the dead man, but Wu knelt beside him. The man wore dark blue pants, well-polished black loafers, a white shirt and a black clip-on bow tie. Both tie and shirt were soaked with blood. A small leather-bound notebook or diary peeked out of the shirt’s pocket. Wu fished it out, wrapped it in a handkerchief and shoved it down into his hip pocket. He then rose and hurried out the front door, followed by Durant, who paused only long enough to smear the inside and outside doorknobs with his handkerchief.

Just as they reached the Lincoln they saw a dark-haired woman hurry out of a house that was across the street and four or five doors up. The house was a brown twin of the yellow one that served as headquarters for Luxury Limos. The woman wore jeans, a white T-shirt and white sneakers. From a distance she could have been either 20 or 30 but she moved as if she were 20.

As Wu and Durant hurried into the Lincoln, the woman started racing toward the yellow house. Just as the Lincoln pulled away she reached the giant bougainvillea and stopped, staring at the accelerating Lincoln. In its rearview mirror, Artie Wu saw her lips move and assumed she was memorizing the car’s license number.

“Who rented this thing?” he asked Durant.

“Booth.”

“Call him and ask him to report it stolen.”

“Where should we lose it — a shopping mall?”

“Why not?”

They found a parking space on the fourth level of the Santa Monica Place mall at Third and Broadway, which was only a short walk to the edge of the continent. They rode escalators up and down until they found a floor that featured a string of ethnic-food stands where Wu bought two cups of espresso and carried them over to a table Durant had claimed.

After Wu sat down, he took out the handkerchief-wrapped notebook that had “1991” stamped in gold on its black leather cover. The handkerchief had soaked up virtually all the blood and Wu used a paper napkin to wipe away what little was left. He then wadded his handkerchief up into the paper napkin, enclosed both in yet another napkin, rose and dropped everything into a nearby trash bin.

Wu sat back down, opened the notebook and began turning pages. Durant sipped his espresso and decided it was too weak. Wu reached for his cup, sipped it, went back to the notebook and murmured, “Good coffee.”

Durant rose. “I’ll go call Booth.”

Wu nodded, completely absorbed by the notebook.

Durant finally found a bank of pay telephones only to discover he no longer remembered what it cost to make a call. Was it a quarter or thirty-five cents? He dropped in three quarters and tapped out the Malibu number with its 456 exchange. When Stallings answered on the third ring, Durant identified himself and said, “We have to lose the Lincoln.”

“What d’you want me to do?”

“Call the rental agency — which one is it?”

“Budget.”

“Tell them it was stolen last night and you just discovered it missing.”

“Where’d you lose it — just out of curiosity?”

“On the fourth level of the Santa Monica Place mall with its windows up and doors locked.”

“Then they’ll find it this afternoon,” Stallings said. “Want me to rent you another car?”

“Get something grander — since Artie might have to put in an appearance as the mysterious Mr. X.”

“I’m Mr. X,” Stallings said. “He’s Mr. Z. What about a Mercedes — a big one?”

“Perfect,” Durant said.

When Durant returned to the table, he found Wu sitting with his clasped hands resting on the leather-bound notebook. “Booth’s getting us another car,” Durant said. “A Mercedes.”

Wu nodded and said, “His name was Carlos Santillan. He would’ve been thirty-one in May. He owed seventy-six thousand on his house, around twenty-six hundred on that old Cadillac, and both monthly payments amounted to around nine hundred and something. He was single but the person to be notified in case of accident or death is Rosa Alicia Chavez, whose address is just four doors up from his house on the other side of the street. She must be the woman who came running to see what’d happened. Miss Chavez is twenty-six.”

“How do you know?”

“He wrote her birthday right after her address and phone number.”

“He write everything down?” Durant asked.

“His car and house were insured by Allstate. He banked at Security Pacific. He was a 1978 graduate of SaMoHi.”

Durant frowned, then nodded. “Santa Monica High School.”

“He was five-eleven,” Wu continued, “weight one-sixty-one, had brown hair, brown eyes, and was scheduled to have his teeth cleaned in two weeks.”

“He did write it all down,” Durant said.

“Everything. A week ago yesterday he had an appointment to pick up Mr. And Mrs. Goodison at Cousin Colleen’s Bed and Breakfast Inn in Topanga Canyon. There’s nothing in his notebook about where he was to take them. I don’t think he knew.”

“Maybe he talked to somebody about them?” Durant said. “God knows they’re weird enough.”

“By somebody, you mean Rosa Alicia Chavez.”

Durant nodded.

“If we tried to talk to her, she’d yell for the cops,” Wu said. “At least I hope she would.”

“Did his notebook list any organizations he belonged to — a union, business association, maybe a fraternal order?”

“You mean one that might provide his survivors or heirs with a small death benefit?”

“Say, two thousand dollars,” Durant said.

“I think the ILOA might,” Wu said. “That’s the Independent Limousine Operators Association, which just this moment sprang into existence.”

“Who d’you think — Otherguy?”

“Otherguy could handle it nicely,” Wu said. “But Booth would do even better. He’s older and more, well, grandfatherly, although I don’t think he’d appreciate the description.”

“Sure he would,” Durant said. “Booth likes being the oldest. He’s got fifteen or twenty years on us and Otherguy and a lot more than that on Georgia. And although he enjoys being the in-house patriarch, the real reason he likes hanging out with us is because he thinks we’re all fellow anachronisms.”

“The hell he does,” Wu said. “You ever think of yourself as an anachronism?”

“No, but some days I do feel kind of quaint.”

“Yes, well, some days so do I.”