Voodoo, Ltd.

Twenty-six

At 11 A.M. that day, Georgia Blue had called Jack Broach to suggest they have lunch. He quickly agreed and recommended a currently popular Alsatian restaurant on Sunset in Beverly Hills. After they agreed to meet at 1 P.M., Broach called a prospective client and cancelled their lunch date. This caused the prospective client, a moody actor, to accuse Broach of fickleness. Since the actor’s career was going nowhere, Broach cheerfully pled guilty to the charge and hung up.

Arriving at the Alsatian restaurant fifteen minutes late, Georgia Blue gained an immediate audience as she followed the maitre d’ to Broach’s table. Most men looked at her face, most women at her clothes. Then all of them, or nearly all, noticed the white streak of hair and the long sure stride and her obvious indifference to their curiosity.

They were still watching when she reached Broach’s table. By then Broach had decided that the stares and speculation were worth more than all the commissions he might have earned from the moody actor, who hadn’t worked in eight months anyway.

Georgia Blue didn’t apologize for being late. After she was seated, Broach asked if she would like a drink. She asked for a glass of the house red, if there was such a thing. When the drinks came, she glanced at the menu and ordered the special cassoulet, which Broach guessed was at least three thousand calories. He ordered soup and salad.

After the waiter left, she sipped her wine, smiled at Broach and said, “Did that nice Mr. Davidson at Security Pacific call you?”

Broach nodded.

“I hoped he would.”

Suspecting he was supposed to ask why, Broach decided not to ask and see whether silence would provoke elaboration. It didn’t. Instead, Georgia Blue sipped more wine, glanced around the room and said, “Some of them look familiar. Should they?”

“A few of them.”

“I haven’t seen a movie in five years. Did I miss much?”

“It depends on what you like.”

“Ironic ones with lots of talk.”

“You haven’t missed anything.”

“What do you like about your business, Mr. Broach?”

“The money. The deals. And now and then the people and the product.”

“I take it you’re still Ione Gamble’s best friend?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Then you should know I’m to be her go-between.”

“You’ll go between what or whom?”

“Between her and whoever’s going to blackmail her.”

Broach leaned back in his chair and studied Georgia Blue. Finally, he said, “If there were any blackmail attempt, I’m sure she would’ve talked to me about it.”

“She doesn’t know about it yet.”

“Who do you think or suspect is going to blackmail her?”

“Hughes and Pauline Goodison.”

“And what exactly would you do as Ione’s go-between?”

“Buy back stuff that could ruin her reputation and destroy her career.”

“Then you have my blessing.”

“Good. Now we can talk about money.”

“The money to pay the blackmailers.”

“Yes. That money.”

“If the Goodisons are the blackmailers, you’re talking to the wrong guy. You should be talking to Enno Glimm.”

“Because he’s guaranteed to indemnify her against any damage or loss the Goodisons might cause?”

“That’s what the contract says.”

“But we only suspect the Goodisons are the blackmailers,” Georgia Blue said. “What if they’re not? What if they’re perfectly innocent?”

“Then why did they disappear?”

She shrugged. “Maybe something or somebody made them disappear. Until you prove the Goodisons are the blackmailers, I don’t think Mr. Glimm will pay anything.”

“Which means Ione will have to come up with the money.”

Georgia Blue nodded.

Jack Broach tasted his drink for the first time, then set it aside as if he had no intention of picking it up again. “How much money are you talking about?”

Staring at his left eye, Georgia Blue said, “I’d guess a million.”

“That’s why you paid my bank a visit, right?”

She then began an examination of his right eye and said, “We need to know if there’s enough to make the payoff.”

“And is there?”

“Mr. Davidson was very circumspect.”

“Do you think there’s enough?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She ended her eye examination, drank the rest of her wine, smiled at him and said, “The Daumiers. In your office. I mean the fake Daumiers. The moment I spotted them I wondered why a guy like Jack Broach would hang fake Daumiers on the wall. My answer: he had to sell the real ones because of hard times in Hollywood.” She rested her elbows on the table, leaned toward him a few confidential inches, smiled again and said, “You are broke, aren’t you, Jack?”

“Am I?”

She straightened, shrugged and looked over his right shoulder at something that might have been halfway across the room. “I could sniff around some more. But to save time I could also have Howard Mott tell Ione Gamble that he needs a financial statement of her assets, liabilities and cash on hand.”

There was a long silence before Jack Broach said, “Why the warning?”

She stared at him with complete indifference. “Self-interest.”

“Go on.”

“Let’s try a worst-case scenario,” she said. “Suppose the blackmailer — singular or plural — demands a million. Ione Gamble agrees to pay and turns to you for the money — or, more precisely, for the money she’s entrusted to you. What then?”

“It’s your scenario.”

“You tell her you’ll have to sell or hock everything to come up with a million. She says fine, do it. Could you raise a million, Jack — in cash?”

Broach said nothing.

“Well, could you raise — say, three hundred thousand? I think you could. So what you do is raise the three hundred thousand and tell Ms. Gamble the million’s ready for the go-between. You then hand me the three hundred thousand and I eventually hand you or Ione Gamble the incriminating material along with a guarantee that the blackmailer or blackmailers won’t ever bother her again.”

“What if they ask for less — say a half a million?”

“The price is still three hundred thousand. I don’t haggle.”

“What good is your guarantee?” he said. “I’m no criminal defense lawyer, but the best of them tell me blackmailers never know when to quit.”

“They do when they’re dead,” said Georgia Blue.