Voodoo, Ltd.

Twenty-eight

After they left the medical building, Durant followed Ione Gamble’s advice and took San Vicente Boulevard all the way to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. After two acute right turns he drove up the short steep incline that was a seldom-used back way into Adelaide Drive.

This stretch of the drive had been transformed into a one-way street by those who lived in the huge houses that lined its right side. To the left of the street the land fell sharply away, almost straight down, and provided a see-forever view of canyon, mountains and ocean.

At the end of the one-way section was a white-painted steel barrier that blocked two-way traffic and gave the long row of huge houses the air of a gated community. As he squeezed the Mercedes past the steel barrier, Durant noticed a group of six or seven fit-looking men and women in their early twenties. Some were doing cramp-relieving exercises. Others were gulping Evian water from one-liter plastic bottles. Nearly all were wearing shorts, tank tops, running shoes, and sweating at half past three on a late February afternoon with the temperature in the low sixties and falling.

“They still bounce up and down those steps?” Durant asked.

“Night and day,” Gamble said. “One hundred and eighty-nine steps up from the floor of the canyon and one hundred and eighty-nine down. The same as in a fourteen-story building. A few of them make three or four round trips a day. Some of them even do it two steps at a time.”

Because Durant couldn’t think of anything to say except “Ah, youth,” he said nothing. His silence provoked a smile from Gamble. “They make me feel the same way and you’ve got ten years on me.”

“More like fifteen,” Durant said.

They were both silent for almost a block until they turned into her driveway, stopped, and she asked, “Is Pentothal like opium?”

“Why?”

“If it is, then I finally figured out why the British fought the opium wars with China.”

“To corner the euphoria market, right?”

“Sure, but what I felt at the dentist’s was ten notches up from euphoria. What I felt was, well, perfection.”

“I’ll remember that the next time they try to give me novocaine,” Durant said, switched off the engine and handed her the keys. He had his door half-open when he turned back to ask, “Any letdown? Pain? Discomfort?”

She shook her head. “A slight twinge now and then — just enough to make you wonder if getting up for a couple of aspirins is worth the effort.” She opened her own door, paused and said, “Why not come in for a drink and some almost instant mock Senate bean soup?”

Durant said it sounded interesting.

He sat at the kitchen table with a Scotch on ice and watched her open a large can of Great Northern beans. She dumped the contents into a saucepan and placed it on the stove over low heat. She found some garlic, then located a large onion, cut it in half and removed its outer skin. She didn’t bother with the outer skin of the garlic.

After Gamble had butter melting in a small frying pan, she tossed the garlic and onion into a mini-Cuisinart, gave it a couple of bursts, then another one, and dumped the chopped results into the now sizzling butter. Once the garlic and onion turned golden brown, she spooned them, butter and all, into the simmering beans, stirred, added salt, a little water, lots of pepper and a dash or two of Tabasco. She almost forgot the bay leaf but tossed it in at the last minute, admitting it provided more style than flavor.

She found two soup bowls, two napkins, two soup spoons and a loaf of dark rye bread sliced at the bakery. She then asked Durant if he wanted anything besides Scotch to drink. He said he didn’t.

After serving the soup, she sat down, picked up her spoon and said, “This recipe was taught me a long time ago by a very young one-term congressman from L.A. who, when last heard of, was living in semi-permanent exile just outside of Lisbon.”

“Chubb Dunjee,” Durant said and tasted the soup.

She halted her spoon a few inches from her mouth. Her eyes widened. “You know him?”

“Artie and I ran into him down in Mexico years ago. Chubb certainly knew some... shortcuts.”

“What were you guys doing in—”

The kitchen’s wall telephone rang, interrupting her question. Gamble rose, crossed to the phone, put it to her left ear and said, “Allo,” in what Durant thought must have been a perfect imitation of her Salvadoran housekeeper.

Gamble then listened to the voice on the phone for nearly fifteen seconds before she said, “Un momento, por favor.” Again, the accent was perfect.

She used her right hand to indicate the telephone, then used the same hand to point at the hall leading into the living room. Durant nodded, rose and hurried into the living room where he picked up an extension phone with his right hand and looked at his watch. It was 3:13 P.M. Just as the phone touched his right ear, he heard Ione Gamble say, “Who’s this?”

“Recognize the voice, love?” a British tenor said.

“Hughes, you dipshit. What the hell happened?”

“Paulie and I went on a retreat — to sort out our options,” said Hughes Goodison.

“Why call me?”

“Because we’ve decided you’re our best option — although we do have several others.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Of course I am, love. And you’ll understand perfectly once I play a tape of you talking to Paulie and me while you were deep in hypnosis. It’s just a tiny bit of a much, much longer tape, but, still and all, rather a fair sample.”

The next voice was Gamble’s, but filtered by tape and telephone. Her voice was also deeper than normal and nearly toneless. “I wanted to kill him,” she said.

Then Hughes Goodison’s voice, similarly filtered, asked a question: “Billy Rice?”

“Yes.”

“Did you?” Goodison’s voice asked.

A long pause, followed by Gamble’s uninfiected answer: “Yes.”

“That’s it, Ione,” Goodison said in his normal voice. “We want you to know we’re willing to sell all forty-nine and a half minutes of the tape you just heard.”

“You mean you want to sell me one of the God knows how many copies you’ve made.”

“Lord, no. Paulie and I are risk avoiders, not risk takers. Whoever pays our price buys the original. There are no copies. None.”

“Bullshit.”

Goodison giggled. “Believe what you like. But I’ll say it again. There is only one copy. Just one.”

“How much?” Gamble asked.

“One million — dollars, of course. Cash.”

“What happens if I can’t or won’t buy?”

“Then we sell to the highest bidder. Only today we heard about a mysterious Mr. X who’s in town looking for confessional-type videotapes of, you know, people doing naughty things — and that’s exactly what we have to sell.”

“You told me there’s only one tape.”

“One audiotape — and one videotape. Those camcorders are such a marvelous treat. But you get both tapes for the same low, low price.”

“I’ll go two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Ione.”

“Five hundred thousand.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay,” she said with a long sigh. “One million — but it’ll take time to raise that much cash.”

“You have four days. No more.”

“What if I can’t raise it in four days?”

“I happen to know you can,” Goodison said. “But if you won’t, I’ll have to get in touch with Mr. X and then people all over the world can sit in their most comfy chairs, watching Ione Gamble, movie star, confess to the murder of poor Billy Rice.”

“Where do I call, if I manage to get the money together?”

“You’re being tiresome again, Ione.”

“Okay. You call me. But let’s get something straight, Hughes. You’re a slimebug and your sister’s a certifiable weirdo and I won’t come anywhere near either of you. So if I do get the money, I’ll send somebody with it, somebody who’ll insist on inspecting the merchandise before paying for it.”

“Who is he?” Goodison demanded, his voice almost cracking on the “he.”

“Who said anything about a he?” Ione Gamble said and hung up.

When Durant returned to the kitchen, she was again seated at the table, head bowed, hands folded in front of her, the bowl of soup shoved to her right.

“You were fine,” Durant said as he sat down, picked up the spoon and tasted his soup again. “In fact, you were perfect.”

She looked up. “Really?”

“Absolutely perfect.”

She looked around the kitchen curiously, as if seeing it for the last time. “I’ll have to sell it.”

“What?”

“The house.”

“Why?”

“You heard him. If I don’t buy, they’ll sell to Mr. X or Y or Z — whoever. To the sleazoids. And I can’t raise a million cash unless I sell the house.”

Durant had two more spoonfuls of soup, nodded appreciatively, then said, “The Goodisons won’t sell to anybody else and you’ll never pay them a dime.”

Ione Gamble, dry-eyed and skeptical, stared at Durant for moments before she pulled her soup bowl back and began eating hungrily. Moments later she looked up at him, frowned, then grinned and said, “Why the fuck do I believe you?”