Voodoo, Ltd.

Thirty-two

At the 26-foot-long, 459-year-old oak refectory table where the late Billy Rice’s guests had once dined, the five current residents of his beach house were gathered around $81.56 worth of Mandarin-style, MSG-free Chinese food that Booth Stallings had ordered from The China Den, a Malibu restaurant-carryout that years ago, according to Overby, had been called The China Diner.

Artie Wu, who had never cared for Chinese food, was the first to finish. He pushed his plate away, lit a cigar and began a report on his and Booth Stallings’s visit to Oxnard. When he described how the black Chevrolet Caprice sedan had tried to run over him and Stallings, Georgia Blue and Durant stopped eating.

And after Wu said, “Booth and I then found Hughes and Pauline Goodison shot dead in their motel bathroom,” Overby, who was enormously fond of Chinese food, put down his chopsticks. Only Booth Stallings continued to eat, using a spoon to scoop up the last of his shrimp with lobster sauce.

Wu answered the quick hard questions that followed and then told of the trip he and Stallings had made to The You Store, where they found nothing. There were more questions, which Wu patiently answered, before he looked around the table and asked, “Okay. Who’s next?”

“Me, I think,” Overby said and gave a nearly verbatim account of his phone call from Oil Drum, whose disguised voice had offered to sell him a videotape of Ione Gamble confessing to the murder of Billy Rice.

After Overby finished, Wu asked, “Your friend Oil Drum said he’d call back tomorrow morning?”

“Eight sharp.”

Durant turned to Wu and said, “What time did you and Booth find the Goodisons?”

“Around four-fifteen, wasn’t it, Booth?”

“Probably a minute or two earlier.”

“Maybe at four-thirteen exactly?” Durant said.

“Maybe,” Stallings said. “Why?”

“Because I’m looking for something extraordinary or peculiar and I’m not finding it. Exactly one hour earlier, at three-thirteen, is when Ione Gamble got a call from Hughes Goodison, offering to sell her almost exactly the same stuff that Otherguy’s new phone pal, Oil Drum, now wants to sell him.”

“Then you heard the conversation between Gamble and Goodison?” Wu said.

“On her extension.”

“She agreed to pay, I hope?”

“She told Goodison she needed time to raise the money and he gave her four days.”

“Let’s get all the times straight,” Wu said — again to Durant. “You picked up Gamble when?”

“We left her house at about twenty ’til two and arrived at the dental surgeon’s at two straight up. Her wisdom tooth was out by two-twenty. It took another ten or fifteen minutes for the Pentothal to wear off in the recovery room. But before it did, I decided to find out how effective a truth serum Pentothal really is and asked her if anyone’d borrowed her car New Year’s Eve. Or if she’d gone out to Billy Rice’s house twice that same day and night. Or if she’d shot him. She answered no to everything.”

“Why’re you so sure it was exactly three-thirteen when Goodison called Ione Gamble?” Wu said.

“Because when I picked up the extension I looked at my watch,” Durant said.

Wu decided to examine the ceiling. “Goodison calls Gamble at three-thirteen and is dead by four-thirteen.” He brought his gaze down. “Can any of you make something out of that?”

When no one spoke, Wu looked to his left and said, “You’re next, Georgia.”

Her face was expressionless and her tone neutral when she said, “Jack Broach’s company is nearly bankrupt.”

Artie Wu leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, clasped his hands across his belly, smiled contentedly and, around his cigar, said, “There’s more, I trust.”

“There is,” she said. “I checked with Broach’s bank first and they’re not happy with his business. Then Broach and I had lunch in Beverly Hills. During lunch I told him why I thought he was almost broke and, after the coffee came, I made a suggestion.”

“I bet you did,” Durant said.

“Let her tell it,” said Overby.

After a shrug from Durant, Georgia Blue stared directly at him and said, “When I finished telling Broach why I thought he was broke, I asked him what would happen if Ione Gamble told him to raise, say, one million in cash to pay off a blackmailer. Could he or couldn’t he, yes or no? He said nothing, not a word, which didn’t really surprise me. So I said all right, if he couldn’t raise a million, could he raise three hundred thousand? If yes, he could tell Gamble that the million in cash was ready for her go-between, me. In exchange for the three hundred thousand, I offered to hand over all incriminating blackmail material along with a personal guarantee that the blackmailer, singular or plural, would never bother her again. Broach said he didn’t have much faith in such guarantees because he’d always heard that blackmailers never quit. I said they do when they’re dead.”

There was a long silence. During the silence, Otherguy Overby’s slight smile widened into his white hard grin. Durant stared at her without expression — except for the thin compressed line his lips made. Artie Wu nodded several times, as if to himself. Booth Stallings poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea, added sugar and drank it down, staring at Blue over the rim of the cup.

Ignoring them all, Georgia Blue picked up her chopsticks and used them to transfer the last dim sum to her mouth. She chewed slowly, almost thoughtfully, swallowed, put the chopsticks down and used a napkin to pat the corners of her mouth. She then leaned back in her chair, smiled politely, as if there had been a lull in the conversation and she was now waiting for someone to say something interesting.

Artie Wu ended the long silence with a question. “What was Mr. Broach’s reaction?”

“I’ve been hoping he would’ve called Ione Gamble by now,” Blue said. “Or her lawyer, Mr. Mott. Or maybe even you. Apparently, he hasn’t.”

“Come on, Georgia,” Durant said. “Did he say, ‘That’s one hell of an idea, Ms. Blue’ — or ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and don’t want to know’ — or even, ‘You’d better watch your mouth, lady’?”

“What he did,” she said, ignoring Durant and speaking directly to Wu, “was sign the check, add a twenty percent tip, smile and say, ‘We’ll have to do this again very soon.’ ”

“When did the lunch begin and when did it end?” Wu asked.

“It didn’t begin until one-fifteen because I was late and it ended at two.”

“Where’d you go then?” Durant said.

“Shopping. I bought some things at Saks and some jeans and a sweatshirt at the Gap. I also stopped at a store in Santa Monica and bought a pair of blue Keds. Then I drove home, arriving here around four forty-five or four-fifty. Otherguy was already here.”

“Did you tell him about Jack Broach?” Durant asked.

“Not a word,” Overby said.

Stallings was still frowning at Georgia Blue when he said, “If I got it right, you offered to kill the blackmailers, singular or plural; retrieve the stuff they were blackmailing Gamble with, and provide both of these services for a flat fee of three hundred thousand dollars, right?”

“Wrong,” she said.

“Let me, Georgia,” Artie Wu said. “What she did, Booth, was exactly what I asked her to do: check Jack Broach out all the way. What she discovered is that he and his agency are in rotten financial shape. Just how rotten we can judge from his reaction, or lack of reaction, to Georgia’s intriguing suggestion. He didn’t reject it out of hand. He expressed no indignation. He didn’t even remind her that, as a lawyer, he’s an officer of the court — nor did he threaten her with the cops. To me, his silence speaks or even shouts of interest — although an understandably wary interest because he may’ve suspected a setup or entrapment or even that Georgia was wearing a wire.”

“There’s more to it than that, Artie,” Overby said. “You or Quincy told me Broach handles all of Gamble’s money, right? I mean he’s her agent, business manager and personal attorney. He looks after her investments, pays her bills — credit cards, charge accounts, insurance premiums, mortgage payments, utilities — everything — and maybe even keeps her personal checking account topped up at around five or ten thousand dollars. In fact, she doesn’t have to even think about money. I mean ordinary money. All the money she has to worry about is if they’re going to pay her two, three or five million to act in their next picture. Right?”

Wu nodded.

“Let’s suppose Broach has made some bad investments for her and maybe even for himself. Say he shorted some stocks and now has to cover his shorts. Or maybe he’s even dipped into Gamble’s assets to get himself out of some other kind of bind. But he wasn’t worried about it because his number one client was about to star in and direct a megabucks picture and marry its billionaire producer and never worry about money again — not that she’s had to worry about it lately. Then all of a sudden Billy Rice is killed and Gamble is arrested and Jack Broach finds himself scrambling to raise money for bail and lawyers and hypnotists. And to top it off, here comes some blackmailer demanding a million or so. The only one not pressing him for money yet is Gamble herself. So when Georgia comes up with her goddamned elegant no-risk plan that offers him a chance to write off seven hundred thousand of what he borrowed from Gamble — okay, stole — he doesn’t say yes, he doesn’t say maybe, but he sure as hell doesn’t say no.”

Booth Stallings, wearing a frown, stared at Georgia Blue and said, “I’m really curious about Broach’s reaction to your offer. How’d he take it? Like it was merely another offer from some reputable member of the nation’s burgeoning service economy?”

Artie Wu smiled and said, “What did you say to him, Georgia? You must’ve rehearsed it.”

“He said he was no criminal defense lawyer, but the best of them had told him that blackmailers never quit. All I said was, ‘They do when they’re dead.’ And that’s when our lunch came to its sudden end.”

“Perfect,” Wu said. “Absolutely perfect.” He looked at his watch. “Booth and I can discuss ethical nuances in the morning. But it’s getting late and Quincy and I still must meet with Enno Glimm and Ms. Arliss. Then at eight tomorrow morning Oil Drum, our putative blackmailer, is due to call. Perhaps we should gather at, say, seven for breakfast.” He looked at Stallings. “What may we expect in the way of breakfast, Booth?”

“Coffee, juice and Egg McMuffins.”

“Excellent,” said Wu as he rose.

“Before we go,” Durant said, “I have two questions for Georgia.”

She hesitated, then shrugged, and Durant said, “What made you suspect Jack Broach was broke or nearly so?”

“I spotted three fake Daumiers hanging in his office.”

Durant nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good answer. My other question is: why tell us about the offer you made him? If you hadn’t, you might’ve walked away with three hundred thousand tax free.”

“No matter what I say, Quincy, you won’t believe it.”

“That’s also a very good answer,” Durant said.