Voodoo, Ltd.

Thirty-six

The three of them were following the Salvadoran housekeeper and the flop-cared rabbit up the stairs to Ione Gamble’s office when the 7-year-old shepherd-Labrador began its charge.

Otherguy Overby, bringing up the rear, turned just in time for eighty-two pounds of dog to spring and slam into his chest. A second later Overby found himself in a sitting position on the stair’s fifth step, the shep-Lab licking his face and emitting yelps and whines of joy and delight.

Overby finally grinned, gave the dog a rough hug, pushed him away and said, “How the hell are you, Moose?” The dog replied with yet another wet lick, rested his head on Overby’s knee and gazed up at him with what seemed to be total adoration.

It was then that Ione Gamble appeared at the top of the stairs and asked Durant, “What happened?”

“Your dog just took out your new bodyguard,” said Durant and quickly introduced Gamble to Georgia Blue.

After the introduction, Gamble stared down at the back of Overby’s head and called, “Are you okay?”

Overby rose slowly, turned around even more slowly, looked up at Gamble and said, “I’m fine.”

“Godalmighty,” she said. “It’s Otherguy Overby himself.”

Overby smiled up at her — a little wanly, Durant thought — and said, “Howya doing, Ione?”

“You’ve met, I see,” Georgia Blue said.

Ione Gamble nodded, still staring down at Overby, whose faint smile had now almost faded away. “The first time was in seventy-four,” she said. “I was eighteen and Otherguy was what — thirty-three?”

“Thirty,” Overby said.

“As I said, thirty-three, and he was going to make me a star. Well, he did get me my first job — leading an iguana by a rope over to Cal Worthington in one of those ‘My Dog, Spot’ used-car commercials.”

“You had to start somewhere,” Overby said.

“And the next time?” Georgia Blue said.

“Ten years later.”

“Eleven,” Overby said. “Eighty-five.”

“Okay. Eighty-five. I’d just bought this house and had to do a picture in London. I needed someone to house-sit and a friend recommended what she called ‘this perfectly marvelous house-sitter.’ So I said okay, send him around. Well, who shows up but Maurice Overby, House-sitter to the Stars.”

“Tell ’em who saved the house, Ione,” Overby said.

“You did. The firemen ordered him out because a fire was sweeping up the canyon. But Otherguy stayed on the roof all night with a garden hose and nobody got hurt and nothing got burned. But when he left six weeks later, my animals pined for him so much, especially Moose here, that they’d hardly eat. The bastard had alienated their affections and I had to pay him fifty bucks every Sunday for two months just to come over and play with ’em for an hour.”

Overby shrugged. “Animals like me.”

“If you don’t want him as bodyguard,” said Durant, “just say so.”

“How long will I need one?”

“Two or three days, if that.”

“If he stays more than three days, my animals will fall for him again.

On the other hand, Otherguy’s mean and crafty and ought to make an okay bodyguard. So let’s go on in the office and you guys can have a beer or something.” She looked back down the stairs at Overby. “You, too.”

Ione Gamble indicated the way to her office, which Durant already knew. He led the way, followed by Georgia Blue. When Overby reached the top of the stairs, trailed by Moose, Gamble looked over her left shoulder to make sure Blue and Durant were inside the office. She then turned back to Overby and said, “You going to give me a hug or not?”

After he gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, she said, “Why didn’t you tell them you knew me?”

“It was a long time ago, Ione.”

“Something told me to ride you a little. Was I right?”

He nodded. “As always.”

“How are you — really?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said, and intuition told Gamble that Otherguy Overby, for once, was probably telling the truth.

No one wanted a beer at 10:45 in the morning so the Salvadoran housekeeper served coffee to everyone except Gamble, who, seated behind her Memphis cotton broker’s desk with the flop-eared rabbit in her lap, stuck to diet Dr Pepper.

After a sip of the soft drink, she looked at Durant and said, “I talked to Howie Mott. He called forty-five minutes ago and told me the blackmailer wants a million dollars for the Goodison tapes. I asked him what I should do and Howie said he’s against paying blackmail in any form. But it’s my reputation at stake and it has to be my choice.”

“That’s a nonanswer,” said Overby, who was sitting in the businesslike armchair with Moose curled up at his feet.

“No, it’s not,” Gamble said. “Howie said that before I decided anything I should find out from Jack Broach if I can even raise a million dollars in cash by five this afternoon. If I can’t, he says the question of payment is moot.” She paused. “Academic?”

“Or irrelevant,” Georgia Blue said. Durant, sitting next to her on the chintz-covered couch, agreed with a nod.

“Well, I called Jack and asked if it was possible and he said just barely, but I’d have to take a beating on some of my stocks and bonds and all my annuities. I told him to go ahead. Of course, he wanted to know what to do with a million in cash. I told him Howie said a Ms. Georgia Blue would be by to pick it up.”

“What did Mr. Broach say?” Blue asked.

“He sounded relieved and said you were very competent.”

“You have to sign anything?” Durant asked Gamble.

She shook her head. “Jack’s got my power of attorney.”

“I’d never give anybody my power of attorney,” Overby said.

Ione Gamble dismissed Overby’s comment with a derisive roll of her eyes and turned again to Georgia Blue. “You’ve had a lot of experience in stuff like this?”

“Yes.”

“Georgia used to be a Secret Service agent,” Overby said.

“Really?”

Blue nodded.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Get the tapes back. You don’t have any choice.”

“But they tell me they’re inadmissible as evidence because I was hypnotized.”

“This isn’t about evidence anymore,” Blue said. “It’s about Ione Gamble, movie star. If you don’t get the tapes back, they’ll be sold to slash-and-burn TV shows and tabloids. They’ll run tapes of you on TV saying God knows what — maybe describing the details of your sex life with Billy Rice. And everything they run on TV will be boiled down by the tabloids into three- and four-word Second Coming headlines that’ll scream the whole story.” Georgia Blue paused, then continued. “Okay. You’re tough and you can take it. But it’ll be an avalanche of pretrial publicity — all of it bad.”

“Maybe it won’t ever come to trial,” Overby said.

“Maybe it won’t,” Georgia Blue said.

“What you’re really telling me is that those tapes could help send me to the gas chamber.”

“That’s melodramatic,” Blue said. “What I’m saying is that they can do you no possible good and could cause you a great deal of harm.”

Gamble looked at Durant. “What d’you think?”

“I think Georgia’s right.”

Gamble seemed drawn back to Blue. “In the Secret Service you must’ve had a lot of experience protecting people.”

Georgia Blue nodded.

“Anybody famous?”

“Imelda Marcos. Mrs. Bush — when he first became Vice-President. Some others.”

“Then you’re an expert.”

“I was.”

“Well, if I need a bodyguard, why is it Otherguy and not you?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Durant,” Georgia Blue said.

Gamble shifted her gaze to Durant, who said, “We don’t know that your life’s in danger. But we think it’s a possibility and Otherguy is the precaution we’ve taken. And a competent one.”

“As competent as Ms. Blue?”

“Nobody is.”

Georgia Blue turned to stare at Durant, then looked quickly away.

“So you and Ms. Blue—”

“Better call me Georgia.”

“So you and Georgia will buy the tapes from the blackmailer with my million dollars?”

“You tell her, Georgia,” Durant said.

“When it’s all over,” Georgia Blue said slowly, “we plan to hand you the tapes and also your million dollars and possibly even the blackmailer.”

Ione Gamble seemed to shrink back in her wooden swivel chair. “Possibly?” she said, almost whispering the word.

“It’s possible the blackmailer will be dead.”

Ione Gamble shrank even farther back in the chair, as if to get as far away from Blue and Durant as possible. She stared down at her desktop, stroked the flop-eared rabbit, as though for reassurance, then looked up at Overby and said, “I don’t really want to hear any more, Otherguy.”