Росс Томас - Voodoo, Ltd.

“It would at least prove your powers of observation.”

“I see no need to prove anything,” Wu said and increased his pace.

The only noticeable change in Enno Glimm was the garish green and red Hawaiian shirt he wore, tails out, over pants that seemed to belong to a blue pinstripe suit. Glimm sat in an easy chair in the sitting room of his two rooms on the inn’s third floor. To his left on a couch was Jenny Arliss, wearing white duck pants and a navy-blue T-shirt. Wu and Durant, after a perfunctory greeting from Glimm, chose a pair of matching armchairs.

Once they were seated, Glimm said, “This place hasn’t got a restaurant.”

“You can send out for a pizza,” Durant said.

Glimm ignored the suggestion. “Okay. Let’s hear it. What’ve you done right so far?”

“So far,” Wu said, “we’ve discovered the murdered bodies of Hughes and Pauline Goodison — thus completing the task you set for us, which essentially was, ‘Find the Goodisons.’ ”

Jenny Arliss murmured, “My God.”

All Glimm did was rise, move to the window and pull a drawn curtain back just far enough to peer out at the miles-away lights of Santa Monica. While staring at them, he said, “They claim there’s a hell of a daytime view from here. Too bad I won’t get to see it.” He let the curtain go, turned to Arliss and said, “Get us on the next flight to New York.”

“I think we should hear the rest first,” she said.

“Make the fucking reservations,” Glimm said, went back to his chair, sat down, aimed his pale gray gaze at Wu, then at Durant, and said, “Okay. Let’s have it.”

It took them thirty-six minutes to tell it. During the first seven minutes, Jenny Arliss spoke quietly into the room’s telephone, then interrupted Wu to tell Glimm she had made first-class reservations for them on a 1 A.M. flight that would get them into Kennedy at 9:30 A.M. with a 12 noon connection to Heathrow. Glimm only nodded and told Wu to keep talking.

By then, Wu was describing his hypnosis of Ione Gamble. Glimm listened silently to everything, asking no questions, not even when Durant described their discovery of the murdered limousine driver, Carlos Santillan. Or the possible bankruptcy of Jack Broach & Co. Or even the failed four-man attack on him and Durant not ten minutes before they arrived at Glimm’s suite. During all but the first seven minutes of the joint recitation, Jenny Arliss made rapid shorthand notes in a spiral notebook. Durant assumed it was a verbatim account.

After Wu and Durant finished, there was a long silence until Enno Glimm asked, “How much?”

“How much what?” Durant asked.

“How much’ll the blackmailer ask for those tapes the Goodisons made and he stole?”

“Probably a million,” Durant said. “That’s almost the standard asking price. People can comprehend it. Divide it easily. And it’s still just enough to make them believe it’ll solve all their problems — even though it’s no more than three hundred thousand was in seventy-three.”

Glimm snorted something in German that sounded derisive, then went back to English. “You say Gamble didn’t kill what’s his name, Billy Rice?”

“We don’t believe she did,” Durant said.

“But the Goodisons’ tapes say she did.”

“We think they’ve been doctored.”

“You think?”

“Suspect,” Durant said.

“Well, Christ, if they were doctored, can’t you and Howie Mott prove it?”

“Not until we get our hands on them,” Wu said. “And if Ione Gamble doesn’t buy them, the blackmailer will probably sell them to the news media that dote on sleaze. If the tapes are printed or broadcast before her trial — the blackmailer claims to have her on both audio- and videotapes — the publicity could affect the trial’s outcome, regardless of the tapes’ accuracy or their inadmissibility as evidence.”

“She willing to pay the million?” Glimm asked.

“Providing she can raise it,” Durant said.

Glimm looked at his right hand, nodded more to himself than to the others, then asked, now looking at his left hand, “But you say this guy, Jack Broach, might’ve lost all her money and his, too, right?”

“We think so,” Durant said.

Glimm stopped looking at his hands, rose, went back to the window and again peered out at the lights of Santa Monica. He stared at them for nearly a minute before he turned, looked first at Wu, then at Durant and asked, “You two wanta make some more money?”

“How much more?” Durant asked.

“Another five hundred thousand U.S.”

“We’re interested,” Wu said.

“Okay. You’ll get the extra five hundred thousand, on top of what we’ve already agreed to, if you do two things. One: you keep me out of it. I’m not just talking no stain now. I mean no connection whatever. And two: get Ione Gamble off the hook. Prove she didn’t kill what’s his name, Rice.” He then looked at Jenny Arliss and said, “Tear up all your notes and burn ’em.”

Arliss nodded, closed her notebook, put away her ballpoint pen, looked at Durant and said, “I think we should hear a bit more about your Georgia Blue. From what you’ve said, she seems to be your weak link.”

“She’s my responsibility,” Durant said.

Artie Wu smiled slightly and nodded several times, the way he almost always did when shocked or surprised. No one seemed to notice except Durant.

“The way you guys told it,” Glimm said, “your Ms. Blue could gum up the works.”

“She’s the best there is,” Durant said. “And that makes the risk worthwhile.”

“You’re saying she’s the best woman?” Jenny Arliss asked.

“She’s the best anybody,” Durant said.

“How long’ve you known her?”

“Seventeen or eighteen years.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-six or — seven.”

Arliss’s left eyebrow rose. “A teenage girlfriend?”

Artie Wu slipped into the conversation before Durant could answer. “I agree with Quincy that Georgia’s the best there is. I must also stress that it was my decision that she join us. And that makes me equally responsible for her actions.”

“Except neither of you trust her around the corner, do you?” Glimm said and chuckled. He had nearly chuckled during his first visit to Wudu, Ltd., in London, and Durant had then wondered how it would sound and suspected it would be a dry scratchy noise — like something small and vicious trying to claw and bite its way out of a cardboard box. He now discovered he was right.

The chuckle over, Glimm said, “Don’t worry. I’ve hired guys just because they’re the best — even though I wasn’t sure I could trust ’em. It’s probably why I hired you two.”

“How kind,” Artie Wu said.

“We got a deal?” Glimm said as if he already knew the answer.

Durant nodded first. A moment later, so did Wu.

Looking almost satisfied, Glimm turned to Arliss and said, “Call down to the desk and tell ’em we’re checking out and to get us a limo.”

He turned back to Wu and Durant to study them carefully for almost thirty seconds before he rose, gave them a farewell nod and their final orders: “Do it right.” Enno Glimm then disappeared into the adjoining bedroom.

Durant rose and went over to Jenny Arliss just as she put down the phone. He held out his hand and said, “I’ll take the steno book.”

She handed it to him, then asked, “You don’t really trust anyone, do you?”

“Not often.”

“Good,” she said.

At shortly after midnight, Booth Stallings lay propped up in bed, reading copies of documents given him that afternoon by Mary Jo something, the brunette legal secretary who worked for Howard Mott.