Росс Томас - Voodoo, Ltd.

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.”

It was 2:42 P.M. When Georgia Blue began counting the $300,000 in Jack Broach’s Beverly Hills office. There were thirty bound packets of currency stacked on his eighteenth-century French desk, each packet containing $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Blue stood, counting silently. When done, she carefully packed the money into a dark blue nylon carryall she had bought at a Sav-On drugstore for $8.95 plus tax.

Broach sat behind his desk, not speaking until she zipped up the carryall. He then smiled and said, “One million exactly, right?”

Georgia Blue sat down in a chair in front of the desk, stared at him for a moment, then said, “Exactly.”

“A receipt in that amount might prove useful someday.”

“Useful to you, not to me.”

“I thought it worth a try.”

She shrugged. “Anything else?”

He leaned toward her, forearms on the ornate desktop, the well-cared-for hands clasped, a look of what seemed to be genuine interest, even curiosity, on his face. “I’d like to know how it’ll work — the mechanics of it.”

“The details,” she said.

He nodded.

“That’s normal,” she said. “Most people become curious when they find themselves in a mess like this for the first time. They ask who-does-what-and-when questions — probably because so much money’s involved.”

“It does spark the curiosity,” Broach said.

“All right. Here’s how it’ll work. When Oil Drum calls later this afternoon—”

“Oil Drum?”

“It’s our name for the seller because of his electronically distorted voice.”

“I see.”

“When he calls—”