Росс Томас - Voodoo, Ltd.

“That’s Billy Rice’s house, isn’t it?” Stallings asked.

“I don’t know whose house it is.”

“That big producer who got shot dead New Year’s Eve?”

“Please move your fucking car, sir. Now.”

Stallings drove another one hundred feet, found an illegal parking space and pulled into it. Once out of the Mercedes he stuffed the brown paper sack containing the Scotch down into a jacket pocket, then darted across the highway and almost got hit by a car whose driver called him a dumb shit.

Stallings walked back toward the Rice house on the beach side of the highway and got there just in time to see Artie Wu, wearing exactly what he had worn at the early pizza dinner, being herded by two plainclothes investigators toward one of the unmarked sedans. Wu’s wrists were handcuffed behind him. His face was impassive. One investigator opened the sedan’s rear door and the other investigator put a hand on top of Wu’s head to keep it from bumping into anything when he turned and backed into the rear seat. As Wu turned and lowered himself, his eyes met Stallings’s. There was no flicker of recognition in the eyes of either man.

A small crowd of a dozen or so had gathered just outside the steel gates that guarded the Rice driveway. Stallings recognized a few of them as neighbors to whom he had paid, or tried to pay, courtesy calls. He avoided them and instead picked out the smartest-looking neighbor he hadn’t met, sidled up to him and said, “I’ve seen that Chinese guy down at the Hughes market. What’d he do?”

“Killed some Mexican taxi driver.”

“Huh,” Stallings said. “He the only one they arrested?”

“So far.”

“Bad-luck house, I guess. Billy Rice got his there on New Year’s Eve and now this Chinese guy takes a fall.”

“No telling who you’re living next to out here,” the neighbor said. “They let any asshole with a few bucks rent whatever he can pay for. I figure the Chinese guy for a coke dealer.”

“Must’ve been, to afford this place,” Stallings said and wandered away. When the stop-and-go traffic stopped again, he hurried across the highway to the yellow duplex and knocked on its door. It was opened seconds later by Rick Cleveland, the Gone With the Wind alumnus. Cleveland was still wearing a bathrobe but this one was canary yellow and came down to his calves. He also wore some new sandals along with a lighted cigarette in the left corner of his wide bitter mouth.

“Got some excitement over your way,” he said around the cigarette.

“Damned if we don’t,” Stallings said. “Mind if I use your phone?”

“Help yourself,” Cleveland said, opened the door wide, stepped back and then followed Stallings into the duplex’s living room.

“It’s right over there,” Cleveland said and pointed.

Stallings took the sack-wrapped bottle of Scotch out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Cleveland. “Pour us one while I make my call.”

The old actor slipped the bottle out of the sack and brightened at the sight of its label. “Jesus. I haven’t had a jolt of this in years.”

Stallings went over to pick up the phone and tap out Howard Mott’s number. As it rang, he noticed that Cleveland had moved to within easy listening distance while working on the bottle’s cork.

When Mott answered the telephone, Stallings said, “The sheriff’s people just took Artie away in handcuffs. The rumor is that he killed a Mexican cabdriver.”

“You’re not alone, then,” Mott said.

“No.”

“Where’d they take him — the Malibu jail?”

“Probably.”

“Then I’d better get busy — except we have a problem. Not enough baby-sitters.”

“Tell you what,” Stallings said, raising his voice slightly. “There’s an actor friend of mine out here who might be willing to help out while you tend to Artie.”

“You’re up to something, Booth.”

“I thought you’d like the idea. Let’s see what my friend says.”

He turned to Rick Cleveland, who had poured two stiff drinks and now stood no more than four feet away, sipping one of the drinks and holding the other in his left hand.

“You want to make five hundred bucks tonight?” Stallings said.

“How?”

“Help me bodyguard Ione Gamble.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Yes or no?” Stallings said.

“Hell, yes.”

Into the phone Stallings said, “We’ll be there in twenty or twenty-five minutes.”

“After you get there, take a look in the lower left-hand drawer of my secretary’s desk,” Mott said.

“The blonde’s desk?”

“The brunette’s.”

“One other thing, Howie.”

“What?”

“Take Artie some cigars.”

Rick Cleveland was wearing a tweed jacket, blue shirt and faded Levi’s jeans when he and Booth Stallings reached the illegally parked Mercedes 500SL. Cleveland stopped and stared at the car. “Christ, that looks just like the one Ione Gamble drove that night.”

“That’s because it is the same one,” Stallings said.

They drove to Howard Mott’s hotel in twenty-one minutes. Mott opened the door to the suite, was introduced to Cleveland and, in turn, introduced him to Ione Gamble, who was seated in the lone easy chair in the secretaries’ office. Gamble smiled up at the actor and said, “I must’ve seen you a hundred times on one screen or other. Funny we haven’t met before this.”

“Haven’t been working much lately,” Cleveland said and looked curiously at the two desks and the two word processors.

“I must go,” Mott said. “Good of you to accommodate us, Mr. Cleveland.”

“Glad to help out,” Cleveland said. “At least I think I am.”

Mott smiled his goodbye and left. After the door closed, Ione Gamble looked up at Stallings and said, “So you and your young friend here are my new bodyguards.”

Because it wasn’t a question, Stallings made no reply. Instead, he went over to the blond secretary’s desk and opened the deep bottom drawer. The only thing it contained was a .25-caliber semiautomatic.

It was a very small vest-pocket-size weapon of Italian manufacture that held five .25-caliber rounds. Stallings could almost conceal it with one hand. But he made a point of showing it to Ione Gamble. “It’s a gun, Ione. I’m not going to shoot you with it. I just want you to know your new bodyguard is armed.” He dropped the small gun into his jacket pocket.

“And with such a very little gun,” she said. “What now?”

“We wait,” Stallings said.

Rick Cleveland sat down behind the brunette secretary’s desk. “Wait for what?” he asked.

“For whatever happens,” Stallings said.

“Well, what d’you guys think’s going to happen?”

“Something awful,” said Ione Gamble.

At 8:49 that night, Otherguy Overby lay flat on the treehouse floor, peering down at Colleen Cullen as she ended her final security sweep through her five-acre grounds. In her left hand was a two-foot-long flashlight and, in her right, the sawed-off shotgun — aimed straight ahead — its shortened stock pressed hard against her right hip.

At 8:51 Cullen returned to the inn, mounted the nine steps to the porch and went inside. A minute later all the interior lights went out. The only lights left burning were the two 100-watt ones on the porch.

Overby had discovered the treehouse just after 8 P.M. as he slowly made his way through what he regarded as the forest primeval but was actually a well-tended three-acre stand of pines, sycamores, eucalyptus and a few rather old live-oak trees. Earlier, he drove past the entrance to the inn’s long brick drive with its always lit red neon sign warning of no vacancy. He stopped a quarter mile farther up the narrow blacktop road, parked the rented Ford on the shoulder, got out, locked the car and disappeared into what he suspected to be the wild wood.