Росс Томас - Voodoo, Ltd.

“Kick the bag out in front of you,” the man said.

Durant took a step back and kicked the bag away.

“Take another step back.”

Durant stepped back just as the man came into view. Durant grinned and said, “My God, it must be Jack Broach, Hollywood super agent — and off to World War Two about fifty years late. Is it tonight we raid Calais, Jack?”

Broach smiled a charming smile. “I’d’ve liked to have done that, Mr. Durant. I really would.”

Broach wore a knitted navy watch cap pulled down over his ears. He also wore a navy-blue turtleneck wool sweater and black pants that were bloused down over jump boots that looked as if they had been spit-shined. Although Durant thought the boots were a bit much he also thought that Broach handled the Uzi with disturbing familiarity.

Broach suddenly stopped smiling, knelt on his right knee beside the moneybag but kept his eyes and the Uzi on Durant. With his left hand, Broach felt for the moneybag’s zipper, found it, tugged it open and glanced down. The open bag was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.

When Broach looked down, Georgia Blue snatched the small .25-caliber semiautomatic from the ankle holster on her right leg — the same leg whose ankle she had rested on her left knee.

She shot the kneeling Jack Broach in his upper left arm. Broach grunted in either surprise or pain or both, dropped the Uzi, clapped his right hand to his wound and stared at Georgia Blue with astonishment. “You shot me,” he said, making it both a question and an accusation.

Now on her feet and aiming the small weapon at Broach with both hands, Georgia Blue said, “Give it up, Jack.”

But his right hand had already darted back to grip the Uzi he had dropped. “Maybe I’ll shoot Mr. Durant myself after all.”

“You can try,” she said.

Broach frowned, as if both puzzled and saddened by events. “We did have a deal, you and I.”

“Where’re the tapes, Jack?”

“What tapes?” he said. “There were never any tapes — none we could use anyway because Ione didn’t kill Billy Rice and don’t ask me who did because I don’t know.”

“And the Goodisons?” Georgia Blue said.

“They became all antsy and wanted to pull out of our blackmail deal and sell their story to some supermarket tabloid and, well, that had to be prevented, didn’t it?”

“Make him drop the Uzi, Georgia,” Durant said.

“A head shot, you think?”

“A head shot would be nice,” Durant said.

“Of course,” Broach said, “it was altogether different with you and me from what it was with me and the Goodisons. You and I are equals. And we made our deal as such.”

“No tapes, no deal, Jack,” Georgia Blue said. “Sorry.”

Jack Broach shook his head as if disappointed. He rose with the Uzi in his right hand, pointed downward, his finger nowhere near the trigger. He seemed unaware of the blood that ran down his left arm beneath the sweater and dripped to the floor.

Clenching his teeth and barely moving his lips, Durant said, “Make him drop the fucking piece, Georgia.”

“I’m leaving now,” Jack Broach said and walked slowly toward the open sliding door. Just before reaching it, he stopped and looked back at Georgia Blue, who still used two hands to aim the small semiautomatic at him. “Regardless of what you now claim, Georgia, we really did have a deal.”

He turned and walked through the door into the foyer. Standing near the stairs was Otherguy Overby, the Sauer semiautomatic he had borrowed from Artie Wu in his right hand.

When Broach saw Overby, he tried to bring the Uzi up. He was still trying when Overby shot him three times without hesitation. Once Broach lay sprawled on the parquet floor, Overby went over, stared down at him curiously, nudged him with the toe of a shoe, then looked up as Durant came through the door, holding one of Colleen Cullen’s revolvers. He was followed a moment later by Georgia Blue, whose small five-shot weapon dangled at her side, seemingly forgotten.

Overby looked back down at the dead man, then up at Georgia Blue. “Jack Broach?”

She nodded.

“What about the tapes?”

“There aren’t any tapes,” she said.

“None they could use anyway,” Durant said.

Overby frowned, then looked around. “What about Colleen?”

“Broach didn’t want any witnesses,” Blue said.

“Except you,” Durant said.

“He didn’t want me as a witness. He wanted me as a conspirator.”

She paused. “But then he and I had a deal, didn’t we?”

“The guy had an Uzi,” Overby said. “A fucking Uzi. How come you two are still walking around?”

“It’s all Georgia’s fault,” Durant said.

After Booth Stallings hung up the telephone on the blond secretary’s desk in Mott’s hotel suite office, he turned to Ione Gamble, who was still slumped in the room’s only easy chair. “More bad news?” she asked.

“Jack Broach is dead,” Stallings said. “Somebody shot him. He was the one blackmailing you — the one we called Oil Drum.”

The shock twisted Ione Gamble’s face and made her eyes bulge until she said, “Jack’s dead?”

Stallings nodded.

“He was blackmailing me?”

“Broach always was a no-good son of a bitch,” Rick Cleveland said from his seat behind the brunette secretary’s desk. He lifted his glass of Scotch, said, “To old Jack,” drank it and poured himself another from the bottle that was now one-third empty.

The shock had gone away from Gamble’s face, replaced by an odd serenity that seemed to erase all other emotions. “You knew Jack?” she asked Cleveland, as though inquiring about some mutual acquaintance neither had seen in years.

“Knew him when he was first starting out,” Cleveland said.

“I was one of his first clients. When he got too big or I got too small, he dumped me.”

She nodded politely, looked at Stallings again and asked, “Why would Jack blackmail me? Did he need money? I would’ve lent him money.”

“You don’t have any to lend,” Stallings said. “He stole it all. Maybe embezzled’s a better word.”

“I have no money?”

“Not much.”

“And you say Jack stole it?”

Stallings only nodded.

“Then how do I pay Howie Mott?”

“You don’t have to worry about paying Howie,” Stallings said, took the small .25-caliber semiautomatic from a pocket, placed it on the desktop and seemed to forget it.

“He won’t defend me for nothing,” she said. “I can’t expect him to.”

“There’s not going to be any trial,” Stallings said. “Not for you anyway.”

“What the hell’s going on, Booth?” she said, her serene look suddenly replaced by anger. “Spell it out. Use babytalk if you have to.”

“We’re going down to the sheriff’s office in Malibu,” Stallings said.

“Or maybe it’s called the substation.”

“The three of us?” she said.

“Just Rick and me,” Stallings said, picking up the small pistol. “And Rick’s going to tell ’em you didn’t shoot Billy Rice, but that he did.”

“You’re not trying to be funny, are you?” she said. “No. Of course you’re not.”

“Know how much it costs a day to rent a car like yours, Ione?” Stallings said.

“What the hell’re you getting at now?”

“Four hundred a day plus fifty cents a mile. That’s how much. Plus a five-thousand-dollar deposit — cash or credit card, providing your credit card can stand it. Rick here rented a car just like yours last New Year’s Eve, didn’t you, Rick?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Sure you did. Then you drove into Billy Rice’s driveway that same night around eleven or eleven-thirty, parked it, got out and rang the doorbell. You told whoever answered the door, maybe Rice himself, that you wanted to patch things up — make amends. Something like that. Once you’re both in the living room, you shoot Rice two times, then leave the gun oil that little elm table in the hall beneath the Hockney where whoever comes in will be sure to see it and maybe even pick it up. Which is just what Ione did.” Stallings looked at her. “Rick even left the front door open so you or someone else could go right in. The gun Rick used is kind of important because it was stolen off a movie set at Paramount where they were filming a pilot. Rick was a member of the cast — right, Rick?”