Росс Томас - Voodoo, Ltd.

Cleveland ignored Stallings, finished his whisky, then poured himself another one.

Ione kept staring at Cleveland, who refused to look at her. “Why would you do it?” she said. “Kill Billy?”

Rick Cleveland downed his new drink, made a face, finally looked at Gamble and said, “Because the fucker spoiled my view, that’s why.”

“Your view?”

“You’ve got a view, don’t you?” Cleveland said. “Sure you do. Suppose some asshole comes along and builds an eight-or nine-story building right in front of it. Wouldn’t that piss you off?”

“Not enough to kill him,” she said.

“What if your view was all you had left in the world?” Rick Cleveland said.

At just past 2 A.M. the sheriff’s substation in Malibu locked Rick Cleveland in the same cell from which it had just released Artie Wu. By then Cleveland had freely admitted killing William A. C. Rice IV and even announced that, given the same circumstances, he would do it all over again.

At 3:16 A.M. The state Highway Patrol, acting on an anonymous tip, discovered the bodies of Colleen Cullen and Jack Broach in the Topanga Canyon bed-and-breakfast inn. Otherguy Overby, the anonymous tipster, had called the Highway Patrol because he remembered Cullen telling him she was paying off certain deputy sheriffs to let her keep the lie-low establishment in business.

At 3:38 A.M. Overby, carrying a blue canvas bag, rang the door chimes at Ione Gamble’s house on Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica. After demanding that he identify himself, a fully dressed Gamble opened the door.

“Let’s go up to your office, Ione,” Overby said.

“I can’t handle any more shit tonight.”

“You’ll like this kind,” he said.

Seated in her office behind the Memphis cotton broker’s desk, an extremely wary Ione Gamble watched Overby place the blue zip-up bag in front of her. “What’s that?” she said.

“Open it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a nice surprise.”

Gamble rose and zipped open the bag that was still stuffed with bound hundred-dollar bills. “Jesus,” she said. “Whose is it?”

“Yours. Three hundred thousand — almost. It’s part of what Jack Broach stole from you. I stole it back. Not all by myself, of course. I had a little help from Georgia and that fucking Durant.”

“This is the mythical million, then, right?” she said. “The million that was supposed to buy back the tapes — except there wasn’t any million and there weren’t any tapes.”

“That’s about right,” Overby said.

“What do I do with it?”

“You got a safe-deposit box, don’t you? Put it in there. When you need some, take some out.” Overby rose. “I’ve gotta go — but it’s been awfully nice seeing you again, Ione.”

“What’ll you do now?”

Overby smiled contentedly. “Probably not much right away.”

“Sit down, Otherguy.”

He sat down. There was a long silence as she studied him before speaking again. “You want to be my agent?”

When Quincy Durant, seated at the old refectory table in the late William Rice’s dining room, got off the telephone with Enno Glimm in London it was 2:05 P.M. There and 6:05 A.M. in Malibu. Durant turned to Otherguy Overby and said, “Mr. Glimm is very appreciative of our efforts. It may not be exact, but he said something like: You guys did a pretty fucking fair job.”

“What about the money?” Overby said.

“Jenny Arliss is making the wire transfer. Glimm says Westminster Bank will handle it. It should be here by nine when our bank opens.”

“All of it?” Overby asked.

“All of it.”

“And our shares are still going to be what Artie said?”

“Nobody’s going to stiff you, Otherguy.”

“If you don’t ask, they don’t tell you.”

There was a pause before Durant said, “How is she?”

“Who?”

Durant only stared at him.

“Oh. You mean Ione. Ione’s fine. Sort of tired. Sort of mystified. But the money cheered her up a little. Not a hell of a lot, but some.” He paused and decided to lie. “She asked about you.”

“Asked what?”

“You know. If you were all right and what your plans were. Stuff like that.” Overby paused. “She also asked me to be her agent.”

Once again Durant’s mouth clamped itself into its unforgiving line. His eyes drilled into Overby as the mouth opened just enough to ask, “And you said what? It sure as hell wasn’t no.”

Overby showed Durant his hard, white and, this time, strangely merry smile. “I said, Ione, that’s the worst fucking idea you ever had in your life.”

Durant slumped back in the dining room chair as if exhausted. “I don’t understand you anymore, Otherguy.”

Overby nodded thoughtfully. “Not many people do.”

After they had walked approximately a hundred yards up the beach, Artie Wu and Howard Mott turned and started back to the Rice house. They walked in silence for several moments until Mott said, “I assume you heard about the war?”

“About it being over? One of the deputies told me. Perhaps it was a preoccupation with my own problems, but I had a very curious ‘So what?’ reaction. I think we must be living in strange times.”

“The war’ll be useful to them in the election,” Mott said.

“You think so? That’s what — twenty-two months off? If there’s a bad slump, nobody’ll remember it. Well, virtually nobody.”

“You still vote?” Mott asked.

“Religiously.”

“Against or for?”

“Against,” Wu said. “I don’t think anyone votes for anyone anymore”

They walked on in silence until Wu looked down at Mott and said, “Okay, Howie. How did you spring me?”

“Favors.”

Wu nodded several times, the nods indicating his understanding, and also his curiosity. “I like details,” he said.

“I called a senior partner in the law firm I’m associated with in the Gamble case. Or what was the Gamble case. He owed me a favor — a considerable one. I told him quite candidly that I would be in his debt if he could think of some way to quash the whole thing. I also mentioned that, if necessary, I could round up a dozen or so street people who’d swear you and Durant were passing out dollar bills on Ocean Avenue at precisely the time Miss Rosa Alicia Chavez thinks she saw el chino grande . I also hinted at other witnesses.”

“He believe you?”

“No, but it gave him ammunition. So he called someone who owed him a favor and that someone called someone else and it went on up the line until they reached the somebody who could pick up the phone and make the call that set you free.”

“I’m in your debt,” Artie Wu said.

“You are indeed,” Mott said. They walked on in silence for a few more paces until Mott asked, “Why’d you sit still for it?”

“Because they needed to arrest somebody,” Wu said. “There were all those rental car receipts and credit card trails and too many people who knew we were in town. We had to give the cops somebody. It couldn’t be Georgia since she was the most vulnerable because of her passport, which isn’t quite kosher. Otherguy was a possibility. He could have tap-danced his way through it, but he had contacts we needed and, besides, we’d have to hear about his noble sacrifice until the end of time. Then there was Booth. But he, thank God, was off riding his own hobbyhorse — the Rick Cleveland connection — and he was also looking after the money and keeping us fed, if not very well. That left Durant or me. But I wanted to keep the Blue-Durant experiment going so that left only me. And as I thought about it, I had to admit I didn’t have anything more constructive to do.” He smiled down at Mott. “Satisfied?”