“You’re putting in too much detail,” Glimm said.
“I like detail,” Wu said, smiling encouragingly at Arliss.
Voodoo, Ltd. —36
She had another sip of Evian water. “The detective had by now struck up a kind of silent rapport with the seven-year-old girl, who hadn’t said a word since her rape. But sometimes she’d nod or shake her head to the detective’s questions, which is more than she’d do for her parents or anyone else. So after getting the parents’ permission the detective explained everything to the child, then went to her masters and told them what she had in mind. After a certain amount of bureaucratic bump and shuffle, it was decided to give the Goodisons a try, providing a doctor was present.”
“I thought the Metro cops had their own hypnotists,” Durant said.
“They do,” Arliss said. “But they’re all male coppers. In any event, Pauline—with brother Hughes as backup—hypnotized the child, who regained both speech and memory and promptly named her dad as the rapist.”
“Well, now,” said Wu because Jenny Arliss had paused, as if expecting comment or exclamation.
“Then what?” Durant said.
“Then the story was leaked by someone,” she said. “The police still don’t know who, but I always suspected Hughes. The tabloids had a perfectly marvelous time. Hypnotized Tot Says Daddy Raped Me. Stuff like that. The tot’s name was never mentioned, nor were the names of her parents—until much later. But the names of Hughes and Pauline were all over the papers and that’s when I swooped in and gathered them up.”
“When did all this happen?” Wu said. “A couple of years ago?”
“Just about. Since then, the Goodisons have opened four more lose-weight, stop-smoking workshops, the police’ve consulted them repeatedly and they’ve given ever so many interviews and made any number of television appearances.”
“You’re what—their agent?” Durant asked.
“No. Help! signed them solely for foreign representation on a just-in-case basis. That’s how we sign all our clients. We neither charge them a fee nor take a percentage of their gross because the employer always pays our fee.”
“Which is how much?” Wu asked.
“Twenty-five percent on top of what our client gets,” Glimm said.
“Sounds profitable,” Wu said, opened a beer, poured himself a glass, had two swallows and said, “I’d like to hear about California now—and how the Goodisons went missing.”
“Okay,” Glimm said. “But first I wanta mention a couple of names because, if you recognize them, it’ll save a hell of a lot of time and explanation. The names are Ione Gamble and William A. C. Rice the Fourth. Ring any bells?”
Durant said, “Jilted Actress Slays Billionaire, Cops Claim.”
“What about you?” Glimm said to Wu. “You up on it?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —37
“I’ve kept abreast,” Wu said. “It would’ve been difficult not to.”
“Then you know she claims she got drunk and blacked out and can’t remember anything. You know about that, right?”
“We know,” Durant said.
“You know about her auditions?”
“For what?” Wu said.
“For criminal defense lawyers,” Glimm said. “She flew ‘em in from all over, guys with big reputations. Then she picks one from Washington, D.C., who she says is the smartest man she ever met and I’ve gotta agree with her there. She picked Howard Mott. Know him?”
Wu looked at Durant, then said, “I don’t think we’ve ever actually met, have we?”
“No,” Durant said. “We haven’t.”
“But you know who he is?” Glimm said.
Wu nodded.
“Well, Mott and I’ve done business before so I wasn’t all that surprised when I got a call from him. I was in Frankfurt and he was in L.A. Santa Monica, anyway. He tells me he’s representing Ione Gamble and wants me to tell him about Hughes and Pauline Goodison.
So I tell him to call Jenny here in London—or I’ll have her call him.
Mott says he’s in a hurry, so I give him her number and he calls her.
She’ll tell you what happened then.”
Durant and Wu looked at Jenny Arliss. She stared at Wu first, then shifted her gaze to Durant and said, “Mr. Mott rang and grilled me for thirty minutes or more about the Goodisons. I gave him some telephone numbers to call, including several at the Metropolitan Police. Two hours later he rang back and said he’d like to employ or retain the Goodisons to help Ione Gamble recover her memory. I was curious as to why he’d pick them when southern California is brimming over with all sorts of hypnotherapists, reputable and otherwise. So I asked him.”
“What did he say?” Durant asked.
She looked away for a moment to stare at the portrait of Agnes Wu and the two sets of twins. She then looked back at Durant and said,
“Mr. Mott wanted to engage a hypnotist—in this case, a pair of them—
whose discretion would be guaranteed. He then asked if Help! would guarantee the Goodisons’ silence or discretion, whatever. I told him of course—that we guarantee the discretion of all our specialists. We then settled on a fee and—”
Durant interrupted. “What do you mean ‘guarantee’?”
“She means we’ll indemnify any loss Ione Gamble takes because of the Goodisons,” Glimm said. “Which could be a great big bundle.” He paused to stare at Wu. “That’s why I want ‘em found.”
After nodding pleasantly, Wu looked at Jenny Arliss and said, “You were talking about their fee.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —38
She said, “I rang Hughes and asked whether he and Pauline would fly to Los Angeles and hypnotize Ione Gamble for one hundred thousand dollars plus expenses. He almost went into a fit but accepted, of course, and they left the next day.”
“Then what?” Wu asked.
“A week later I had a call from Mr. Mott, who said the Goodisons had had three sessions with Ione Gamble. After the third session, they rang Mr. Mott at two in the morning to report a serious problem, but refused to discuss it over the phone. Mott told them not to stir, that he was coming right over. He was in a Santa Monica hotel and they were in the Bel-Air Hotel. I understand it usually takes twenty or twenty-five minutes to get from one to the other. Mr. Mott made it in less than twenty. But the Goodisons had already vanished.”
“Have they been heard from since?” Wu asked.
“Mott got a call from the brother,” Glimm said. “He said it was nothing but gibberish.”
“So what’s worrying you—blackmail?” Durant said.
“Exactly,” Glimm said.
“There’s no proof of it,” Wu said.
“Yet,” said Glimm. “Look,” he continued. “Maybe they’re blackmailers or maybe they aren’t. Or maybe they’ve been kidnapped and somebody else is the blackmailer. I could maybe this and maybe that the rest of the afternoon. But maybes aren’t answers, are they?”
“If it is blackmail,” Wu said, “who pays—you or Gamble?”
“I do,”
“You could wiggle out of it,” Durant said.
“Sure,” said Glimm, “but the word’d get around, wouldn’t it? I’d lose all my clients and spend the rest of my life kicking myself because I didn’t fork over a lousy million bucks. And when I wasn’t kicking myself, I’d be talking to lawyers about how to wiggle out of the ten or fifteen million Ione Gamble’s suing me for. But I don’t wanta do any of that, which is why I’m hiring you guys.”