“The widow was both pleased and enriched, as well you know,” Mott said. “I also appreciate the clients you’ve referred to me. Some have been a bit odd, of course. A few were fascinating. All of them, thank God, were solvent and every last one of them was guilty as hell.”
“If they weren’t,” Durant said, “why would they need a thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer?”
“I don’t charge quite that much. Yet.”
“How’s your batting average?” Wu said.
“Eight of the ten you sent me were acquitted. The other two are improving their Ping-Pong skills at various minimum security joints in Pennsylvania and Florida.” Mott again stared, first at Durant, then at Wu, shook his head slightly and said, “I was just thinking it’s strange we haven’t met until now.”
“We try to avoid the need for legal counsel,” Durant said.
“Very wise,” Mott said, then asked, “Overby’s not coming?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —70
“No.”
“I hope to meet him while he’s in town. We’ve talked over the phone so many times I’ve come to think of him as a prospective client.”
“As well you might,” Wu said.
“So how’s my father-in-law?”
“In love,” Durant said.
“Really? Who with?”
“An ex-Secret Service agent. Georgia Blue.”
Mott frowned. “Wasn’t she the one in Hong Kong who they extradited to the Philippines for murder and—”
Wu didn’t let him finish. “The very same.”
“Well. The five of you. Together again. Must seem like a reunion.”
“Fortunately,” Durant said, “like all reunions, it’s only temporary.”
Mott obviously wanted to say more and even ask a question or two.
Instead, he moved something around inside his mouth. Bit his tongue, Wu thought. Mott then glanced at his watch and announced the meeting would be upstairs in Ione Gamble’s office.
“Just the four of us?” Wu said as they started up the stairs.
“Is there supposed to be someone else?”
“You mentioned Jack Broach.”
“Jack couldn’t get away,” Mott said.
Ione Gamble wore a dark blue cable-knit cotton sweater with a deep V-neck over what looked like a raw-silk T-shirt. She also wore gray flannel pants and white Reeboks. As Mott made the introductions, Gamble shook Durant’s hand first and murmured something polite as she assessed the tweed jacket, custom-made chambray shirt, twill pants and the aged loafers that encased a pair of spirited argyle socks she wouldn’t see until he sat down and crossed his legs.
She smiled at Artie Wu next, shook his hand and said something nice as she took in the tieless white shirt with the semi-Byronic collar, the faintly raffish double-breasted blue blazer, the putty-colored pants and the gleaming black pebble-grained wing tips that he wore like a badge of respectability. She also noticed that Wu wore a wedding ring but Durant didn’t.
After the introductions, Gamble resumed her seat behind the Memphis cotton broker’s desk. Mott took the businesslike armchair and Wu and Durant settled for the couch with the chintz slipcover.
It was then that Durant crossed his legs, revealing the argyle socks, smiled at Ione Gamble and said what he’d been planning to say.
“We’ve rented William Rice’s house in Malibu.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —71
Her surprise came and went quickly, replaced by a bleak stare that was aimed at Durant while she asked a question of Howard Mott. “Am I paying for the house, Howie?”
“Enno Glimm is,” Mott said.
The bleak stare gave way to a smile and she said, “Then I hope you guys enjoy it because it’s a lovely place.”
“Did you rent it just by happy chance?” Mott said.
Artie Wu nodded. “It’s one of those fortuitous events that may or may not prove useful. But as Miss Gamble says, it’s a hell of a house.”
“You’d better call me Ione and I’ll call you Artie and— Quincy, isn’t it?”
“Quincy,” Durant agreed. “Since we’re here to ask questions, maybe we should establish the ground rules. Are there any areas you want declared out of bounds?”
“If there are, I’ll tell you when to stay the fuck away.”
“That ought to be warning enough.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where do we start?”
“With the Goodisons,” Durant said. “Pauline and Hughes.”
“Yes, the Goodisons. Well, they wanted me to call them Paulie and Hughsie two minutes after we met. I’ve lived in this town for thirty years—and by ‘this town,’ I mean L.A.— and I didn’t have what you’d call a sheltered upbringing. By the time I was twenty I figured I’d met every kind of slime king and ooze queen known in Christendom—until I met the Goodisons.”
“Tell us about them,” Wu said.
“Okay. I met with them three times and it was after the last meeting that Howie got that phone call from Hughes Goodison who claimed he had all sorts of new information, important facts or something like that. Anyway, Hughes said he was calling from the Bel-Air but by the time Howie got there, the Goodisons’d disappeared.”
“They check out?” Durant asked.
Mott said, “No, they simply vanished, leaving everything behind.”
“Shall we go back to that first meeting with them?” Wu said.
“All right,” she said. “Here we go. The Goodisons fly in from London and check into the Bel-Air. Then they call me—or Hughes does—and after the usual jabber-jabber, he gets to it—the hypnotism. Hughes thinks it’d be nice if I came to their Bel-Air suite that has an ever so quiet and relaxing atmosphere. I’m not going to bore you with an impression of his voice, but it’s faux plummy, if you know what that sounds like and, being from London, I guess you do.”
“Yes,” Wu said. “We do.”
“Well, I learned not to go to strange men’s hotel rooms pretty early on—when I was around four or five. So I tell Hughes my house also has an atmosphere that’s ever so quiet and relaxing and that’s where Voodoo, Ltd. —72
the hypnotizing, if any, will take place. Then I give him the address and the directions and they show up in a limo, for God’s sake.”
“What time was this?” Durant asked.
“About four in the afternoon.”
Durant looked at Mott. “Were you here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t told of either the Goodisons’ arrival in L.A. Or of their appointment with Ione.”
Durant looked at Gamble. “Why not let him know?”
“I was going to call him, but then Jack Broach dropped by with some stuff I had to sign. He was still here when Hughes called and I asked him to stay. I also asked Jack if I should call Howie and he said it might be a good idea. But when I told him it was just going to be a let’s-get-acquainted session, but no hypnotism, Jack said there probably wasn’t any reason to bother Howie and I didn’t.”
Durant again looked at Mott. “You ever meet the Goodisons?”
“Just once. They came to the Santa Monica hotel where I’m staying, called me on the house phone and wanted to come up for a drink. I suggested the bar would be more comfortable. We had a drink there, some very idle talk of no consequence and they left.”
“How did you read them?”
Mott smiled slightly. “Let’s say I suspected that they lacked moral fiber.”
“Bent?”
“I’m not a mind reader.”
“Did Enno Glimm swear by them?”
“Nobody ever swore by them, Quincy. But a lot of people in London, who should’ve known better, told me they were wonderful.”
“They’re bent,” Durant said. “After I found out they’d gone missing, it took me less than twenty-four hours to learn just how bent. What bothers me is why Enno Glimm and company didn’t do the same thing.”