The extraction of the impacted wisdom tooth took less than ten minutes. Durant calculated that Dr. Unger, working at top speed, could gross around $7,200 an hour. Ione Gamble was still out when Durant helped the dental technician half walk, half carry her into the quiet room where they eased her onto a narrow couch.
The technician handed Durant a box of Kleenex and said, “There shouldn’t be any more bleeding, but if there is, give her some of these.”
“What about pain?”
“No pain,” she said. “Just some mild discomfort.”
“When can she eat?”
“An hour or two from now. But I’d suggest soup, medium warm.
Later this evening, anything she wants within reason.”
After the technician left, Durant sat down next to Ione Gamble, watched her for several seconds, then said, “Ione?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes still closed.
“Did anyone borrow your car New Year’s Eve?”
“No.”
“Did you go out to Billy Rice’s house twice that day—once in the late afternoon or evening and again early the next morning?”
“No.”
“Did you shoot Billy Rice?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No,” she said just as the dental technician bustled in and asked,
“She coming around?”
“Seems to be,” Durant said.
“Let’s have a look.” She bent over Ione Gamble and, using a voice she would use on someone hard of hearing, said, “Miss Gamble? Can you hear me?”
Ione Gamble opened her eyes and said, “Is it over yet?”
The technician smiled. “All over and everything’s fine.”
“God, that Pentothal’s wonderful stuff.”
The technician beamed. “Isn’t it, though?”
Gamble turned her head and found Durant leaning against a wall. “I say anything?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —134
“Nothing I could understand,” he said.
Voodoo, Ltd. —135
Twenty-eight
After they left the medical building, Durant followed Ione Gamble’s advice and took San Vicente Boulevard all the way to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. After two acute right turns he drove up the short steep incline that was a seldom-used back way into Adelaide Drive.
This stretch of the drive had been transformed into a one-way street by those who lived in the huge houses that lined its right side. To the left of the street the land fell sharply away, almost straight down, and provided a see-forever view of canyon, mountains and ocean.
At the end of the one-way section was a white-painted steel barrier that blocked two-way traffic and gave the long row of huge houses the air of a gated community. As he squeezed the Mercedes past the steel barrier, Durant noticed a group of six or seven fit-looking men and women in their early twenties. Some were doing cramp-relieving exercises. Others were gulping Evian water from one-liter plastic bottles. Nearly all were wearing shorts, tank tops, running shoes, and sweating at half past three on a late February afternoon with the temperature in the low sixties and falling.
“They still bounce up and down those steps?” Durant asked.
“Night and day,” Gamble said. “One hundred and eighty-nine steps up from the floor of the canyon and one hundred and eighty-nine down. The same as in a fourteen-story building. A few of them make three or four round trips a day. Some of them even do it two steps at a time.”
Because Durant couldn’t think of anything to say except “Ah, youth,” he said nothing. His silence provoked a smile from Gamble.
“They make me feel the same way and you’ve got ten years on me.”
“More like fifteen,” Durant said.
They were both silent for almost a block until they turned into her driveway, stopped, and she asked, “Is Pentothal like opium?”
“Why?”
“If it is, then I finally figured out why the British fought the opium wars with China.”
“To corner the euphoria market, right?”
“Sure, but what I felt at the dentist’s was ten notches up from euphoria. What I felt was, well, perfection.”
“I’ll remember that the next time they try to give me novocaine,”
Durant said, switched off the engine and handed her the keys. He had Voodoo, Ltd. —136
his door half-open when he turned back to ask, “Any letdown? Pain?
Discomfort?”
She shook her head. “A slight twinge now and then—just enough to make you wonder if getting up for a couple of aspirins is worth the effort.” She opened her own door, paused and said, “Why not come in for a drink and some almost instant mock Senate bean soup?”
Durant said it sounded interesting.
He sat at the kitchen table with a Scotch on ice and watched her open a large can of Great Northern beans. She dumped the contents into a saucepan and placed it on the stove over low heat. She found some garlic, then located a large onion, cut it in half and removed its outer skin. She didn’t bother with the outer skin of the garlic.
After Gamble had butter melting in a small frying pan, she tossed the garlic and onion into a mini-Cuisinart, gave it a couple of bursts, then another one, and dumped the chopped results into the now sizzling butter. Once the garlic and onion turned golden brown, she spooned them, butter and all, into the simmering beans, stirred, added salt, a little water, lots of pepper and a dash or two of Tabasco.
She almost forgot the bay leaf but tossed it in at the last minute, admitting it provided more style than flavor.
She found two soup bowls, two napkins, two soup spoons and a loaf of dark rye bread sliced at the bakery. She then asked Durant if he wanted anything besides Scotch to drink. He said he didn’t.
After serving the soup, she sat down, picked up her spoon and said,
“This recipe was taught me a long time ago by a very young one-term congressman from L.A. who, when last heard of, was living in semi-permanent exile just outside of Lisbon.”
“Chubb Dunjee,” Durant said and tasted the soup.
She halted her spoon a few inches from her mouth. Her eyes widened. “You know him?”
“Artie and I ran into him down in Mexico years ago. Chubb certainly knew some . . . shortcuts.”
“What were you guys doing in—”
The kitchen’s wall telephone rang, interrupting her question.
Gamble rose, crossed to the phone, put it to her left ear and said,
“Allo,” in what Durant thought must have been a perfect imitation of her Salvadoran housekeeper.
Gamble then listened to the voice on the phone for nearly fifteen seconds before she said, “Un momento, por favor.” Again, the accent was perfect.
She used her right hand to indicate the telephone, then used the same hand to point at the hall leading into the living room. Durant nodded, rose and hurried into the living room where he picked up an extension phone with his right hand and looked at his watch. It was Voodoo, Ltd. —137
3:13 P.M. Just as the phone touched his right ear, he heard Ione Gamble say, “Who’s this?”
“Recognize the voice, love?” a British tenor said.
“Hughes, you dipshit. What the hell happened?”
“Paulie and I went on a retreat—to sort out our options,” said Hughes Goodison.
“Why call me?”
“Because we’ve decided you’re our best option—although we do have several others.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Of course I am, love. And you’ll understand perfectly once I play a tape of you talking to Paulie and me while you were deep in hypnosis.