“They got names?” Deason asked.
“Yes, sir, they do. Their real names are Hughes and Pauline Goodison.”
Deason looked down at the counter, then up at Stallings, shook his head regretfully and said, “Never registered ‘em.”
“In their late twenties or early thirties?” Stallings said. “Both blond and look a lot alike on account of they’re brother and sister but claim they’re man and wife? Talk with a real strong English accent?”
Something changed in Deason’s face. His eyelids drooped and his pursed mouth formed a crafty smile just before he said, “British accents, you say?”
“English. British.”
“Both kinda tall and skinny and blond?”
“Exactly.”
“What’ll you do with ‘em?”
“Me and my associate here, Mr. Chang, will pay ‘em a call. We’ll ask for a full refund of the fare they stole. Then we’ll make sure they settle their bill with the innkeeper. You. Then we’ll put ‘em in that Voodoo, Ltd. —142
black Mercedes out there and give ‘em a fast ride to the police station.” Stallings paused. “In other words, Mr. Deason, we’ll make a citizen’s arrest.”
“What about the five-hundred-dollar reward?”
“It’ll be paid on the spot. Cash. No receipt required.”
Behind closed lips, Deason ran his tongue back and forth across the front of his lower teeth. Artie Wu decided it was part of a decision-making process.
“Room four-twenty-four,” Deason said. “Been here since last Friday.
Registered as Mr. And Mrs. Reginald Carter of Manchester, England.
Don’t know what they came in, but they didn’t have a car and I never like the look of that. Had one big suitcase and two small carryalls.
Nothing else. But listen, I don’t want no damage. They paid me three days cash in advance and I just want the rest of what they owe me and the reward you promised. Once you ride off with ‘em, you do what you please.”
“I wish everyone was as public-spirited, Mr. Deason,” Stallings said and turned to Wu. “Pay the man, Mr. Chang.”
Wu scowled. “I think we oughta wait and see if they’re really in four-twenty-four. I think he oughta give us a key. I think we oughta surprise ‘em. And if they’re the ones, then I think we oughta give him his five hundred.”
Stallings nodded in judicious agreement. “Mr. Chang here has had himself a whole lot of experience in stuff like this. So maybe you oughta give him the key to four-twenty-four like he says.”
Deason made no reply. Instead, he ran his tongue over the front of his lower teeth again, half turned, took a key from a slot, placed it on the countertop, stepped back quickly and said, “I don’t want nothing busted up, understand?”
Wu picked up the key, examined it suspiciously, examined Deason the same way, scowled again and said, “You mean you don’t want none of the furniture busted up, right?”
“Especially the TV set,” Deason said.
“Don’t worry,” said Artie Wu, aimed a nod at the door and told Stallings, “Let’s go get this crap over with.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —143
Thirty
Artie Wu would later say that the car was a black Chevrolet Caprice sedan. Booth Stallings would later say that although he could identify any American car manufactured between 1932 and 1942, he could no longer tell one postwar car from another. But he agreed with Wu that the black car had been a sedan and that the low-in-the-sky, 4:12 P.M.
February sun had splashed a blinding reflection across the car’s windshield, making it impossible to identify the driver who tried to run them down.
The car had backed out of a space at the bottom of the motel’s U-shaped layout as Wu and Stallings walked toward unit number 424.
They paid little attention to the car until it picked up speed and veered toward them at 30 miles per hour, according to Wu, and 50 miles per hour, according to Stallings.
They went to their left, but so did the black Caprice, and it was Stallings who first leaped between two parked cars, tripped, fell and landed mostly on his hands and knees. After Wu’s great leap to the left, he stumbled over Stallings, fell, but bounced up and hurried out from between the parked cars to catch a brief glimpse of the black Caprice as it turned right and disappeared down the street.
Wu hurried back to Stallings and helped him to his feet. “Break anything?” Wu asked.
“Bruised some ego. You get the license?”
“No.”
“Think it was them—the Goodisons?”
Wu shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
As they continued toward the bottom of the motel’s U, Stallings wrapped a handkerchief around his left hand, which he had skinned on the asphalt. When they reached 424, neither was surprised to find that the black sedan had backed out of the space directly in front of the unit.
Although Wu had the room’s key in his hand, he said, “Let’s knock first.”
“What for?”
“Never hurts to be polite.”
Stallings knocked on unit 424’s lime-green door with his undamaged right hand. When there was no response, he stepped back to let Wu Voodoo, Ltd. —144
open the door with the key. Wu went in first. Stallings followed, closed the door behind him and sniffed the room’s air.
“Smell it?”
Wu only nodded.
“Exploded cordite,” Stallings said. “That means somebody pulled a gun and shot at somebody. And if somebody got hit and killed, the next thing we’ll smell is loosened bowels. Ever since the war, whenever I smell cordite, the next thing I expect to smell is shit. And somehow I know if I go through that bathroom door over there, I’ll smell ‘em both, cordite and shit, together again.”
“Then stay here while I look,” Wu said.
“Death, cordite and shit don’t bother you, Artie?”
“Not as much as your babbling.”
“My mouth runs when I’m nervous. Not scared. Just nervous. When I’m scared, I clam up.”
“Stay here,” Wu said, crossed the room, opened the bathroom door, looked inside, turned and said, “You’d better come look.”
Stallings saw the woman first. She was huddled in the southwest corner of the shower stall, her knees drawn up to her chest. She wore a white blouse, black jeans and tan sandals on bare feet. There was a small neat hole just above the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were open.
The man was scrunched up against the bathroom wall between the sink and the toilet. His hands lay in his lap. His face was turned up toward the ceiling. There was a neat hole in his left temple and his eyes were also open. So was his mouth.
“They do look alike, don’t they?” Stallings said.
“Very much.”
Stallings, who had been holding his breath, sniffed twice, then began breathing through his mouth. “God, I hate that smell.”
“Don’t leave any prints,” Wu said.
“Hadn’t planned to,” Stallings said, then asked, “Now that we’ve found them, what next?”
“Let’s see what else we can find.”
Two minutes later, Stallings discovered a crumpled-up computer-produced receipt in a wastebasket beneath four empty diet Coke cans.
He lifted the empty cans out with a handkerchief, picked up the receipt with his fingers, smoothed it out, read it and handed it to Wu.
The receipt was from an Oxnard company called The You Store. After deciphering it, Wu said the Goodisons apparently had rented a store-and-lock compartment for a month at a cost of f 106.50. They had paid cash. The number of their storage space was 3472.