“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.”
“I think we can get to the ‘Who Struck John?’ section of our agenda later,” Wu said. “Right now I’d like to ask Ione a few questions. Any objections?”
Hearing none, Wu leaned forward on the couch, elbows on his big knees, hands clasped. He gave Gamble the kind of smile that made her smile back and said, “The Goodisons — your very first impression?”
“Star fuckers.”
“I was thinking more of their act — the one they put on after the initial star fucking was over.”
Gamble first looked suspicious — then interested. “You knew them in London?”
“Not them, but people like them. Everyone has a personal act of some kind — especially hypnotists.”
“What’s yours?” she said.
“We usually begin with terse questions and end up offering sympathetic understanding and a measure of hope.”
She gave him a wry, even rueful smile and said, “You’re right. They had an act. It was something like going to a doctor for the first time. Even before you tell him where it hurts, he’s already into his act — shooting you those sharp little side glances while he jots down your vital statistics. Hughes and Pauline had that kind of patter. While Hughes said his lines, Pauline studied me for — well, for whatever they were looking for. Then it was Pauline’s time to talk and Hughes’s time to study.”
“You’re very observant.”
“In Howie’s trade and mine, we’re always on the lookout for blinks, smirks and twitches to steal or borrow, right, Howie?”
Mott agreed with a small nod and a smaller smile.
“What happened when their act was over?” Durant said.
“They offered to hypnotize me — sort of a test run kind of thing. When I said I wasn’t ready yet, they offered to put on a demonstration. So I said okay and Hughes put Pauline into a trance in about five seconds flat. I mean, zap — she was under. He then took her back to when she was six and asked her to show us what she’d learned that day at dancing school. She got up and did an awkward little time step and sat back down.”
“Then what?” Wu asked.
“He brought her out of it looking relaxed, happy and not remembering anything — or saying she didn’t. And that’s when Hughes asked if he could test my receptiveness. I told him I still didn’t want to be hypnotized yet. Well, he turns on all of his considerable smarm and says he can’t hypnotize anyone who resists it and that he just wants to test my receptiveness, which was a word he really seemed to like. Then he starts talking about all the stars who’re known for their receptiveness. About half of them are long dead but still it was kind of an impressive list. And since Jack was there, I said all right.”
She paused then and asked, “Would you guys like coffee or something to drink?”
Wu shook his head. “I think we’d rather hear the end of the story.”
“Okay. Well, we’re all still here in the office — me, Jack, Hughes and Pauline. Then Hughes is telling me to relax, close my eyes and think of all the colors in the rainbow and name them one by one. So I do and feel myself sort of going — I don’t know where — under, I guess. But I fight it and snap back. When I open my eyes, Hughes and Pauline are looking disappointed and Jack is looking half-amused, the way he always does. So I get rid of the Goodisons by agreeing to another session the next day.”
She stopped talking and turned in her chair to stare again through the floor-to-ceiling window at ocean and canyon. She was still looking at the view when she said, “But by the next day I’d decided I wasn’t going to be hypnotized by anybody— especially not by the Goodisons.”
She turned back. “I let them try anyway and the same thing happens. I started to go under — then snapped myself back. Their third and last test of my so-called receptiveness ended the same way. And that’s when I told them there weren’t going to be any more sessions and it was the last time I ever saw them.”
“What was their reaction?” Wu said.
“Nothing much. They apologized for not being more helpful and that was that. They left.”
Durant looked at Howard Mott. “And this was the same day you got that panicky call from Hughes Goodison?”
“Yes,” Mott said.
Artie Wu sighed and rose. He went slowly over to the Memphis cotton broker’s desk, picked up the long yellow pencil and began rolling it with the thumbs and fingers of both hands. “When Hughes tested your receptiveness that first time, did he use any object such as this pencil?”
She stared at the pencil. “No.”
“But he talked about the colors of the rainbow?”
“Yes.”
“He asked you to concentrate on them, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And say them aloud?”
“Yes.”
“Yellow’s a rainbow color, isn’t it, Ione?”
“Yes.”
“Like the yellow of this pencil.”
“Yes.”
“Close your eyes and tell me if you can still see the yellow.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it make you feel relaxed?”
“Yes.”
“When you’re fully relaxed, Ione, you’ll go to sleep. To help you relax, think of the rainbow again. Start with red. When you get to the last color, yellow, you’ll be fully, completely relaxed.”
“All right.”
“Have you reached yellow?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to remember something you tried to remember but couldn’t?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to remember the night you drove to Billy’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Remember what happened that night, Ione. Remember it aloud — everything that happened from the time you left your house.”
She began to speak in a soft voice and told all about her fast drive to the beach house of William A. C. Rice IV and what she found there and about the one phone call she made.
Fifteen
Ione Gamble still sat behind the Memphis cotton broker’s desk with her eyes closed and her hands resting on the arms of the chair. Her lips had formed a faint smile and she looked rested, content — even happy.
After staring at her for almost a minute, Howard Mott turned to Wu and asked, “Can she hear me?”
Wu shook his head.
“She didn’t kill him,” Mott said, more to himself than to Wu and Durant.
“You thought she did?” Durant said.
“I try not to let hope interfere with logic,” Mott said, turned to Wu and asked, “Where’d you learn that?”
“In a carnival when I was sixteen.”
“Seventeen,” Durant said. “It was Little Doc Mingo’s Amazing Carnival and Traveling Panorama. Little Doc was a midget. Three feet tall. His regular hypnotist was Szabo, the Mystifying Mesmerist. Szabo’s real name was Hank Steem and the only mystifying thing about him was how he could still drink a fifth of rotgut a day at sixty-eight.”
“Hank was okay,” Wu said.
“He was a happy drunk at least,” Durant said. “And just after we were hired as roustabouts, Hank decided to retire to his daughter’s place in Corpus Christi. So Little Doc came up with a replacement — the Amazing Fu Chang Wu.”