“That how you’d work it, Otherguy?” Durant asked.
Overby gave Durant a carefully chilled stare. “That’s how guys both you and I know’d work it.”
“We should hope that much of what both Georgia and Otherguy suggest is true,” Wu said with a small wise gentle smile that Booth Stallings thought some of the smarter saints might envy.
Overby’s answering smile was two parts knowing and one part wicked. “They don’t get it yet, Artie.”
“I think Georgia does — don’t you, Georgia?”
“Sure.”
“Quincy?”
Durant only nodded.
“Booth?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“When the Goodisons attempt to blackmail Ione Gamble,” Wu said, “which I now believe they will, what’s the first thing she’ll need?”
“Money?” Stallings said.
“She’ll also need an intermediary,” Wu said.
Stallings nodded. “A go-between.”
“Who do you have in mind?” Durant asked.
“Georgia, of course,” Wu said, sounding surprised that anyone would ask.
“Of course,” Durant said, his voice flat and toneless.
“Get to the good part, Artie,” Overby said. “The money part.”
“It’s occurred to me,” Wu said, “that Wudu, Limited, of Berkeley Square, London, should let it be known it’s in temporary residence in Malibu and anxious to acquire searing, shocking and even salacious true-life tapes — video preferably, but audio in a pinch — for a worldwide, multilingual, exposé-type TV show. For the right tape, it’s prepared to pay what? Up to a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Why not pounds?” Durant said.
“Better yet.”
“What’re you going to do, run an ad in The Hollywood Reporter?” Stallings said.
“I think we should depend entirely on word of mouth,” Wu said. “And I can think of no one better to serve as our town crier than Otherguy. Any objections?”
Overby sent a glare around the room that encountered no resistance. The glare quickly disappeared, replaced by his familiar hard white grin.
“But please remember this,” Wu said. “We’re being paid to find the missing Goodisons, who obviously don’t want to be found. If Georgia’s theory is correct, and again I’ll say I think some of it is, the Goodisons will try to blackmail Ione Gamble. If they do, they’ll have to deal with one of us as the go-between. If they try to sell tapes, audio or video, we’ll’ve already made what I hope is a preemptive bid — and again they must deal with us. Would anyone like to add or ask something?”
“Who does what?” Durant said. “Spell it out.”
Wu closed his eyes briefly, then nodded at something, which Booth Stallings guessed was the order of battle. After opening his eyes, Wu looked at Georgia Blue. “As I said, Georgia, you’ll be Ione Gamble’s go-between. But until you’re needed for that job, you’ll continue looking into the life and times of Jack Broach. Otherguy, for now, will be our town crier and the putative buyer of whatever the Goodisons have to sell. Quincy and I will follow up on a couple of things, including the license number of the limo that carried the Goodisons off.”
“That leaves me,” Stallings said.
Wu gave Stallings a smile of genuine affection. “You’ll be our Mr. X, Booth — the secretive emissary from the mysterious Mr. Z, who’s retained Wudu, Limited, to scour the world for sensational videotapes.”
“In other words, I sit by the phone and wait for somebody to try and sell me something,” Stallings said.
“The answering machine can take care of that,” Wu said. “What we need is a utility chameleon — someone who can step in and play any role at a moment’s notice. I think you’re ideal. Any objections?”
“None,” Stallings said, “as long as you don’t ask me to handle a juvenile part.”
Twenty-two
The tiny frame house on the eastern edge of Venice sat on a twenty-five-foot lot and the 1982 black Cadillac limousine, parked out front, looked longer than the lot was wide. The limousine license plate read, “LUXRY 3,” implying that there might be a fleet of them. The implied claim was supported by a small, nicely painted wooden sign that was nailed to a porch pillar. It advertised “Luxury Limos” and listed a phone number that was as large as its name.
The small front yard was split by a concrete walk that left enough room on the right for some grass and five ruthlessly pruned rosebushes. The other half of the yard, the left half, was dominated by an ancient bougainvillea that had swarmed up and over the small front porch and onto the roof as if intent on devouring the chimney.
The bougainvillea concealed much of the roof but the part still visible revealed old composition shingles of a faded green. The rest of the house had been painted not long ago in two shades of yellow — a very pale shade for the clapboard siding and a much darker shade for the trim. Durant thought the house looked both cozy and bilious.
He got out of the Lincoln Town Car on the passenger side and Wu got out from behind the wheel. After they reached the porch, they heard a telephone begin to ring inside the house. Durant knocked. When no one came to the door and the phone rang for the ninth time, Durant gave the brass doorknob a halfhearted twist and was surprised to find it unlocked.
The door opened directly into a living room. The ringing phone was on a small gray metal desk in the room’s far left corner. Between the front door and the phone was a Latino in his late twenties or early thirties who lay on a braided oval rug with his throat cut. Durant stepped over the man, took out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the still-ringing phone.
“Luxury Limos,” Durant said.
There was a silence until a woman asked, “Carlos?”
“He can’t come to the phone right now,” Durant said in what he discovered was rusty Spanish. “Any message?”
The woman hung up.
Artie Wu was now on the other side of the desk, turning the pages of a black-bound ledger with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “His logbook,” he said without looking up. “All of February’s missing.”
“Let’s go,” Durant said.
Wu nodded and closed the ledger with the pen.
Durant again stepped over the dead man, but Wu knelt beside him. The man wore dark blue pants, well-polished black loafers, a white shirt and a black clip-on bow tie. Both tie and shirt were soaked with blood. A small leather-bound notebook or diary peeked out of the shirt’s pocket. Wu fished it out, wrapped it in a handkerchief and shoved it down into his hip pocket. He then rose and hurried out the front door, followed by Durant, who paused only long enough to smear the inside and outside doorknobs with his handkerchief.
Just as they reached the Lincoln they saw a dark-haired woman hurry out of a house that was across the street and four or five doors up. The house was a brown twin of the yellow one that served as headquarters for Luxury Limos. The woman wore jeans, a white T-shirt and white sneakers. From a distance she could have been either 20 or 30 but she moved as if she were 20.
As Wu and Durant hurried into the Lincoln, the woman started racing toward the yellow house. Just as the Lincoln pulled away she reached the giant bougainvillea and stopped, staring at the accelerating Lincoln. In its rearview mirror, Artie Wu saw her lips move and assumed she was memorizing the car’s license number.
“Who rented this thing?” he asked Durant.
“Booth.”
“Call him and ask him to report it stolen.”