“In Oxnard.”
“Did he say which one?”
She studied the check again, then looked up and said, “All he tells me is they’re locos and he drives ’em to Oxnard, a motel there. You think maybe these locos are mixed up with the big Chinese and the tall guy with the real dark tan?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, of course.”
“So if I don’t tell you what motel Carlos took ’em to, you’re gonna take back the check, right?”
“No.”
She waved the check a little, almost admonishing Stallings with it. “Look. If this is some kinda trick or joke, I don’t think I can stand it.”
“It’s no trick or joke and you have our deepest sympathy,” Stallings said and rose.
She looked up at him and said with great formality, “I thank you for coming and for the money. You’re a very nice man. Can I offer you something to drink — some coffee maybe?”
He smiled. “Thank you, no.”
“Can I ask one more question?”
“Of course.”
“How long were you a limo driver?”
“Over thirty years.”
She nodded gravely and said, “I thought it must be something like that.”
Twenty-five
It took Otherguy Overby less than half an hour to win nearly $500 at the draw poker club in Gardena. He won by playing what he thought of as “sullen style” — never speaking other than to say “three cards” or “fold” or “raise ten” or “call.” He also kept looking over his left shoulder.
The player to his right was a fiftyish woman with a 30-year-old body and a face that too much sun had baked into a filigree of fine lines. She wore a blue tank top and a Dodgers baseball cap with the bill turned sideways to the left. After Overby looked over his shoulder for what could have been the sixteenth time, she said, “You expecting reinforcements?”
“A guy’s supposed to meet me here.”
“Way you’re squirming around, he must owe you a bundle.”
“I’m looking to pay, not collect — if he ever shows up.”
The woman lowered her voice and leaned toward Overby. “If you’re really hurting, I can give you a number.”
Overby scowled at her. “I look like a doper?”
“Who mentioned dope? But come to think of it you do look like every narc I ever saw.”
Overby made his scowl go away. “I buy home videos.”
They played two more hands before the woman asked, “Home videos of what?”
“Of people doing things they shouldn’t.”
“You mean sex stuff?”
Overby glared at her again. “What’s with you, lady? First I’m a doper. Then I’m a narc. And now you’ve got me in the porn business.”
She leaned closer to him and whispered, “What about a video of a couple trying to drown their four-month-old baby?”
Overby’s glare changed into a speculative gaze. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” the woman said and gathered up her chips.
She said her name was Cheyne Grace. She spelled Cheyne and told Overby it was pronounced like Shane, the old movie, or Shayne, the old detective.
“What old detective?” Overby asked.
“Michael Shayne, private eye. What’s his name, Lloyd Nolan, used to play him in pictures.”
Overby stirred his coffee for almost fifteen seconds, looked over his left shoulder and said, “Tell me about the baby-drowning video.”
“This guy I know says he knows somebody who saw it.”
“Maybe I oughta talk to him — this guy you know.”
“I’m sort of his agent.”
“Sort of?”
“Okay, I’m his agent. You wanta talk to him, you talk to me first.”
Overby nodded, looked over his shoulder again, leaned toward the woman, lowered his voice and said, “Okay. Here’s how it works. I represent a guy I’ll call Mr. Z — okay? Mr. Z is outta London — in England — and he’s putting together a TV show for worldwide syndication. It won’t need any actors and hardly any voice-over because everything’ll explain itself. That’s because it’ll all be home videos of real shock stuff.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Like the one Mr. Z paid a hundred thousand pounds for.”
“What’s that in American?”
“About a hundred and eighty thou.” He looked over his shoulder again and dropped his voice into a confidential murmur. The woman leaned toward him. “There was this murder that happened in London two years ago,” Overby said. “A guy comes home from a business trip to the States and finds his wife and mother-in-law with their heads chopped off.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “You got all that on tape?”
Overby sighed, looked over his shoulder again and said, “Of course we haven’t got it on tape. What we’ve got is a home-video tape of the killer confessing and then turning on the gas and sticking his head in the oven. We left his confession pretty much the way it is but edited the oven scene down to six or seven seconds — just long enough to make impact.”
“Who was it?” she asked.
“Who was what?”
“The killer?”
“Yeah, well, it was the husband. He was in Washington, D.C. Bought or stole himself an American passport, flew the Concorde both ways, chopped their heads off with an ax and got back to Washington before anybody knew he was gone. Then he flew economy-class back to London thirty-six hours later, discovered the bodies and called the cops. Perfect crime, perfect alibi.”
“Why’d he kill ’em?” Cheyne Grace asked.
Overby decided to go with the standard motive. “Money, what else? His mother-in-law was kind of rich and his wife was her only heir. So he kills the mother-in-law first, makes his wife fix them both something to eat, then kills her an hour later. The autopsy proves the mother-in-law died first and that means her daughter inherits everything. So the husband inherits it all from his dead wife. The mother-in-law left a real nice little place down in Torquay near the water and that’s where the husband taped his confession and then stuck his head in the oven.”
“How much did he inherit?” Cheyne Grace asked.
“It was about four hundred thousand pounds,” Overby said after deciding to make it less than a million.
“Who’d you buy the confession tape from?”
Overby smiled for what he thought must be the first time in three hours. “That’s confidential.”
She nodded her understanding, then said, “That drowning-the-baby thing. I just made that up.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, but this guy I know does know lots of weird people, know what I mean?”
Overby only nodded.
“So how do we contact you — in case he’s got something?”
Overby recited the 456 number of the William Rice house. “Four-five-six,” Cheyne Grace said, impressed. “That’s Malibu.”
“It’s Mr. Z’s place,” Overby said. “But don’t ask for him, ask for Mr. X.”
“That’s you, isn’t it — Mr. X?”
Before Overby could reply a big hand landed on his left shoulder. He jumped, then looked up and around at a man who was well over six feet tall and wore a tightly belted tan bush jacket, dark aviator glasses, a pigskin hat with its brim turned down and a beard that had been growing for at least three days.
The man spoke in a low rumble that was half-accusation, half-threat. “You said you’d be alone, man.”
“I am,” Overby said.
“Then who the fuck’s that?”
Overby looked at Cheyne Grace and shrugged an apology. “You mind?”
“No,” she said, rising quickly. “Not at all.”
When she was gone, the man sat down at Overby’s left and said, “She’s still watching us.”
“Good.”
“How’d I do?”
“You were perfect.”