Georgia Blue stared up at him. “You already have it all planned out, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The Otherguy angle.”
Overby examined her for several moments before he shook his head. “Not this time, Georgia.”
“Bullshit.”
Overby shifted in his chair and studied her some more before he said, “How long’ve we known each other?”
“Half my life.”
Overby ran the years through his mind, added them up, then nodded in agreement. “I’m gonna give you some advice and that’s something I seldom do because I don’t like it when people give it to me. Okay?”
She shrugged.
“If you’re thinking of setting up a sideshow, Georgia, that’s fine — as long as it doesn’t affect my cut. Just make sure you don’t get Durant pissed off at you. All that stuff you pulled in Manila and Hong Kong’s still eating at him and he’s just waiting for you to give him an excuse. If you get him really pissed off, even Artie can’t stop him. So if you’re considering a solo, think about Durant.”
“I’ve had five years to think about—”
She broke off because Booth Stallings came into the living room, followed by Artie Wu. After a quick glance around, Wu asked, “Durant’s not back yet?”
“Not yet,” Overby said.
“He still at Ione Gamble’s?”
“Far as I know.”
Wu went to the phone, picked it up, looked at Overby and said, “What’s her number?”
Overby took a three-by-five-inch card from his shirt pocket and ran a forefinger down a list of a dozen or so neatly pointed names. When he came to Ione Gamble’s, he read it off. Without repeating the number, Wu dialed it.
Ione Gamble rolled over, picked up the bedside telephone on the fourth ring and said, “Yes?”
“This is Artie Wu. Is Quincy Durant still there?”
“I’ll see,” she said, covered the mouthpiece with a palm, looked to her left and said, “Artie Wu.”
“Right,” Durant said, rose naked from the bed, went around it, took the phone from Gamble and sat down on the bed, his back to her. She ran a gentle forefinger over the thirty-six crisscrossed scars on his back, wondering how and where he had got them and decided to ask him someday.
Instead of saying hello into the phone, Durant said, “I was just leaving.
“Good,” Wu said. “We have some news.”
“So do I.”
“Then perhaps you might share it with us.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Durant said, hung up the phone, turned to Gamble and kissed her. When the long kiss ended, she said, “Thanks for all the comfort and solace.”
“Is that what it was?”
“That’s sometimes what sex is between friends.”
“Between good friends anyway.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “I’d say we were pretty good friends by now.”
Thirty-two
At the 26-foot-long, 459-year-old oak refectory table where the late Billy Rice’s guests had once dined, the five current residents of his beach house were gathered around $81.56 worth of Mandarin-style, MSG-free Chinese food that Booth Stallings had ordered from The China Den, a Malibu restaurant-carryout that years ago, according to Overby, had been called The China Diner.
Artie Wu, who had never cared for Chinese food, was the first to finish. He pushed his plate away, lit a cigar and began a report on his and Booth Stallings’s visit to Oxnard. When he described how the black Chevrolet Caprice sedan had tried to run over him and Stallings, Georgia Blue and Durant stopped eating.
And after Wu said, “Booth and I then found Hughes and Pauline Goodison shot dead in their motel bathroom,” Overby, who was enormously fond of Chinese food, put down his chopsticks. Only Booth Stallings continued to eat, using a spoon to scoop up the last of his shrimp with lobster sauce.
Wu answered the quick hard questions that followed and then told of the trip he and Stallings had made to The You Store, where they found nothing. There were more questions, which Wu patiently answered, before he looked around the table and asked, “Okay. Who’s next?”
“Me, I think,” Overby said and gave a nearly verbatim account of his phone call from Oil Drum, whose disguised voice had offered to sell him a videotape of Ione Gamble confessing to the murder of Billy Rice.
After Overby finished, Wu asked, “Your friend Oil Drum said he’d call back tomorrow morning?”
“Eight sharp.”
Durant turned to Wu and said, “What time did you and Booth find the Goodisons?”
“Around four-fifteen, wasn’t it, Booth?”
“Probably a minute or two earlier.”
“Maybe at four-thirteen exactly?” Durant said.
“Maybe,” Stallings said. “Why?”
“Because I’m looking for something extraordinary or peculiar and I’m not finding it. Exactly one hour earlier, at three-thirteen, is when Ione Gamble got a call from Hughes Goodison, offering to sell her almost exactly the same stuff that Otherguy’s new phone pal, Oil Drum, now wants to sell him.”
“Then you heard the conversation between Gamble and Goodison?” Wu said.
“On her extension.”
“She agreed to pay, I hope?”
“She told Goodison she needed time to raise the money and he gave her four days.”
“Let’s get all the times straight,” Wu said — again to Durant. “You picked up Gamble when?”
“We left her house at about twenty ’til two and arrived at the dental surgeon’s at two straight up. Her wisdom tooth was out by two-twenty. It took another ten or fifteen minutes for the Pentothal to wear off in the recovery room. But before it did, I decided to find out how effective a truth serum Pentothal really is and asked her if anyone’d borrowed her car New Year’s Eve. Or if she’d gone out to Billy Rice’s house twice that same day and night. Or if she’d shot him. She answered no to everything.”
“Why’re you so sure it was exactly three-thirteen when Goodison called Ione Gamble?” Wu said.
“Because when I picked up the extension I looked at my watch,” Durant said.
Wu decided to examine the ceiling. “Goodison calls Gamble at three-thirteen and is dead by four-thirteen.” He brought his gaze down. “Can any of you make something out of that?”
When no one spoke, Wu looked to his left and said, “You’re next, Georgia.”
Her face was expressionless and her tone neutral when she said, “Jack Broach’s company is nearly bankrupt.”
Artie Wu leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, clasped his hands across his belly, smiled contentedly and, around his cigar, said, “There’s more, I trust.”
“There is,” she said. “I checked with Broach’s bank first and they’re not happy with his business. Then Broach and I had lunch in Beverly Hills. During lunch I told him why I thought he was almost broke and, after the coffee came, I made a suggestion.”
“I bet you did,” Durant said.
“Let her tell it,” said Overby.
After a shrug from Durant, Georgia Blue stared directly at him and said, “When I finished telling Broach why I thought he was broke, I asked him what would happen if Ione Gamble told him to raise, say, one million in cash to pay off a blackmailer. Could he or couldn’t he, yes or no? He said nothing, not a word, which didn’t really surprise me. So I said all right, if he couldn’t raise a million, could he raise three hundred thousand? If yes, he could tell Gamble that the million in cash was ready for her go-between, me. In exchange for the three hundred thousand, I offered to hand over all incriminating blackmail material along with a personal guarantee that the blackmailer, singular or plural, would never bother her again. Broach said he didn’t have much faith in such guarantees because he’d always heard that blackmailers never quit. I said they do when they’re dead.”