Rick Cleveland downed his new drink, made a face, finally looked at Gamble and said, “Because the fucker spoiled my view, that’s why.”
“Your view?”
“You’ve got a view, don’t you?” Cleveland said. “Sure you do.
Suppose some asshole comes along and builds an eight-or nine-story building right in front of it. Wouldn’t that piss you off?”
“Not enough to kill him,” she said.
“What if your view was all you had left in the world?” Rick Cleveland said.
At just past 2 A.M. the sheriff’s substation in Malibu locked Rick Cleveland in the same cell from which it had just released Artie Wu.
By then Cleveland had freely admitted killing William A. C. Rice IV
and even announced that, given the same circumstances, he would do it all over again.
At 3:16 A.M. The state Highway Patrol, acting on an anonymous tip, discovered the bodies of Colleen Cullen and Jack Broach in the Topanga Canyon bed-and-breakfast inn. Otherguy Overby, the anonymous tipster, had called the Highway Patrol because he remembered Cullen telling him she was paying off certain deputy sheriffs to let her keep the lie-low establishment in business.
At 3:38 A.M. Overby, carrying a blue canvas bag, rang the door chimes at Ione Gamble’s house on Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica.
After demanding that he identify himself, a fully dressed Gamble opened the door.
“Let’s go up to your office, Ione,” Overby said.
“I can’t handle any more shit tonight.”
“You’ll like this kind,” he said.
Seated in her office behind the Memphis cotton broker’s desk, an extremely wary Ione Gamble watched Overby place the blue zip-up bag in front of her. “What’s that?” she said.
“Open it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a nice surprise.”
Gamble rose and zipped open the bag that was still stuffed with bound hundred-dollar bills. “Jesus,” she said. “Whose is it?”
“Yours. Three hundred thousand—almost. It’s part of what Jack Broach stole from you. I stole it back. Not all by myself, of course. I had a little help from Georgia and that fucking Durant.”
“This is the mythical million, then, right?” she said. “The million that was supposed to buy back the tapes— except there wasn’t any million and there weren’t any tapes.”
“That’s about right,” Overby said.
“What do I do with it?”
“You got a safe-deposit box, don’t you? Put it in there. When you need some, take some out.” Overby rose. “I’ve gotta go—but it’s been awfully nice seeing you again, Ione.”
“What’ll you do now?”
Overby smiled contentedly. “Probably not much right away.”
“Sit down, Otherguy.”
He sat down. There was a long silence as she studied him before speaking again. “You want to be my agent?”
Forty-four
When Quincy Durant, seated at the old refectory table in the late William Rice’s dining room, got off the telephone with Enno Glimm in London it was 2:05 P.M. There and 6:05 A.M. in Malibu. Durant turned to Otherguy Overby and said, “Mr. Glimm is very appreciative of our efforts. It may not be exact, but he said something like: You guys did a pretty fucking fair job.”
“What about the money?” Overby said.
“Jenny Arliss is making the wire transfer. Glimm says Westminster Bank will handle it. It should be here by nine when our bank opens.”
“All of it?” Overby asked.
“All of it.”
“And our shares are still going to be what Artie said?”
“Nobody’s going to stiff you, Otherguy.”
“If you don’t ask, they don’t tell you.”
There was a pause before Durant said, “How is she?”
“Who?”
Durant only stared at him.
