He lay on his back, blue eyes open and aimed at the beamed cathedral ceiling. The long right leg was slightly bent at the knee. The long left leg was straight. His arms and hands were haphazardly arranged with the right hand pointing due north and the left hand south by southwest. There were two dark holes in his bare hairless chest just to the left of the right nipple. His feet were also bare and his white tennis shorts were stained.
Ione Gamble stared down at the dead man for at least thirty seconds, breathing through her mouth in short gasps until she stopped gasping and said, “Aw, hell, Billy, I wish I were sorry.”
She turned then, swaying a little, and made it to the small wet bar where she poured two unmeasured ounces of whisky into a glass and gulped them down. The whisky caused a coughing fit. When it ended two minutes later, she stumbled across the room to a console telephone, collapsed into what she knew to be Billy Rice’s favorite chair, placed the Beretta in her lap, picked up the phone and tapped out 911.
The police emergency number began to ring. On the eighth ring she yawned. On the tenth ring she put the still-ringing phone on the table, wrapped both hands around the butt of the Beretta in her lap, closed her eyes and passed out. She was still passed out and still clutching the Beretta when two deputy sheriffs entered the living room at 6:27
A.M., snatched away the pistol, shook Ione Gamble awake, read her her rights and arrested her on suspicion of murdering William A. C.
Rice IV, who, ever since 1950 when he enrolled in Kansas City’s first private kindergarten, was called Billy the Fourth by all who disliked or despised him, which, someone later said, “was almost everyone who’d known him for more than three minutes.”
Two
By the third week in January of 1991, Ione Gamble had been indicted for the murder of William A. C. Rice IV and released on bond. An assistant Los Angeles County attorney had argued for a bail bond of at least $2 million but the county Superior Court judge in Santa Monica had instead set it at $200,000 and defended his decision with a rhetorical question: “With a face known throughout the world, where can she possibly skip to and where can she possibly hide?”
Gamble was now concealed, if not hidden, in her 35-year-old, thirteen-room mission-style house on Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica.
She lived there alone, except for the Salvadoran couple in the garage apartment and her six cats, three dogs and a housebroken flop-eared rabbit who spent most of his waking hours hopping up and down the staircase.
Gamble was up in the second-floor study she called her office, discussing criminal defense lawyers with Jack Broach, her combination business manager, agent and personal attorney. Broach was a product of UCLA (’68), Boalt Hall (71) and the William Morris Agency (’73—’79). Like many entertainment industry agents in their mid-forties, he resembled a meticulously groomed character actor who would be perfect to play either a young lean-jawed President or an aging lean-jawed fighter pilot.
The office-study had three walls of bookshelves, filled mostly with novels and biographies, and one wall of glass that offered a view of Santa Monica Canyon, some mountains and also the Pacific Ocean.
Gamble was seated behind her 1857 Memphis cotton broker’s desk and Broach was in a nearby businesslike armchair.
After sipping some bottled diet Dr Pepper through two paper straws, Gamble said, “So far I’ve talked to the Massachusetts Unitarian, the Wyoming Jew, the Texas Episcopalian and the New York Baptist. Comes now the Washington what?”
“I’m quite sure he’s not a Muslim,” Broach said.
“Tell me about him—the guy from Washington.”
“I called him,” Broach said, “just as I called all the others and said, in effect, ‘Hi, there, I’m the best friend and personal attorney of Ione Gamble and she needs the best damn criminal lawyer alive. You interested?’ The other four said, Gosh, yes, but the guy in Washington said, ‘Not especially.’ As usual, I was impressed by the unimpressed.”
“He’s good though—the one from Washington?”
“He’s not as well known as the others, but the legal minds I revere most say he’s top gun.”
Gamble frowned. “Is ‘top gun’ your cliche or theirs?”
“Mine. I use cliches because everybody understands them. That’s why they’re cliches.”
Gamble sipped more diet Dr Pepper and said, “You think I should pick him, don’t you—the guy from Washington?”
Broach shook his head. “I think you should pick the one you trust and respect most.”
“What about like?”
“Like’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Will he ask me if I killed Billy?”
“I don’t know.”
Ione Gamble looked at the ceiling, as if notes for her next remarks Were written there. She was still looking at it when she said, “I liked the Jew and respected the Baptist and trusted the Episcopalian—
despite his shit-kicking Texas ways—but the Unitarian seemed consumed by the notion that he and I’d finally wind up in bed.”
“Is there something wrong with optimism?”
Her gaze came down.
“Help me, damnit.”
