“What’d they do?” Overby said.
“They just giggled and I don’t see much of ‘em after that except at meals ‘til the morning they left.”
“A week ago tomorrow?”
“That’s right,” Cullen said.
“They tell you they were leaving?” Georgia Blue asked.
Cullen shook her head. “They just came downstairs with all their stuff. One big old leather suitcase and two weekend carryalls made out of canvas or that new stuff mountain climbers use. And they’re all dressed up, too— except they look like they’re all dressed up—know what I mean?”
Overby nodded.
“So I come out with something like, ‘Ya’ll leaving so soon?’ And Hughes, he turns all serious and says they’re sorry, but it’s time to move on—or some such shit. Then he says he’s wondering if I might sell him some personal protection and I say I don’t carry condoms.”
Cullen grinned. Overby grinned back. But Georgia Blue said, “Go on.”
“Well, Pauline blows up. She starts yelling that I’m too fucking dumb to know the difference between guns and condoms. I tell Hughes the longer she hollers the higher the price. He hauls off and knocks her down and while she’s down on her butt, still howling at me, Hughes and I dicker over two hardly used Chief Specials that wind up costing him seven-fifty apiece and would’ve been only five hundred apiece if Pauline hadn’t thrown her fit.”
Overby nodded thoughtfully and said, “How much’d two thirty-eights cost us?”
“Six hundred each.”
“We’ll think about it,” he said, then asked, “How did they leave?”
“In that same old black limo with the same driver.”
“Then it was prearranged,” Georgia Blue said.
“Had to be and where’s my money?”
“You don’t know where they went?”
“I didn’t ask, they didn’t say.”
“Okay, Colleen,” Overby said. “Here’s the deal. You already got one thousand. We’ll pay you another thousand for what you told us about the Goodisons. We’ll pay you a third thousand for two pieces—
providing they’re in good shape. And we’ll also pay you a thousand for the limo’s license number. That all adds up to four thousand, just like I said.”
“What makes you think I know the license number?”
Overby shrugged. “You do or you don’t.”
“Well, why the hell not?” Cullen said, rose and reached for the shotgun but Georgia Blue’s hand was faster. “Better leave that here,”
she said.
Cullen thought about it, then shrugged and left through a door at the rear of the parlor. While she was gone, Georgia Blue took the two shells from her purse and reloaded the shotgun, snapped it back together and cocked both hammers.
When Colleen Cullen returned five minutes later, a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver dangled upsidedown by its trigger guard from each forefinger. She stopped and stared at the shotgun Georgia Blue aimed at her.
“You gonna do me, Slim?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Still staring at Georgia Blue, Cullen went slowly to the table and carefully placed one of the pistols on it. Overby picked it up. Cullen then put the other pistol on the table, again looked at Georgia Blue and asked, “Now what?”
“The license number,” Georgia Blue said.
After Colleen Cullen rattled it off, Georgia Blue uncocked the shotgun, broke it open, removed the shells, put the shotgun on the table and said, “Pay her, Otherguy.”
Twenty
In his role as a Malibu newcomer, Booth Stallings spent nearly two hours that same afternoon and early evening introducing himself to his somewhat dumbfounded neighbors or their completely dumbfounded Latina maids.
He was invited in three times; told to go away twice; had two doors slammed in his face; experienced cool brief chats on four thresholds, and once was listened to politely, if with total incomprehension, by a vacationing woman from Dusseldorf who spoke only German except for the phrase “Okay, swell,” which she used over and over again, smiling all the while.
The neighbors who did talk to him knew nothing pertinent about the late William A. C. Rice IV—at least nothing they would confide to Stallings—until he rang the bell of the duplex direcdy across the highway from the house where Rice had died.
The man who opened the door of the two-story canary-yellow duplex was at least 74 or 75. He was also barefoot and wore a short green terry-cloth bathrobe and apparendy nothing else except a cigarette, aviator sunglasses and the amber drink he held in his left hand. Still, Stallings thought there was something vaguely
