“But there’s one more thing he could do with the tape that nobody’d ever have to know about,” she said. “He could sell it to me, which, I believe, is called blackmail.”
She gave Mott the small cool smile that debaters use after making a telling point. Mott scratched the back of his left hand and said, “What if I could find you a hypnotherapist whose discretion is guaranteed?
Would you be interested in trying to regain your memory of that night?”
Gamble frowned. “It’s important, isn’t it? My memory?”
“Extremely so.”
“You know any hypnotists?”
“I know of somebody who does.”
“You mean that’s his business—supplying hypnotists for wives and girlfriends who get drunk, black out, do in their husbands or boyfriends, but remember fuck-all about it?”
Mott smiled. “He supplies extremely well-qualified, extremely discreet professionals to perform any number of extremely delicate tasks.”
She stared at him, frowned again and said, “Do all those extremelys mean you’re going to be my lawyer?”
“If you like.”
“Okay. As my lawyer, what d’you recommend?”
“A discreet and well-qualified hypnotist.”
“Then you’d better go ahead and call your jobber—whoever he is.”
“His name is Glimm,” Howard Mott said. “Enno Glimm.”
Three
The left cheek of Enno Glimm, the walk-in, was flawed by a puckered scar that would almost pass for a dimple—just as his English could almost pass for American were it not for those Rhine-flavored w’s that turned Wudu, Ltd., into Voodoo, Ltd.
Quincy Durant, sensing profit, made no effort to correct the prospective client. As for the scar, Durant guessed it could have been made by a small-caliber round—either a .22 or a .25—or by some 9-year-old bully jabbing a pencil through Glimm’s left cheek thirty-five years ago during a schoolyard scuffle.
It was Arctic cold in England and throughout most of Europe that February. Eight inches of snow fell on London and a few flakes had even dusted the French Riviera. The cold and damp penetrated everywhere, including the panelled conference room/office of Wudu, Ltd., where Durant had hauled a three-bar electric fire out of a closet and stuck it in the false fireplace to supplement the building’s inadequate central heating.
Enno Glimm sat in one of the twin wingback chairs that flanked the fireplace. Above its mantel hung a large oil portrait of Mrs. Arthur Case Wu (the former Agnes Goriach) and the two sets of Wu twins.
The seated 14-year-old twin girls looked both worldly and a trifle mischievous. Their standing 17-year-old brothers, Arthur and Angus, wore identical half-smiles that made them look faintly sinister. The artist had brilliantly caught the mother’s handsome features, regal bearing and even the sparkle in her huge gray eyes that suggested she was thinking of something bawdy.
Enno Glimm ignored the portrait and remained hunched-over in the wingback chair, toasting his palms before the electric fire and frowning, as if sorry that he had let Durant relieve him of the black double-breasted cashmere overcoat.
Durant guessed the coat had cost at least a thousand pounds or, more likely, three thousand deutsche marks. After hanging it on the overly elaborate coatrack that had been carved out of black walnut, supposedly in 1903, Durant went over to the other wingback chair, sat down, crossed his legs and waited for Glimm to say whatever he had come to say.
Glimm was still toasting his palms when, without looking at Durant, he said, “Mr. Wu won’t be joining us?” This time he made Artie Wu’s
surname sound like the vieux in Vieux Carre and even gave it a passable French pronunciation.
“He’s away,” Durant said. “A family matter.”
Glimm looked up at the portrait with pale gray eyes that Durant thought weren’t much darker or warmer than sleet. “Someone is ill?”
Glimm asked, coating the question with just the right amount of concern.
“His sons are having a problem at school,” Durant said.
“Neglecting their studies?”
“Something like that.”
“Their school is here—in London?”
“Why?” Durant asked, turning the one-word question into a warning and possibly a threat.
It made Glimm smile. “You think I’m a kidnapper—a terrorist maybe?”
“I don’t know what you are,” Durant said. “Maybe we should get to that.”
“Listen. When I deal with a business, any business, I like to deal with its principals, its top guys, the yes-or-no people. In this case, you and Voo. So after I fly into Heathrow last night in the snowstorm—”
“From where?”
Glimm ignored the question. “—and check into the Connaught, where they’ve got rooms going
