Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man [calibre]

“So I don’t even have to apply?”

“But you might want to anyway, sometime down the road, Archer. I won’t be around forever, and the license I have is not transferable to you. And I have to tell you that there’s talk of changing the law, making it even more restrictive next year. It might well require several years of apprenticing as a PI, and also require that the applicant not have been convicted of any serious crime.”

Archer nodded. “Okay.”

“So you might want to find five people and get yourself grandfathered in, if you can. Me and Connie can be two of them, so you’re nearly halfway home on that score. In the meantime, I can provide a ticket for you that allows you to operate under the license of this firm. I’ll have Connie get going on that.”

“Didn’t know it was so involved.”

“It’s a profession, Archer. And it’s getting all the riffraff out and making way for us professionals. I went to the CAPI conference last year and it was quite informative.”

“The what?”

“California Association of Private Investigators. Had a woman named Mildred Gilmore speak. She’s a licensed PI and an attorney, and good at both jobs. She argued for adopting a code of ethics for PIs. She also said that women make better operators because they’re more ethical and no one would suspect them of being PIs.”

“What do you think?”

“I’ve got my own ethics, and I don’t want other folks telling me what they should be.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“What’s your first name again?”

“Aloysius.”

“Then I’ll just call you Archer.”

“I, uh, I saw the billboards around town. Miss Morrison told me they were from a while ago.”

Dash cocked his head and the mouth flatlined. “Don’t play me for a fool, son. You put up billboards to get business, least I did when I first got here. The fact is I soon had more than enough business, so no need for more billboards. Plus, I sort of like driving around and seeing what I used to look like.”

“But you need business now, sounds like.”

“Things have slowed, I won’t debate that point with you.”

“So you were with the FBI?”

Dash poured out small measures of Beam in both glasses and nudged one toward Archer.

“How is Earl? In fine form? Man loves to talk.”

“He thinks the world of you.”

“I did him one act of kindness and he did the rest.”

“Nice of you after sending him to San Quentin.”

Dash said sharply, “He sent himself to San Quentin. That liquor store didn’t rob itself.”

“Right. I guess not.”

“And it was the Bureau of Investigation when I was there. Didn’t become the FBI until 1935.”

“He said you worked with Eliot Ness. Is that true?”

“It is. But Ness worked with a lot of guys. I was just one of them.”

“Didn’t he take down Ma Barker, Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, and folks like that? Were you in on that, too?”

“Ancient history, Archer.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“I had my reasons.”

“So then you went to Frisco to be a cop?”

“A detective,” corrected Dash. “I grew up on the West Coast and wanted to get back here.”

“So why the shamus route?”

“I don’t like following orders, particularly if they’re lousy ones. And I like being my own boss. But enough about me, Archer, how’d you find the joint?”

“It wasn’t so different from being in the Army, actually. And I was innocent, if that makes a difference to you.”

Dash sipped his Beam, and slowly shook his head. “Were you tried and convicted?”

“No, I did a deal. Otherwise, they were going to throw the book at me.”

“Then you were guilty?”

“You think all men who do a deal are guilty?”

“Of course I don’t. Just as I know that all men who are tried and convicted aren’t guilty. But it’s the only system we have. Fact is, I’m not concerned with the past, Archer, yours or mine. I look toward the future.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With a possibility, nothing more and nothing less.” He bent over and worried at the hole in his sock, tucking the little toe out of sight before straightening. “What do you know about the detective business?”

“What Lieutenant Shaw taught me.”

“Which was?”

“Listen, ask questions, don’t believe anything is true unless you can corroborate it, and don’t trust anyone.”

He nodded approvingly. “That’s a good start. Irv knows his way around an investigation, that’s for sure. He said in his letter that you saved his life.”

“He did the same for me.”

“And you have a good war record.”

“I did my bit.”

“Care to talk about it?”

“No.”

He nodded approvingly again. “I fought in the First World War, the one that was supposed to end any future ones, right? Basically living in holes and only climbing out of them when the Army felt it had to show it was doing something, giving folks their money’s worth, so to speak.” He slapped his right leg. “Got some metal here they never took out. But I was one of the lucky ones. Left a lot of good buddies back there.”

“I can understand that,” said Archer, sipping his drink and letting it go down as slow as possible.

“What else?” asked Dash.

“That fingerprints can do a man in and the police check for that. That honest people lie all the time when they’re in a jam. And that sometimes it’s the last person you suspect who did the deed.”

Dash put his glass down, sat forward so his toes were touching the planks once more, and said, “Now, this possibility I’m talking about.”

Archer hunched forward and settled in to listen.

The buzzer on the desk phone sounded off like a warning shot across the bow.

Dash moved across the space with surprising speed and snatched up the phone. He listened for a moment and said, “Give me one minute, hon.”

He put the phone down, stepped into his brown wingtips, which were set next to his desk, and rapidly put his collar and bow tie in place before slipping on his jacket and pinching his cheeks. Next he opened a desk drawer, slipped out something hairy, squirted on its underside something wet from a bottle on his desk, and then plopped a black toupee on the top of his bald head. He fussed over it in the slanted shaving mirror on his desk until he came away satisfied with the look. To Archer the thing looked like a baby skunk without a stripe.

“Put the Beam away in that cabinet over there, Archer, and hoist up the bed.”

Archer quickly did so and said, “What’s up, Mr. Dash?”

“The possibility, Archer, the possibility has just walked in the door.”

Chapter 21

THE DOOR OPENED AND THERE appeared Morrison looking breathless from her three-foot walk from desk to door. She stepped to the side and said, “Mr. Douglas Kemper and Mr. Wilson Sheen.”

Two men walked past her and into the room. She hastily closed the door, but Archer did not hear her trademark heel clatter going away. He glanced at Dash, who was staring at the door and apparently thinking the very same thing.

Dash moved slowly across the room to greet the men. Where he had been frenetic seconds before, Archer could see the man was now all cool, calm, and as collected as a preacher about to dispense an easy dose of religion and then follow that up with an ask for money.

“Gentlemen,” he said, shaking their hands. He motioned to the sitting area across from his desk. “Please, sit. Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea?”

Both men shook their heads, dutifully marched across the room, reached Archer, and stood there, each sizing him up.

Dash said, “This is my associate, Mr. Archer. Just in town from working with the police in another state on a very important investigation. His former boss there is a good friend of mine and a fine police investigator. Archer will be truly helpful to me in this matter. And his discretion is legendary.”