Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man [calibre]

Archer squinted at her. “How’d he die?”

“They say he drowned in his bathtub.”

“They say ? You don’t know for sure?”

“I don’t know for sure, because the police don’t know for sure. No one apparently knows for sure. They only thing they know for sure is that Benjamin Smalls is dead.”

“People do drown in their bathtubs.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.”

“I guess maybe he was old, or drunk.”

She rose, went over to a bureau, opened the drawer, and took out a framed photo. “This is Benjamin Smalls. He was thirty-five and a teetotaler.”

Archer looked at the photo that was signed to her and studied Smalls. He was tall, with slicked-back dark hair parted on the side. He had a dimple under his chin that must have been annoying to shave. He also had nice, comely features and wore a white linen suit with a Panama hat held in one hand. This was actually the second time he had seen a picture of the man.

“That photo was taken last year, when he won reelection.”

“Maybe he died of a seizure, then, or a heart attack.”

“The police could find no evidence of that.”

Archer pulled out a Lucky and lit up, catching the ash in his hand. “You seem to think there was more to it.”

“You’re a private eye, maybe you should turn your ‘eye’ to that.”

“I think I have enough on my plate.”

She shrugged. “Why do you want to know about Armstrong and the Kempers?”

“Something to do with my investigation.”

“Then I would be careful if I were you. Very careful.”

“I’m starting to figure that out.” He didn’t think she could see the bruises on his face and neck in the dim light, but maybe she had better vision than he was giving her credit for. “I might go for a stroll. Is it safe out there at night?”

“Is anywhere safe at night, Mr. Archer?”

He tipped his hat and left her there with her toddy and her moody introspection.

Outside, he headed toward Sawyer Avenue, lighting another cigarette on the way and feeling for the gun in the belt holster. Its presence lifted his spirits considerably. And if he ran into Tony or Hank again, he planned to shoot first and ask not a single question later.

There was no one out and about that he could see. All shops were closed at this hour, even the ones that, when open, catered solely to the baser pleasures of its patrons. A sliver of moon crept out from behind the clouds and cast a delicate glow over Bay Town.

A prowler slowly pulled up to him; he tipped his hat to the officer who stared suspiciously at him from the passenger seat. Archer tried to remain calm, but his aching body was stiffening all over with anxiety, and for an obvious reason.

Could this be about Ruby Fraser? Could they be here to arrest me?

“Everything okay, bub?” asked the cop, giving Archer a once-over.

“Yes sir, officer. Just got into town and couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d walk around and get the lay of the land.”

The cop at the wheel leaned forward so as to be in Archer’s line of vision.

“That wouldn’t include casing any joints, would it?” But he smiled to show he was kidding.

“Only the best liquor joints. But that can wait until the sun comes up,” he said, grinning back, but his heart beat even harder.

They drove off and he picked up his pace.

He wondered how many cops were up at Midnight Moods right now. Maybe every one of them besides those two yokels.

Crossing Sawyer Avenue, he turned away from the fancy areas of furs and teas and Bentleys and headed to the working-class wharf. He wanted to hear the breakers better and smell the salt air with more vigor. He had no idea why, he just did. Maybe it would help him not to think of dead Ruby.

He reached the wharf after a brisk walk of fifteen minutes, during which he saw not another soul, or another car, prowler or not. Bay Town was clearly bedded down for the night.

He walked along the pier and finally settled on a bench built into the wooden wall there and which looked directly out to sea. The territory of Hawaii was out there, he knew, thousands of miles away. And beyond that, and more thousands of ocean miles, was Japan, which was still no doubt licking its war wounds after having two atom bombs dropped on it four years ago. Archer was just glad he hadn’t had to fight his way to mainland Japan. He’d had enough of war to last him forever. Any man who had seen and done what he had would feel the same way. And if they didn’t there was something wrong with them that nothing could fix except copious amounts of booze. He figured if Prohibition were still in place after the war, America would be no more. They would have rolled up the carpet and headed for Europe, where a man could get a decent shot of booze and a kind word from a woman at any time of the day or night.

The breakwater built out parallel to the land was made of enormous boulders which, like an iceberg, was just the tip of the rock out there. He sat staring at the jetty and the moored boats bobbing slightly, and worked through two more cigarettes and half his flask while he listened to the waves leisurely hitting the rocks and let the salt air carve his insides smooth.

The moon cast finger shadows over the water. The Pacific was basically flat and calm, the air not moving much, no storm clouds overhead to cause trouble. He might just sit here until sunrise and surprise the longshoremen and fishermen on their way to work. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander.

A few minutes later he opened them, and his thoughts focused on one thing. It was constant and perfectly replicated, meaning it was mechanical. As he continued to listen and watch, the motorboat came into view. There was a spotlight deployed on its bow, and the light gashed over the water as it tried to discern solids from fluids. As it came more fully into view and passed the breakwater, and started navigating through the minefield of moored boats, he could see that it was about twenty-five feet long and there were a number of people on board. It veered southward as it approached the pier and ran parallel to it for about two hundred yards, until it was well away from the port operations.

A minute before this, Archer had taken to his heels and was jogging along in that direction. He reached a spot where he took up position behind a waist-high wall and eyed the boat as it docked at a pier.

Two men got off and secured the boat’s lines to the dock cleats. Then the bow light was extinguished and more people got off. Archer continued to watch as they walked toward the lot adjacent to where Archer was hidden. He sank lower, turned his head, and saw two vehicles parked there.

As the men drew closer to the cars, another automobile came down the wharf road, turned, and pulled into the parking lot. Due to the thrust and reach of its headlights, the group from the boat was fully revealed to him.

The tall figure of Sawyer Armstrong was prominent among them, as were his two goons, Tony and Hank.

And there were three other men that Archer didn’t recognize.

The car pulled to a stop but kept on its headlights. Stepping out of the car was another person that Archer did know.

Beth Kemper hurried over to her father, and they held a quick and apparently heated conversation, at least by their body language, because Archer could hear none of it. The brief meeting ended with Armstrong and his group climbing into the two cars and driving off, leaving Kemper alone.

Archer saw the dot of flame emerge as the woman lit a cigarette and leaned against her car, which he now recognized as the little Triumph Roadster convertible he’d seen back at the Kemper estate. The woman stared out at the ocean and smoked her cigarette while Archer continued to watch and contemplated what to do. Part of him wanted to approach her, see what was going on. But his professional instincts—such that he had—told him that would be the wrong move, for any number of reasons. If he did that and she told her father that Archer had seen them come in on the boat from God knew where in the middle of the night, Archer figured he would get another visit from Tony and Hank, and it would be his last visit with anyone ever. His final resting place might be the very same ocean Beth Kemper was staring at, with cement shoes encasing his feet as he sank to the bottom to realize his new destiny as plankton.