Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man [calibre]

“They have evidence, or so they say,” commented Archer, one eye on Armstrong and his other on the doorway waiting for Hank and Tony to appear. “Pretty compelling stuff. Cufflinks, bloody shirt with guess-who’s blood on it, eyewitness testimony, stomach contents from Sheen. I’m no lawyer, but even a bad DA could make hay out of that.”

Armstrong said, “You and Willie never gave me an answer on my offer. I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I work for him. It’s his call.”

“Then tell him what I said. And just do it.”

“By any means necessary?” asked Archer, with a glance at Beth, who looked at the floor and nothing else.

“I won’t tell Willie or you how to do your job. I’d appreciate the same courtesy.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’ll be going then.” He looked at Beth. “You going to be okay?”

“She’ll be fine, Archer, now that I’m here,” Armstrong answered for her.

The night sky was bursting with stars, the air chilly enough to make him feel alive, and yet with all that, part of Archer felt dead inside as he steered the Delahaye back down the mountain. The scent of eucalyptus was so strong he felt his eyes start to water. He glanced at his timepiece. He debated whether to go back to Midnight Moods, but then decided against it. He opted to return to the office, call Dash, wake him up if necessary, and get his advice.

He pulled to the curb in front of the office building and got out. The front door to the building was unlocked and Archer proceeded down the hall toward the stairs. He reached the elevator and stopped. The elevator’s outer door was partially open because there was something blocking it. And that something was an arm, with a gnarled hand at the end of it.

Archer quickly pushed the door all the way open, revealing Earl lying there, his face pointed to the side.

“Earl, you okay? Earl?”

The man’s eyes were closed, and it was dark enough that Archer couldn’t see whether he was breathing or not. He might have had a heart attack or maybe a stroke.

He knelt down and felt around the man’s neck. He didn’t need to check for a pulse, because when he pulled his fingers back the clotted blood came with them. Archer pivoted on the balls of his feet for a better look at the little man. He tipped the chin back a bit and saw the slash across the neck.

This was Ruby Fraser all over again. The man was cold. He’d been dead awhile, but his limbs weren’t stiff. Archer looked around the elevator car and saw what looked to be a pile of blankets in one corner along with a newspaper and the bottle of booze he had seen before. Archer sniffed the air. From out of the pile of blankets he pulled a raw onion, half eaten, and a knuckle of bread with some roast beef inserted in it. Along with a pair of underwear and a torn sock.

The guy was living here?

He backed out of the car and hurried toward the stairs. And stopped again.

A door off the hall was open. The doorjamb was shredded and the locking side of the door had a long crack in it.

Archer eyed the name stenciled on the door.

MYRON O’DONNELL, M.D.

Archer recalled the name because O’Donnell was the surgeon who’d recently removed Beth Kemper’s appendix.

He eased the broken door open.

“Hello? Dr. O’Donnell, you okay? It’s Archer from upstairs. I work for Willie Dash.”

There was no response. The place had the feel of a tomb. Archer nipped out his gun and pointed it around. He worked his way through the front reception room, which had six wooden-back chairs all in a row, and a coffee table with magazines spread out on it. He spied an old Look magazine from 1948. And a Life magazine from August with a toothy Joe DiMaggio on the cover.

“Hello?” said Archer.

He reached another door and pushed it open. This must be where O’Donnell kept his drug dispensary. The glass cabinet was smashed open, and bottles and spilled pills littered the floor.

Archer left this room and headed on. The next room was O’Donnell’s office. Archer could tell because the man’s diplomas were on the wall. There was a desk with two chairs on the patient’s side, and one office chair on the other.

And in the office chair was a dead man.

Chapter 60

ARCHER RUSHED UP TO THE FOURTH FLOOR to make sure that Dash had not been a victim as well. When he unlocked the door and burst into Dash’s office’s a few moments later, he heard a voice call out, “One more step and you get a third eye, buster.”

“It’s me, Archer.”

Dash turned on a light revealing him sitting on the side of the bed holding a lethal-looking .32 Colt. “What the hell are you doing here?”

And Archer told him what he was doing there. Dash hurriedly dressed and raced out without bothering to don his toupee.

They first went to look at Earl. “Shit,” Dash said.

Then he followed Archer to the doctor’s office.

Dash looked down at the body. “Shit twice,” he muttered.

“Who is it? Dr. O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded, picked up the dead doctor’s phone, and made a call.

“Ernie Prettyman on duty? Yeah, right. Tell him it’s Willie Dash. Thanks.”

A few moments passed and then Prettyman came on. Dash told him what had happened.

“Okay, Ern, we’ll be here,” said Dash in reply to whatever Prettyman had said.

Dash put down the phone and said, “Okay, you look like you have something to tell me.”

“Pickett arrested Kemper for the murders of Fraser and Sheen.” Archer told him about all the evidence Pickett said he had on Kemper. And the fact that Beth had called her father and that Armstrong had shown up a bit later.

“I’m sure Pickett paid top dollar for the eyewitness accounts,” said Dash. “And the other stuff is easy to massage into evidence of anything you want it to.”

“We can’t fight the whole police force, Willie.”

“Maybe not. Let’s go analyze this sucker and see what they were really after.”

In the dispensary Dash carefully looked over the tossed bottles and spilled pills. Then he stepped back and said, “Tell me what you see here, Archer. Take your time and think it over.”

Archer bent down and picked up some of the bottles and scooped up some of the pills. He compared some pills with some bottles and even put some of the scattered pills back in the bottles. He looked up at Dash.

“This thing was staged, to make it look like a robbery with drugs as the loot.”

Dash nodded. “You’re right. But explain to me your reasoning.”

Archer stood and held out two half-empty bottles and a handful of pills. “This is morphine. And these pills are amphetamines. Worth a small fortune on the street.”

“That’s right.”

“But when you compare the pills they spilled with the space left inside the bottles, they pretty much tally. So they didn’t take any narcotics with them.”

“And they didn’t have to smash the cabinet open. The key’s in the lock. The idiots obviously didn’t see it, or else they would have taken it with them.”

“Did you know O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded. “He was a good guy. A good doctor.”

“Why would anyone want to kill him?”

“That’s principally why they call it a mystery, Archer.”

“So do we wait here for Prettyman?”

“Now that I know Pickett has arrested Kemper, I’m pretty damn certain that Ern’s not gonna show up here. Pickett will. And then I think I might actually fear for our safety.”

“So what do we do?”

“You got your car out front?”

“Yeah.”

On the way out, Dash stopped at Earl’s body. He knelt down and closed the man’s eyes.

“He was a crook, and he hated my guts, but anybody who thinks they had a harder life with fewer opportunities than Earl is seriously fooling themselves.”