Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man [calibre]

She took a cigarette from the bowl and lit it. “You’re nuts.”

“Am I? I’d explain it all like they do in the detective novels, but it would take too much time and you already know what I’m going to say.”

“You’re making me out to be some criminal.”

“You made yourself out to be one by committing criminal acts. Funny how that works.” He took out a pillbox from her purse and withdrew a pill from it. “I saw this pillbox in your purse before, but it was empty. And that same bouncer asked me if I was a customer of yours. A customer for what, I wonder?”

Darling just stared at him, lips pursed, legs still primly crossed at the ankles, the smoke in her hand.

“You sell drugs, Wilma.” He looked at the pill. “Amphetamines.”

“You know about amphetamines, Archer? I’m impressed.”

“Army used to give them out like candy in the war. Made you not feel tired even though you hadn’t slept for days. Made you not feel hungry so they didn’t have to stop the fighting to feed you. Made you act like a lion when you felt like a mouse.” He put the pill back and returned the box to the purse. “And you’re also selling to the gals in your office. That’s why they could work dawn to dusk and move like someone had stuck their fingers in a wall socket. Must pay well. You got the place in Bay Town, this place here. A new car. Nice clothes. Yeah, what a success you are.”

“Everything I have I worked for.”

“Oh, yeah, you did. And you said you went to Midnight Moods regularly. I’m betting you sold to the gals there, too. Like Ruby Fraser. You sold her pills. And I’m thinking you were the one who fingered her to be the patsy in all this. Put her at the center of this phony blackmail scheme with Kemper, and then they cut her throat out. And then you set up poor Wilson Sheen and removed any alibi Kemper has for Fraser’s murder. You probably got that info from one of them while at the office and passed it along to the appropriate party.”

“You weave a good tale, Archer. Good thing for me the cops only care about facts.”

“Let me give you some then. They killed Dr. Myron O’Donnell tonight and made it look like a narcotics hit. In the process, they slit the throat of a harmless old man who spent his days going up and down in an elevator reading the Gazette and swigging his cheap rum after a really shitty life. I look down on folks who kill other folks, unless you happen to be in a war. So that makes you an accessory to two more murders, Wilma. Even if they don’t send you to the gas chamber you’re getting at least twenty-five to life.” He checked her purse again. “Where’s the Derringer?”

“A lady has to protect herself, Archer. You got a gun. Why shouldn’t I have a gun?”

“Under any other circumstances, I would agree with you. But I’m fresh out of understanding right now. So where is it?”

“I dumped it. It was making me nervous.”

He decided to let this pass, for now, and kept the gun pointed right at her, his finger on the trigger guard.

“So I get no points at all for screwing you? ’Cause I know you enjoyed it, lover boy. Guys can’t fake it, only the gals can do that, only I admit I didn’t have to with you.”

“Yeah, and now that I know the truth about you, I’ll be taking three showers a day to try to get the stink off.”

“A girl has to do what a girl has to do to survive, Archer. But being a man, you would have no clue.”

“I know lots of gals who get by just fine without selling drugs and helping people kill other people.”

“I never wanted to be like ‘lots of gals.’”

“And thank God lots of gals never want to be like you . I hope the money you got paid was worth it. And I’m betting it was a lot more than a grand.”

She hiked her eyebrows. “So where does all this leave you and me?”

“In a difficult spot.”

“You have no proof of anything.”

“That’s my difficult spot. But I just wanted to let you know that I know the truth.”

“How decent of you, Archer. I was half serious when I asked where I could get a dozen of you. Of course, you’d start to bore me at some point. See, I don’t like the shiny knights. I like the bad boys who take what they want when they want.”

“Yeah, I know all about them. And the bad girls , too, like you.”

“What a choirboy you turned out to be.”

“I tell you what. Give up Sawyer Armstrong and get a few years shaved off your sentence. He framed his son-in-law for a double murder that Kemper had no part in. Can’t let a guy like that walk the last mile to San Quentin.”

“And why not?” She ground out her cigarette on the tabletop and sat back.

“If you have to ask, any explanation I could give you would be a waste of time.”

“We seem to be wasting a lot of time tonight, Archer. But one thing I wanted you to know.”

“What’s that?”

“I wasn’t surprised to see you here. I was just faking. How’d I do?”

“I’d rate you right up there with Bette Davis. But why weren’t you surprised?”

“I was at that dance club tonight. And the bouncer’s my friend. And he told me all about you.”

She did move well, very well. The Derringer came out from a pocket on her jacket and she got off two quick shots.

Both missed.

Archer’s did not.

Darling lowered her gun and then looked down at her front. The dark green cloth was sprouting another color.

The crimson patch kept growing as she looked up at him, her facial muscles as tensed as a person surprised that she is suddenly dying can make them. A bit of blood emerged at the corner of her mouth as the internal hemorrhaging expanded upward.

She fell to her knees and glanced up at him. Her mouth moved but no words came out. Her head hit the table on the way down. It didn’t matter. She didn’t feel the impact. The dead felt nothing.

Archer looked behind him where the twin Derringer bullets had slammed into the back of his chair right on either side of him.

Part of him thought it would turn out this way. He’d only hoped that part of him would be wrong.

He rose and looked down at her. Fleeting images of their first meeting and their lovemaking raced through his thoughts. Part of him felt lucky, part felt depressed, and part of him, maybe the largest part, just felt sick to his stomach.

He left the way he had come, after wiping his prints off everything he had touched. If he could have dug the bullet out of her he would have. Now he had to be worried about getting fingered for her death.

He drove fast back to Bay Town because he knew there was more to be done.

Chapter 64

ARCHER RODE THE STORM ALL THE WAY BACK. It looked like the entire coast of southern California was getting the same treatment. On reaching the town limits he drove straight to his office building. There were no prowlers out front, nor did he see Pickett’s big Chrysler. They must have come and gone, thought Archer.

Dawn was still over an hour away as the storm continued to rage overhead. He hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours, but he had never felt less tired in his life. Killing a person, particularly a beautiful woman with whom you’d previously slept, just did that to you, he supposed. It didn’t make him feel good or bad. He didn’t feel anything, really, and he couldn’t really handle that so he stopped thinking about it.

He entered the office building through a back entrance and crept along the first-floor corridor until he neared the elevator. He got a sight line that showed Earl’s body was no longer where it had been before. He moved forward and saw that the car was empty. He passed by it and drew closer to O’Donnell’s office. He waited, crouching in the darkened hallway, listening and watching. Satisfied that an army of cops wasn’t lurking to bash him in the head, he eased the office door open and peered inside.