Дэвид Балдаччи - One Good Deed

Archer sat down on the bed and started to think things through.

None of this was looking particularly good for him. The money in his pocket, the residue from Pittleman’s advance, the papers he’d taken from the dead man, all felt like lumps of white-hot coal melting him away from the inside. He knew Shaw was probably going to see Jackie next, and what would she tell him?

You didn’t kill the man, Archer.

Yet he hadn’t committed the crime he’d been sent to Carderock for, and that hadn’t stopped them, had it?

And from what Shaw had said, the motive would be clear.

I slept with Pittleman’s mistress.

I’d been drinking.

I knew how to slit someone’s throat.

But Pittleman had hired him for a job. Now he had no job, like Jackie had told the deputies. That would cut against any reason he would have to murder Pittleman. But would it be enough? Clearly not if Detective Shaw were the sole arbiter of his guilt or innocence.

He lay back on the bed and wondered if Poca City would be the last stop of his short-lived life.

Later, Archer headed out. As he passed by the front desk, he looked at the clerk there who had been talking to Shaw outside.

“How you doing, brother?” said Archer.

“Better ’n you, by a long shot, mister.”

“Why’s that?” asked Archer, marching over to him. “Give me the straight dope, pal.”

The smaller man drew back, fear riding in his eyes and the shakes of his limbs.

“Don’t mean nothing,” said the man. “Just leave me be.”

“Take it easy. I mean you no harm.”

“Says you,” he replied darkly. “Tell that to poor Mr. Pittleman,” he added.

Archer wheeled around and walked outside. He took three long breaths, something he had done in the Army before every significant military engagement he and his fellow soldiers had been called up to do. He hadn’t been a superstitious person before he’d gone in the Army, but he’d damn well become one while in uniform.

Three long breaths and I came home alive.

His spirits suddenly sagged.

For prison and now this?

He had some decisions to make. There was one area of possibility. With Pittleman dead, Jackie might, despite her words, see the benefit of reconciling with her father. But would Marjorie take Tuttle to court to get the money repaid? If so, Archer wouldn’t be getting a dime from that. But maybe Marjorie didn’t know, or wouldn’t care, about the forty dollars her husband had advanced to him. Yet Shaw could use that as a motive for Archer to have killed Pittleman if he found out about it.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Archer, so what are you going to do?

He hoofed it to 27 Eldorado Street and knocked on the door. When no one appeared, he tried the door. It was unlocked. He walked in, calling out Jackie’s name as he went. He found the woman lying in bed with not a shred of clothing on. She had a glass of something held to her lips.

“You just looking or buying?” she said, taking a swallow of whatever was in the glass.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I’m hurting, Archer, more than I thought I would be. Come over here and do something about my melancholia.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“If I have to tell you, what good are you?”

He crossed the floor, stripped down in record time, and lay alongside her.

“That’s better,” she said, giving him a kiss.

“I feel funny doing this now.”

“Because of Hank? It’s because of Hank that I want to do it. Otherwise, I’d just be crying.”

“I thought you didn’t love him?”

“I didn’t. But I can still be sad. I’m no angel, Archer. I’m also thinking that my means of livelihood is about to come to an end. So let me enjoy the moment, damn you.”

She gripped a part of him so hard he gasped, then she kissed him roughly and they went from there.

Later, when they were done, she lay her head on Archer’s arm and stroked his flat, rigid stomach.

“You have any family, Archer, any brothers and sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“You said you never hit a woman, Archer, like Hank did me?”

“I told you that because it’s the truth.”

“Oh come on, never? Don’t lie to me.”

“Like I told you, I never even thought about doing it.”

“Why? Because you never had sisters?”

“I’d like to think it’s because I see the unfairness of a guy hitting a gal.”

“How about your parents? They alive?”

He shook his head and stroked her hair. “They died while I was overseas. Never got a chance to say good-bye, or even see ’em buried.”

She rested her chin on his chest and stared at him. “Why not?”

“Couldn’t get any leave to go home. My division was in hard fighting with the Germans. The battle for Bologna was, well, it was tough. Good thing the war ended a couple weeks after that because we were beat up bad. So even if I could’ve gotten leave, there was no way for me to get out. Not that I’d have wanted to.”

“Why wouldn’t you have wanted to?”

“My parents were dead, Jackie. Nothing was bringing them back. But the Thirty-Fourth needed every soldier it could muster. If we all started taking leave, a lot more men would have died who didn’t need to.”

“That was very heroic of you.”

“No, it wasn’t. Heroes are special people who do things they’re not expected to do. I was just a grunt doing my job like millions of other grunts. Only I got to come home for no good reason other than I was lucky enough not to die.”

“Still, that must have been awful, not even seeing them buried.”

“It happened to lots of boys during the war. Why should I be any different?”

“That’s extraordinarily magnanimous of you.”

“Those are big college words for such a little thing.”

“I’m an only child, too. I don’t have anyone, either.”

“Well, you have your father, like it or not.”

Her fingers stopped stroking his belly for a moment before resuming.

“You sure know how to press my buttons, Archer,” she said. “And not in a good way.”

There were a few moments of silence until Archer said, “Hey, did that detective fellow Shaw come and see you too?”

She sat up and looked down at him, covering her nakedness with the sheet.

“Yes. I didn’t like him. He asked a lot of questions.”

“What did you tell him?” he asked.

“Well, what did you tell him?”

“The truth. Mostly.”

“I told him the whole truth. Nothing for it.”

“Meaning?”

“He asked where we met, and I told him.”

“At the bar?”

“Well, that’s the truth, Archer.”

Well, there goes my parole. My butt’s heading back to Carderock regardless.

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing, but he wrote it all down.”

“I’m sure he did. He’s a man who likes his pencil and paper. What else?”

“That Hank had hired you to collect a debt from my father. But he already knew that.”

“What else?”

“That you had to carry Hank to his room and then we went back to your place for a nightcap.”

“Did you tell him what else we did?”

“Not in so many words. Did you tell him we slept together?”

“What else was I supposed to say?”

“A gentleman would not have betrayed a lady’s secret. I do have a reputation to preserve, Archer.”

“Is that right? Well, he called you Hank Pittleman’s mistress .”

“I corrected him on that. Not that he cared. Just looked at me funny.”

“Man’s a bulldog. He’s not going to let this go.”