Дэвид Балдаччи - One Good Deed

Archer spat on his hand and wiped it through his hair before replacing his hat there. He had sink-washed his shirt, undershorts, and socks the night before, letting the breeze dry them fine. His worn and dusty Oxfords had been spit-polished. He’d even found an iron at the hotel, and for a nickel’s worth of rental time had done the best he could on his suit and shirt; he’d even given his slender tie a few passes. He’d stopped by a barbershop and splurged for a shave overseen by a tiny, wrinkled black man with no teeth, who wielded his strap and razor like a musketeer. His jaw and chin had never been this smooth since he’d dropped from the womb.

He was as smart-looking as he was ever likely to be, he figured.

The lobby had marble floor tiles in swirls of emerald green and fat columns holding up a ceiling with murals depicting things close to the musical infants stuck in the fountain, just with more color and poorer taste. He quickly found the proper department, emblazoned as it was on a black-backed directory, in a lobby that was full of strays looking for direction, as he was.

The elevator was a grill-door operation, which Archer still did not cotton to. So he walked two floors up and headed down the hall counting office numbers as he went. He neared the sheriff’s haunts and also that of the tax revenue bureau. A uniformed man in his fifties came out of the former’s door as he passed by and gave Archer the once-over. He had on a big Stetson hat, a Colt long-barreled revolver in a waist holster, and sported a gut that one would see coming around the corner before one did its owner. Pinned to his broad chest was a shiny pointed star.

“Where you headed, son?”

“Parole Office,” said Archer.

The man’s eyes gleamed with condescension. “Carderock?”

Archer nodded, fingering his hat.

“Ernestine Crabtree’s the parole officer,” said the man.

“That’s what my paper says.”

“She’s a damn fine-looking woman.” The man tongued his lips and his eyes tightened and his nostrils flared. “Damn fine.”

“Okay,” said Archer.

“But she don’t mess with your kind, son.”

“I’m not looking to mess with anyone, least of all my parole officer.”

“She likes men with badges,” he said, pointing to his own. “You tell her Deputy Sheriff Willie Free says hello.”

“Will do, Sheriff Free.”

Archer watched the man saunter down the hall before he turned and walked on.

The door was half-frosted glass above, transom over that, stained and scraped pine down below.

Engraved across the glass was: PAROLE OFFICE: ERNESTINE J. CRABTREE.

Archer drew a calming breath and wondered what the next few minutes would hold for him. He gripped the knob and pushed the door open.

The room inside was small. Varnished parquetry floor, walls painted white, whirly fan going above, the smell of cigarette smoke enticingly lingered as did a trail of its vapor in the air. Well, this place had the bus beat by a mile just on the tobacco issue, he thought. There was a hat tree in the corner from which dangled a woman’s trim, green pillbox hat.

He closed the door behind him, glanced down at the floor, and saw the piece of folded paper that apparently had been slipped under the door. He bent down and picked it up.

He read the words on the page. They were crude and mostly misspelled. And they were all of a sexual and violent nature directed at Ernestine Crabtree.

Archer’s mouth curled in disgust as he scrunched up the paper and put it in his pocket.

A plain wooden desk sat in the middle of the room, a straight back chair not built for comfort was lined up behind it and perched in the kneehole, and a weighty and ponderous, dull gray Royal typewriter dominated the top of the desk, with a preprinted form wound into it. A pulled-out leaf was on the left side of the desk and had several files on it. A blue fountain pen lay in its cradle, its brass nib sparkling from the overhead light.

Archer ducked down to take a look at the page in progress. It looked official, and the typed comments on another poor parolee soul held phrases like, “unacceptable attitude,” “overly aggressive,” and “devious.” He looked for the name of the person she was reporting about, but it must have been on another page.

A fat black phone sat to the right of the typewriter, its cord snaking into the kneehole. Next to the phone was a speckled glass ashtray, with a spent, unfiltered butt lingering, and a chrome lighter parallel to it.

He twirled his hat and waited, until the clock on the wall overhead hit nine a.m.

The door he’d come through opened and there stood, apparently, Miss Ernestine J. Crabtree.

His first thought was she looked nothing like her name. His second impression was the name did her justice just fine.

She was around his age more or less and tall for a woman, about five-eight barefoot, he estimated. She wore a black skirt that stopped below the knee and was flared out by a petticoat underneath that widened her hips, and a white blouse with ruffles down the front and a schoolmarm Peter Pan collar.

Despite the fullness of the skirt, he could gauge her figure, which was shapely, perhaps more than that now that he thought about it. She had on flesh-colored stockings — and no doubt the seams would be lined up perfectly in back — and grim, low-heeled pumps. Her blond hair was done up in so tight a bun that it pulled at her face. Her chin was sharply defined, the cheeks nicely formed and riding high, the lips full, with not a trace of lipstick, which he’d already figured on because there had been none on the cigarette end. Behind black shell glasses, her eyes were blue and wide, the irises plump, with the overall effect being what he thought some might call vivacious . At least they held the potential if she let her hair down, in more ways than one. All in all, quite a looker, he concluded. And then he thought about the sick note residing in his pocket and he stopped thinking about the woman in that way.

Her countenance did fit her name, he concluded. It was a slab of granite with nothing behind it. The baby blue eyes, now that he studied them again, seemed bound to the surface of the fleshy sockets only. It was a cold and untrusting face peering back at him.

“You are Mr. Archer?” she said, coming forward after shutting the door.

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“I am Ernestine Crabtree.”

“I figured, from the name on the door.” He put out his hand. “Been here a couple of minutes.”

She did not return the gesture. “Then you’re two minutes early.”

“I guess my watch has the runs.”

The granite only deepened a notch at his poor joke.

“Let’s get down to it then,” she said sharply.

She motioned to a chair set against the wall. “Pull that up across from the desk,” she commanded as she sat down in front of the typewriter, her back straight as a two-by-four.

She spun out the page in there and rolled in a fresh sheet with a few firm cranks of the wheel as he sat down across from her, his legs splayed wide, his hat dangling in one hand.

“Full name?”

“Aloysius Archer.”

“Middle name?”

“Never had one.”

“Really?” she said incredulously.

“I think they believed one name was good enough, and certainly Aloysius might, under some circumstances, be quite as good as two names.”

She stared at him for a long moment with what he thought were lips fighting to become a smile. In the end, the granite won out.

She asked for more personal information, which he readily gave, and that Crabtree promptly typed on the form.

“You have your parole papers?”

He presented the pages and she dutifully looked over them.