Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man

“Didn’t know that,” said Dash, giving the woman the once-over in a single glance.

Archer drank from his Manhattan. “Nice,” he said. “Thank you.”

Dash eyed her closely. “Heard you were ill recently. Appendicitis. You’re looking fine now.”

“How did you know?”

Dash glanced at Archer before saying, “Myron O’Donnell is in my building. He happened to mention that he performed the operation.”

“He was my mother’s doctor, too. And many years ago he saved my father’s life after a car accident. That’s how I came to use him. He’s a fine surgeon.”

As soon as she finished speaking, her look hardened like wet cement solidifying. “Now, to business.”

“You know why we’re here?” said Dash.

“In a general sense, yes.”

She sipped her drink and then placed it on a doily set on the timber mantel. “But please feel free to enlighten me as to particulars.” She picked up a cigarette case from a side table, clicked it open, and extracted a cigarette. Then she placed it into an ivory holder, which she also took from the case, and ignited the end with a platinum lighter that had sat next to the case. She replaced both exactly where they were before.

A careful, measured woman, Archer observed. Who likes things just so. At least the things she can control. He wrote this impression down.

She blew smoke out and picked up her drink, taking another sip.

Dash said, “Some of this may be troubling to hear.”

“Much of what I have to deal with is troubling, Mr. Dash. And people like you and your associate do not get called in when things are not troubling, do you?”

“I appreciate that you understand the situation.”

She took another puff of cigarette and a sip of her drink. “I’ll understand it even better when you tell me the particulars .”

Archer took another swallow of his drink and eyed the room once more, this time with a nuanced approach.

Everything in this place is for show. He eyed Kemper. Maybe including the woman.

He didn’t write this down; he didn’t have to.

Dash laid it all out for her, piece by piece, regurgitating everything that her husband had earlier told them, including his denials of a relationship with Ruby Fraser.

Kemper took it all in and drained the rest of her drink, then turned and started toward the table as though to make another but seemed to think better of it. It was the only moment of indecision Archer had seen in the woman. And from that glimpse he considered the possibility that she actually might be human, with real blood flowing through her thin veins.

She returned to face them in front of the fire, which now seemed to Archer somewhat metaphorical. She perched on the leather-topped fender surrounding the fireplace opening.

“Have you talked to your husband about this... matter?” asked Dash.

She took a moment to finish her cigarette and tossed it, minus the holder, into the fire. She dexterously rolled the ivory holder around and around between her thumb and index finger. “Not really, no. Douglas is running for mayor, I’m sure you know.”

“Which makes the matter even more delicate, and the timing suspicious.”

The cornflower eyes focused on him with an astonishing degree of severity. “Mr. Dash, you are not a fool, I take it?”

“My worst enemies would accuse me of a lot, and they would be right, but being a fool is not one of them. I’ve seen too much of life and suffered through quite a bit of it. It strikes foolishness clean from you, least it did for me.”

“Then do not intimate that the timing of the election makes this accusation scurrilous.”

“Now that’s a fifty-dollar word,” replied Dash.

“And the only one that comes to my mind to fit the situation.”

“Then you believe that your husband did have an affair with Ruby Fraser?”

Her angry look quickly faded. “I... I don’t know about that. I would hope not. But...”

“Did you ask him?”

“No, I didn’t.” She paused and studied her shoes. “Maybe I didn’t want to know his answer,” she added quietly.

“His political opponents would love to make hay out of this.”

“Alfred Drake most assuredly knows of it, or at least his associates do, which in politics is a difference without meaning.”

“I forgot your father was mayor here and once took a run at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.”

Her lips pursed for a moment. Archer wasn’t sure if she was holding back a smile or not.

She said, “He won the mayor’s race by a landslide and lost the governor’s contest by the same margin.”

“Is there a lesson in that?” asked Archer.

She turned to him, her look now one of amusement. “Fame and influence are both often fickle and localized .”

“I’m sure it was a hard loss for your father,” said Dash.

“It was, if only because it was the only time he did lose at anything.”

“But Drake may be behind this blackmail attempt.”

“He may, or he may not. I have no idea, really. I actually always thought Alfred Drake was a decent man. But I think that of many people and I’ve been proven wrong before.”

“If he is the blackmailer, we could use that against him,” noted Dash.

“No one expects Drake to win, even with this allegation bubbling up.”

Archer spoke up. “Then why would your husband hire us to investigate the matter if it will have no impact on the outcome of the election?”

She graced him with a look that hit Archer somewhere between his gut and his heart. Her slender tongue slid over the pale, glossy, and full lips.

“An excellent question to which I have no viable answer. Did you ask him that?”

Dash said, “I don’t usually discourage clients from hiring me, and in our defense, we didn’t know the lay of the land yet. But what you said does give me something to chew on.”

Archer said, “So you know Alfred Drake, then?”

“I used to go to him for my teeth.” She smiled. “He’s actually an orthodontist and an excellent one. I think he did a rather marvelous job, taking out some teeth and putting braces on which straightened the ones that were left. I was hopeless as a child. My father was ready to give up on my having any sort of a social life simply because of the atrocious state of my teeth. But it was my mother who finally put her foot down and took me to Drake.”

“I hardly think anyone would have agreed with your father’s assessment,” noted Archer.

This did not earn him a second graceful smile. The eyes grew cold.

“In many ways, his observation was spot-on because people are invariably shallow, at least here. But you can know nothing of that, so don’t bother rendering an opinion.”

Archer held up a hand in a motion of acquiescence and also apology.

This also did him no favors with the woman. “You surrender quite easily, Mr. Archer. I hope you’re not as squeamish in your work. If so, my husband will certainly be overcharged.”

She turned her attention to Dash, as though now totally discounting the value of Archer’s presence. “Anything else, or can you both leave me in relative peace now?”

“Not unless you can think of anything that might help our investigation.”

“If I did, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

“So, you don’t want to help out your husband here?”

“If Douglas got himself into this, he can get himself out of it.”

“I apologize in advance for this question, but is he the sort of man who has the wandering eye?”

“What man doesn’t?” was her reply.

“Well, I think that’s it for now, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

She leaned over and pushed a button on the wall. Five seconds later the same man appeared to lead them out.