A Gambling Man

Chapter 19

archer climbed into the Delahaye, turned the key, thumbed the starter button, and put the car in gear. Heads turned to stare at the car as he followed the precise directions Morrison had given him, and he made it to Encino Street in short order. The buildings down this way seemed a lot older than others he had passed, and they became dingier still the longer he was on it. The very last building was Dash’s, and it was the dingiest of all. It looked like something erected at the end of the last century merely as an afterthought.

Mortar splotches had permanently stained its brick surface. The green awning that covered its entrance was torn, with a sleeve of it flapping in the stiffening ocean breeze. The sidewalk in front was missing a few chunks, like teeth punched out of a mouth.

He parked the car in front of the entrance and opened the single glass door, finding himself in a tiny lobby that smelled of stale tobacco, spilled gin, and a few odd odors that he couldn’t readily place but made his nose crinkle in displeasure. The space was badly lighted, and he had to blink a few times to transition his pupils from daylight to enforced dusk.

There was an occupant register on the wall. Though he knew the suite number, Archer wanted to check out who his potential neighbors might be. It didn’t take him long. There were only twelve suites in the building, three on each floor, and only four were currently occupied; the other eight had VACANT next to them.

There was a doctor on the first floor by the name of Myron O’Donnell. On the second floor was a chap named Bradley Wannamaker, attorney-at-law. Dash was on the top floor along with a business called Gemology Incorporated. There was no girl at the tiny reception desk in the lobby. A dusty telephone switchboard sat in one corner. There were no cobwebs covering it, but there easily could have been.

Archer saw the sign for the elevator and headed that way. He figured the stairs would be in the same direction. Ever since being in prison he did not like small, enclosed spaces where he could not open the door when he wanted to.

He came to the single elevator, where a black man who looked to be about a hundred, wearing an ill-fitting gray bellhop’s uniform with white piping down the legs and arms, sat on a small, ragged, pillow-topped, wooden dropdown seat just inside the car, reading a nickel copy of the Bay Town Gazette. He was short and too thin, with hands that bent upward, apparently against their owner’s will because he held the paper in an awkward grip. The unlit, short, cheap stogie in his mouth was rolling from one side to the other with delicate flicks of his tongue.

With an effort he put the paper aside, sat on it, and said, “What floor, young man?”

“It’s okay, I’ll take the stairs.”

He scratched his nose and looked interested. “Give me something to do if you let me take you. My first customer all day.”

“Aren’t Willie Dash and his secretary here?”

The man grinned. “Hell, they don’t count. They work here. I need me some fresh, smiling faces like yours. Keeps me going. You going to see Willie?”

Archer nodded.

“Fourth floor. Suite 401. Let’s get to it, young man.”

Archer hesitated for a moment, glancing at the wooden door with a wired pane of glass leading to the stairs for a few moments until the man said, “Time waits for no man, mister, and don’t I know it. I’ll be worm food before long.”

Archer stepped on.

The man closed the cage door and then hit the button for the fourth floor, which automatically closed the car’s outer solid metal door.

Archer sucked in a breath and felt his body stiffen and his pulse race. He shut his eyes and pretended he was outside with all sorts of possibilities for escape.

The man had swiveled around in his seat and stared at him as the car began its glacial ascent of thirty or so feet.

“When’d you get out, friend?” asked the man with a knowing look.

Archer opened his eyes. The old fellow smiled, showing off perfectly white teeth, and all of them real, as far as Archer could tell.

“Get out of where?”

The fellow snorted. “Come on, don’t BS me. The joint, man.”

“How do you figure that?”

“How do I not figure it, you mean. Been inside myself, lots of times, all together longer than you been alive. And carried lots of men up to see Willie who got the elevator disease, same as you. Stair doors you can open all by yourself.” He tapped the cage. “Not like these. Remind you of bars, don’t they?”

“Does it go away?”

“Look at me. I live in a goddamn elevator, son.”

“How long did it take you?”

“I won’t say ’cause I don’t want to discourage you.”

“I got on, didn’t I?” retorted Archer.

“Sure you did. Now stop sweating and looking like you gonna puke and we getting somewhere.”

Archer put a hand against the wall. “What can you tell me about Willie Dash?”

The man picked up his paper but his brown eyes stayed on Archer. “What you want to know?”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“You looking to hire him?”

“No, work for him.”

This surprised the man. He took a moment to light up his stogie, sticking the burned match in a metal cup that stuck out from the wall of the car. “Work for him? What, you a baby shamus or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, Willie is getting up there, all right. Can’t be doing this forever.”

“But he’s good at what he does?”

The man puffed on the cigar to get it going as the car slowly moved past the second floor and began its assault on the third. “You know he was a G-man with Hoover’s boys before he left to be a copper in Frisco.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“He was one of the best. Worked with that there Eliot Ness.”

“Why’d he leave?”

The man shrugged. “Who knows? Why’d he leave Frisco to come here and be a private dick?”

“So he’s really good, then.”

The man smiled slyly. “Hell, he caught me. It was his second day on the job as a detective in Frisco and he nailed my ass.”

“For doing what?”

“Held up a liquor store. Done my time at San Quentin. I don’t recommend it, son. Death row there. Used to hang ’em. Now they gas ’em.”

“Either way you’re dead,” said Archer.

“Now, Willie put in a real good word for me, so I didn’t get nearly as long a sentence as I might have and then I got time off for good behavior, and I was getting up there age-wise and they needed more room for younger bad guys needing prison beds. It was Willie got me a job here after I left prison.”

“So he kept in touch after you went into the joint?”

“Visited me at the prison a few times. Said I did what I did because I was down and out and the wrong color; all stuff I knew. Hell, I’m a Mississippi boy. Only thing the police do down south is march in parades on July Fourth and shoot folks look like me. Why I got outta the south. But I ain’t find it all that different no matter where I go. Figgered robbing a place might get me three squares and a roof over my head, so I hit that liquor store. But Willie said I could make an honest living, if I wanted to.”

“So you came down here and climbed into this car?”

“Naw. Willie got me a job at the docks, loading shit on and taking shit off the boats. Did that for years.” He held up his gnarled hands. “Where I got these. Then Willie got me this sitting job when I couldn’t lift the shit no more. I can still poke a button and close a gate, see?”

“Did that surprise you? I mean, what he did for you?”

“Nothing surprises me, young man. Not no more. You live to be my age and you colored to boot, life ain’t got no more surprises, ’cept why no white man ain’t shot me dead at some point along the way for no reason ’cept he wanted to, see?”

A minute later the slow-moving car passed the third floor and settled into the home stretch.

“What about his gal, Connie Morrison?”

The old man cackled. “Connie? They used to be hitched.”

Archer shook out a Lucky. The old man struck a match and lit it for him before depositing the spent match in the chromium cup.

“So, they were married? But not anymore?”

“That’s right. Think Willie was married way back to some gal when he was a G-man, but guess that didn’t work out. Pretty sure he’s done walking down the aisle now. Not sure ’bout Connie. She’s forty-two, which is long in the tooth for getting hitched. But maybe some man’ll snatch her up.”

“What’s your name, by the way?”

“Earl. You?”

“Archer. So if I go to work for him, what’s your advice?”

“Go in with both eyes and ears open and pray that’s enough.”

“Think he can teach me stuff?”

“He’s forgot more about gumshoeing than you’ll ever know, young man, no offense.”

With a jolt and a hiss, they reached the fourth floor, and Earl slid open the cage door. When the outer door disappeared into the wall, Archer quickly stepped through and gratefully sucked in even the stale air at his sudden freedom.

Earl poked his head out. “Down the hall and to the left, Archer. Good luck to you.”

“At this point in my life you’d think I wouldn’t need so much damn luck,” muttered Archer as he headed on to meet ex — G-man and former copper Willie Dash.