A Gambling Man

Chapter 20

The door was pebbled glass with painted letters on its surface that spelled out: WILLIE DASH: VERY PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

The image of a lawman’s five-point star was etched below this as though to lend gravitas to the entry point, a certain officialness. Or maybe it had been thrown in for the price of the name above, mused Archer.

The doorknob was brass and looked worn down, probably by the thousands of nervous, sweaty hands that had touched it looking for some help of a “very private” nature.

The door was locked. He noted the buzzer next to the door and pressed it.

“Yes,” said the voice, from the little intercom screen.

“It’s Archer.”

Archer heard a lock click free. He turned the knob and swung the door open.

Six feet directly across from him was, presumably, Connie Morrison. He could have laid flat on the floor, his hat against one wall, and the bottom of his shoes would have touched her desk. Morrison was a honey blonde with shoulder-length hair parted in the middle with the sides winging their way down. The lady was sitting behind a carved oak desk that looked like it had come over on the Mayflower and gotten wet along the way.

Archer took in the small reception area. Four walls, one window, five dented metal file cabinets with alphabet letters on their fronts, and a square of faded carpet that was so worn it looked like the plank floor had reclaimed it. There was a fuzzy light overhead, and a table lamp with a patterned shade on the desk.

A Royal typewriter about the size of a Sherman tank sat on the desk in front of her with a black blotter underneath that. A jar of finely sharpened pencils was near her elbow, along with a stapler and a roll of tape in its holder. A Boston sharpener bolted to the wall just behind her, and standing ready to take care of all those yellow number twos, completed this dream of an office setup.

On the walls were diplomas and certificates from places Archer had never heard of, and framed photos of people he didn’t know, except for President Harry S. “The buck stops here” Truman dressed in a cream suit and a dotted bow tie, who smiled all alone from one wall.

A rubber tree that looked fake and still somehow dead leaned out of a blue-and-white ceramic planter with an elephant on it that sat next to the desk.

When Morrison rose and came around to the front of the desk, Archer could see that she wore a blue tailor-made suit dress and that she was medium height, and thin. She had fine lines all over her chiseled face, like the depth markings on a shipping channel map.

Morrison slipped on a pair of rimless cheaters that she was holding in her hand. They accentuated the woman’s eyes, which Archer decided were closer to periwinkle blue than any other blue he knew of. They were slightly washed out, as were the woman’s features. Her heels were black and matched the color of her hosiery and added about two inches of height to her frame. A slender platinum watch graced her left wrist.

A dark hat with a blue ribbon was on a wall hook. A tan raincoat hung next to it, though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Next to that hung a dented crown fedora with a blood-red ribbon. He assumed that belonged to Willie Dash.

He tipped his hat in greeting as she reached him.

“Mr. Archer, nice to meet you.”

Her long fingers managed a grip that was firm and reassuring, her expression less so. The periwinkles took him in as thoroughly as his gaze had done her. She seemed to come away impressed, although that could have simply been Archer’s wishful thinking.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Morrison. I’m really hoping I can go to work for Mr. Dash.”

The periwinkles dulled a bit, and the firm jaw clenched even tighter, and the lines around her eyes and mouth deepened into ditches. “Um, yes. Give me a minute. We’ve had a, uh, development since you called.”

She turned and left him there, opening and then quickly closing the door to the interior office, where, Archer was certain, Willie Dash bided his professional time.

A development since I called ten minutes ago?

He took off his hat, twirled it between his fingers, and took a long, slow loop around the room, arriving at the Royal typewriter and the paper wound into its maw that had clickety-clack marks all over it. He bent over to read the typing better.

It was addressed to the First National Bank of Bay Town.

The words ended here. Archer slid back around the desk as the inner office door opened, and Morrison appeared once more. She wouldn’t meet his eye but said, “Mr. Dash will see you now, Mr. Archer.”

“Great. Everything okay?”

She lifted her elegant chin and dead-eyed him with the periwinkles that had instantly hardened to glowing bits of molten iron. “Why shouldn’t it be okay?” She glanced sharply at her typewriter.

Archer said, “You mentioned developments. I took that as maybe there was a problem. My mistake, sorry.”

The fire in the eyes dimmed and the periwinkles sparkled back at him. “No apology necessary.” She held the door open for him.

He passed by her and went in. He heard the door close firmly behind him and listened to the efficient heels of Connie Morrison marching the short distance back to her desk to finish her boss’s letter of developments.

Next, Archer heard a belch and swiveled his attention to a battleship-sized dark walnut desk that turned out to not have a single sailor on board. This office was three times the size of the outer room but seemed far smaller because it was crammed with so much stuff Archer wasn’t sure whether he was in a private eye’s office or a fence’s warehouse.

Against one wall was a Murphy bed that was in the down position. It was neatly made up with two pillows plumped on its surface like white geese on a rectangular pond.

“Keep your eyes looking, Archer, you’ll get there, son.” Archer did as the voice suggested and came to rest on the man lying shoeless on a pale blue davenport. His cuffed pants were held up by white plastic suspenders rather than a belt or leather braces. His collar was undone, and his blue dotted bow tie hung off limply to one side of his neck like a broken arm dangling.

His broad face was flushed, and his scalp was as bald as a cue ball and close to the same color, which provided an odd and unsettling juxtaposition. His white shirt was wrinkled beyond perhaps the remediation of an iron, and one of his dark socks needed darning where his little toe poked out like a hatching chick.

His eyes were cloudy gray, like the color of a naval ship. They seemed to peer right through Archer.

On the coffee table in front of the davenport was a bottle of Jim Beam Kentucky Bourbon and two glasses, one of which had been used. A newspaper lay next to them.

“Willie Dash, sir. Come on and take a seat and let me have a closer look at you.”

Archer crossed the room and noted the plank floor was worn smooth, perhaps from a man pacing in his socks for a number of years.

He sat down, placed his hat next to the Beam, and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, waiting.

Dash had a line of sweat on his broad forehead, each drop perfectly lined up with its neighbor — blackbirds on a phone line. When he opened his mouth wide, Archer saw twin porcelain crowns, one on either side and occupying the lower back forty.

A grinder who has worn down his grinders.

“You live here?” said Archer, eyeing the bed.

“I sleep here sometimes. Depends on the job. This ain’t no nine-to-fiver, son. You want that life, go apply at the bank to count other people’s money and be bored to death for the next forty years.”

“So how are developments?” asked Archer. “Things looking up or still down? To put it as squarely as I can, will you be able to hire me if I pass muster?”

With an effort Dash sat up and swung his short, thick legs down to the floor. The toes touched, but not the heels. He was no more than five-seven, but his burly build looked strong. He wasn’t much under two hundred pounds. His age was difficult to say. Archer thought over sixty rather than under.

“I like your directness, Archer. It’s good, up until it’s not so good. And you eyeballed the letter in Connie’s typewriter because she sure wouldn’t have told you. That shows initiative and a certain disregard for the rules. Both okay in my book and maybe essential to the task.”

He pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket, hocked into it, and set it down next to him.

“The developments can come later, and maybe not the ones you’re thinking of. Now, Irving Shaw wrote very highly of you.”

“He’s a good man. Learned a lot from him.”

“And you no doubt want to continue your education under me.”

“I hoped my letter to you made that clear.”

“You’re coming in from this Poca City place? Irv told me that in his letter.”

“Yes. I stopped over in Reno for a little bit and then headed west.”

Dash hocked once more into the cloth and sat back, lifting his feet fully off the floor. “You got a ticket?”

“Come again?”

“A PI’s license.”

“Nope. Do I need one?”

“State of California says you do. Law enacted back in 1915.”

“What do I have to do to get it?”

“You have to apply to the State Board of Prison Directors.”

Archer felt like someone had just shivved him in the carotid. “Prison Directors!”

“Yes. You have to provide background on yourself, where you were last employed, and where in the state you intend to work as a PI. And you have to provide facts that you’re of good moral character. You have to sign that application, and then you have to find five reputable people in Bay Town who will approve of the application and also sign it before an officer duly authorized to take acknowledgment of deeds.”

“I don’t even know five people in town.”

“And the State Board will review the application and may do its own investigation to confirm that you are indeed a person of good moral character and integrity. If they do, they will issue a license good for five years, and the fee is ten dollars a year.”

Archer stared at him. “And if they find out I’ve been in prison, will that knock out any chance of me getting my license?”

“It might. But there’s another way.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a provision in the law that allows you to act under the auspices of the license I have for this firm.”

“So I don’t even have to apply?”

“But you might want to anyway, sometime down the road, Archer. I won’t be around forever, and the license I have is not transferable to you. And I have to tell you that there’s talk of changing the law, making it even more restrictive next year. It might well require several years of apprenticing as a PI, and also require that the applicant not have been convicted of any serious crime.”

Archer nodded. “Okay.”

“So you might want to find five people and get yourself grandfathered in, if you can. Me and Connie can be two of them, so you’re nearly halfway home on that score. In the meantime, I can provide a ticket for you that allows you to operate under the license of this firm. I’ll have Connie get going on that.”

“Didn’t know it was so involved.”

“It’s a profession, Archer. And it’s getting all the riffraff out and making way for us professionals. I went to the CAPI conference last year and it was quite informative.”

“The what?”

“California Association of Private Investigators. Had a woman named Mildred Gilmore speak. She’s a licensed PI and an attorney, and good at both jobs. She argued for adopting a code of ethics for PIs. She also said that women make better operators because they’re more ethical and no one would suspect them of being PIs.”

“What do you think?”

“I’ve got my own ethics, and I don’t want other folks telling me what they should be.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“What’s your first name again?”

“Aloysius.”

“Then I’ll just call you Archer.”

“I, uh, I saw the billboards around town. Miss Morrison told me they were from a while ago.”

Dash cocked his head and the mouth flatlined. “Don’t play me for a fool, son. You put up billboards to get business, least I did when I first got here. The fact is I soon had more than enough business, so no need for more billboards. Plus, I sort of like driving around and seeing what I used to look like.”

“But you need business now, sounds like.”

“Things have slowed, I won’t debate that point with you.”

“So you were with the FBI?”

Dash poured out small measures of Beam in both glasses and nudged one toward Archer.

“How is Earl? In fine form? Man loves to talk.”

“He thinks the world of you.”

“I did him one act of kindness and he did the rest.”

“Nice of you after sending him to San Quentin.”

Dash said sharply, “He sent himself to San Quentin. That liquor store didn’t rob itself.”

“Right. I guess not.”

“And it was the Bureau of Investigation when I was there. Didn’t become the FBI until 1935.”

“He said you worked with Eliot Ness. Is that true?”

“It is. But Ness worked with a lot of guys. I was just one of them.”

“Didn’t he take down Ma Barker, Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, and folks like that? Were you in on that, too?”

“Ancient history, Archer.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“I had my reasons.”

“So then you went to Frisco to be a cop?”

“A detective,” corrected Dash. “I grew up on the West Coast and wanted to get back here.”

“So why the shamus route?”

“I don’t like following orders, particularly if they’re lousy ones. And I like being my own boss. But enough about me, Archer, how’d you find the joint?”

“It wasn’t so different from being in the Army, actually. And I was innocent, if that makes a difference to you.”

Dash sipped his Beam, and slowly shook his head. “Were you tried and convicted?”

“No, I did a deal. Otherwise, they were going to throw the book at me.”

“Then you were guilty?”

“You think all men who do a deal are guilty?”

“Of course I don’t. Just as I know that all men who are tried and convicted aren’t guilty. But it’s the only system we have. Fact is, I’m not concerned with the past, Archer, yours or mine. I look toward the future.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With a possibility, nothing more and nothing less.” He bent over and worried at the hole in his sock, tucking the little toe out of sight before straightening. “What do you know about the detective business?”

“What Lieutenant Shaw taught me.”

“Which was?”

“Listen, ask questions, don’t believe anything is true unless you can corroborate it, and don’t trust anyone.”

He nodded approvingly. “That’s a good start. Irv knows his way around an investigation, that’s for sure. He said in his letter that you saved his life.”

“He did the same for me.”

“And you have a good war record.”

“I did my bit.”

“Care to talk about it?”

“No.”

He nodded approvingly again. “I fought in the First World War, the one that was supposed to end any future ones, right? Basically living in holes and only climbing out of them when the Army felt it had to show it was doing something, giving folks their money’s worth, so to speak.” He slapped his right leg. “Got some metal here they never took out. But I was one of the lucky ones. Left a lot of good buddies back there.”

“I can understand that,” said Archer, sipping his drink and letting it go down as slow as possible.

“What else?” asked Dash.

“That fingerprints can do a man in and the police check for that. That honest people lie all the time when they’re in a jam. And that sometimes it’s the last person you suspect who did the deed.”

Dash put his glass down, sat forward so his toes were touching the planks once more, and said, “Now, this possibility I’m talking about.”

Archer hunched forward and settled in to listen.

The buzzer on the desk phone sounded off like a warning shot across the bow.

Dash moved across the space with surprising speed and snatched up the phone. He listened for a moment and said, “Give me one minute, hon.”

He put the phone down, stepped into his brown wingtips, which were set next to his desk, and rapidly put his collar and bow tie in place before slipping on his jacket and pinching his cheeks. Next he opened a desk drawer, slipped out something hairy, squirted on its underside something wet from a bottle on his desk, and then plopped a black toupee on the top of his bald head. He fussed over it in the slanted shaving mirror on his desk until he came away satisfied with the look. To Archer the thing looked like a baby skunk without a stripe.

“Put the Beam away in that cabinet over there, Archer, and hoist up the bed.”

Archer quickly did so and said, “What’s up, Mr. Dash?”

“The possibility, Archer, the possibility has just walked in the door.”