Dream Town

Chapter 19

Archer drove back to Callahan’s and found a note inside saying that she had slipped out to run some errands and would be back around six thirty, and what did he want to do for dinner.

He called Willie Dash’s office, and this time the man himself picked up.

“Willie, it’s Archer.”

“I was hoping it would be you. Now, I want to hear everything you told Connie, plus everything else you’ve found out since you talked to her. I doubt you’ve been dragging your feet. If anything, you sometimes move too fast.”

Archer complied, ending on his conversation with Alice Jacoby.

“Malibu, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills, huh? You’re running in some high circles, Archer, and some dangerous ones.”

“It’s not by choice.”

“It was your choice to hustle work in LA, and to take this case.”

“True.”

“I know Phil Oldham. He’ll seem like a nice guy right before he rips your heart out and drops you in a cell for nothing much. You watch yourself around him and his boys.”

“I will.”

“Connie told me about the guys you ran into on the beach.”

“Yeah. I was just wrong place, wrong time. Has to be smugglers, don’t you think?”

“There used to be gun and rum runners in Malibu years ago, especially during Prohibition. Hell, Ramirez Canyon used to be called Whiskey Gulch. I’ll let you figure that one out. The whole coast down there was a smuggler’s paradise. Portuguese Bend, Rancho Palos Verdes. The mother boat stays out to sea and they run the small fast boats to shore with the stuff and a lot of manpower. Quick in and out.”

“Sounds exactly like what I saw last night.”

“You were lucky, Archer. You might not be so lucky next time.”

“I’m not going after smugglers. Just a missing writer.”

“So, the Jade Lion Bar.”

“You know it?” said Archer.

“I don’t have to. I got nothing against the Chinese, but you can’t go in there thinking normal rules apply because they don’t. Thirty-forty years ago you had opium dens and gambling houses and whorehouses and Tong warfare all over. That’s been cleaned up since they knocked down old Chinatown to build Union Station and they all got moved to what used to be Little Italy a mile away. Now the place has nice shops and restaurants and nice people living and working there, just like they do in other communities. But just like in other communities, you got good and you got not so good and you got really bad. And the really bad places all have the same MO.”

“Namely?”

“Their side business is selling one thing — booze, food, medicine. Their main act is always selling something else and it’s the something else that breaks a book’s worth of statutes.”

“Well, Lamb might have been a frequent visitor to it.”

“I understand your interest.”

“Did you find out anything on Cedric Bender?”

“He’s in our line of work, Archer.”

“You mean he’s a PI?”

“And apparently a respected one. I got a physical description for you.” Archer heard paper rustling. Dash said, “Five-ten, heavy set, thinning gray hair, in his fifties.”

“That matches the dead guy. And his car is missing, too.”

“So the questions are who killed him, where, and why? And what did they do with his ride?”

“He had to have a connection to Lamb.”

“Why?”

“I found him in her house!”

“You can’t jump to that conclusion. Someone could have dumped his body there to incriminate her.”

“I actually fed that line to Oldham. He didn’t bite on it.”

“And the guy who answered the phone couldn’t be Bender. He was already dead.”

“Maybe it was the guy who killed him.”

“Killers don’t normally answer phones. And since it looks like he was killed elsewhere, chances are they dumped him there for some reason. And that reason isn’t good for Lamb, since it’s put the county cops right on her doorstep. She may have gone on the run. And she might not be running just from the likes of Phil Oldham.”

“Or else she’s dead. And then there’s the matter of who knocked me out.”

“Could’ve been the guy who answered the phone. Or it might have been Lamb. Big enough sap and enough motivation, even a lady could lay your butt out, Archer.”

“Makes me wonder why they didn’t finish the job with me.”

“Could be simple. They had one body to deal with and didn’t want another one.”

“So you think whoever killed Bender is trying to frame Lamb?”

“Considering they had the world’s biggest ocean right next door to dump him in but used her home sweet home instead, it’s a plausible theory. What’s your next move?”

“I’ve got one lead to follow up with and then I’m going to hit this Jade Lion Bar tonight and see what shakes out.”

“You want me to come down?”

“I can handle it, for now. When I can’t you’ll be the first to know.”

“How’s Liberty?”

“If anything, even more beautiful.”

“Oh, Archer, you got it so bad, son.”