Dream Town

Chapter 43

Archer sat on a stool and stared into the mirror behind the bar to watch for Little Tony trying to sneak up on him. He knew he had taken an aggressive posture in the Copa Room, and made perhaps some unjustifiable leaps of logic. But the fact was, the odds of Lamb’s turning up alive were decreasing by the minute. And he was tired of walking in circles. And a good man was dead and his widow wanted someone held accountable.

And so do I.

He had no idea if Bart Green was connected to whatever Darren Paley was doing at the Jade. That was why he’d voiced that possibility to Green with the frog-and-scorpion fable. A scorpion needs to get across a river but can’t swim. So it enlists the aid of a frog. At first the frog is reluctant, afraid that the scorpion will sting it. The scorpion tells the frog that it wouldn’t sting the frog because then they would both die. So the frog lets the scorpion hitch a ride. Halfway across the scorpion indeed stings the frog, who is astonished. When the frog tells the scorpion that now they will both die, the venomous creature simply confesses that it couldn’t help itself. It’s just its nature.

So Paley was the scorpion for sure, and Green maybe the frog, which made his surname spot on. But then again, maybe Archer was totally off base and hunting in the wrong direction. There was a point in every case he’d worked on where he’d had enormous self-doubt about what direction to go in, or whether he would ever solve it. He was at that point right now, which was why he was sitting here drinking his way to viable answers.

He was surprised when Ross Chandler entered the bar and came to sit next to him.

“Wow, that was some powwow you two had back there,” he began.

“You should see me when I really get worked up.” Archer lit a Lucky and took a swallow of his martini. “Tell me about Eleanor Lamb.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything and anything you got.”

“She’s a good writer, one of the best.”

“You have much interaction with her?”

“Not too much. I did help her on a rewrite of a script for Paramount. Ellie does female roles really well. And Cecily helped on that one, too. All I did was play messenger boy, really.”

“Ransome and Lamb, they get along okay?”

“They seem pretty tight, actually. Going out to lunch and dinners. Working late. Cecily would run out to Malibu a lot to work over the weekends with Ellie.”

Archer tapped ash into a glass ashtray and stared at his drink. Chandler said excitedly, “It must be fun and dangerous doing your job.”

“Yeah it is, but never at the same time. When was the last time you saw Lamb?”

Chandler ordered a whiskey and thought about the question until it came. “She was in the office the day before New Year’s Eve.”

“She ever talk about having a friend she was reconnecting with out in Malibu?”

“Not that I recall.”

“You ever heard the name Bernadette Bonham?”

“No, who is she?”

“Just a gal. What’s the story on the sisters? Why are they here with Green? Are they his little playthings?”

“No way! They’re his nieces.”

Archer side-eyed him. “Come on, for real?”

“I thought the same thing, but they’re his younger sister’s kids. She died a while back and he takes care of them. Gives them money, flies them here.”

Then he might want to start taking care of Gayle’s pill problem, thought Archer. “Okay. Tell your boss if he wants to continue our conversation I’m staying here tonight.”

“He’s going to be gambling tonight.”

“Hell, pal, we all gamble every minute of every day.”

Chandler left. Archer ordered another drink and carried it to the real reason they built the Sands.

The casino.