Dream Town

Chapter 58

Archer hung up the pay phone for the third time at the hospital where he had driven the badly wounded Dash. He had first called Connie Morrison to tell her what had happened. She was on her way to LA. He had next called Jake Nichols and woken him up.

His response had been terse. “Come and see me in the morning, once they’re sure Willie’s in the clear. If things turn bad, call me anytime no matter how late.”

He had finally phoned Callahan and told her what had happened. He could hear the woman quietly sobbing, and part of him knew that she was also thinking about what if it had been him who was shot and lying near death. He had put down the phone with her still weeping because he was afraid he would start crying as well.

The doctor on duty had called the police, as was required by law. While Dash was in emergency surgery Archer had met with two uniformed officers and a plainclothes detective from the LAPD. They seemed to be honest and forthright and eager to do their job. And yet he left out everything except that they had been riding in a car minding their own business when the shots had rung out. He had no desire to get into a lengthy explanation about everything until he knew what they were really up against.

The plainclothes, in his forties with a calm face and low voice, said, “You might’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’re cleaning this town up, but it’s not all scrubbed yet.”

“Could be gangs,” said one of the uniforms, who looked too baby-faced to be a cop, and whose speech had a southern strum to it. “Puerto Ricans or Chicanos most likely. Or the coloreds. They don’t care who they kill.”

They had examined the Buick, and the surgeon promised to deliver the slug that was still in Dash to the police. Archer had left his answering service number with them, and they promised to be in touch with regard to their investigation.

Connie Morrison arrived just as her boss and former husband was wheeled out of surgery. Archer had never seen her look so pale and flustered in the three years he had known the woman.

They met with the surgeon, who told them Dash had come through the procedure well, but his recovery would take some time. And he would be unconscious for a while.

“I think he’s out of the woods,” said the doctor, a short, thin man with a face as pale as his lab coat, but who possessed a reassuringly calm demeanor. He cleaned his specs with his coat sleeve and said, “He’s strong, certainly, for his age. But he was also lucky. The bullet missed a major artery by about two centimeters, and didn’t hit any bone along the way, either. While he lost a lot of blood, I feel he’ll make a full recovery. Somebody was looking out for him tonight.”

Archer looked guiltily at his shoes. Only it wasn’t me.

They thanked him, and Morrison went to sit next to Dash in his private room. Archer knew she would be there every second of every day until her ex got up and walked out of the place under his own power.

Archer stood behind her and looked down at the man who had become like a second father to him. Dash was alternately pale and gray, and his limbs twitched spasmodically in his induced slumber. The perimeter of a large gauzy bandage poked up from under the gown near his neck. He looked old and beaten and... nothing good. But it was good, Archer had to remind himself, because Dash was alive when he could so easily have been dead.

Morrison turned to stare resolutely at him. “I’ll take care of the bills and all the paperwork, Archer. You just do what you need to do to find the ones who shot Willie.”

He squeezed her shoulder and turned to leave.

“Archer?”

He looked back to see her staring dead at him.

“Do not get killed.”

He gave her a quick grin that died on his lips, because there was nothing funny about what she had said, meant, and felt. He nodded, lifted his hat an inch, turned, and left.

He drove to the motel in Silver Lake, grabbed a few hours’ sleep, rose, showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes, and had some coffee. He turned in the Buick at a local franchise of the company he had rented it from in Bay Town. He had to pay a substantial penalty, since the company was not fond of having their cars shot up. They would also not lease him another one for the very same reason.

So Archer walked two blocks to an Avis office and drove out a half hour later in a gray 1952 Oldsmobile two-door sedan.

He headed straight to Jake Nichols’s bar. The man was waiting for him inside. He was sitting at a table in his wheelchair staring at the door like the worst news in the world was about to march in and crush what little life he had left.

Archer took off his hat and said, “He’s going to be okay. But it’s going to take a while.”

Nichols wheeled himself over to a cabinet, took two glasses out along with a bottle of whiskey, wheeled back over, and poured himself and Archer shots.

“To brave men and lucky ones,” said Nichols with his glass raised. Archer mimicked this movement, and each downed his drink in one swallow. Archer then told Nichols in greater detail what had happened during the night.

Nichols quickly absorbed all of this and said, “You got made. Guy goes into the terminal to get a cup of joe, but also makes a phone call. The trap is set and he runs you right into it.”

Archer nodded, looking deeply chagrined. “That’s the way I figured it, too.”

“So selling people and dope.”

Archer said, “I don’t know where the people went. But the dope didn’t go to the Jade, at least not all of it. Some went on Bart Green’s plane. Which convinces me that Bonham and Green are working this together, and Green is the one drinking out of Darren Paley’s trough, to use the man’s own words.”

“Then they’re taking a big risk. You don’t cross a guy like Paley unless you have a death wish.”

“Bart Green’s motive is clear. He has big gambling bills to pay. And if he doesn’t he’s dead anyway.”

“Okay, but how do you think Paley and Bonham hooked up?”

“His wife knew Paley years before she was married to Bonham. They met in Reno.”

“And how did Peter Bonham get into the dope and slavery business?”

Archer lit a cigarette and sucked on it. “His elderly neighbor told me he once worked overseas, all hush-hush. She joked that he was a spy.”

“Maybe he got his drug connections when he was out of the country. Anybody check into his business, where he gets his money, at least on the surface?”

Archer shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But I guess maybe we should.”

“Let me deal with that. We know the guy’s a smuggler, but he has to clean the money off his doping somehow.”

Nichols poured another swig of whiskey into his glass. He held up the bottle, but Archer shook his head. Nichols looked at the liquid in the glass for the longest time, but didn’t drink it. “It’s not your fault, you know. Willie never saw it coming, so how could you?”

“I’ve been working this case solo for days. Willie really got on it just yesterday. I should have had his back. I should have suspected something. But I didn’t.”

“You can blame yourself, but it’s not helpful. You can see that, right?”

“Yeah, I can, even if I don’t want to right now.”

“He’s a tough guy and the doc says he’s going to make it. If Willie was dead, we’d maybe be having a different and more difficult conversation. But right now you need to keep focused on what’s important. Paley will be thinking of nothing else other than this. You need to at least match the man on that.”

Archer straightened and looked around the empty bar. “You ever regret any of it? Doing what you did? Your life? Your choices?”

“Since I’m human, the answer is ‘all the time.’ You can spend half your life second-guessing what you did and didn’t do and in the end it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. So you can either live your life or pretend to have another one where you never made a mistake.”

“That may be the hardest thing in the world to do, Jake.”

“The easiest thing in the world to do is die. It takes almost no effort or time. You’re here and then you’re in a grave. It’s the stuff beyond dying that’s hard.”

“What’s that exactly?”

Nichols now drained his glass. “Living.”