One Good Deed

Chapter 45

“Who do you think killed Lucas Tuttle, then?” asked Shaw, over a glass of Rebel in Archer’s hotel room. “You have any opinions?”

Archer refilled their tumblers he’d gotten from the hotel to replace the ones Shaw had taken to fingerprint. They’d purchased a cluster of roast beef sandwiches and pickles from a deli and brought them up as their dinner.

“Ernestine knows her way around a gun. But as far as I know Tuttle didn’t know her. And I don’t want to think she’d do something like that. She’s a sweet gal. But I saw her turn the tables on a parolee coming after her. The lady has a spine of steel.”

“And she’s done a runner, too,” said Shaw. “Innocent folks don’t tend to do that.”

“But what I don’t get is, on the tape Tuttle is clearly intending on seeing Jackie that night. Only Jackie said he never showed up at her house.”

“She could be lying,” noted Shaw.

“The thing is, Jackie suggested that I go collect the debt. And then she said she’d agree to meet with her father, as a way, I thought, to help me get the money paid. But now I see it was a way for her to get her father out of the house, so she could get what was in that safe.”

“But how’d she even know it was in there? You only told her after the fact. Remember? She was mad at you for withholding that.”

Archer eyed the lawman in an amused fashion. “You’re forgetting your own rule.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t believe anybody without corroboration. But I think I know how. Same way she knew that she’d been cut out of the will.”

Shaw’s eyes lit up. “The secretary, Desiree, could have told her.”

“Right. She typed up all his letters. She’d sure as hell know what was going on with the man’s business.”

“You think Jackie promised her some of the loot in return for helping?”

“Could be. Hey, you think Desiree could’ve shot him?”

Shaw finished a sandwich, balled up the wax paper, and tossed it into the trash can. “I checked. She had an alibi. But that was a nice piece of deduction on your part, Archer.”

Archer bit into his sandwich and took a swallow of his drink. “How’d you even come to be in the detective business?”

“My old man was a beat cop for forty years over in Kansas. I got married there and started a family, then moved out this way, became a patrolman, and later got promoted to detective for the state police. I was doing real well, had a knack for it and all. Then I volunteered for the war and flew planes. After I got out of uniform, I got my old job back.”

“You obviously like the work. And you’re good at it.”

“Well, I see the utility in punishing bad folks. It preserves civilization as we know it. And both of us have seen the other side of that equation, when civilization gets shown the door, and the rule of law don’t matter for shit, and the whole damn world gets set on fire. It’s always closer than you think.”

“So you got a family then? You mentioned a daughter?”

“Got me three kids. Two boys and a girl. Oldest is my son Johnny, near to grown now. He’s going to join the Army. Serve his country.”

“I wish him luck and that he gets to serve during peacetime. We don’t need any more wars.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

They clinked glasses.

“I checked on you. You got no family left. Never married.”

“That’s right.”

“Never found the right gal?” asked Shaw.

“I used to think that. No more.”

“What changed?”

“Well, since I got here, I think maybe for all the ladies I met along the way, I wasn’t the right man for them.”

“That’s pretty enlightened of you, Archer. But you must’ve wanted to settle down at some point.”

“Can’t say yay or nay on that. I grew up in a small slice of a big city and decided to see the country for a bit and then went on to college. Then they bombed Pearl Harbor, and I did my bit and came back. And took up my wandering ways again. Then Carderock Prison became my new home for a while. Hell, I’m not all that shy of thirty and part of me feels like I haven’t started to even live my life yet.”

“Maybe your day is coming.”

Archer nodded, but he didn’t really believe this was a viable possibility. He was thinking if he managed to survive Poca City, it would be a miracle.

Shaw said, “Now, why do you reckon they would go to Marjorie’s house? What would they need from her? And why would she give them anything anyway? Is it just about money? People are that crass, you know. They’ll kill for ten cents if they think it’s worth it to them. And it’s not a damn dime we’re talking about here.”

“But Jackie thought her father was going to be in town to meet with her. That was the whole point. So how did he end up dead at his place?”

“Maybe she called him after he recorded what he did on that machine and changed the plan. They could have arranged to meet him out there.” Archer did not seem convinced by this. In fact, he felt even more troubled.

Shaw unwrapped another sandwich. “Now, you said something woke you the morning you found Pittleman’s body. What was that?”

Archer thought back. “Loud noise or bang.”

“Like maybe someone hit your door?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, if I’m reading this right, whoever killed Pittleman was the one to bang on your door to get you up from your bed. Then they waited to hear you coming down the hall and they opened the door a crack to Number 615, and maybe went and hid in Number 617. You see, the plan was they wanted you to find the body and get your prints on that doorknob.”

“I guess that could be.” Archer smacked his forehead and pulled the small framed photo out of his pocket. “Hell, I forgot about this. There’s Lucas Tuttle and Malcolm Draper together.”

Shaw looked stunned. “But he worked for Pittleman, not Tuttle.”

“Well, Marjorie said that Draper only came to work for them about a year ago.”

“Hold on, wasn’t that about the time Jackie left home?”

“Yes, it sure was.”

Shaw squinted as he thought about this. “And Draper would go out to the slaughterhouse most nights, the clerk said. And then you told me they couldn’t make payroll.”

“That’s right.”

Shaw smiled in a self-satisfied way.

“What?” asked Archer sharply.

“I know this will sound like a long shot, but I was a pilot and you were infantry, Archer, so all we knew were long shots that paid off every night we went to bed still breathing.” He paused. “What if Draper was a plant of Tuttle’s?”

“A plant? How so?”

“Man gets Draper in there to do his bidding and mess up Pittleman’s little empire. Draper might’ve been going out to the slaughterhouse to mess with the books, so to speak. Maybe skimming money off, things like that. And maybe that wasn’t the only business of Pittleman’s he was doing that to.”

“You think?”

“Remember the past-due bills I found in the trash can behind the hotel? What if Draper took them from the office and tossed those in there? Thing is, the man was sort of Pittleman’s business manager. He lived at the Derby Hotel. He could have had access to that office anytime he wanted. Hell, maybe Pittleman thinks the man is paying those bills, but instead he’s tossing them. Wouldn’t take long for Pittleman’s businesses to be run into the ground and him not even know it before it was too late. And on top of that Pittleman had his own gambling problem.”

Now Archer looked stunned as he recalled something Sid Duckett had told him. “Hold on. When I talked to Sid Duckett about what would happen to Pittleman’s businesses since he was dead, the man said that Lucas Tuttle might buy them up, ’cause he had the money.”

“But how would Duckett know that Tuttle had the money to do that? Everyone thought he had financial problems, including his own daughter.”

“He would if Draper told him.”

Shaw took all this in. “And the night we talked to Duckett at his cottage, and you mentioned payroll not being met at the slaughterhouse?”

“You think Duckett put two and two together and confronted Draper about what he thought was going on?”

Shaw nodded. “Maybe even tried to blackmail him over it. He could have threatened to tell the law what was going on unless they paid him off. And then he ends up fed to the hogs for his troubles.”

“So Lucas Tuttle was getting his revenge on Pittleman.”

“Come again?” said Shaw.

“When I met with him, Tuttle told me that Pittleman had this big plan to get Tuttle’s daughter and then all his property. But I’m thinking that it was actually Tuttle who had that plan. To get all that Pittleman had. Like Marjorie told us, the two men were rivals.”

“And Tuttle would get it on the cheap since Pittleman had all those past-due bills and such.”

“And Marjorie would probably have to rely on Draper to tell her what a fair price for the business would be, and with the man working for Tuttle we know whatever price he told her was fair surely wouldn’t be. Hey, how is Draper? We could ask him flat out about all of this.”

Shaw shook his head. “Still not conscious. But when he does wake up, I’ll be right there with all my questions.”

Archer fell silent and looked out the window.

“What is it?”

“We fought a war for this? Conniving folks killing other folks over money?”

“Wars don’t change how people are, Archer. They just kill a bunch ’a folks and when it’s over, people go back to being how they always were. Most good, some not so good.” He yawned and stretched. “Now, I’m all done in. Need some sack time. Been a long damn day.”

“Okay.”

Shaw gave Archer a thumbs-up. “We’re going to get to the truth, have no fear. I got me some ideas.”

After he left, Archer smoked another cigarette while he stared out the window.

Part of him wished he was back in prison, a thought he never believed he would have. This had all shaken his faith in a lot of things, but mainly in one thing.

Me.

During the war, during most of his life, in fact, Aloysius Archer had been able to trust his instincts. Not now.

A few minutes later he looked down at the framed picture. Pittleman was dead. Tuttle, too. Draper might never wake up and tell them the truth. He picked up the photo and absently tapped the frame against his knee, thinking about a million possibilities.

With his tapping, the backing fell off the frame and the freed paper fluttered to the floor. He reached down and picked it up. It was a letter. He read it through three times, each time growing more incredulous at what the words said.

He wanted to go and tell Shaw, but the man was no doubt already asleep. Well, it would keep until morning.

On impulse, Archer took out his knife and used it to cut the stitching on his hat’s inner lining. He secreted the letter and the photo in there and put his hat on the bureau.

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

When he woke up early the next morning, his life was about to totally change.

And not in a good way for him.