One Good Deed

Chapter 46

Archer yawned, stretched, and slowly came awake.

In the distance, he heard a sound that seemed, to his half-asleep state, partly familiar, and unrecognizable. As it grew closer, he sat up, because he now knew what the noise was.

The low-pitched wail-growl of a siren.

He lumbered over to the window, his legs stiff and heavy with sleep.

He lifted the glass, rubbed his eyes clear, and looked out onto a surprisingly cool, overcast day. He watched with interest as a long, white ambulance with red markings on the side raced down the street, its guttural siren shattering the otherwise peaceful commencement of another day in Poca City that at least for variety’s sake did not hold clear skies and sun.

He was about to turn back when a second sound joined the first, another siren, but different from the ambulance’s babble.

It was a police car, with the single roof light on and the siren cranked to an ear-numbing pitch — a one-note, one-instrument orchestra performing a banshee of a song with a troubling melody.

Archer slid out a Lucky Strike from a fresh pack and lit up as he continued to peer out and wonder what all the fuss was about. Ambulances he understood. But that coupled with a police car was disturbing.

The next moment he crushed the smoke out on the windowsill as both the ambulance and police car pulled up to the front of the Derby. He saw uniformed men leap from the patrol car, and men in white smocks and pants jump out of the ambulance. He slipped on his clothes and shoes, grabbed his jacket, and ran out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time to the lobby. He burst out of the fire door and saw that the lobby was half full of onlookers and a handful of anxious guests, some still in their pajamas.

He heard the elevator ding and watched the car ascend to and stop at the third floor.

Archer ran over to the front desk, where there was a different clerk, a young man with narrow shoulders and a pockmarked face.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

The young man was pale and his eyes were large with fear. “They found somebody out in the hallway bleeding like crazy.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. A maid found him.”

Archer ran back to the stairs and sprinted up to the third-floor landing. He caromed out into the hall and looked in both directions. He saw nothing but heard something. He ran to his left and around the corner, where he stopped abruptly.

The police and ambulance men were gathered in a small knot around someone lying on the floor. Archer hustled over there to see. One of the officers heard his approach, whirled around, and put up a hand. “Stay back, this is police business!”

However, he had moved just enough for Archer to see who it was. Irving Shaw was lying there covered in blood.

“What happened to him?”

“Get out of here, sir,” said the uniformed officer sternly, his face flushing red and the words catching in his throat. His partner turned, put his hand on the butt of his service revolver, and added, “Now.”

Archer staggered back to the stairs, stumbled up them, and made it to his room before collapsing on the bed.

Shaw was wounded, or maybe dead. He had seen blood all over the man’s shirt front. He didn’t know if he’d been shot or stabbed or what, but it had to be one of them. He slowly sat up and covered his face with his hands. He felt sick and dizzy. He imagined he was back in combat and they were being called up to attack yet another enemy position, in an endless stream of them. Men would be praying, puking, writing letters good-bye, making sure their dog tags were on, even finalizing last wills and testaments on preprinted papers the army had conveniently provided, and for which your fellow soldiers were your witnesses and you theirs.

He got up and stumbled over to the open window, sucking in the fresh air like it was a gaseous version of Rebel Yell. He leaned out the window as more police stormed into the hotel, including pudgy Bart and long-legged Jeb.

As his thoughts cleared, Archer started to focus on what he needed to do. He and Shaw were supposed to talk this morning about how to get to the truth. Now it would be up to Archer to do so alone. And maybe he had some ideas of his own.

Archer hustled down the stairs and out the back door of the hotel, avoiding the growing crowd in the front lobby.

Shaw had left his big Buick parked on a side street. Archer climbed into the driver’s seat, popped open the glove box, and slipped out the keys. He had seen Shaw put them there the night before. He started up the Buick, geared it into reverse, made a U-turn, and drove off in the opposite direction to avoid all the activity at the front of the hotel. He came up on the main street two blocks from the hotel in time to see men carrying out a stretcher with Shaw on it, the sheet up to his neck.

But not over his face, so he’s not dead, thank God.

Archer watched this until the rear doors closed on the ambulance. He took a whiff, and the scent of the man, imprinted in every pore of the Buick, came rushing into his lungs. A good man with maybe a bad ending. It could happen to any of us, Archer knew. Against enormous odds, the lawman had survived all those bombing missions fighting for his country only perhaps to come back and die in a two-bit hotel in Poca goddamn City.

And someone might’ve tried to kill him because he was looking for the truth and trying to clear my name at the same time.

This thought gave added fire to Archer’s mission, not that he needed it. Avoiding a short drop with a rope around the neck should be incentive enough for any man, he thought.

He hung a left and drove out of town; his destination was Marjorie Pittleman’s. Jackie and Ernestine had gone there, presumably with the loot from the safe. And he needed to find out why. And that also might provide a clue as to where the women had gone. And, most important, something had occurred to Archer that might lead him to the truth. Ironically, it was due in part to something Shaw had told him: It was a two-way street with the women. He was attractive to them, and they could, in return, bend him to their purposes.

He made it there in good time, parking the Buick down the road a bit and finishing the journey on foot. It was early enough that he could see no one out and about yet. The gates were chained shut, but he quickly clambered over and dropped to the ground inside.

From a crouch, he looked right and left, feeling back in his role of an Army scout.

He was not concerned with the main house but flitted off to the left. He reached into his pocket and felt for it. He had not only taken Shaw’s car; he had also popped open the compartment under the dash and taken the man’s Smith & Wesson .38 Victory piece. Archer was hoping for a triumph of his own right about now. He could sure as hell use it.

He got the lay of the land while hunkered down and checked his watch. He imagined folks would be up and about soon. This assumption paid off when he saw Manuel come around a corner of an outbuilding with a bucket of something in hand.

He rose from his hiding position and approached the man, who stopped abruptly when he saw Archer.

“Hello, Manuel, how’s doing?”

Manuel looked confused by this greeting.

“Doing?” He held up the bucket. “I am working.”

“Got a question. Maid in the house named Amy?”

“What about her?”

“How long has she been working here?”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking of asking her out. I think she likes me.”

Manuel smiled. “She is very... friendly.”

“Yeah, I could see that. So how long?”

“Not long. Maybe six months.”

“Any idea where she is now?”

“At this hour, probably in her room getting ready for work.”

“Where is that?”

Manuel eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

Archer patted his pocket where the gun was. “Got a present I want to give her and then ask her out. Don’t like to let grass grow under my feet. Another fella might cut me out.”

Manuel smiled again in understanding, nodded, and pointed to his left.

“The maids live in little cottages behind that barn. Amy’s is the last one.”

Archer pressed a dollar into the man’s callused hand. “Thanks, friend, you have no idea how much that helps me.”

“Good luck.”

“I think I’m going to need it.”

Archer hustled to the row of little one-room dwellings and reached the last one.

He knocked on the door and a girlish voice said, “Who is it?”

Doing a reasonably good impression of Manuel’s baritone, Archer said, “Mrs. Pittleman needs you right now, Amy.”

“Just a minute.”

Less than a minute later the door opened and there stood Amy. She looked up at Archer, astonished beyond belief, and then she smiled disarmingly. “What are you doing here, Mr. Archer?”

She stopped smiling when Archer pulled out the .38 and pointed it at her.

Terrified, she backed up, and Archer entered and closed the door behind him. He looked around the tiny dimensions of the room, which was not much bigger than his prison cell had been. It was furnished in a rudimentary fashion. Cot, dresser with a washbowl and pitcher on top. One wooden chair with a broken back. Pegs on the wall for clothes, of which she had few. A small square of tattered rug over the cold plank floor. There was a chill in the air and the distinct odor of mildew. He figured her bathroom would be a nearby outhouse.

“Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the cot, while he took up residence in the chair.

She sat and looked at him fearfully. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“I need you to tell me, right now, where Jackie and Ernestine are.”

She looked at him blankly and said nothing. She just sat there with tears forming in her eyes and her small face twitching.

He rose and roughly gripped her by the arm, jerking the woman to her feet. “Okay, let’s just go to the coppers then. They’ll be able to hang somebody, might as well be you, sister.”

Amy’s bloodless face collapsed, and she pulled against him and wailed, “Wait, wait, please. Don’t. I—”

He looked around the room again. “They shake some cash in front of you? A way out of this dump. How much?” When she didn’t answer he pointed the revolver at her again and said quietly, “I’m one desperate son of a gun, lady. So how much?”

“A... a th-thousand dollars.”

Archer sat back down, took out his pack of smokes, flicked one out, and placed it, unlit, between his teeth. “Where’s the crate?”

“Crate?”

“Box, crate, whatever the hell you want to call it. This is pretty damn simple, Amy, it was all about the dough.”

When she didn’t say anything, Archer nodded slowly. “Okay, let me just spell it out just so you know I’m not bluffing. They came that night in the Nash. Not to see Marjorie. No way Jackie’s working a deal with a lady who hates her guts. So my gut tells me they came to see you. ’Cause you look like the sort that would do just about anything for money. And Jackie would be over here a lot because she was seeing Hank Pittleman. And I bet she sized you up real quick. And that other maid, old sourpuss Agnes, doesn’t have the grit that Jackie needed. They had a trunk full of gold bars, cash, hell, maybe the damn crown jewels, for all I know. And they needed a way to get it outta Poca City.” He glanced out the window in the direction of HP Trucking. “Is it in the warehouse over there?” When she didn’t answer, Archer said very quietly, his gaze boring into her, “You willing to swing at the end of a rope for a thousand bucks, sister? Better give it to me straight, or that’s where you’re ending up.”

She started to sob. “I just did what they told me to do. I didn’t know nobody was going to get killed.”

“Well, they did. And the law says ignorance is no excuse. You’re just as guilty as they are. Now, take me to what they brought here that night.”

They took the long way around to the Buick and drove directly over to the warehouse. There was no one yet there, it still being early. The big double doors were locked, but Archer found a window on the side that succumbed to his knife. He pushed Amy through and followed her in. He turned on his flashlight and aimed the beam around the huge interior of the place. It was piled high with merchandise ready to be shipped out.

“Where?” he demanded.

She led him to the very back corner where a number of boxes were piled high. Right behind this stack was the large metal four-wheeled trolley cart the men had used to bring the boxes in that Archer had loaded on Sid Duckett’s truck. And behind that was something covered with a blanket. Archer slipped off the blanket and a wooden crate was revealed. He aimed his light beam at the shipping label on top and read off what was written there.

He looked at the quivering Amy. “I... I don’t even know where that is,” she said, eyeing the crate’s final destination.

Archer said, “Well, I do. And it makes a lot of sense, actually.”

He found a crowbar, popped open the top of the crate, and peered inside. He found the contents of Lucas Tuttle’s safe underneath a great deal of folded-up women’s clothes and shoes and blankets and sheets, probably for additional padding and also to fool anyone chancing to look inside that it was just full of such items and no hint to a king’s ransom lurking there. He thought that some of the clothing might have come from Jackie and Ernestine. In fact, he believed that he recognized a few items from Ernestine’s closet. And they would want their personal things to also be delivered to where they were headed.

Then Archer found something stuck inside a pillow case that he had not been expecting. It was a sheaf of papers stapled together. He read down the first page and then flicked back to the last, eyeing the signatures at the bottom.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

“What’s that?” Amy said in a trembling voice.

“Nothing.” He put the papers in his jacket pocket, put the crate top back on, and pounded the nails back in using one end of the crowbar.

Next, he eyed the trolley, and his plan came together. Squatting down and using all his strength he heaved one end of the crate up on the trolley, and then squatted down once more and lifted the other end up. He rolled the trolley to the front doors, unlocked them, and managed to get the crate from the trolley into the enormous trunk of the Buick. He closed the warehouse door and pointed the .38 at Amy.

“You say one word to anyone about this, you’re going to hang, do you understand me?”

Teary-eyed, and her hands gripping her white apron, she nodded. “But I don’t understand one thing.”

“What?”

“I was nice to you. I was even... flirty with you. So why’d you ever think I was involved in all this?”

“You just answered your own question, lady.”

“What?”

“I’ve discovered some gals like to play me for a sucker because I lose my good sense around them. Well, not this time.”

He left her to walk back while he drove off down the road and hit the main strip. He had to find some place safe to hide the contents of the crate. Two miles down the road, the perfect place came to him.

He floored the Buick and shot down the road to where he needed to go.