Archer said, “I guess you’ve been in to see for yourself. I wouldn’t know.”
She squeezed her black envelope handbag and continued to study the toes of her high heels with evident concern. “There is no law against me enjoying a drink, every now and again.”
“No law at all, ma’am. I would join you if I could, but it would violate Rule Number 14, and possibly 15 and 16, depending on how things turned out. There might be others, but those will surely do.”
She eyed his clothes. “Your new suit fits you…very well.”
“And that dress is very pretty. And your hair down that way gives your face a nice framing.”
She touched her hair and tried, but could not manage, to suffocate the smile that appeared on her face.
“Thank you,” she said with a level of shyness that he had a hard time reconciling with the unyielding parole officer. “Are you working on your pickle of a problem?”
“I am indeed. It’s why I’m here at this particular spot.”
She glanced at the bar. “You think he might show up here? Mr. Pittleman, I mean?”
“Well, the man told me he’s here every day except Saturday and the Sabbath, when he’s with his wife. And I know that for a fact since I was at his house on Saturday.”
“Why did you go there?”
“He’s paying me, so I thought it right to explain things to him.”
“But from what you told me this morning, he wasn’t very understanding.”
“No, but he was very clear on what I needed to do if I wanted to get paid. But now with the collateral all burned up, we have to go in a different direction. I’ve been thinking about some options to give him. And see if he has any ideas. Always a good thing to give a man options and let him know what’s what.”
“Yes, I agree, that is smart.”
“Well, I have to be smart, since he pretty much told me he was going to hurt me bad if I didn’t finish the job.”
“He threatened you with bodily harm? That’s a crime.”
“Who’s gonna call him on that? From what I’ve heard he owns just about anything worth owning around here.”
“Well, he doesn’t own the law. Or me.”
“Never figured he could afford you, Miss Crabtree.”
She smiled at this comment but then caught herself and her expression returned to neutral. “So, what will you do when you see him tonight?”
“Tell him the truth. Tell him about the burned-out car and give him some ideas going forward. At the least I figure it’ll buy me a little time to sort things out. I mean, I can’t collect what doesn’t exist anymore.” He paused and eyed the bar. “Well, don’t let me keep you. Is the person you’re meeting already in there, or are you meeting him out here?”
She ignored this and said, “If things don’t work out with Mr. Pittleman, I have other positions, as I said. You can earn money to pay him back what you owe.”
“I really do appreciate that, Miss Crabtree. More than you can know. But the fact is, the slaughterhouse job doesn’t really appeal to me. Now, old Dickie Dill might favor bashing hog skulls in for cash in his pocket, but it’s not something I’m suited for, being human and all.”
He thought she might laugh at this last part, but she fought it long and hard and her cold side won the day. “A job is a job. You think everybody loves what they do for a living?”
“Do you?”
“I do not have to answer that.”
“I know that. I’m just making conversation, since you’re still here.”
This seemed to sting her a bit, something he had clearly not intended.
“Well, I’ll let you get on with your ‘thinking’ then.”
Hiding his self-inflicted chagrin, he tipped his new hat at her and watched as the woman crossed the street and entered the Cat’s Meow without a backward glance at him.
He was cursing himself for having now messed up twice with beautiful young women, when he saw the pair navigating down the street.
Pittleman was dressed in a seersucker suit with a boater hat sporting a red-and-blue band, and brown and white wingtip shoes. Jackie Tuttle rode on his left arm and was bedecked in a tight lavender dress and a short-waisted white jacket with narrow lapels over it. Her legs were encased in black seamed stockings, and her feet in black heels with fancy laces around her ankles, the mere sight of which gave Archer the spine shivers. She wore a lavender beret over her dark hair.
He had never seen a more beautiful woman, other than Ernestine Crabtree minutes before. If someone had told him a place like Poca City could hold two such alluring women, he would have called the person either a liar or cockeyed beyond belief.
He slunk back behind a conveniently placed sycamore growing up out of the street as they passed, and so they did not see him as they entered the bar.
About two hours later Ernestine Crabtree exited the premises. Archer looked for but failed to see the companion to whom she had referred. He kept behind the tree as she looked around, perhaps for him, or possibly others. Then, despite the height of her heels, she began walking quickly down the street with elegant strides of her long legs.
He watched her go until she was nearly out of sight. He was about to turn back when Archer saw something that made him leave his post outside the bar and take up following Crabtree.
Chapter 12
THESE BOYS JUST don’t take a hint, thought Archer.
The subject of his frustration was the burly and unkempt Dan Bullock, who was currently following Crabtree. This was why Archer had left his post at the Cat’s Meow. His fellow ex-con was stealthily making his way from cover point to cover point as the woman walked along.
Archer felt he was back in Italy threading his way through a bombed-out village as he slipped along in the hopes of uncovering some information to help him and his fellow soldiers. He knew very well what Bullock was doing. He just didn’t know the exact particulars of his intentions in following a woman late at night. But he knew that none of them were good for Crabtree.
They had entered a neighborhood of cute bungalows with little shutters on the windows and tiny brown lawns. Archer thought it seemed like a nice place to call home. Bullock seemed to like these surroundings better for his purposes; he picked up his pace, closing the distance between him and his prey. There was no one else around.
Except for Archer, twenty yards behind.
Bullock took something from his pocket. Under the moonlight, Archer saw a flash of metal.
It was a knife.
Archer started to sprint forward.
He needn’t have bothered.
When Bullock was still five feet from his target, Crabtree turned. From her sizeable envelope purse the woman had taken a walnut-gripped .38 Colt Detective Special snub-nosed with a three-inch barrel. She took aim at Bullock’s broad chest as the big man came to a stop so fast he nearly toppled over.
“What in the hell!” he cried out.
Crabtree calmly looked him over and noted the knife in his right hand. “Mr. Bullock, first, drop the knife before I put a large hole in you.”
He immediately did so.
“Second, I hope you see that this means your parole is hereby revoked. The authorities will be coming to arrest you just as soon as I tell them what you’ve done.”
A pale Bullock took a step back. “Look here, ma’am, I don’t want to go back to no Carderock.”
“Then why were you following me, with a knife?”
“I—”
“Clear out!” she barked, startling the man. “Now!”
He turned and sprinted off.
Crabtree watched him go until she could see him no longer. She bent down and, using a handkerchief, picked up the knife and put it in her purse. She continued on into one of the bungalows. A light came on in the hall, and then another in the front room on the right side of the bungalow.
Archer drew closer and assumed this was probably her bedroom. He could see her silhouette against a lowered window shade. Then
she drew the curtains across it, cutting off his view.
He turned and hustled back to the Cat’s Meow, his already high respect for Crabtree growing immeasurably.
* * *
He had barely taken up position behind the sycamore tree when the door to the bar opened and out staggered Hank Pittleman, with Jackie on his arm. Yet, she seemed to be carrying him more than he was carrying himself, and it was apparently a struggle for the woman.
While Archer was standing there, Pittleman turned and slapped her across the face, knocking her beret off. The sudden blow almost caused Jackie to fall over and take him with her.
Archer had stayed his hand in the bar when Pittleman had acted the same. And he’d held his objection because of the look Jackie had given him. But not this time, he decided. He rushed across the street and came up beside the pair.
Pittleman didn’t seem to have the capacity to recognize him or anyone else, but as he lifted his hand to take another swing at Jackie, Archer smoothly put his hand under the man’s arm, blocking him from doing so. Jackie, her cheek reddened where he’d struck her, looked over, smiled, and mouthed, Thank you.
She bent down and retrieved her hat. Instead of attempting to put it back on, she simply shoved it into her jacket pocket.
“What the hell!” snapped Pittleman. Then he clutched at his head and spit something up. Archer had to move his foot out of the way to avoid getting his new shoes besmirched by the man’s vomit.
“Too much to drink?” he asked Jackie as Pittleman started to rattle nonsense once more.
“How’d you guess?”
“You okay where he—”
“I’m fine. I’ve been hit a lot harder than that.”
They lurched along with Pittleman talking mostly incomprehensibly.
“Where are we taking him?” asked Archer.
“He’s got a place in town.”
He nodded, and they kept walking, cradling the gimpy-legged Pittleman between them.
It surprised Archer when Jackie led him to the Derby Hotel.
“What, this is where he stays?”
“Yes. He’s on the top floor.”
Archer’s jaw slackened another few degrees. “What room?”
“Two of them they’ve put together for him: 615 and 617.”
“I’m in 610.”
Jackie looked over at him, her features full of possibility. “Why, that’s right down the hall, Archer.”
When Pittleman failed completely to continue standing even with assistance, Archer took off his hat and said, “Hold this for me, Jackie.”
He squatted down and hefted Pittleman into the air over his shoulder with one clean thrust of his legs.
“You are a strong man, Archer,” she said approvingly.
“Yeah, well, at least I’m something. Lead the way.”
With the load he was carrying, Archer forced himself to ride the elevator up, though he closed his eyes while doing so. They got to the room and Jackie dug into her purse for the key. She stuck it in the lock while Archer stood there with Pittleman slung over his shoulder like a carcass kill. Jackie swung the door wide and waved Archer in.
He strode in, saw the bed, and deposited Pittleman there. Quiet snores were now emanating from him. Archer looked around as Jackie handed him back his hat.
“What’s he need two rooms for?”
“He doesn’t need them. He just wanted them.”
“Well, that makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Makes sense to him. And didn’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Hank owns the hotel.”
Archer took a step back and looked down at the sleeping mess of a man. “Hell, what doesn’t he own?”
“Not much.”
Archer looked her over. If anything, her dress was even tighter and more revealing than the one from the other night. Jackie caught him eyeing her and sat on the edge of the bed, taking all the time in the world to cross one gleaming stockinged leg over the other.
“Well, he’s taken care of, now what?”
He looked down at her. “Any ideas?”
“We can go to your room for a drink.”
“I had some gin, but it’s gone now.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a small flask. “Problem solved.”
“Last gal I saw with a flask pulled it out of her stockings.”
Her smile was wide, warm, and inviting and caused Archer to go weak-kneed.
She edged her skirt high enough to get his undivided attention. “Well, as you can see, I am wearing stockings. But, I’ll keep that in mind for next time, Archer.”
“You’re counting on a next time?”
“I like math. I can count really high.” She rose. “In fact, to 610. Let’s go.”
“Okay to leave him like that?”
“I leave him like that all the time.”
They made the short walk to Archer’s room after she locked Pittleman’s door behind them. He opened the door to his room and let her go in first. He shut the door behind him and pocketed the key.
She picked up two short glasses off the scarred dresser and poured out a portion of the contents of the flask into each one. Archer observed that she measured with precision.
“You like things just so,” he noted.
“Just so,” she replied, handing him a glass and then clinking hers against his.
She pressed the glass against her injured cheek.
“You’re gonna have a bruise there,” he said.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Back in the bar that night?” He looked down at her wrist.
“Men have to show off, Archer. If they can’t do it with their brains, and most often they can’t, they do it with the fact that they’re stronger than women. Hank’s not stupid, but he’s no better than most men when it comes to that.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“Are you telling me you’ve never struck a woman?”
“Never even thought about hitting one.”
She raised her glass to him. “Glad to hear it.” She took a drink and looked him up and down. “So you never told me why you got the new clothes.”
“Want to look the part.”
“What part is that?”
“Professional debt collector for one drunk asshole.”
He grinned and took a swallow of his drink, while she laughed loud and long, something that both surprised and pleased him.
She ran a hand up and down his jacket, while he tossed his new hat down on the bed.
“Where do we go from here?” he wanted to know.
Jackie moved slowly around the room while she sipped her drink, swaying maybe to some tune in her head. She reached the window, drew back the curtain, and looked out onto the dryness of Poca City.
“I have no plan, Archer. I’m just feeling my way. What were you doing outside the bar tonight?”
“Waiting for you to come out with Mr. Pittleman.”
“Why?”
“Needed to update him on things.”
“Like what?”
“Like your daddy torched his 1947 Cadillac, so there’s no way for me to get it back.”
“And how do you know this?” she said, looking at him with interest.
“I went out there last night with the idea of getting the car. It wasn’t where you thought it might be. I found it in a little clearing not too far from there, in the middle of a bunch of pine trees.”
She continued to gaze at him, her hand perched on one hip. “That used to be my secret spot, Archer, when I was little. I’d go there and pretend to be all sorts of things. A princess, Amelia Earhart, Jean Harlow, and Madame Curie.”
“Well, right now it’s got a mess of a burned-up car. And it’s been there a while, long before I went out there asking about it.”
“I wonder why he did that?”
“To spite Pittleman. Make sure the man’s never gonna collect so long as you’re with him.”
/> “Then he’s a fool.”
“Not sure about that. Pittleman told me he’s not taking Tuttle to court because it might cause embarrassment for his wife.”
Jackie smiled and said, “He really told you that?”
“I went out there to see him and that’s what he said. You don’t think he was telling the truth?”
“Who knows? I find the truth coming out of folks’ mouths less and less these days.”
He sat on the one chair while she slipped off her shoes, taking so long to undo the straps around her ankles that it forced Archer to look down into his drink before something happened he might later come to regret. But that water might already be over the dam.
She dropped her heels on the floor, took her legs up under her haunches, and perched there like a queen on her throne. But it wasn’t a throne; it was Archer’s bed.
“This is getting interesting, Archer, don’t you think?” she said in that husky and now whiskey-draped voice.
He looked up, cradling his drink and taking another short swallow.
“Could be.”
“You know, all the others just tried to steal that damn Caddy in the middle of the night.”
“May they rest in peace. I took a different tack. Just my nature.”
“You’re the path-less-traveled sort of man, are you?”
“It seems to me that if I just follow along with everybody else, my life will always be crowded with folks I don’t necessarily care to spend time with.”
“Now you can’t accede to my father’s request, and you can’t fulfill Hank’s, either. And you spent money and you can’t pay Hank back.”
“You seem different than you did in the bar that first night. I mean, the way you talk and all.”
“Hank likes me a certain way. So, I’m that certain way when I’m around him.”
“What way is that?”
“You’re a college boy. Do you know what chattel is?”
“Like property.”
“Right. That’s what Hank likes, owning things. And he also likes girlish giggles, flighty, flirty, his hand freely grabbing my ass, and all that goes with it. That also includes the occasional insult, slap, or punch.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t let him do it.”
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