A Gambling Man

by David Baldacci

  “Why? You’re still young.”

  “In the movie business, I’m getting close to middle age. I need to get going before the only parts left to me are playing the heroine’s spinster aunt.”

  “Um-hmm.” Archer checked the mirror.

  She noticed this and said, “You don’t think we’re being followed?”

  “Never can be too careful.”

  They passed over the San Joaquin River and watched the rushing water below. It was the fourth such river they had crossed. It seemed to Archer that California was a very well-hydrated state. It grew dark as they continued heading south through the San Joaquin Valley, which was flat and filled with plants of every description, and all lush and green.

  “So are we done with the mountains?” asked Callahan, looking relieved. “This place is pretty level.”

  “Valleys usually are, but no, we’re not. We have to go through the Diablo Range next,” noted Archer.

  “Then is that it for the mountains?”

  “No. There’s a whole mess of coastal ranges, north to south. After Diablo, we cross the Santa Lucia Range to get to Bay Town, which is where I’m going.”

  “Lots of Spanish names in California,” she said suspiciously.

  “Well, they did discover it first.”

  “Where are we stopping for the night?” she asked as she lit up a cigarette and nervously blew smoke to her side of the car.

  “There’s a place called Coalinga in Fresno County. Route 198 will take us there.”

  “Never heard of Coalinga.”

  “Neither have I. But it’s a place to stop.”

  “Do we go through the Diablo mountains to get there?”

  “No, it’s still pretty much in the valley. It’s farmland, mostly level.”

  “How much farther after Coalinga to Bay Town?”

  “On these sorts of roads, I’m not sure. We cross the Diablos, head for the coast and then go south for a way, cross the Santa Lucias, and then go straight for the Pacific. It’d be good if we could make it in one trip, but I’m getting pretty tired and it’s another three hours just to Coalinga.”

  “Then why don’t you pull over and rest your eyes, at least? I don’t want us running off a cliff because you’re beat.”

  He found a rest area on the side of the road that had a small picnic table and an old, rusted charcoal grill. They sat at the table with their coats wrapped around them, since the sinking sun had brought drastically cooler temps, and the winds, funneled down the valley, had picked up. Callahan had brought a paper sack of sandwiches, and they ate one each and split a fat pickle. As they smoked their cigarettes and Callahan took a pull on Archer’s flask, he said, “We’ll need to gas up again. We can do that in Coalinga. And maybe we can get a cup of coffee.”

  “Or a slug of gin.”

  “Right. Then we’re good until we get to Bay Town.”

  “And you can be a private eye,” said Callahan. “Or die trying.”

  Archer glanced over at her. “And you can go to Hollywood and be a movie star. And ditto.”

  She looked over at the Delahaye admiringly. “Nice ride so far.”

  “Except for the mountains, you mean.”

  “I’m getting used to them, actually. I can learn to accept pretty much anything.”

  “That’s real good, lady, ’cause you’re gonna have to.”

  They looked up to see three men standing there.

  Chapter 12

  ARCHER STARED OVER AT THE TRIO of intruders. One guy was small, but he stood in front of the other two. He was clearly the leader. Archer sized up the pair as the necessary muscle on a mission of this kind. They were built like pickup trucks, and their expressions betrayed as much intellect as an exhaust pipe.

  The little fellow was dapperly dressed in a blue serge suit with two-tone shoes, black and gray, toe to heel, and a white felt hat with a black band and ribbon. The hair Archer could see around the temples was slick, just like the facial features. The eyes were dulled ball bearings. His waistcoat was dark gray and matched the shoe color. His tie was dark red and knotted in the double-Windsor style. He had a straight line of mustache above a thin, chapped top lip. It looked waxed. He looked waxed.

  The pair of strongarms was outfitted in 46 long pinstripes that still looked squeezed by their bulk. Tweedle-dee held a .45 loosely at the side of his hammy thigh. His partner in crime cradled a far more menacing Remington side-by-side sawed-off shotgun in his hands like a newborn. They both had matching fedoras, light blue with black bands, and no ribbons thereon.

  The boss took a step forward and the big boys did likewise; the menace in their features was palpable.

  Archer rose from the picnic table while Callahan remained in her seat staring at the men.

  “Hello, fellas, are you lost?” said Archer by way of greeting. He pointed to his right. “The Pacific’s that way, at least I think.”

  The little man snickered and then apparently thought better of it and his features turned nasty. “We know exactly where we are. If anybody’s lost, it’s you two.” He aimed a finger at Archer and then Callahan for emphasis that wasn’t needed; the shotgun and .45 did that just fine.

  “We know where we are and where we’re going,” said Archer.

  Tweedle-dee’s twin brought the sawed-off up and leveled it at Archer’s belly.

  Archer wasn’t prepared to fight a Remington with his bare hands; he couldn’t outrun buckshot, and assuming the fetal position seemed like a lousy idea, too.

  “The fact is, mac, you ain’t going anywhere,” said the little man.

  Archer glanced at Callahan to see her gaze still holding on the three men. She seemed concerned but not desperate. Archer didn’t quite know how to read that.

  “Is there something you want?” asked Archer, his gaze now swiveling between the little man and the Remington. The night air was suddenly thick with the choking smells of the eucalyptus trees, and the chaparral seemed to close upon them like a band of hungry wolves. If Archer dared close his eyes he could be back in the European theater, on the outskirts of another village, the names of which he could never pronounce. He would be creeping along, he and two buddies, M-1s in hand, cig packs in their pockets, dog tags dangling from quivering necks, equal parts hope and dread in their hearts, just wanting to finish the mission of the moment and get back to safety, if there was any to be had in the middle of a world war.

  The dapper fellow pointed to the Delahaye.

  Archer followed the finger. “You want the car?”

  “What a smart guy you are.” There was no joviality behind the remark, only stark insult.

  Archer eyed the muscle. There was nothing behind their eyes. They were here to dispose of a problem. Two problems.

  “You been following us, right?”

  “Ever since you left Reno. Wasn’t that hard. Roads like this, you can only go one way, probably why you never eyed us.”

  “Reno? Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “You happen to know somebody named Robert Howells?”

  The man grinned. “He was the one who told us you were heading to California. This was after we roughed him up a little. Made it easy to follow you. It was one of my guys who put the ding in that car last night. And you ruined my Buick, pal. You owe me for that. I’m here to collect.”

  “Okay, but why do you want the car? Howells was going to pay you off with the money he got for it.”

  “Yeah, thing is, he owed me a lot more than he got from you.”

  “How do you know how much he got from me?”

  The man pulled out a wad of cash. “’Cause soon as he left you I took it from him and counted it. He owes another six grand. I figure the car will make up the difference.”

  “He didn’t mention owing you that much. If he did I’m surprised he let the car go for what I gave him.”

  “Well, thing is, old Bobby H must’ve forgot to add in the interest. At a hundred percent a day, it adds up quick.”
<
br />   “Yeah, I bet. And where is Howells now?” asked Archer, his face starting to tingle.

  The man gave him a forced grin. “You ain’t that stupid, are you?”

  “You didn’t have to kill him, you know.”

  “I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

  Callahan broke the silence. “If you take the car, how the hell do we get out of here?”

  Archer couldn’t believe the woman was serious with her question, and when he looked over at her he could tell by her expression that she wasn’t. Maybe she was stalling for time, allowing Archer to come up with a plan. What a disappointment he would be for her.

  “That won’t be a problem, for you,” said the little man.

  “Well, I don’t find that acceptable,” said Callahan.

  Archer almost laughed at this comment but when he looked at her the thought of humor faded.

  The little man seemed to want to say something, but the words stalled in his throat. He just shrugged, lit a half-smoked cigarillo, and contemplated the dirt for a few moments.

  “Take the car,” said Archer. “And we can walk to where we’re going.”

  The muzzle of the cigarillo came up and pointed in Archer’s direction; like the Remington, it seemed a direct threat to his personal well-being.

  Archer added, “We don’t know you from Adam. You’ll be long gone before we reach a telephone box or a cop. Why make two bodies if you don’t have to? Stealing a car is one thing. The other is something else. The gas chamber at San Quentin is a shitty way to kick it.”

  Smoke curled off the end of the cigarillo and lifted to the sky like a fragment of a memory gone to Heaven. Archer looked up at the sky, and when his gaze came back down, the little man was staring dead at him.

  “No can do, pal. I never did like loose ends.”

  Archer felt his adrenaline actually ease for some reason. This unusual physiological reaction in the face of danger came from his fighting in the war. If you wanted to live, you had to remain calm. He moved to his left, drawing the attention and angle of attack of the thugs.

  “Don’t try to run,” said the little man. “It won’t matter and you’ll just embarrass yourself, mac.”

  “I don’t remember asking you for your opinion,” said Archer. “And just so you know, the outer killing range on a sawed-off is about six feet. I’m double that.” He eyed the .45. “And in the dark, that revolver is bumping up against the wall of accuracy at ten feet.”

  He took a long stride backward. “And now I’m at fifteen feet.”

  “Son, don’t end your time looking like a fool,” said the little man somberly. “Have some self-respect and let’s get this over with nice and clean.”

  Archer moved in a slow curve, and they curved with him.

  Sawed-off, perhaps sensing a loss of control of the situation, took a few quick strides forward.

  “Still not enough,” said Archer. “The buckshot will sting but it won’t kill.” He didn’t really believe this, but then he didn’t have to.

  Now .45 moved forward, joining his twin along the line of attack. The little man, sensing the end coming, took a step back, burned off the remnants of his smoke, and dropped it to the dirt. The orange embers winked dead in the darkness like a miniature sun burrowing into the horizon.

  “Now just hold still,” said .45, his voice surprisingly high-pitched for such a big larynx. He took aim with the revolver, but Archer could see his dominant arm shaking like a twig in a breeze; .45 clearly wanted to be big and tough but maybe he was just big.

  Archer kept moving for two more strides, turning the men’s attention even more fully to him.

  What they hadn’t foreseen was that his movements had put their backs to Callahan. They seemed to have forgotten all about the woman. That was about to change, but not exactly in the way Archer intended.

  Callahan fired and her .38’s round hit Sawed-off in the right shoulder blade. He grunted once as the slug penetrated first skin, then tendon, then severed bone and plowed right through an intersection of blood vessels.

  He groped around, pawing with his free hand at the entry wound, and screaming in pain. His hat came off and landed in the pool of blood now avalanching from him, for the shot had split a fat artery right in two. Snot blew out of his nose in his rage and fear and pain. He threw up whatever he’d last eaten and drunk, fouling the air. A urine stain emerged around his zipper as the shock of the round’s hitting him overcame his ability to hold this bodily function in check.

  His fingers lost their strength, and the Remington hit the hard dirt. The impact with the ground must have sprung its filed-down hair triggers, because the twin barrels of the sawed-off boomed sideways and caught .45 at both ankles with hundreds of pebbles of angry buckshot at a distance of about seven inches, severing that part of his body as neat as a bone saw and miraculously leaving him upright. At that range, the sawed-off wasn’t a gun, it was a bomb.

  The big man looked down and saw that his black wingtips, and the feet in them, were resting next to him, instead of under him. He was suddenly three inches shorter and standing on twin shattered bone tips, and his mind didn’t seem able to cope with this because he made no sound. He toppled sideways but fired his gun, maybe as a knee-jerk reaction.

  He killed a eucalyptus tree next to Archer.

  .45 commenced dying as he lay on the ground probably not knowing who or what had killed him. Archer watched as the man turned to him, his hemorrhaging eye an inch above the forest floor. The man blinked once, then shock took over. He convulsed once, then again, and the eye closed and the man died quick and silent.

  Archer knew that pulling the trigger and killing a man was easy. What was hard was everything leading up to that point. And everything coming after it.

  Archer turned to Sawed-off. He, too, had left this life in a dark, burgundy spread of blood that the dirt did not seem to want, because it lay on top of the ground like water in a pool.

  “Don’t,” the voice barked out.

  Archer turned to see Callahan now pointing her Smith & Wesson at the little man, who, dazed by the sudden elimination of his comrades, had pulled a .22 Derringer from his waistcoat and was pointing it around, though Archer could tell the fellow had no firm idea of an actual target.

  “Don’t do it,” Callahan said. Her voice was assured, in command, with an ice-in-the-veins sort of rhythm. It was like a dagger needling your ribs before it went in for the kill.

  Archer looked at her. Unlike .45, there wasn’t a twitch in her gun hand. The Smith & Wesson was held as sure and steady as a foot-round oak branch in still air. Callahan’s features looked like the mountain peaks they had passed, chiseled, foreboding, impenetrable. The last one got to Archer the most, confounding him.

  The little man dropped the Derringer and backed away from it, his hands palm up in front of him, as though that would matter against the .38.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, a line of sweat glistening around the whiskers above his lip. “Don’t do nothing crazy, lady.”

  “You mean, kill you? Like you were going to kill us? So, who’s crazy?”

  “Please, lady,” he moaned.

  “Don’t please me,” she retorted. “It’s a little late for that.”

  Archer said, “It’s over, Liberty. Just let him go.”

  She spoke without looking at him. “And let him do what? Keep following us? Tell somebody else what happened? I killed a man, Archer.”

  “In self-defense.”

  “I shot him in the back.”

  “I’m your witness to what happened.”

  The little man said, “He’s talking sense. And all the fight’s gone right out of me. Wish I’d never come up here. I’ll take my money and go. You got my word, honest to God.”

  “Too late to be talking about God,” snapped Callahan.

  “Just wait a minute,” said Archer.

  “You can’t trust guys like this, Archer. They say one thing and do another.” She took closer aim with her
revolver. “And he confessed to killing Bobby H.”

  Archer stepped forward, blocking her sight line. “Killing a man in self-defense is one thing. Shooting him in cold blood is something else. And I’m no saint, but I can’t be a party to that, so you might as well shoot me first.”

  “I like you, Archer, but I’m not sure I like you that much.”

  “Well, keep this in mind. We have more mountains to go over. You want to drive it alone? Go ahead.”

  This did what apparently her conscience could not. She lowered her gun. “Pick up his piece and the shotgun and the revolver.”

  Archer did as she asked, holding the trio of weapons so their barrels pointed to the dirt.

  “Where’s your car?” Callahan asked the little man.

  “Around the bend back there.”

  “Show us.”

  He led them around a curve in the road. It was a wonder they hadn’t heard the engine, but the wind up here was loud, funneled between the peaks.

  It was a Chrysler sedan painted an ugly green with the biggest chrome bumper Archer had ever seen. It was large enough for him to take a nap on.

  “You got a spare tire?” asked Callahan.

  “Of course,” replied the man.

  She shot out the Chrysler’s right front tire and the air hissed out as the rubber fell flat.

  She lowered her gun, studied what she’d done, and said, “I still want to shoot him.”

  “I know,” said Archer, drawing a sharp look from her. “But I say we get back in the car and keep going.”

  “I’ll go along with that plan, for now.” She eyed the man, who looked like a fellow who thought he was still on death row. “You follow us, Archer won’t save you next time. You go back to where you came from and stay there. And you keep your mouth shut.” She lifted her .38 and took aim at a spot between his ball-bearing eyes.

  The man backed away. “Yes ma’am.”

  “One more thing,” said Archer. He walked over to the man and drilled him so hard in the face with his fist that the fellow was lifted off his feet and slammed against the side of the car before crumpling to the dirt.

  “That was for Bobby H. And if I ever see you again, I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”