A Gambling Man

by David Baldacci

  Mildred said, “Well, you two are definitely married. I know love when I see it.”

  On that comment, neither Callahan nor Archer would look at the other.

  “There’s a pot of coffee on that table over there in the morning,” said Mildred. “Let’s get you signed in.”

  Later, after they were in their room, they took turns changing in the bathroom down the hall. Archer put on dark pajamas and Callahan a long white sleeping gown with a slit of interesting elevation, a few fluffy feathers, and nothing on underneath.

  They lay in the one narrow bed and Callahan said, “You really thought I’d just up and leave you to those killers?”

  He turned to the side to look at her. She did likewise, perching her cheek on her palm as she studied him.

  “It’s not like you owe me anything, Liberty.”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “We just met.”

  “So is there a rule that you have to know somebody a certain amount of time before they can be friends?”

  “No.”

  “And it seems to me that we’ve already shared a bunch of stuff that people who are friends their whole lives haven’t.”

  “Well, being almost killed on three separate occasions over the span of twenty-four hours is unusual, I’ll give you that.”

  “Do you consider yourself my friend?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “Okay, then it’s all settled.”

  She lay back down. But Archer didn’t move. He just watched her.

  She seemed to sense this because she said, “Under normal circumstances, Archer, I’d be having certain feelings for you lying here like we are. Especially after that kiss…” She shot him a glance full of curiosity. “Just so you know.”

  “Nothing remotely normal about our circumstances. But I feel the same way, just so you know.”

  This made her smile. She reached out a hand and he took it.

  Archer lay back down. And they both fell asleep hand in hand.

  Chapter 15

  ARCHER WAS UP EARLY, and he brought a sleepy Callahan a cup of coffee from the pot Mildred had mentioned. After that he took the Delahaye for a gas fill-up. When he got back Callahan was dressed and ready to go.

  “That’s some traveling outfit,” noted Archer as he observed the hip-hugging white dress that fell to above her knee and showed enough cleavage to make a man temporarily forget his name. Her heels were high and the color of lavender, and the slim leather belt around her waist was black. Her hair fell to her shoulders, and her head was topped by a turban the color of which matched her shoes.

  “If I’m going to be a star, I have to look the part,” she replied. “So you think I look okay?”

  “That would not be the adjective I would use.”

  “What would be the adjective?” she asked, her eyes lifting to meet his gaze.

  “I think I’ll keep that to myself.”

  “And I have to compete with that damn car. I feel like such a second billing.”

  “Don’t worry. Guys like cars, but they like beautiful women better.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all morning, Archer. Now, let’s blow this joint.”

  He was loading the bags into the trunk of the Delahaye as a prowler drifted by. The two cops inside gave the Delahaye, and then Archer, long looks, before floating on to the next street.

  By the time they were about to drive off, the prowler had drifted back downstream and docked next to them. The passenger’s-side window was cranked down, revealing the meaty face of a guy in his forties with a clean-shaven slab of skin that was sunburned and windburned around the neck and forehead. His brown hair was cut close to the scalp. Archer thought he might be ex-military. His shoulders were wide enough to swallow the window on the prowler. His partner was tall and reedy, and seemed not nearly as interested in them as Meaty was.

  “Nice car,” said the cop.

  “Yeah, isn’t it,” replied Archer with a friendly grin. He wanted this to go only one way, when it could so easily go the other.

  “Where’d you get something like that?” Meaty had apparently read the name located on the chrome front of the car, because he said, “A Dela-haye? What the hell is that?”

  “French made. But it was built for an Englishman, which is why the steering wheel’s on this side.”

  “Where’d you get it, pal?”

  Archer had been expecting this and said, “From a collector over in Reno. He had some money setbacks and needed to sell.”

  “You look pretty young to have the dough to lay down for this piece of chrome.”

  “Yeah, it was a sweetheart deal, but I have to keep paying on it for a while.”

  The cop pushed back his cap and thought about this, his eyes going back and forth and then reaching to Archer’s eyes and holding like the searchlight bolted to the side of the prowler.

  Archer didn’t like that look. It was probing and distrustful and seemed to be angling for any reason to bust his head open and put the cuffs on. Pretty much every cop he’d ever run into had, at some point, given him that very same look.

  “You got papers that prove that?”

  “If you really need me to get them, yeah.”

  The cop’s features turned to stone at this slight pushback, and the glare he shot Archer was all official and aggressive and the look of a dog who’d just found a dinosaur bone to crack open and then devour.

  “Let me tell you something, buddy—” he began sharply.

  Callahan stuck her head around Archer’s. “Are you from Coalinga, Officer?” She smacked him with an ear-to-ear smile.

  He eyed her features and grinned. “Born and bred, ma’am.”

  “I’m from back east, but I wouldn’t have minded growing up here.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Then the cop’s grin faded as he looked at the Delahaye’s damaged windscreen post where the bullet had struck. Next his gaze dropped to the door panel and held there; his expression grew even more serious. Felony serious, thought Archer, who was noting every changing nuance of this little confrontation.

  “What the hell is that?” the cop asked, pointing.

  Archer dropped his gaze and saw it. His first instinct was to hit the gas. His second was to look up to see the cop watching him closely.

  “Looks like blood to me,” said the cop. “What’s it look like to you, mister?”

  Archer knew that blood was exactly what it was. The car had been parked in the picnic area near the shoot-out. The blast from the shotgun had obviously driven some of the dead man’s blood spatter onto the Delahaye’s metal. Archer hadn’t noticed it in the dark and, for some reason, hadn’t noticed it in the light of morning, either. It was, unfortunately, clearly revealed to him now.

  “We hit something on the road last night. A deer, a coyote, some animal. Banged the windscreen and then I guess it brushed the side of the car.”

  “But no dent,” said the cop, getting out to look closer. His buddy joined him, coming around the side of the prowler, his hand on the butt of his leather-holstered Colt .45. He looked like he wanted something to shoot.

  “You’d expect a dent, right, Jimmy?” Meaty said, looking at his partner, who had an Adam’s apple so pronounced it looked like a tumor. “Ain’t no dent that I can see. You hit a deer or a big cat, you’re gonna have a dent or at least some paint scratches, yes sir. Something weird going on here. I got me some questions, mister.”

  He bent down to look closer, while Jimmy kept his distance, probably in case he had to draw and shoot Archer on the fly. Meaty looked up and said, “Step out of the car, buddy.”

  It was right then that Callahan got out of the car and came around to them.

  Both cops took a whiff of her nectary perfume and came to rigid attention, like a bailiff had just called the court to order. Archer was gratified that their full focus was on the lady and her tight dress rather than the blood and absence of dents.

  “I was driving at
the time when we hit something. Scared the bejesus out of me,” she said. “Didn’t it?” she added, looking at Archer.

  “The bejesus,” repeated Archer.

  “‘Bejesus,’ that’s an Irish term,” said Meaty. “Hey, are you Irish, Miss?”

  She put out a gloved hand for him to shake. “Name’s Callahan, Liberty Callahan, so that would be a yes. I am most definitely Irish, officer.”

  His grin threatened to run off both sides of his face. He pointed to the name sewn onto his uniform. “I’m Sean, Sean Regan. My parents came from the county of Offaly.”

  “My grandparents were from Cork.”

  “Talk about a small world.” He turned and looked at his partner. “Hell, Jimmy, this gal’s family is from Cork.”

  Jimmy couldn’t take his gaze off Callahan’s prominent bosom. “Cork,” was all he managed to say.

  Archer noted that Callahan stood so that she was entirely blocking the door panel.

  “I’m heading to Hollywood. I want to be in the pictures.” She put a hand on her hip and bumped it out and placed the other hand behind her long neck, turned into a profile shot, curved that long neck back like a swan’s, and hit them with a dazzling smile. “Think I have a shot? Tell me the truth now, fellas.”

  Regan said, “Hell, you’re lots prettier than Rita Hayworth.” He glanced down at her stockinged legs. “Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy looked like he had downed two bottles of Old Forester as a warmup to really hitting the juice. “Cork,” he said throatily.

  Jimmy was down for the count, Archer concluded. He’d probably forgotten about his Colt .45, or the fact that he was even a cop. And Regan wasn’t far behind.

  “You are so sweet.” She gave Regan a hug and Archer watched the cop’s hand slide down to her buttocks. He made his landing and dug into her soft flesh. She made no attempt to move his fingers back to a respectable spot. Archer had to appreciate the lady’s self-control.

  When Callahan stepped back, she said, “I was so nervous, but you’ve cheered me up no end. So thank you and now I’ll let you go on your way. I know how important police work is. My uncle’s a cop in Boston.”

  Regan beamed. “Now there’s a big city, all right. They say on Saint Paddy’s Day every bar in Boston gives free drinks to every Irishman. Is that true?”

  “Every Irishman and Irishwoman,” she added, giving him another broadside of a smile fired right from the biggest quarterdeck cannon she had.

  He chuckled and tipped his cap at her. “Best of luck to you, Ms. Callahan.”

  She did a little curtsy. “Thank you kindly, Officer Regan.”

  They climbed into the prowler, Regan gave one more enthusiastic wave, and they were gone, just like that. It was hard for Archer to believe everything that had just happened was not a by-product of his imagination or a drunken binge.

  Callahan watched them until they were out of sight and then got back in, tugging her dress sharply so the hem wouldn’t get caught in the door as she closed it.

  “Okay, now I’m convinced,” said Archer.

  She looked at him curiously. “Of what?”

  “That you actually might make a go of it as an actress.”

  “That wasn’t acting, Archer, that was just lying.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve done a lot of one, but not necessarily the other.”

  “It was lucky about the Irish thing.”

  “What lucky? I saw Regan’s name sewn into his uniform. And I am Irish. I thought I would give it a shot. What could we lose, right?”

  “Is your family from Cork?”

  “Hell, who knows? Now, let’s get out of here before that dumb mick forgets the pleasure of grabbing my ass and remembers the blood and no dent. So hit it.”

  And so Archer hit it.

  Chapter 16

  HOURS LATER CALLAHAN AWOKE WITH A START and looked over at Archer. Only he wasn’t there. The car was empty except for her. The Delahaye was pulled off to the side of the road, next to a river. She looked out the window and saw Archer skimming rocks across the water.

  She slipped her heels back on and got out, walking carefully over to him across the uneven terrain.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just taking a break. You were asleep, seemed like a good time to stop.”

  He reached down and picked up an opened bottle of Coke. “Got this back in Coalinga at the filling station. Just cooled it in the river for a few minutes.”

  She took the bottle from him and took a couple of swallows before handing it back.

  “So where are we?”

  “Salinas Valley.” He pointed at the water. “That’s the Salinas River. Its mouth is way up at Monterey Bay.”

  “It’s beautiful around here.”

  “It’s farmland and very fertile. Nearly a hundred miles of it in the valley. Mountains on both sides. They raise a lot of crops here.”

  “Were you a farmer?”

  “Never plowed a field a day in my life. But I can read. You ever heard of The Grapes of Wrath?”

  “I saw the movie. Henry Fonda, right?”

  “Right. But first it was a novel by a fellow named John Steinbeck. The title comes from a line in the song, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ Read it when I was in college.” He took a drink of the Coke. “It’s about the Joad family. The Depression and the Dust Bowl wiped out their farming prospects in Oklahoma, so they gathered all the possessions they had left, converted their sedan into a rattling truck, and set off for California for a better life.”

  Now Callahan looked interested. “Well, hell, that’s what we’re doing.” She took the Coke from him and took another swallow before handing it back and settling her gaze on the rushing water and the picturesque land beyond.

  He continued, “The trip didn’t turn out too well. Some died on the way. And when they got to where they were going the good-paying jobs turned out not to exist, at least for them. The Joads fell on hard times. It got pretty bad.”

  “Well, then, I’m surprised you want to go anywhere near California.”

  “There’s a line in the book I’m partial to.”

  “What is it?”

  “‘How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.’”

  “So what ‘fear beyond every other’ have you known, Archer?”

  Archer handed her the Coke and spun a beauty of a six-skipper over the face of the Salinas as the sun blazed down on them.

  He tipped his hat back. “Life, really, Liberty. Just life. How about you?”

  She gave him a look that was between a sob and a smirk. “Hell, Archer, I’m a woman. So yeah, I can say the same, only double.”

  Archer was about to skip another rock, but then let it drop. He put his hands in his pockets and stared out over the water.

  “Don’t leave me in suspense, Archer. How’d it really end for the Joads? Were they all dead? Or did it turn into a fairy tale and they woke up rich?”

  “Some of them fought back. Tried to do the right thing. Organized labor, that sort of thing. Fight the rich men. Sort of like trying to beat a Sherman tank with a pistol for all the good it’ll do you. But if a man doesn’t even try…?”

  “Or a woman, Archer,” she said firmly.

  “Or a woman,” he conceded.

  “So was the trip worth it for them?”

  “I guess any trip is worth taking if standing still isn’t an option.”

  “So why aren’t we moving then?”

  They were walking back to the car when Callahan noticed it. “The blood on the door is gone.”

  “Why do you think I stopped by the river? A rag and water equals no blood.”

  “Smart thinking, Archer.”

  They got back on the road, and very soon they entered the Santa Lucia Mountains. As the land rose around them
, Archer looked over at Callahan as she closed her eyes and gripped the seat again.

  “You know, for a tough lady like you who knows her way around a gun, I’m surprised anything scares you. We could have used you in the Eighth Army. You’re a better shot than a bunch of the guys I served with.”

  “Flattery will only get you so far with me.” But she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “And where I grew up the land was pretty flat. I don’t really care for this.”

  “How’d you get to Reno?”

  “Trains, and buses, and hitching rides when my money ran out, which it did pretty regularly.”

  “That can be dangerous for a gal on her own.”

  “Yes it can, Archer,” she said but did not elaborate.

  “Well, glad you made it.”

  She gazed out the windscreen. “I didn’t really run into any mountains on the way.” She looked at him. “But I guess there’s always something in the way of where you want to go.”

  “Well, once we clear these mountains, we’ll be able to see the Pacific Coast and the ocean.”

  This perked Callahan up. “Really?”

  “The mountains affect the weather coming west from the Pacific. Lot wetter on the coast side. Learned that while I was out here training. You’ll see the plants and trees and things are a lot different on the western-facing slopes. The mountains bump the weather systems. They drop their rain and then head over the peaks. They call it the rain shadow effect. It’s drier in the Salinas Valley because of that. They have to irrigate a lot from local water sources, although they do get some rain.”

  They cleared the top of a peak on the winding road and started down. They passed coastal redwoods, ponderosa pine, fir trees, Pacific madrones, and cypress.

  Later, at a lower level, they rounded a curve and Archer said, “And there’s the Pacific.”

  Callahan actually sat on her haunches on the seat, one hand clutched on her turban, as she surveyed the breath of the largest body of water in the world.

  “That whole thing is the Pacific?” she exclaimed.

  “Well, you can only see a little bit of it from here. Keep going straight west and you’ll hit Japan. Same ocean, though.”