A Gambling Man

by David Baldacci

  “Is he going to be okay?” Archer asked, taking the paper. “He seems to be in pain.”

  “Ulcers. He just needs to rest from time to time and watch his diet.” Morrison opened her desk drawer and took out a black leather card case. “Here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Your ticket. It just came in twenty minutes ago.”

  Archer looked surprised. “But didn’t I have to sign something?”

  “I did all the paperwork for you.”

  Archer opened the case and saw the printed card with his name and other information on it. “Aloysius Archer, Licensed Private Investigator in the city of Bay Town under the auspices of Willie Dash, Very Private Investigations, Incorporated. Licensed under California Law, Bonded and Insured.”

  “The cost of getting it will be deducted from your earnings.”

  “How much are my earnings?”

  “Willie didn’t discuss that with you?”

  “No, and I asked him.”

  “Well, I’ll have to leave that to him.”

  “He said I should apply for my own ticket because the law might change and this might not be enough.”

  “If he said so, I would believe it.”

  “He said I need five people to vouch for me. He said you would be one of them.”

  “Sure, Archer, whatever you need.”

  “Just like that?”

  “If Willie said it was okay for me to sign, then that’s good enough for me.”

  Archer left her and looked at the address as he walked down the hall. Kemper’s office was on Idaho Avenue. He rode back down in the elevator with Earl, who was not nearly as talkative as before, but just sat on his little chair and read his newspaper.

  Archer drove to a Rexall drugstore and bought a map of Bay Town and the surrounding area. As he sat at the counter drinking a cup of coffee and studying it, the pink-frocked soda jerk girl with a matching cap said, “You looking for someplace in particular, mister?”

  “Idaho Avenue?”

  “On the rich side of town,” said the girl.

  “Is that right?”

  She had curly red hair, a skinny frame, and a freckled face with a button nose barely large enough to support both nostrils. She placed her long index finger on a spot on the open map. “We’re here, okay?”

  “Right.”

  “And Sawyer Ave cuts right through the middle of town. Anything to the mountain side is the working-class side, at least for the most part. Anything to the ocean side is the rich side, except for obviously where Sawyer’s Wharf is. And Idaho Ave is right here,” she added, stabbing the paper with her finger once more.

  “So I guess folks want the water view?”

  “I guess rich folks get whatever it is they want,” she replied gamely.

  “How about up in the foothills? That’s not ocean side.”

  “Now that’s where the really rich live. See, you don’t just get the ocean views up there, you get to look down on the rest of us.” She laughed at her own little joke.

  “You mean, like the Kempers?”

  Her freckles seemed to bulge at the mention of the name. “You know them?”

  “I met them today. Husband and wife.”

  She gave him an appraising look and adjusted her pink cap. “Old man Armstrong and his family really built up this town.”

  “His son-in-law, Douglas Kemper, is running for mayor.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know nothing about that. I’m more into flicks than politics.”

  Archer noted the movie pulp magazine stashed under the counter behind her. “Do you know anything about Kemper?”

  “He’s got a bunch of businesses. My mom and dad work for him, and my two brothers work for him, too.”

  This got Archer’s attention. “What sort of businesses?”

  “He builds houses and apartment buildings, for one. My dad’s a carpenter with that company. Lots of people moving to this area and they need some place to live. And he has a vineyard, too, a little north of here. My older brother works there building the casks and working in the grape fields. And Kemper owns a members-only country club, the Winward. It’s a mile north of here and right on the water. They have a marina and folks keep their boats there. My middle brother works there as a valet. He says it’s really nice. And Kemper owns the Mayport Hotel. That’s near Idaho Ave. My mom’s a maid there. It’s probably the nicest hotel in town.”

  “Sounds like the Kempers only deal in the nicest of everything.” He handed her a buck tip.

  Her fingers closed around it and she flashed him a smile. “Thanks, mister.”

  Archer left, fired up the Delahaye, and started off in the direction of Idaho Avenue. He glanced at the passenger seat where he’d placed the map.

  The traffic was light, and he figured he could make it in under twenty minutes. Bay Town was bustling, Archer could see that easily enough. Folks were driving and walking and biking and riding the trolleys that were gold in color and promoted Bay Town as the “place of paradise.” Folks seemed to have taken this to heart and were dressed up and shopping and working and hauling stuff and generally moving both commerce and contentment from here to there with smiles on their faces.

  Archer passed several dance halls, two buildings advertising card clubs, and a filling station where helpful uniformed attendants pumped gas, cleaned windshields, and gave out shiny toy metal cars to little boys jumping up and down in the rear seats. There was an open-air food market on a patch of green town square, where farmers in bib overalls were offering their wares from the beds of ancient pickup trucks to discerning shoppers. There was a new-looking movie theater playing The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

  The fog had burned off down here and the sun was warm, but the air was still damp and thus chilly. He looked toward the foothills where the Kempers resided and saw higher-level winds swirling up the west-facing slopes and ruffling the canopies of the sea of trees. And up there silver strands of marine fog still crept into the clefts of the rock like a thief’s hand slipping into a pocket. To his left the ocean shimmered broad and fine, with seagulls dipping for their meals and boats puttering along as they made to port or away from it. About a hundred boats of all sizes were moored in the bay, bobbing up and down to the beat of the Pacific. An airplane, a Western Airlines DC-4, glided along about a thousand feet above the water, its four propellers whirling in precise synchronization.

  Archer had flown on the military version of the DC-4 during the war. That brought back memories of a harrowing flight in dense fog that resulted in a crash landing in which not everyone had survived. But since it was World War II, the grunts who did survive got off and took up the fight once more as though nothing remotely unnerving had happened. He had never really cared for riding in planes after that.

  He crossed Sawyer Avenue going toward the ocean, and he could see what the soda jerk girl had meant. Even the dogs looked healthier over here, as did the flowers, trees, and bushes. And the sidewalks held not a scrap of paper or other trash. People were clothed in nicer duds. The price tags of the cars cruising along became elevated, pickup trucks and old, dented Fords were replaced with Coupe de Villes, Eldorados, and chromed Buick Roadmasters that looked big enough to live in. The shop fronts were classier and catered to a clientele that obviously had money. Archer had passed one beauty parlor on the other side of Sawyer. It was dingy with two cracked vinyl chairs, a dirty window, and two old women in their housecoats getting their hair dyed a color he didn’t recognize offhand. He had already passed four beauty parlors on the ritzier side of Sawyer, and each one was nicer than the one before, where each well-heeled patron was greeted at the door with a smile, a handshake, and a symbolic kiss on the behind.

  Archer slowed down for traffic and then stopped in front of a shop selling furs. He peered through the front glass and saw a hostess in a long pale green gown and silver shoes catering to an old woman and what looked to be her twenty-something granddaughter, while a tall young w
oman modeled an ankle-length mink coat. Both granny and granddaughter looked enthralled at the prospect of draping the remnants of dead things over themselves.

  He next passed the Mayport Hotel, which Kemper owned. It was six stories high and had twin columns out front, along with a top-hatted doorman in full faux military regalia. A long, pristine burgundy awning was stenciled with the hotel’s name in fancy swirls and loops of calligraphy. A cabstand out front was doing a brisk business. Tall windows were on the street side, and an oak revolving door near the end of the left side of the hotel invited folks into the Mayport Bar and Lounge for libations, live music, and good times, or so the sign said. Through one window Archer could see women in stylish hats and dress gloves having what looked to be a refined tea in the main dining area.

  He kept driving and turned left and then right before reaching Idaho Avenue. It was a trim street, shadowed and cooled by a canopy of overhanging trees. The road here transformed from asphalt to cobblestones, and the Delahaye bumped uncomfortably over them. A policeman was on the corner telling traffic where and when to go, and Archer waited his turn until the uniformed gent sent him on his way with a sharp wave of a white-gloved hand.

  He’d seen six prowl cars on the other side of Sawyer Avenue and not one on this side. As though the rich didn’t commit crimes, thought Archer. Yet, he also knew that those with lots of money didn’t do it in the open with a gun or knife or a fist like a workingman might employ. They did it in the shadows four layers removed from the actual dirty deed, and nobody came after them because they could afford the best lawyers, knew all the judges, gave to charity, and had good teeth.

  He parked in front of a ten-story limestone building that was as neat and refined as the street.

  THE KEMPER BUILDING, the gold wall plaque outside read. Archer thought Kemper might operate all his myriad businesses out of this place and then he probably rented the rest of it to other tenants. The receptionist took his name and request and got on her sleek telephone switchboard to call up to Douglas Kemper’s office. With that done, she sent him on his way with the suite number on the very top floor.

  He eyed the marquee in the lobby, and it showed that the place was fully leased, to businesses with impressive-sounding names. Overcoming his fear of enclosed spaces, Archer rode an automatic elevator car up to the top floor. It had been a bit easier to beat his phobia this time, because the elevator was mostly all glass wrapped in chrome. He thought Earl from Dash’s building might go crazy riding up and down all day in the thing. And he assumed at night that one might get some unsettling reflections. He, for one, didn’t want delusions occurring at a hundred feet in the air.

  But then again, they probably exist at street level, too.

  Chapter 29

  A PAIR OF REFLECTIVE GLASS DOORS with platinum wrappers greeted Archer at the entrance to Kemper Enterprises. Two large rubber plants in thousand-pound cast stone pots with lions in raised relief on their sides guarded this portal. Since there was no sunlight in the hall Archer wondered how these beauties could manage, but when he touched them and then smelled them, he realized they were fake.

  He opened one of the doors and stepped through. It was then that he realized the revealed anteroom was just a tease. There was no one and nothing here. Just four walls painted black and a hat and coat rack, stuck in one corner, that was bereft of both hats and coats.

  The door set directly across from him was thick oak and he found out it was locked. He saw the buzzer and the voice box, so he buzzed and prepared to use his voice.

  A woman answered, “Yes?”

  “Aloysius Archer here to see either Mr. Kemper or Mr. Wilson Sheen.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but they should be expecting me. We met this morning at Willie Dash’s office.”

  “Oh,” said the voice, and Archer heard what he expected to hear—the door being buzzed open.

  He gripped the knob, pulled, and stepped into la-la land, at least at first blush. His opinion didn’t change much on the second blush.

  The room was cavernous, awash in light, indeed so much light that stepping from a dark hall into a darker anteroom and then into this burst of illumination made Archer’s eyes squint, his pupils contract, and his head momentarily pound. The windows were floor-to-ceilings and let in as much of the descending California sun as was humanly possible. There was not a drape to be had in the whole space, apparently.

  There were six uniform desks, each lined up with the other. And on a raised dais behind them was one desk, twice as large as the others. Six women sat in the lower section. They all looked to be in their twenties, well scrubbed, professionally dressed, efficient, earnest, smart, ambitious, and platinum blonde right down to the part in the middle of the scalp. They could be sextuplets, down to their bone marrow. Carriage typewriters clicked and clacked, phones rang, and a stock market tape rattled along on one walnut-carved credenza spelling doom or fortune, depending on one’s Wall Street position. There was a frenetic energy here that was hard for Archer to wrap his head around. These ladies seemed to be living life at a different speed from the rest of humanity.

  Since the hat rack outside was empty, he figured they must keep theirs in their desk drawers.

  The walls were upholstered in what looked to be brown leather two-by-two tiles. On these walls hung paintings of seascapes and landscapes and mountainscapes, as well as other scapes Archer had never contemplated before. A marble statue of a naked woman and baby stood in one corner. Real plants whiled away their time in cast stone pots that dwarfed the ones in the hall. The overhead light fixtures were grand chandeliers with about a thousand pieces of cut crystal each, and they looked like a bitch to clean and even more of a bitch to raise to the ceiling. And that ceiling. It was flat metal copper plates acid-washed with blue, black, brown, and teal slashes. It looked like something you’d see in Europe before the war took its pound of flesh and everything else.

  The rug underneath his feet sank in two inches under his weight, and Archer didn’t think he’d hit rock bottom yet. To Archer’s mind there was too much woodwork everywhere, like an overabundance of makeup on an aging film star; in trying to hide every perceived flaw, it succeeded in wiping out all that was authentic.

  Yet the whole outfit made Willie Dash’s operation look like a plot in a desperate Depression-era Hooverville with cardboard homes and not an ounce of hope in sight. Despite that, Archer found himself preferring Dash’s humble space over this over-the-top setup.

  The large desk on the raised dais was occupied by a very different sort. She was in her thirties, tall and well shaped, and so brunette that in the sea of platinum she looked like the puppy that had gone lost. Her face held starkly intelligent features, and her eyebrows, as dark as the hair, acted like antennae, sniffing out everything before it became an issue. She was dressed all in black except for a high white collar and slips of white around the ends of her long dress sleeves. Her hair was thick and wavy and graced her head like a tiara. She had stacks of files on both sides of her desk, a phone in the middle next to an open ledger book, and no typewriter in sight, which told Archer that in addition to her heightened position behind the half-dozen ladies, she was the boss of this little dynasty. And unlike the frenetic activity going on around her, this lady exhibited an aura of languid calm, like the eye of a hurricane.

  She suddenly harrumphed, and one of the platinums obediently rose like a pet on voice command and came over to greet Archer. She was dressed in a tailored brown pants suit with dark heels, a white blouse, a yellow carnation in her buttonhole, and a splash of yellow in her breast pocket. An earthy-colored cravat was around her throat. She looked like she was just about to step onto a magazine cover for smartly dressed professional women who wanted to take over the world by 1950.

  “Mr. Archer?” she said.

  “The one and only.”

  The efficient face sparked for a moment and the lips looked like they might uplift to a smile, but then the moment w
as gone and the mask went back on. “Miss Darling will see you now.”

  “But I didn’t ask to see Miss Darling.”

  “Yes, please step this way.”

  Archer stepped that way and was led up onto the dais and deposited next to the brunette aka Miss Darling, as the platinum returned to her glorified niche and commenced to attack her typewriter once more.

  Darling looked him up and down, perhaps gaining insights into him that Archer lacked himself. He twirled his hat and said, “I’m here to see either Kemper or Sheen.”

  “Yes, I heard. Take a seat, it might be a while for either Mr. Kemper or Mr. Sheen.”

  “I only need to see them for a minute.”

  “That’s what they all say. You see that chair over there? Take it and we’ll see what happens.”

  “And if you just buzz them?”

  “You’re currently twelfth on the ‘buzz’ list.”

  “And where are the other eleven?” asked Archer.

  “They gave up. Let’s see how much stamina you have.”

  “Can you put in a good word for me?”

  “Do you have a reason why I should?” she said.

  “I’ll go smoke a cigarette like a good boy and think of one.”

  This line seemed to please her even as she deftly waved him off.

  He sat in the prescribed chair, a leather monster of a baseball mitt that looked like it might reach around and hug him to death, but ended up minding its own business. He slid a chrome ashtray stand over, lit up a Lucky, and tapped ash into it as he gave the place the once-over, once more. He came away even more impressed with its organization and blazing efficiency. The platinums worked away like ants on a hill, occasionally venturing to Darling for some reason or another, showing a piece of paper, whispering something, or in one instance writing something down for her while casting worried glances at Archer. Darling took everything in, her eyebrows flicking and clicking like knitting needles. She made firm decisions and sent the girls on their productive way.

  He finally stood and wandered over to a large map of the area that sat on a wooden stand and had red stick pins inserted all over. By reading the accompanying information section he was able to discern that these were ongoing Kemper projects, and there were an enviable number. He caught the platinums eyeing him from time to time, and Darling once. Each time he smiled, which sent them scurrying back, goggle-eyed, to their work, all except for Darling. She nodded and leisurely returned to what she was doing.