“There used to be gun and rum runners in Malibu years ago, especially during Prohibition. Hell, Ramirez Canyon used to be called Whiskey Gulch. I’ll let you figure that one out. The whole coast down there was a smuggler’s paradise. Portuguese Bend, Rancho Palos Verdes. The mother boat stays out to sea and they run the small fast boats to shore with the stuff and a lot of manpower. Quick in and out.”
“Sounds exactly like what I saw last night.”
“You were lucky, Archer. You might not be so lucky next time.”
“I’m not going after smugglers. Just a missing writer.”
“So, the Jade Lion Bar.”
“You know it?” said Archer.
“I don’t have to. I got nothing against the Chinese, but you can’t go in there thinking normal rules apply because they don’t. Thirty-forty years ago you had opium dens and gambling houses and whorehouses and Tong warfare all over. That’s been cleaned up since they knocked down old Chinatown to build Union Station and they all got moved to what used to be Little Italy a mile away. Now the place has nice shops and restaurants and nice people living and working there, just like they do in other communities. But just like in other communities, you got good and you got not so good and you got really bad. And the really bad places all have the same MO.”
“Namely?”
“Their side business is selling one thing — booze, food, medicine. Their main act is always selling something else and it’s the something else that breaks a book’s worth of statutes.”
“Well, Lamb might have been a frequent visitor to it.”
“I understand your interest.”
“Did you find out anything on Cedric Bender?”
“He’s in our line of work, Archer.”
“You mean he’s a PI?”
“And apparently a respected one. I got a physical description for you.” Archer heard paper rustling. Dash said, “Five-ten, heavy set, thinning gray hair, in his fifties.”
“That matches the dead guy. And his car is missing, too.”
“So the questions are who killed him, where, and why? And what did they do with his ride?”
“He had to have a connection to Lamb.”
“Why?”
“I found him in her house!”
“You can’t jump to that conclusion. Someone could have dumped his body there to incriminate her.”
“I actually fed that line to Oldham. He didn’t bite on it.”
“And the guy who answered the phone couldn’t be Bender. He was already dead.”
“Maybe it was the guy who killed him.”
“Killers don’t normally answer phones. And since it looks like he was killed elsewhere, chances are they dumped him there for some reason. And that reason isn’t good for Lamb, since it’s put the county cops right on her doorstep. She may have gone on the run. And she might not be running just from the likes of Phil Oldham.”
“Or else she’s dead. And then there’s the matter of who knocked me out.”
“Could’ve been the guy who answered the phone. Or it might have been Lamb. Big enough sap and enough motivation, even a lady could lay your butt out, Archer.”
“Makes me wonder why they didn’t finish the job with me.”
“Could be simple. They had one body to deal with and didn’t want another one.”
“So you think whoever killed Bender is trying to frame Lamb?”
“Considering they had the world’s biggest ocean right next door to dump him in but used her home sweet home instead, it’s a plausible theory. What’s your next move?”
“I’ve got one lead to follow up with and then I’m going to hit this Jade Lion Bar tonight and see what shakes out.”
“You want me to come down?”
“I can handle it, for now. When I can’t you’ll be the first to know.”
“How’s Liberty?”
“If anything, even more beautiful.”
“Oh, Archer, you got it so bad, son.”
Chapter 20
Archer put the phone down and looked at his watch. It was almost six. He scribbled a note to Callahan and went back out to the Delahaye. He drove to Boleros and parked on a side street to hide it from sight, since Ransome had already seen the car. He passed by competing billboards for the Roy Rogers TV show and Gene Autry’s program. Both men were in full frontier regalia. Rogers held a pearl-handled six-shooter, while Autry brandished a fancy guitar. There wasn’t a speck of dust or dirt on their colorful cowboy duds. Their smiles were sparkling white even in the growing gloom. This made him think of Jacoby’s comments on maybe a more sobering and substantive dawn coming for the country. Well, Archer, for one, thought it was long overdue.
He walked into Boleros and looked around. It was pretty much like every other dive bar he’d been in. Wooden stools worn down by drunken butts, a slick, scarred bar with a string of names either carved by knife or via the long fingernails of the inebriated, a few rickety tables, a scattering of more private booths, three tiered rows of bottles behind the bar, and cigarette smoke grazing the ceiling like trapped clouds. The only things that looked out of place were a battered and dusty black baby grand piano with fake gold trim by the window, and a cadaverous old man dressed in a tux from the early forties with a tacky white carnation pinned to his lapel sitting at the piano. He had a toothpick dangling from bloodless lips and an old bowler hat pushed back on his mostly bald head. He was pecking out an Andrews Sisters tune that was impressing truly nobody, not even him. When someone dropped a dime into the neon jukebox and Eddie Fisher came on to sing “Tell Me Why,” the cadaver got up to hit the men’s room.
The bar wasn’t crowded yet but Archer knew that would change, particularly on a holiday. LA liked its booze and a place to sit and drink that was not home, particularly if you were married and your wife didn’t understand you.
He picked the booth that would allow his back to be to the door, but also have him facing the mirror over the bar, enabling him to see anyone coming in. The woman who escorted him to that booth asked for his drink order. She was petite, in her early twenties, brown-haired, slim-hipped, and full of spunky attitude.
“Make it a cup of coffee black to start and we’ll go from there. And make sure it’s fresh.”
“Oh, what a dream customer you are.”
He slipped the woman a five and she clammed up and went away to fetch the coffee.
Archer kept his hat on to hide the bandage. He got his coffee, which was good and hot, and watched as it started to rain, the chilly drops pitter-pattering the glass like liquid bullets.
Archer suddenly remembered he hadn’t had any food since his noontime breakfast. “What do you have to eat in this place?” he asked the waitress.
She leaned down with a pouty look and said, “Sandwiches, potato chips on the side. And a fat pickle.”
“Any good?”
She put her elbows on the table. “Tell you what, dreamy, for another five I’ll grill the rye and make it myself with love and kisses. A Reuben do it for you? We got real Russian dressing.”
“Sold, but go light on the Russian dressing.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? We’re in a Cold War.”
He ate while the rain drizzled down. The Reuben was warm and excellent, and Archer ate fast. He was finishing his last potato chip when, at seven on the dot, he saw her glide in. Cecily Ransome hadn’t changed clothes since he’d seen her before, only now she was wearing a man’s black fedora and a dark peacoat with a white scarf, because the rain had dropped the temperature. With the coat and her hair hidden inside the hat, she could have easily been mistaken for a man. She lowered her umbrella, looked around, and walked over to a corner booth on the other side of the room.
The jukebox had gone quiet for the moment, but the cadaver had come back from an extended performance in the john and was doing an Irving Berlin tune, badly. The growing number of people around the bar, both young and old, took turns glancing his way and probably wondering what the hell he was even doing here.