“I went yesterday afternoon. Knocked on the door and talked to him.”
Pittleman shook his head in confusion and poured another cup of coffee from a silver-plated pot with a long, curved spout. A platinum cigarette case was on the table lying open. Inside were gold-tipped, needle-thin smokes. Next to that was a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver with walnut grips and a hair trigger manually filed down to make it so.
“You like that little belly gun?” asked Archer.
“Nice gat. Drops what I hit, can’t ask for more.”
With hiked eyebrows Archer said, “How often do you drop things?”
“Depends on the target and my mood.”
“With that hair trigger do you even bother fanning the hammer?”
“I shoot slow, but I don’t miss. Isn’t that right, Marjorie?”
She didn’t respond, but Archer didn’t think Pittleman expected her to.
Pittleman took a drink of his coffee and the movement revealed on his wrist a watch encrusted with six diamonds and twin sapphires. Archer saw the name LONGINES etched on the face underneath the glass. He looked down at his own timepiece and reminded himself that they both told the same story despite being separated by a truckload of dollars.
Pittleman said, “So why the hell did you go out there and see Tuttle in broad daylight? You think he was going to just hand you the keys to the damn Caddy? You can’t be that cockeyed, boy!”
“No, sir. I just wanted to verify that he owed the money.”
“I already verified that to you, son. Are you simple? Did I make a mistake hiring you?”
“Well, he did verify it. And he has the money to pay the debt off. Which I think you probably want more than the car. Am I right about that? I mean, you said it wouldn’t come close to paying off the debt and interest and such.”
“You are right about that. So what?”
“Well, there’s one little sticking point on the debt.”
“And what might that be?”
Archer glanced at Marjorie and did not proceed.
Pittleman looked confused for a moment before exclaiming, “Good Lord, is it Jackie we’re talking about?”
Archer shot another glance at Marjorie, who was now drinking her coffee and leafing through a magazine with a placid expression. She could be in church marching silently through her catechisms, he thought.
“That’s what he said. He wants her back.”
“She’s an adult, in case you and her daddy didn’t notice. She can decide on her own.”
“But he won’t pay back—”
“Which is why I told you to get the goddamn car, Archer. Hell, boy, I didn’t need you to go out there and ask the man what his problem was in paying me back my money. I know what it was. He doesn’t like the fact that his daughter is now seeing me. Now go paste that in your new hat bought with my money.”
“So you know all that then?”
“Let me tell you something else I know, son. Jackie’s current status doesn’t give Lucas Tuttle a pot to piss in when it comes to a legal obligation owed to yours truly.”
“Why not take him to court then?” asked Archer.
Pittleman sat back in stark wonderment. “What, and subject my dear wife here to gossip of a perverse nature? To dredging up facts in a court of law that might prove painful to her? No sir.” He patted his wife’s hand. “I love her too much to put her through that.”
“I can see that,” said Archer slowly, when in truth he could see none of it. He eyed the three-initial monogram on the man’s shirt cuff.
“Got a problem with something?” said Pittleman when he caught him looking there.
“You afraid you might put on another man’s shirt by mistake?”
“Funny guy, huh? If I’d known that when I hired you, maybe I wouldn’t have. Now get your ass out there, Archer, and take back my collateral by hook or crook. And if you don’t, you’re going to owe me forty dollars with interest. And I might leave you naked on the street, son, with more wounds than you got fighting the Krauts. Where you staying?”
“Derby Hotel.”
“Mighty fine place,” said Pittleman, with another sly glance in Marjorie’s direction. “You need money to keep staying there. And you sure know how to get it, don’t you?”
He turned back to his paper.
“Got another question,” said Archer.
“We’re done here,” replied Pittleman as he picked up the belly gun and examined it, the barrel pointing in Archer’s general direction.
Archer next looked at Marjorie, who was still leafing through her Saturday Evening Post magazine, apparently mesmerized more by the words therein than by her husband’s admitted adultery.
Pittleman glanced at her. “You need anything, honey? Just tell me, if you do now.”
She graced him with a smile. “I’m just fine, Hank.”
“Hell, I know you’re fine. Just ask any man.” He glanced at Archer. “And why are you still here, son? Have I not made myself as clear as the sky outside?”
Archer rose and tipped his hat at the woman. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Pittleman.”
She nodded absently at him, her gaze holding on the magazine.
He walked to the door, looked back at the odd couple, and could only shake his head.
On his way out, he glimpsed a young woman in a maid’s uniform scampering up the stairs. She looked back, saw him watching, and gave him a wide smile. He tipped his hat and returned the smile. She hiked her eyebrows fetchingly, then disappeared from sight.
He waved to Manuel, who opened the gate for him. He passed through and headed for the road. He walked for a while, the dust collecting on him like metal fragments to a magnet. He finally hitched a ride on a slow-moving Model A heading to Poca City and driven by a man dressed all in black who said he was a circuit preacher. He told Archer he needed to repent his ways, regardless of what they were, and gave him a pamphlet from a wooden box in the back that was entitled “The Devil Is Inside You.”
Archer got back to town over an hour later and threw the pamphlet away in the first trash can he spotted.
I know the devil’s inside me and maybe I like it that way.
He went back to the Derby and washed off the dust in the hall bath. He went in search of and bought a bottle of Blue Bird gin and two packs of Lucky Strikes and a box of matches. He walked back to his room and debated what to do.
Tuttle was not giving up the money if Jackie stayed with Pittleman.
Pittleman was going to do nothing about that situation.
So the only way for Archer to make any money off this was to take the damn Cadillac.
But all the others who had attempted it had failed. Or maybe died trying if the Remington had anything to say about it. He didn’t even know where the man kept the sedan. Maybe in one of the outbuildings he’d glimpsed when he was there.
Tuttle would be on his guard for another attempt, and while Archer would die for his country, and almost had, he didn’t relish kicking the bucket via buckshot simply trying to earn a living. But if he didn’t get the car, Pittleman, who he assumed was a man of his word, would probably tar and feather Archer before running him out of town. And if he could argue that Archer had taken his money and not done what he promised, that constituted a crime and he’d be right back in Carderock.
He smoked a Lucky right down to nothing, drank his gin slow and easy, and pondered why he had not taken the simpler route and become a hog-brain basher like Dickie Dill. This made him think of the scrawled note he’d found in Ernestine Crabtree’s office. He pulled it out of his old jacket, read it again, found it even more disturbing, and put it back where it had been.