Jackie insisted on paying and Archer didn’t protest too much, since he would have had to dig into the dregs of his remaining cash to do so. Still, a woman should not pay for a man’s meal. It just wasn’t done.
“You have any work needs doing, let me know. I can pay off the meal.”
She ran an appraising eye over him. “Oh, I’ll let you know all right. You might come in very handy for what I need.”
Jackie then gave him such a look that Archer felt himself blush for one of the few times in his life.
As they walked out, Archer thought he saw Ernestine glance at him, but that also might have been his imagination. Dickie and his pals had long since left. Archer kept a sharp eye out for them on the street but saw neither hide nor hair of the terrible trio.
It was warm, the air still bone dry as they walked along.
“Does any moisture ever creep into the ether here?” he asked.
“Now and again, but not so you’d notice much. We’re pretty far from the ocean.”
“Guess so.”
“It does brittle your skin. I have to slather on moisturizer after I get out of the bathtub.”
Okay, thought Archer, that was a deliberately low blow, designed to knock him off his stride. And it succeeded beautifully. He nearly ran into a lamppost.
Jackie entwined his arm with hers and said, “You want to head over to the Cat’s Meow? We could do some dancing and quench our thirst for real. No bender, just a couple of highballs.”
“Aren’t you Pittleman’s gal?”
“We see each other from time to time. But I’m not his ‘gal.’ He provides for me.”
“Okay.”
“So you want to go drinking and dancing?”
“I’ll have to take a rain check on that.”
She did not look pleased by his refusal. “I might not ask again.”
“I understand that. Look, you have any idea where your father keeps the Caddy?”
She stepped away from him. “Do I look like a patsy? First, you give me the cold shoulder, and now you ask me to make your job easier, Archer? Why should I? Give me one reason.”
“I can’t think of a single one, Jackie.”
This frank answer seemed to soften the hardened edge she had adopted. “Well, he used to keep it in the barn.”
“Used to?”
“Would you keep it in the same place if a bunch of men had tried to take it?”
“Right. So where, then?”
She put a fist on her hip and stared at him. “There’s a building about a quarter mile behind the barn. My father stores old farm equipment there. If I were you, I’d look there.”
“Any idea where he might keep the car keys?”
“No.”
“That’s okay. I know how to hotwire a car.”
“Do you now? How is that, I wonder?”
“The Germans weren’t always good about leaving the keys behind when they abandoned their vehicles, so the Army taught me what to do.”
“Good old Army,” she said. “Providing skills you can use your whole felonious life.”
“Thanks, Jackie, for the information.”
“Don’t thank me, Archer, it’s your funeral.”
He thought she would just turn and leave, but she didn’t. She rose up on her heeled tiptoes, hugged him tight, and pressed her ruby-red lips against his cheek, leaving her mark upon him. She smelled of gin and lime, and also lavender and maybe the moisturizer she used after climbing naked from the bathtub. She slowly withdrew her body from his, her hands sliding down his shoulders, along his obliques, and then around his waist.
“See you around, Archer.”
“Yeah.”
She turned and left him there on the street.
Right now, he couldn’t have hit a German with a bazooka at a foot’s distance. He took off his new hat and slapped it hard against his thigh, giving himself a sting from the blow. Not so much to rid himself of the ubiquitous dust, but to make himself feel some hurt for allowing a lovely young woman who wanted to drink and dance and maybe do other things with him get off scot-free thinking he was a lame SOB from the east of here.
He went back to the hotel and slept until one in the afternoon dreaming of tubs and moisturizer and a host of college co-eds applying same and who all looked like Jackie Tuttle. He had dinner at a place cheaper than the Checkered Past. After that he stopped at a hardware store, where he bought a clasp knife and a Ray-O-Vac flashlight with batteries for the grand total of a buck-fifty from a man in a dirty undershirt with a bib tucked in gnawing on a chicken leg and holding a Pabst Blue Ribbon in the other mitt. Both these tools would come in handy.
Later that night, he glanced at the still cloudless sky, wondering if actual weather had been somehow suspended over Poca City. He then turned to look at the road where the bus had dropped him. It seemed like at least a year ago, but not in the way of accomplishment, since he had none. He set off to see about taking back a 1947 Cadillac sedan without dying in the face of the Remington.
He had had the good sense to change into his old clothes from prison. He reasoned that if he did get killed they could bury him in the new duds instead of the old, blood-splattered ones, and there’d be nothing Hank Pittleman could do about it.
Archer angled his hat just so and set off to snatch a Caddy.
Chapter 10
He managed to hitch a ride on a Peterbilt long-haul truck. The tobacco-chewing driver said he was taking freight all the way to Nevada and could do with some company for a bit. For a good hour he and Archer sat in the cab and talked about the war — the driver had served in the Navy — and the New York Yankees probably winning the World Series again.
“Hell, I can see ’em winning a bunch in a row, the lineup they got,” said the driver.
“What about that player with the Dodgers?” said Archer. “Jackie Robinson?”
The man nodded. “That colored boy can hit something fierce, I’ll give him that, and run like the durn wind.” He spit his chew into a Maxwell House coffee can riding next to him on the seat. “Won Rookie of the Year in ’47.”
“Heard he might be the National League MVP this year,” said Archer.
“Maybe so, fella, maybe so.”
Then they had turned to politics, speculating that maybe Dwight D. Eisenhower would run for president when Truman was all said and done.
“I like old Ike,” said the driver.
“Make a good campaign slogan,” opined Archer.
He had the man drop him off about a mile before Tuttle’s, figuring he didn’t want any witnesses to what he was planning.
Archer walked the rest of the way. A silky darkness had fallen by the time he got to the mailbox, with the air turning chilly. He made the turn at the fork and squatted down, studying the house and the barn and the flat, tilled fields beyond. Channeling his instincts as an Army scout, Archer looked at what needed looking at and formulated a plan. The Caddy clearly wasn’t in the house. The barn was the next logical choice, but Jackie had warned him off that. But still. He had to be sure.
He skittered over to the barn, found the door unlocked, which did not give him any ease, and decided to approach the place from another entry point. A side window succumbed to the nudges of his knife, and he entered there and shone his Ray-O-Vac flashlight around. It was quickly apparent that the car wasn’t in here. But there was another vehicle. He ran his light over it. It was a four-door, long-hooded, burgundy automobile with a beige cloth top and whitewall tires. He opened the door and looked at the license and registration cards on the steering post. It was in Tuttle’s name, and the car was a 1938 Cadillac LaSalle. It was a beautiful car, just not the Cadillac he was looking for.
After a bit of a trudge over uneven ground, he found the outbuilding right where Jackie said it would be. But there was nothing inside except ancient pieces of farm equipment, including a strange-looking device that had several cone-shaped nodules fronting it. He shone his flashlight over it and read off the words, ALLIS-CHALMERS CORN-PICKER. This farming business was more complicated than he had thought. Frustrated now, he left the shed, and squatted on his haunches, pondering what to do next.