One Good Deed(110)

Archer pressed a dollar into the man’s callused hand. “Thanks, friend, you have no idea how much that helps me.”

“Good luck.”

“I think I’m going to need it.”

Archer hustled to the row of little one-room dwellings and reached the last one.

He knocked on the door and a girlish voice said, “Who is it?”

Doing a reasonably good impression of Manuel’s baritone, Archer said, “Mrs. Pittleman needs you right now, Amy.”

“Just a minute.”

Less than a minute later the door opened and there stood Amy. She looked up at Archer, astonished beyond belief, and then she smiled disarmingly. “What are you doing here, Mr. Archer?”

She stopped smiling when Archer pulled out the .38 and pointed it at her.

Terrified, she backed up, and Archer entered and closed the door behind him. He looked around the tiny dimensions of the room, which was not much bigger than his prison cell had been. It was furnished in a rudimentary fashion. Cot, dresser with a washbowl and pitcher on top. One wooden chair with a broken back. Pegs on the wall for clothes, of which she had few. A small square of tattered rug over the cold plank floor. There was a chill in the air and the distinct odor of mildew. He figured her bathroom would be a nearby outhouse.

“Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the cot, while he took up residence in the chair.

She sat and looked at him fearfully. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“I need you to tell me, right now, where Jackie and Ernestine are.”

She looked at him blankly and said nothing. She just sat there with tears forming in her eyes and her small face twitching.

He rose and roughly gripped her by the arm, jerking the woman to her feet. “Okay, let’s just go to the coppers then. They’ll be able to hang somebody, might as well be you, sister.”

Amy’s bloodless face collapsed, and she pulled against him and wailed, “Wait, wait, please. Don’t. I—”

He looked around the room again. “They shake some cash in front of you? A way out of this dump. How much?” When she didn’t answer he pointed the revolver at her again and said quietly, “I’m one desperate son of a gun, lady. So how much?”

“A…a th-thousand dollars.”

Archer sat back down, took out his pack of smokes, flicked one out, and placed it, unlit, between his teeth. “Where’s the crate?”

“Crate?”

“Box, crate, whatever the hell you want to call it. This is pretty damn simple, Amy, it was all about the dough.”

When she didn’t say anything, Archer nodded slowly. “Okay, let me just spell it out just so you know I’m not bluffing. They came that night in the Nash. Not to see Marjorie. No way Jackie’s working a deal with a lady who hates her guts. So my gut tells me they came to see you. ’Cause you look like the sort that would do just about anything for money. And Jackie would be over here a lot because she was seeing Hank Pittleman. And I bet she sized you up real quick. And that other maid, old sourpuss Agnes, doesn’t have the grit that Jackie needed. They had a trunk full of gold bars, cash, hell, maybe the damn crown jewels, for all I know. And they needed a way to get it outta Poca City.” He glanced out the window in the direction of HP Trucking. “Is it in the warehouse over there?” When she didn’t answer, Archer said very quietly, his gaze boring into her, “You willing to swing at the end of a rope for a thousand bucks, sister? Better give it to me straight, or that’s where you’re ending up.”

She started to sob. “I just did what they told me to do. I didn’t know nobody was going to get killed.”

“Well, they did. And the law says ignorance is no excuse. You’re just as guilty as they are. Now, take me to what they brought here that night.”

They took the long way around to the Buick and drove directly over to the warehouse. There was no one yet there, it still being early. The big double doors were locked, but Archer found a window on the side that succumbed to his knife. He pushed Amy through and followed her in. He turned on his flashlight and aimed the beam around the huge interior of the place. It was piled high with merchandise ready to be shipped out.

“Where?” he demanded.

She led him to the very back corner where a number of boxes were piled high. Right behind this stack was the large metal four-wheeled trolley cart the men had used to bring the boxes in that Archer had loaded on Sid Duckett’s truck. And behind that was something covered with a blanket. Archer slipped off the blanket and a wooden crate was revealed. He aimed his light beam at the shipping label on top and read off what was written there.

He looked at the quivering Amy. “I…I don’t even know where that is,” she said, eyeing the crate’s final destination.

Archer said, “Well, I do. And it makes a lot of sense, actually.”

He found a crowbar, popped open the top of the crate, and peered inside. He found the contents of Lucas Tuttle’s safe underneath a great deal of folded-up women’s clothes and shoes and blankets and sheets, probably for additional padding and also to fool anyone chancing to look inside that it was just full of such items and no hint to a king’s ransom lurking there. He thought that some of the clothing might have come from Jackie and Ernestine. In fact, he believed that he recognized a few items from Ernestine’s closet. And they would want their personal things to also be delivered to where they were headed.