One Good Deed(84)

“What will they be talking about?”

“Lots of things. Some I know, some I don’t have a clue about. But are you okay with that?”

“I am. If that’s what she wants.”

He finished his drink, rose, and fingered his hat, looking nervous.

“Is there something else?” she asked quietly, peering up at him.

“My old man, rest his soul, was a good father. He, uh, he stood up for me a lot when I was a kid. I grew into my height and all later on. So some of the bigger kids would rough me up and such. But my dad was always there.” Archer held up a fist. “He taught me how to fight proper and all.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Sometimes my father would go too far, though. He beat up a couple older kids that had knocked me around. Police got called out on him. He almost went to jail, but in the end didn’t. It was bad all around for everybody, and back then I got mad at my old man for doing it. But the thing I came to understand is that he did what he did because he loved me. It really was that simple.”

Perhaps involuntarily, Ernestine glanced in the direction of her bedroom and where the scrapbook lay before her large and now sad eyes came to rest on him once more.

“Do you understand what I mean?” Archer said, his look unsure and anxious.

“I think I understand exactly what you mean, Archer,” she replied.

She looked at him with an expression that Archer couldn’t entirely fathom. It was sort of caught between hope and heartbreak, he supposed.

“Ernestine, you okay?”

“I’m fine, Archer, thank you. I hope everything works out for you.”

“Yeah, me too. Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she said with something akin to finality, at least in his eyes.

Troubled by this odd impression, he left.





Chapter 35



THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Archer ventured down to the Rexall drugstore, with the big orange-and-blue sign. Sitting at the counter he smoked a pair of Luckys while he devoured his bologna-and-cheese sandwich with a pickle, and drank down a lukewarm bottle of Coca-Cola. He bought some aspirin from the blue-smocked druggist standing behind the counter and downed a couple pills with the remnants of his soda pop. He idly watched a young, slender woman in geranium red coveralls loading Life and Look magazines into a wire rack next to a shelf of toiletries.

Finished with his meal, Archer ducked into the phone booth adjacent to the lunch counter, looked up the number in a phone book dangling from a chain, then dropped in a nickel and made the necessary call because he didn’t want to surprise a man who answered his door with a shotgun. As he fingered the rotary dial and listened to the familiar clicks and whirls as it spun, he thought about what to say. He decided to make it short and sweet. When the call was answered, it wasn’t Tuttle, it was his secretary, Desiree. The conversation went far more pleasantly than if Tuttle had been on the line.

Later, under a vast, blue sky, Archer pushed the Nash fast as he roared down the road leading to Lucas Tuttle’s. The big, bulky car handled well and had plenty of power, like Shaw’s Buick. Before taking the wheel of the Buick, Archer hadn’t driven a car in years. For obvious reasons, the prison folks had not deemed it sensible to allow convicts to command heavy pieces of equipment.

He felt open and free, and part of him contemplated taking this Nash all the way to California, where he had heard the jobs were plentiful, the weather was always warm, and all the women looked like Rita Hayworth. Then the thought of Irving Shaw with his ribbon of mustache and indefatigable thirst for the truth made Archer ashamed he had even thought of making a run for it. Now he wanted to know the truth as much as the lawman did.

He turned past the leaning mailbox and hurtled down the road, cut to the right, and pulled up in front of the neat house a bit later.

He climbed out and looked around, thinking it had to have been something pretty bad for Jackie to forgo all this to take up with someone like Hank Pittleman. He didn’t care how much money the man had. He had forsaken his wife and chosen a younger woman because Marjorie had the audacity to grow old. Well, Pittleman had gotten old, too. For Archer, who had never taken the plunge, marriage was for life, right or wrong, good or bad. You just didn’t wake up one day and decide enough was enough because your mate had a few more wrinkles or a few more pounds.

Maybe that’s why I never got hitched. Maybe I’m afraid I can’t live up to the vows.

He put on his hat, angled it just so, and headed to the front door.

Rapping twice, he expected to see the door open and the Remington over-under appear in his field of vision. He braced himself for that in fact, but it wasn’t necessary.

Desiree Lankford, dressed in a dark gray skirt and a three-button jacket with a pale blouse and sensible pumps, greeted him.

“Hello, Mr. Archer,” she said. “You’re right on time. This way.”

She led him down a hall floored in two-by-two-foot terra cotta tile. As he gazed around, he noted once more the old wooden beams running along the ceiling and the walls plastered and thick. The place smelled of wood fires and age.

“You live here?” asked Archer.

“No, but I don’t live too far away. I’m heading out now, in fact. I hope your meeting goes all right.”

Desiree led him to a door and opened it.