One Good Deed(9)

Pittleman smiled, took a long puff on his stogie, and shook his head. “Oh, no. That’s not how this works, Archer.”

Squinting through the man’s wispy curtain of cigar smoke, Archer said, “Well, tell me how it does work then.”

“Like your expenses, how can I know what I’m gonna get for a 1947 Cadillac? I might get five thousand for it, though I sure as hell doubt it. I was crazy in the head for not asking for more collateral.” He glanced here at Jackie. “Maybe my heart is just too soft. The point is, Archer, even if a miracle happened and I got some poor sucker to fork over five grand for the Caddy, the debt still isn’t paid in full because there’s interest on top. I got to make a profit on my money. You see that, don’t you? Money neither is nor should be free.”

“I always like to make a profit off my money too.” He rubbed his fingers over the twenties.

“Say I sell the Caddy for three thousand, then Tuttle still owes me another two thousand plus interest, plus my incidental costs of collection.” He tapped the pile of twenties. “Like this. Adds up.”

“Mr. Tuttle has dug himself one deep hole.”

A smile creased Pittleman’s face. “Hell, I didn’t make him take my money, did I?”

“You have his address, and directions there? I don’t know the area.”

Pittleman took out a thick pencil and wrote something down on a bar napkin and slid it over to Archer. “When do you expect to do this then?” he asked, pocketing the pencil.

“Soon.”

“What does soon mean?”

“Pretty soon.”

He put the twenties in his jacket pocket.

Pittleman watched this move. “Now, so you know, I have technically just made a loan to you. Though not a scrap of paper has passed between us to legally memorialize that arrangement. But my money has long strings attached. Same as Tuttle’s. And I demand honesty and integrity in my associates. Expect the same of myself.”

“Well, I aim to deliver both, Mr. Pittleman.”

In response, Pittleman drew the switchblade from his coat pocket once more, sprung it open, and speared the remaining twenties lying there, pinning them to the wood of the bar. The knife quivered there like a pine tree in the wind.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Archer didn’t even look at the blade or the stabbed twenties. “Now, where can I reach you most times?”

“Right here at this time will do, every day except Saturday and the Sabbath.”

“And then you’ll be at worship?”

“No, then I’ll be with my dear, beloved wife.”

Pittleman suddenly clutched his head and grimaced in pain.

“Hey, you okay?” asked Archer, gripping him by the shoulder.

“Must be all this cheap hooch.”

Recovered, Pittleman unpinned his knife and thrust it back inside his pocket after closing it. “I trust I will hear good news from you, Archer.”

Archer tipped his hat first to Jackie and then to Pittleman.

“I will do my best.”

“For me you will, you mean?”

“Well, can you see it any other way?”

Archer headed to the door while most of those at the bar, and Pittleman and Jackie in particular, watched him go.

He was no longer shuffling. He was walking upright, springy and brisk, like any free man with serious folding money in his pocket would.





Chapter 4



IT WAS FIVE MINUTES before nine in the morning. The sun was scaling the sky, which was a dazzling blue without a single cloud marring its surface. As Archer stood there on the pavement, looking up, he had started to doubt that cumulus was even allowed here.

Then he lowered his gaze and turned it to the Poca City Courts and Municipality Building. Done in the rococo style and also decidedly on the cheap, the structure was easily big enough for the unwieldy name chiseled across its imitation stone front that was bracketed by false spindle turrets and its middle filled in with even more curious architectural elements. It looked to Archer like it had been dropped from a fairy tale into their midst. A castle without a king or queen; he wondered what they had done with the moat.

Archer spat on his hand and wiped it through his hair before replacing his hat there. He had sink-washed his shirt, undershorts, and socks the night before, letting the breeze dry them fine. His worn and dusty Oxfords had been spit-polished. He’d even found an iron at the hotel, and for a nickel’s worth of rental time had done the best he could on his suit and shirt; he’d even given his slender tie a few passes. He’d stopped by a barbershop and splurged for a shave overseen by a tiny, wrinkled black man with no teeth, who wielded his strap and razor like a musketeer. His jaw and chin had never been this smooth since he’d dropped from the womb.

He was as smart-looking as he was ever likely to be, he figured.

The lobby had marble floor tiles in swirls of emerald green and fat columns holding up a ceiling with murals depicting things close to the musical infants stuck in the fountain, just with more color and poorer taste. He quickly found the proper department, emblazoned as it was on a black-backed directory, in a lobby that was full of strays looking for direction, as he was.

The elevator was a grill-door operation, which Archer still did not cotton to. So he walked two floors up and headed down the hall counting office numbers as he went. He neared the sheriff’s haunts and also that of the tax revenue bureau. A uniformed man in his fifties came out of the former’s door as he passed by and gave Archer the once-over. He had on a big Stetson hat, a Colt long-barreled revolver in a waist holster, and sported a gut that one would see coming around the corner before one did its owner. Pinned to his broad chest was a shiny pointed star.