A Gambling Man (Archer #2)(28)

“Don’t worry. Guys like cars, but they like beautiful women better.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all morning, Archer. Now, let’s blow this joint.”

He was loading the bags into the trunk of the Delahaye as a prowler drifted by. The two cops inside gave the Delahaye, and then Archer, long looks, before floating on to the next street.

By the time they were about to drive off, the prowler had drifted back downstream and docked next to them. The passenger’s-side window was cranked down, revealing the meaty face of a guy in his forties with a clean-shaven slab of skin that was sunburned and windburned around the neck and forehead. His brown hair was cut close to the scalp. Archer thought he might be ex-military. His shoulders were wide enough to swallow the window on the prowler. His partner was tall and reedy, and seemed not nearly as interested in them as Meaty was.

“Nice car,” said the cop.

“Yeah, isn’t it,” replied Archer with a friendly grin. He wanted this to go only one way, when it could so easily go the other.

“Where’d you get something like that?” Meaty had apparently read the name located on the chrome front of the car, because he said, “A Delahaye? What the hell is that?”

“French made. But it was built for an Englishman, which is why the steering wheel’s on this side.”

“Where’d you get it, pal?”

Archer had been expecting this and said, “From a collector over in Reno. He had some money setbacks and needed to sell.”

“You look pretty young to have the dough to lay down for this piece of chrome.”

“Yeah, it was a sweetheart deal, but I have to keep paying on it for a while.”

The cop pushed back his cap and thought about this, his eyes going back and forth and then reaching to Archer’s eyes and holding like the searchlight bolted to the side of the prowler.

Archer didn’t like that look. It was probing and distrustful and seemed to be angling for any reason to bust his head open and put the cuffs on. Pretty much every cop he’d ever run into had, at some point, given him that very same look.

“You got papers that prove that?”

“If you really need me to get them, yeah.”

The cop’s features turned to stone at this slight pushback, and the glare he shot Archer was all official and aggressive and the look of a dog who’d just found a dinosaur bone to crack open and then devour.

“Let me tell you something, buddy—” he began sharply.

Callahan stuck her head around Archer’s. “Are you from Coalinga, Officer?” She smacked him with an ear-to-ear smile.

He eyed her features and grinned. “Born and bred, ma’am.”

“I’m from back east, but I wouldn’t have minded growing up here.”

“Yes ma’am.” Then the cop’s grin faded as he looked at the Delahaye’s damaged windscreen post where the bullet had struck. Next his gaze dropped to the door panel and held there; his expression grew even more serious. Felony serious, thought Archer, who was noting every changing nuance of this little confrontation.

“What the hell is that?” the cop asked, pointing.

Archer dropped his gaze and saw it. His first instinct was to hit the gas. His second was to look up to see the cop watching him closely.

“Looks like blood to me,” said the cop. “What’s it look like to you, mister?”

Archer knew that blood was exactly what it was. The car had been parked in the picnic area near the shoot-out. The blast from the shotgun had obviously driven some of the dead man’s blood spatter onto the Delahaye’s metal. Archer hadn’t noticed it in the dark and, for some reason, hadn’t noticed it in the light of morning, either. It was, unfortunately, clearly revealed to him now.

“We hit something on the road last night. A deer, a coyote, some animal. Banged the windscreen and then I guess it brushed the side of the car.”

“But no dent,” said the cop, getting out to look closer. His buddy joined him, coming around the side of the prowler, his hand on the butt of his leather-holstered Colt .45. He looked like he wanted something to shoot.

“You’d expect a dent, right, Jimmy?” Meaty said, looking at his partner, who had an Adam’s apple so pronounced it looked like a tumor. “Ain’t no dent that I can see. You hit a deer or a big cat, you’re gonna have a dent or at least some paint scratches, yes sir. Something weird going on here. I got me some questions, mister.”

He bent down to look closer, while Jimmy kept his distance, probably in case he had to draw and shoot Archer on the fly. Meaty looked up and said, “Step out of the car, buddy.”

It was right then that Callahan got out of the car and came around to them.

Both cops took a whiff of her nectary perfume and came to rigid attention, like a bailiff had just called the court to order. Archer was gratified that their full focus was on the lady and her tight dress rather than the blood and absence of dents.

“I was driving at the time when we hit something. Scared the bejesus out of me,” she said. “Didn’t it?” she added, looking at Archer.

“The bejesus,” repeated Archer.

“ ‘Bejesus,’ that’s an Irish term,” said Meaty. “Hey, are you Irish, Miss?”

She put out a gloved hand for him to shake. “Name’s Callahan, Liberty Callahan, so that would be a yes. I am most definitely Irish, officer.”