A Gambling Man (Archer #2)(34)

“Aren’t Willie Dash and his secretary here?”

The man grinned. “Hell, they don’t count. They work here. I need me some fresh, smiling faces like yours. Keeps me going. You going to see Willie?”

Archer nodded.

“Fourth floor. Suite 401. Let’s get to it, young man.”

Archer hesitated for a moment, glancing at the wooden door with a wired pane of glass leading to the stairs for a few moments until the man said, “Time waits for no man, mister, and don’t I know it. I’ll be worm food before long.”

Archer stepped on.

The man closed the cage door and then hit the button for the fourth floor, which automatically closed the car’s outer solid metal door.

Archer sucked in a breath and felt his body stiffen and his pulse race. He shut his eyes and pretended he was outside with all sorts of possibilities for escape.

The man had swiveled around in his seat and stared at him as the car began its glacial ascent of thirty or so feet.

“When’d you get out, friend?” asked the man with a knowing look.

Archer opened his eyes. The old fellow smiled, showing off perfectly white teeth, and all of them real, as far as Archer could tell.

“Get out of where?”

The fellow snorted. “Come on, don’t BS me. The joint, man.”

“How do you figure that?”

“How do I not figure it, you mean. Been inside myself, lots of times, all together longer than you been alive. And carried lots of men up to see Willie who got the elevator disease, same as you. Stair doors you can open all by yourself.” He tapped the cage. “Not like these. Remind you of bars, don’t they?”

“Does it go away?”

“Look at me. I live in a goddamn elevator, son.”

“How long did it take you?”

“I won’t say ’cause I don’t want to discourage you.”

“I got on, didn’t I?” retorted Archer.

“Sure you did. Now stop sweating and looking like you gonna puke and we getting somewhere.”

Archer put a hand against the wall. “What can you tell me about Willie Dash?”

The man picked up his paper but his brown eyes stayed on Archer. “What you want to know?”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“You looking to hire him?”

“No, work for him.”

This surprised the man. He took a moment to light up his stogie, sticking the burned match in a metal cup that stuck out from the wall of the car. “Work for him? What, you a baby shamus or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, Willie is getting up there, all right. Can’t be doing this forever.”

“But he’s good at what he does?”

The man puffed on the cigar to get it going as the car slowly moved past the second floor and began its assault on the third. “You know he was a G-man with Hoover’s boys before he left to be a copper in Frisco.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“He was one of the best. Worked with that there Eliot Ness.”

“Why’d he leave?”

The man shrugged. “Who knows? Why’d he leave Frisco to come here and be a private dick?”

“So he’s really good, then.”

The man smiled slyly. “Hell, he caught me. It was his second day on the job as a detective in Frisco and he nailed my ass.”

“For doing what?”

“Held up a liquor store. Done my time at San Quentin. I don’t recommend it, son. Death row there. Used to hang ’em. Now they gas ’em.”

“Either way you’re dead,” said Archer.

“Now, Willie put in a real good word for me, so I didn’t get nearly as long a sentence as I might have and then I got time off for good behavior, and I was getting up there age-wise and they needed more room for younger bad guys needing prison beds. It was Willie got me a job here after I left prison.”

“So he kept in touch after you went into the joint?”

“Visited me at the prison a few times. Said I did what I did because I was down and out and the wrong color; all stuff I knew. Hell, I’m a Mississippi boy. Only thing the police do down south is march in parades on July Fourth and shoot folks look like me. Why I got outta the south. But I ain’t find it all that different no matter where I go. Figgered robbing a place might get me three squares and a roof over my head, so I hit that liquor store. But Willie said I could make an honest living, if I wanted to.”

“So you came down here and climbed into this car?”

“Naw. Willie got me a job at the docks, loading shit on and taking shit off the boats. Did that for years.” He held up his gnarled hands. “Where I got these. Then Willie got me this sitting job when I couldn’t lift the shit no more. I can still poke a button and close a gate, see?”

“Did that surprise you? I mean, what he did for you?”

“Nothing surprises me, young man. Not no more. You live to be my age and you colored to boot, life ain’t got no more surprises, ’cept why no white man ain’t shot me dead at some point along the way for no reason ’cept he wanted to, see?”

A minute later the slow-moving car passed the third floor and settled into the home stretch.