A Gambling Man (Archer #2)(66)

The breakwater built out parallel to the land was made of enormous boulders which, like an iceberg, was just the tip of the rock out there. He sat staring at the jetty and the moored boats bobbing slightly, and worked through two more cigarettes and half his flask while he listened to the waves leisurely hitting the rocks and let the salt air carve his insides smooth.

The moon cast finger shadows over the water. The Pacific was basically flat and calm, the air not moving much, no storm clouds overhead to cause trouble. He might just sit here until sunrise and surprise the longshoremen and fishermen on their way to work. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander.

A few minutes later he opened them, and his thoughts focused on one thing. It was constant and perfectly replicated, meaning it was mechanical. As he continued to listen and watch, the motorboat came into view. There was a spotlight deployed on its bow, and the light gashed over the water as it tried to discern solids from fluids. As it came more fully into view and passed the breakwater, and started navigating through the minefield of moored boats, he could see that it was about twenty-five feet long and there were a number of people on board. It veered southward as it approached the pier and ran parallel to it for about two hundred yards, until it was well away from the port operations.

A minute before this, Archer had taken to his heels and was jogging along in that direction. He reached a spot where he took up position behind a waist-high wall and eyed the boat as it docked at a pier.

Two men got off and secured the boat’s lines to the dock cleats. Then the bow light was extinguished and more people got off. Archer continued to watch as they walked toward the lot adjacent to where Archer was hidden. He sank lower, turned his head, and saw two vehicles parked there.

As the men drew closer to the cars, another automobile came down the wharf road, turned, and pulled into the parking lot. Due to the thrust and reach of its headlights, the group from the boat was fully revealed to him.

The tall figure of Sawyer Armstrong was prominent among them, as were his two goons, Tony and Hank.

And there were three other men that Archer didn’t recognize.

The car pulled to a stop but kept on its headlights. Stepping out of the car was another person that Archer did know.

Beth Kemper hurried over to her father, and they held a quick and apparently heated conversation, at least by their body language, because Archer could hear none of it. The brief meeting ended with Armstrong and his group climbing into the two cars and driving off, leaving Kemper alone.

Archer saw the dot of flame emerge as the woman lit a cigarette and leaned against her car, which he now recognized as the little Triumph Roadster convertible he’d seen back at the Kemper estate. The woman stared out at the ocean and smoked her cigarette while Archer continued to watch and contemplated what to do. Part of him wanted to approach her, see what was going on. But his professional instincts—such that he had—told him that would be the wrong move, for any number of reasons. If he did that and she told her father that Archer had seen them come in on the boat from God knew where in the middle of the night, Archer figured he would get another visit from Tony and Hank, and it would be his last visit with anyone ever. His final resting place might be the very same ocean Beth Kemper was staring at, with cement shoes encasing his feet as he sank to the bottom to realize his new destiny as plankton.

She dropped her finished cigarette and scrunched it flat with the heel of her shoe, then got into her car and drove slowly off. Archer swiftly moved after the convertible. He knew full well there was no way he could really follow her on foot if she sped up and vanished from sight. Fortunately, she didn’t go far. As Archer trotted along behind, she drove only three blocks before she parked the car at the curb and got out. Two motorcycles, one with a sidecar, were pulled up on the pavement in front.

Archer eyed the twenty-four-hour sign of the restaurant as she walked in.

He waited for a few minutes and followed.





ARCHER STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of the hole-in-the-wall diner. Its yellow, pebbled floors were sticky linoleum, its booths shiny red vinyl, its tabletops slapdash laminate of no memorable design, and its walls painted a sea-foam green with the overhead whirly fans moving at the pace of a man with nowhere to go. There was a jukebox, but it was as dark and silent as the night.

There were three other customers in the place besides Beth Kemper. All three were around nineteen or twenty, and all were clustered around her booth, apparently giving the lady trouble, while a flustered waitress in her forties hovered nearby, looking uncertain as to what to do.

Archer heard one of the young men, tall and pudgy with a crew cut and muscled arms and shoulders showing under his T-shirt, say, “Hey, baby, we got some gin back at our place. You need to join us. Good times, sugar doll, good times.”

His skinny, acned friend laughed and parroted, “Good times, sugar doll.”

“Sure like to see your gams without anything on ’em,” said Crew Cut. “Bet they’re a knockout, like you.”

The third man was lean and lanky, had dark, greased hair, and wore denim jeans stiff as a two-by-four, scuffed black motorcycle boots, and a brown leather bomber jacket; the fanned-out top half of a switchblade stuck out of his rear pants pocket like a cobra’s head.

Kemper, for her part, was smoking another cigarette and looking extremely bored. She seemed to perk up when she saw Archer coming.

“Mrs. Kemper?” said Archer, walking over.