Dream Town, page 27
As they left the airport, following the shiny stripe on the truck’s rear axle, Archer looked up and thought he could see the Beechcraft pass overhead with its shipment of dope to points unknown. But that might just have been his imagination.
They followed the truck at a steady pace.
“Maybe we’re finally going to Chinatown,” said Dash as they passed in a northeasterly direction through South Central LA, past downtown, and hooked around Union Station.
It did indeed look like they were finally venturing into Chinatown.
However, when they rounded a corner, the truck was no longer in sight.
“He must have turned down that alley,” said Dash, pointing to his left.
At that same instant, three men stepped out from that alley. And they were pointing something at the Buick.
“Hit it, Archer, it’s an ambush,” barked Dash.
Archer gunned the engine, cut the wheel, and slammed down on the gas even as the men opened fire, shattering the side and back glass of the Buick. Archer felt the crack of rounds whizzing past him; some lodged in the upholstery, others clanged off the metal inside the car. It was like he and Dash were stuck in a pinball machine and ricochets were everywhere trying to kill the two men. He piloted the Buick around a corner and kept the pedal to the floor. The car’s engine wound up high, screaming like a woman in distress.
Archer exhaled a relieved breath as he slowed down. “Damn, that was close.”
He turned to look at Dash and his lungs seized.
An unconscious Willie Dash was lying sideways in his seat with blood pouring from his back.
Chapter 58
ARCHER HUNG UP THE PAY PHONE FOR the third time at the hospital where he had driven the badly wounded Dash. He had first called Connie Morrison to tell her what had happened. She was on her way to LA. He had next called Jake Nichols and woken him up.
His response had been terse. “Come and see me in the morning, once they’re sure Willie’s in the clear. If things turn bad, call me anytime no matter how late.”
He had finally phoned Callahan and told her what had happened. He could hear the woman quietly sobbing, and part of him knew that she was also thinking about what if it had been him who was shot and lying near death. He had put down the phone with her still weeping because he was afraid he would start crying as well.
The doctor on duty had called the police, as was required by law. While Dash was in emergency surgery Archer had met with two uniformed officers and a plainclothes detective from the LAPD. They seemed to be honest and forthright and eager to do their job. And yet he left out everything except that they had been riding in a car minding their own business when the shots had rung out. He had no desire to get into a lengthy explanation about everything until he knew what they were really up against.
The plainclothes, in his forties with a calm face and low voice, said, “You might’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’re cleaning this town up, but it’s not all scrubbed yet.”
“Could be gangs,” said one of the uniforms, who looked too baby-faced to be a cop, and whose speech had a southern strum to it. “Puerto Ricans or Chicanos most likely. Or the coloreds. They don’t care who they kill.”
They had examined the Buick, and the surgeon promised to deliver the slug that was still in Dash to the police. Archer had left his answering service number with them, and they promised to be in touch with regard to their investigation.
Connie Morrison arrived just as her boss and former husband was wheeled out of surgery. Archer had never seen her look so pale and flustered in the three years he had known the woman.
They met with the surgeon, who told them Dash had come through the procedure well, but his recovery would take some time. And he would be unconscious for a while.
“I think he’s out of the woods,” said the doctor, a short, thin man with a face as pale as his lab coat, but who possessed a reassuringly calm demeanor. He cleaned his specs with his coat sleeve and said, “He’s strong, certainly, for his age. But he was also lucky. The bullet missed a major artery by about two centimeters, and didn’t hit any bone along the way, either. While he lost a lot of blood, I feel he’ll make a full recovery. Somebody was looking out for him tonight.”
Archer looked guiltily at his shoes. Only it wasn’t me.
They thanked him, and Morrison went to sit next to Dash in his private room. Archer knew she would be there every second of every day until her ex got up and walked out of the place under his own power.
Archer stood behind her and looked down at the man who had become like a second father to him. Dash was alternately pale and gray, and his limbs twitched spasmodically in his induced slumber. The perimeter of a large gauzy bandage poked up from under the gown near his neck. He looked old and beaten and…nothing good. But it was good, Archer had to remind himself, because Dash was alive when he could so easily have been dead.
Morrison turned to stare resolutely at him. “I’ll take care of the bills and all the paperwork, Archer. You just do what you need to do to find the ones who shot Willie.”
He squeezed her shoulder and turned to leave.
“Archer?”
He looked back to see her staring dead at him.
“Do not get killed.”
He gave her a quick grin that died on his lips, because there was nothing funny about what she had said, meant, and felt. He nodded, lifted his hat an inch, turned, and left.
He drove to the motel in Silver Lake, grabbed a few hours’ sleep, rose, showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes, and had some coffee. He turned in the Buick at a local franchise of the company he had rented it from in Bay Town. He had to pay a substantial penalty, since the company was not fond of having their cars shot up. They would also not lease him another one for the very same reason.
So Archer walked two blocks to an Avis office and drove out a half hour later in a gray 1952 Oldsmobile two-door sedan.
He headed straight to Jake Nichols’s bar. The man was waiting for him inside. He was sitting at a table in his wheelchair staring at the door like the worst news in the world was about to march in and crush what little life he had left.
Archer took off his hat and said, “He’s going to be okay. But it’s going to take a while.”
Nichols wheeled himself over to a cabinet, took two glasses out along with a bottle of whiskey, wheeled back over, and poured himself and Archer shots.
“To brave men and lucky ones,” said Nichols with his glass raised. Archer mimicked this movement, and each downed his drink in one swallow. Archer then told Nichols in greater detail what had happened during the night.
Nichols quickly absorbed all of this and said, “You got made. Guy goes into the terminal to get a cup of joe, but also makes a phone call. The trap is set and he runs you right into it.”
Archer nodded, looking deeply chagrined. “That’s the way I figured it, too.”
“So selling people and dope.”
Archer said, “I don’t know where the people went. But the dope didn’t go to the Jade, at least not all of it. Some went on Bart Green’s plane. Which convinces me that Bonham and Green are working this together, and Green is the one drinking out of Darren Paley’s trough, to use the man’s own words.”
“Then they’re taking a big risk. You don’t cross a guy like Paley unless you have a death wish.”
“Bart Green’s motive is clear. He has big gambling bills to pay. And if he doesn’t he’s dead anyway.”
“Okay, but how do you think Paley and Bonham hooked up?”
“His wife knew Paley years before she was married to Bonham. They met in Reno.”
“And how did Peter Bonham get into the dope and slavery business?”
Archer lit a cigarette and sucked on it. “His elderly neighbor told me he once worked overseas, all hush-hush. She joked that he was a spy.”
“Maybe he got his drug connections when he was out of the country. Anybody check into his business, where he gets his money, at least on the surface?”
Archer shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But I guess maybe we should.”
“Let me deal with that. We know the guy’s a smuggler, but he has to clean the money off his doping somehow.”
Nichols poured another swig of whiskey into his glass. He held up the bottle, but Archer shook his head. Nichols looked at the liquid in the glass for the longest time, but didn’t drink it. “It’s not your fault, you know. Willie never saw it coming, so how could you?”
“I’ve been working this case solo for days. Willie really got on it just yesterday. I should have had his back. I should have suspected something. But I didn’t.”
“You can blame yourself, but it’s not helpful. You can see that, right?”
“Yeah, I can, even if I don’t want to right now.”
“He’s a tough guy and the doc says he’s going to make it. If Willie was dead, we’d maybe be having a different and more difficult conversation. But right now you need to keep focused on what’s important. Paley will be thinking of nothing else other than this. You need to at least match the man on that.”
Archer straightened and looked around the empty bar. “You ever regret any of it? Doing what you did? Your life? Your choices?”
“Since I’m human, the answer is ‘all the time.’ You can spend half your life second-guessing what you did and didn’t do and in the end it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. So you can either live your life or pretend to have another one where you never made a mistake.”
“That may be the hardest thing in the world to do, Jake.”
“The easiest thing in the world to do is die. It takes almost no effort or time. You’re here and then you’re in a grave. It’s the stuff beyond dying that’s hard.”
“What’s that exactly?”
Nichols now drained his glass. “Living.”
Chapter 59
ARCHER DROVE OUT TO MALIBU. The sky was clear, the sun warm but not too warm, the humidity nonexistent. And still Archer was sweating. The investigation was close to getting out of control and he had just lost for the time being the one man who had given him a decent shot to bring this case home.
He stopped at a gas station and phoned the county cops. Two pass-throughs later and Phil Oldham came on the line.
“Heard on the wire about Willie and Chinatown. How’s he doing?”
“He’s going to make it, but it was close. Too close.”
“You were there?”
“I was. How’s the Bender case coming? Got the killer yet?”
“Why should I spill to you?” Oldham said brusquely.
“No reason that I know of other than we’re both trying to get to the same spot.”
“We’ve made some progress. We fished his car out of the ocean.”
“I heard. You know a guy named Darren Paley, manages the Jade Lion in Chinatown?”
“Is that why you two were there?”
“Do you know him?”
“I know of him. Is he involved in what happened to Bender?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. And you might want to patrol the western half of the Malibu beaches, say around one to four in the morning.”
“For what?”
“What do you think?”
“Smuggling? What?”
“The usual,” replied Archer.
“You seen this action?”
“Maybe I have. And it’s not just dope.”
“What else?” asked Oldham.
“Try people on for size.”
This seemed to get Oldham excited. “I want you to come in and make a statement and tell us what you know.”
“Why? I heard you boys weren’t working extra hard to get Bender’s killer.”
Oldham didn’t answer right away. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“Is it true?”
Again, Oldham didn’t answer right away. “Where are you?”
“Seventy-six station in Malibu.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Eighteen minutes later the old Plymouth lurched into the parking lot of the gas station and Phil Oldham rolled himself out.
“Let’s walk,” he told Archer.
They headed to the beach. It seemed to be a popular spot for confidential talk, thought Archer.
The tide was coming in, so they kept to high ground as the breakers covered their discussions and the seagulls fought against the wind in making their dives for mealtime.
Oldham looked even pastier than before, his clothes grungier, but his eyes were bright and alert, and the man looked pissed.
“Your source was right,” he said as they walked along. Oldham’s hands were shoved deep into his pants pockets and the remains of a stogie rolled around in his mouth. “Soon as we pulled the car from the water I got assigned to another case.”
“You can’t just sweep a corpse under the rug.”
Oldham shot him a glance. “Can’t you, Archer?”
“I thought you county cops were immune from the LAPD disease.”
“Says you.”
“No, says you.”
“Then maybe I was wrong.” Oldham turned and hurled the stogie toward the water.
“I promised Bender’s widow I’d find out what happened.”
“I checked into Bender. He was a good guy, but he had a lot of unpaid bills. They were threatening to take the house.”
Archer stopped walking and looked at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I guess he’d borrowed big against it when his business wasn’t doing too good. He couldn’t make the mortgage payments. They were foreclosing on it.”
“But his widow still has the house.”
“That’s because the debt got paid off. I didn’t dig deep enough to find out how. I didn’t have the chance.”
“But this sort of changes things.”
“How?”
Archer looked off for a few moments and studied the breakers coming in. “Even good guys can make bad choices when things get desperate.”
“How do you mean?”
Archer continued to stare out at the rising ocean. And in that moment certain things seemed to come together with startling clarity. “How much was the mortgage on Bender’s house?”
“What? Oh, about five grand, something like that.”
“No private dick is going to make that running down regular cases in a couple of weeks.”
“What are you getting at, Archer?”
“Like I said, good guys make bad choices when they get pushed.”
“You talking about Bender?”
“I’m talking about all of us.”
Chapter 60
ARCHER DROVE BACK INTO TOWN and dropped the film off from the previous night with the same guy, and asked for another rush job. Then he checked with the private lab where Dash had taken the powder samples for analysis.
A stern-looking man in a white lab coat confirmed to Archer that they were indeed heroin.
Archer took the certified lab report with him and headed across town to Green and Ransome. Both name partners were in today, so he took Cecily Ransome first.
She was dressed in navy blue slacks and an oversize dark green sweater that covered her narrow hips. She had on a black beret and an uncomfortable look as she sat at her desk with a pen in hand and a film script set in front of her. She laid her pen aside. “So, what do you have to report?”
“I brought a partner up here to work with me.”
“Okay.”
“He got shot last night in Chinatown. I almost did, too.”
Ransome jerked forward. “What! Is he going to be okay?”
“Yes, but not for lack of trying by the guys doing the shooting.”
“Does this have to do with Ellie?”
“I think it does, yes.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“Strange things going on in Malibu. Trucks come and trucks go. And dope crates and people in hoods go with them.”
Ransome flushed so deeply Archer thought she might collapse. “P-people in h-hoods?”
“Smugglers, Miss Ransome. A slavery ring. It’s a business. Just a really nasty one.”
“Do you think Ellie found out about this and that’s why she’s gone missing?”
“Could be, yes.”
“Do you know who’s involved?”
“Chinatown is involved, that’s for sure.”
“The Jade Lion you mentioned?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Ransome looked down at the document in front of her, with her brow furrowed. “Then you may want to look at this.”
“What is it?”
She spun it around. “Ellie left this script for me about two weeks ago. She wasn’t paid to write it, she did it on her own.”
He read over a couple pages. “Just give me the shorthand of what the story’s about.”
Ransome’s voice trembled. “Chinatown, the mob, dope dealers, and…other things. Like…a slavery ring. It…it must be a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. Tell me more.”
“It’s dark and violent. Very different from what I normally see from Ellie. Right on the edge, and it has a remarkable feeling of authenticity. Like she knows that world intimately. And it has a terrific female lead. I mean, this might have Oscar written all over it.”
“Why would she give the script to you?”
“Because she wants me to direct the film. And I think I might want to.”
“So the question becomes: How does she know that world intimately?”
“You said you found Jade Lion matchbooks in her desk. She might have gone there, for research.”
Archer looked dubiously at her. “I don’t see that happening. The guy who runs the place doesn’t really like folks snooping around. I can personally attest to that.” But something else occurred to him. “Does she have a star in mind for the film?”
“Yes. She left a note about casting.” Ransome rummaged around and picked up a piece of paper. Before she could say anything, Archer spoke.
“Is the lead actress, by chance, Samantha Lourdes?”
Fear flitted through Ransome’s features as she looked down at the paper she held. “Yes. What is going on, Archer?”
