Chandler seemed worried for a moment until Green smiled. Relieved, he said, “Hey, they’re serious novelists. I’m just writing for the movies.” He glanced at Archer. “I mean, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. But do you like it?” asked Archer.
“I like it.” Chandler glanced at the buxom Mitzi. “A lot.”
“You know Eleanor Lamb?” asked Archer.
“Sure.”
“Archer,” said Green. “Not now. If you want to interrogate the boy, do it on your own time. And, Ross, get up and let Archer have your seat. I want him closer to me.”
Chandler immediately stood and seemed surprised that Archer took his time, stubbing out his smoke and taking a sip of his drink before rising.
He sat next to Green, while Chandler immediately struck up a conversation with Mitzi.
Archer pointed to Green’s glass. “What’s that stuff?”
“A specialty liquor that I’m fond of. Would you like to try one?”
“No, I’m good with what I have.”
“I made some inquiries about you after you left.”
“And?”
“And you have a good reputation.”
Archer glanced at the stage as one of the Copa Girls, with a slit right up the front of her skirt, commenced a solo. She had good pipes and nice legs, which in Vegas could make you a star. “Nice to know. But I could’ve told you that.”
“You also met with my wife.”
“I could’ve told you that, too.”
“So why didn’t you?” Green said sharply enough for Chandler, Mitzi, and even sky-high Gayle to look over at them.
Archer scooped up a handful of nuts from a bowl and put one in his mouth. “You never asked, and I never volunteer information if I don’t have to.”
“And would that include flying up here in my plane?”
Archer studied the man for a moment. So it was his plane. “Your wife gave the okay, which I was told she could. It was the fastest way here so I could talk to you and cross you off my list.”
“What list?”
Archer ate another nut and sat back. “Were you in LA on New Year’s Eve?”
“What’s it to you?”
“A man died and Lamb went missing then.”
“Why would I kill a guy I didn’t know or make a writer of mine disappear?”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay, I think we’re done here. Finish your drink and be on your way.”
“You like the Jade Lion in Chinatown?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Lamb apparently liked it. And the guy who manages it, Darren Paley? I hear he has Vegas mob connections.”
“I see you have some of your drink left. I think I asked you to finish it.”
Chandler leaned over and said, “You better do what he says, buddy.”
Archer didn’t take his eyes off Green. “For starters, my name’s not buddy. The Jade’s got a drink that’ll sear your insides. Regulars there swill it like it’s nothing. Amazing what people can work up to if they really want something, and I’m not just talking about booze.”
Green looked at Little Tony and gave him the high sign. The giant began lumbering over.
“You’re handling this all wrong, Archer. You know that, don’t you?” said Green.
“Maybe I am,” conceded Archer. “But then maybe so are you.”
Green wagged his head. “You don’t even know what you don’t even know.”
“Ever heard the story of the frog and the scorpion?”
“It’s probably the basis for a quarter of the movies ever filmed.”
“Well, the way I see it, maybe you’re the frog. You built something good, you’re chugging along, just want to get to the other side. And here comes Paley. He’s a free rider. He sees something good, too. He makes himself indispensable to you. But on the flip side, at a certain point, that doesn’t make you indispensable to him.” As Little Tony was arriving at the table Archer leaned over and said, “And where did gorilla boy come from? Courtesy of the mob and Darren Paley? If so, what do you do about it?”
That got a reaction from Green all right.
Archer turned, smiled at Little Tony, and said, “Hey, what a coincidence, Little Tony, I was just leaving. ’Night, ladies.”
Mitzi wouldn’t look at him now. She gazed fearfully at her lap. And Gayle was too far gone into the drug abyss to do much of anything except look pouty and dazed.
As Archer left, he turned and saw Green whispering something to Tony.
That was good, he thought. And that was also bad.
And that was the PI business in a nutshell.
Chapter 43
Archer sat on a stool and stared into the mirror behind the bar to watch for Little Tony trying to sneak up on him. He knew he had taken an aggressive posture in the Copa Room, and made perhaps some unjustifiable leaps of logic. But the fact was, the odds of Lamb’s turning up alive were decreasing by the minute. And he was tired of walking in circles. And a good man was dead and his widow wanted someone held accountable.
And so do I.
He had no idea if Bart Green was connected to whatever Darren Paley was doing at the Jade. That was why he’d voiced that possibility to Green with the frog-and-scorpion fable. A scorpion needs to get across a river but can’t swim. So it enlists the aid of a frog. At first the frog is reluctant, afraid that the scorpion will sting it. The scorpion tells the frog that it wouldn’t sting the frog because then they would both die. So the frog lets the scorpion hitch a ride. Halfway across the scorpion indeed stings the frog, who is astonished. When the frog tells the scorpion that now they will both die, the venomous creature simply confesses that it couldn’t help itself. It’s just its nature.
So Paley was the scorpion for sure, and Green maybe the frog, which made his surname spot on. But then again, maybe Archer was totally off base and hunting in the wrong direction. There was a point in every case he’d worked on where he’d had enormous self-doubt about what direction to go in, or whether he would ever solve it. He was at that point right now, which was why he was sitting here drinking his way to viable answers.
He was surprised when Ross Chandler entered the bar and came to sit next to him.
“Wow, that was some powwow you two had back there,” he began.
“You should see me when I really get worked up.” Archer lit a Lucky and took a swallow of his martini. “Tell me about Eleanor Lamb.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything and anything you got.”
“She’s a good writer, one of the best.”
“You have much interaction with her?”
“Not too much. I did help her on a rewrite of a script for Paramount. Ellie does female roles really well. And Cecily helped on that one, too. All I did was play messenger boy, really.”
“Ransome and Lamb, they get along okay?”
“They seem pretty tight, actually. Going out to lunch and dinners. Working late. Cecily would run out to Malibu a lot to work over the weekends with Ellie.”
Archer tapped ash into a glass ashtray and stared at his drink. Chandler said excitedly, “It must be fun and dangerous doing your job.”
“Yeah it is, but never at the same time. When was the last time you saw Lamb?”
Chandler ordered a whiskey and thought about the question until it came. “She was in the office the day before New Year’s Eve.”
“She ever talk about having a friend she was reconnecting with out in Malibu?”
“Not that I recall.”
“You ever heard the name Bernadette Bonham?”