Archer had one final question. “What do you know about a guy named Darren Paley?”
The man’s features tensed. “You don’t want nothing to do with that man. I was a Marine. Fought at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. And I seen all the tough guys in this town. He’s one of the few who really scares me. He’s got a couple screws loose and he’s meaner than a rattler.”
“I might not have a choice. So, what do you have on him?”
“He worked here in town. Deep with the mob. He ran enforcement for them. Little Tony was one of his foot soldiers, in fact.”
“But he’s in LA now.”
“Right. Heard he left the mob and was running a place down in LA’s Chinatown.”
“He is. The Jade Lion. What do you know about it?”
“I don’t know nothing about it. But I do know Paley. He’s a mob man through and through.”
“So maybe what he’s doing down in Chinatown involves still working for the mob.”
“You said it, not me.”
Archer left the man and walked over to watch Jacoby play and lose at poker.
Jacoby was an old-looking early forties. His hair was rapidly graying, and his face was long, loose, and pouchy, and the color wasn’t healthy. He had three half-empty drinks in front of him as he studied his cards with an unfocused air. His big belly was kissing the table. His ankles were crossed under his seat like a bobby-soxer waiting to be asked to dance for the first time. His trousers were ill fitting and rode up on the man. The few chips in front of him told Archer all he needed to know about the man’s abilities and prospects at five-card stud.
Archer thought of Jacoby’s elegant wife in her perfectly orchestrated attire in her perfectly designed mansion. He wondered how the dreamer Alice Jacoby handled this little weakness of her hubby’s. He thought the same about the flinty, give-no-quarter Mallory Green. Bart Green’s addiction could sink her as well as her husband. But perhaps neither woman knew the extent of it. And maybe their husbands were getting their bills paid in a way that wasn’t legal. And maybe the source of those funds had something to do with Darren Paley and the Jade. But right now, Archer had no idea how they might be connected.
He was so intent on Jacoby and his own thoughts that he only noticed Little Tony standing next to him when he felt the gun muzzle saying hello to his right kidney.
“Let’s walk, Archer. And just so you know, I will shoot you right here out in public and I’ll have five guys say it was self-defense, and the cops won’t hassle me one little bit.”
“Why do I believe you?” said Archer as they headed off.
Chapter 45
With a gun wedged against his spine, Archer could smell the stink of his own fear, along with the heavyweight cologne Little Tony had smeared all over himself. They traversed a long, dark hallway, and passed through a door, which Little Tony closed behind them.
There were two other people in the room. One was the young Chinese woman from the Jade who had directed Archer to the bar using the same words: “That way, honey.”
The woman was dressed in canary yellow. All she needed was a set of wings and she could simply fly away from all this trouble, thought Archer.
The other person was the one Archer instinctively kept his eye on.
Under the weak light the scars on Darren Paley’s face seemed electrified. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie. His white shirt seemed heated and shiny in the light. A white pocket square was set just so. A new-looking fedora lay on the table beside him. Archer could see the hump of a gun under his jacket. Up close he indeed looked to Archer like a rattler: lean, curled, and deadly serious, with eyes that never forgot anything they saw. And the man’s warning rattle was echoing in Archer’s ears like cannon fire.
He was smoking a cigarette and tapping a finger on the table he was seated at, with the woman beside him. He hadn’t once looked at Archer.
“Him?” asked Paley. “This the guy?”
At first Archer didn’t know who he was speaking to.
Then the woman nodded. “Yes. He is the one that night.”
“You’re real sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Thanks. Beat it.”
The woman quickly rose, passed Archer and Little Tony, and left the room. She never once looked at Archer. He figured she was the kind who didn’t like being around dead people.
That way, honey.
As soon as the door shut, Paley motioned to Little Tony, who pushed Archer forward and forced him into the chair facing Paley.
The man methodically smoked his cigarette down while Archer watched. He had known men like this before. Nothing ever hurried them. They took everything they did seriously; it required that level of thought and attention because if they made a mistake they would no longer be alive. And every single one of those men Archer knew had been either a soldier or a crook.
Paley crushed the butt of his smoke into the ashtray and finally looked up at Archer. “You know why I had the skirt here?”
“To identify me.”
“Yes and no. Yes on the ID. I had other people I could have used, but she saw you up close. I like to be sure because I like to be fair. I’m not doing nothing to nobody that they don’t deserve because I don’t want nobody doing that to me. I take my lumps if I earned them.”
“The guy outside the Jade saw me.”
“And he also let you get away. So he couldn’t ID you. That’s why I brought the skirt here.”
“Then he’s dead?”
Paley gave Archer a look like he thought that was quite obvious.
“What was the no part?” asked Archer.
“That dame and her kind don’t mix good with the white folks, but I need them to do the work that needs to be done. Now, you got to earn the respect of the Chinese, or else scare the shit out of them so they don’t try and cross you. I prefer the scare route myself. So if I prove my seriousness to her, then she gets the word out to the guys who are maybe thinking of taking what don’t belong to them. Then those guys stop thinking that way because they don’t want nothing bad to happen to them.” He paused and gave Archer a look that did nothing to bolster his confidence about leaving here alive. “Just like I’m sure you don’t.”
“That’s right.”
Paley moved his head from side to side. “Kraut tried to break my neck during the war. Gutted him with his own knife. Gets sore when the weather changes. Desert air seems to help.”
“Yeah, I got some of that, too.”
“You’re a PI. You’re trying to find a broad who’s gone missing, and you’re trying to find out who plugged a PI named Bender and dumped his body at the broad’s house. Am I missing something or is my line pretty straight?”
“You’re doing okay, actually.”
“Thanks. I came from nothing and never went to no fancy schools, and here I am surrounded by all these rich, educated people. It can intimidate a man.”
“I would think it would be the reverse.”
Paley gave him a knowing look. “You would think that, wouldn’t you? Now, I can intimidate people. When the stakes are really high. That’s when I’m in my element, so to speak. I don’t care how much they got in the bank, or how famous they are, because I mean what I say and I have the facts on my side.”
“I can understand that.”
“I could tell you stories of grown men you see in the movies all the time playing these big, tough guys, who have sat in rooms like this weeping because they were afraid of what I was going to do to them. It’s a very heady experience for a guy like me. I mean, I look up to these men. I consider them heroes. But when they’re not in front of the camera they’re nothing but scared little fuckers because they did wrong. And they have to be held to account for that, and they know I’m the guy to do it. Do you see what I’m saying?”