“I’d like to think I can rise above such things. And I have a lot that I didn’t deserve.”
“Despite your wealth, you didn’t deserve to be blackmailed. So stop beating yourself up over it. Did you know Mallory Green owns a plane?”
“No, I believe Bart owns it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Does it matter?”
“Everything matters, Gloria.” He rose. “And thank you for your frankness. I know it was hard, but you’ve helped me a lot.”
“Do you think you can find Ellie?”
“I think I’m going to have to.”
She walked him to the door.
“I take it you won’t be attending the McCarthy event tonight,” he said.
“On the contrary, I’ll be right there in the front row, with the biggest, fattest tomatoes I can find. And I have a helluvan arm.”
“Remember to take pictures.”
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Archer.”
“For what?”
“For being a nice guy. They’re a lot rarer than you might think, as every woman out there can tell you.”
As Archer walked out he again envisioned Mars as a warrior, only this time armed with tomatoes instead of a sword, to do battle against the forces of evil.
He thought Uncle Joe might truly meet his match tonight.
Chapter 64
Today, under the sun, Bel Air was just as pretty as the less affluent parts of LA, Archer thought.
At least on the outside. The inner core was a whole other sordid tale.
He stopped in front of the Jacoby estate. The tall, skinny palm trees waved to him in the wind like flitting fingers.
He knocked on the door, and the hinged-butler statue answered after a bit of a wait.
“I’d like to see Mrs. Jacoby. I was here before. The studio said she was at home today when I phoned earlier.”
“Who in the hell are you?”
Simon Jacoby was looking over the butler’s aged shoulder. He had on dark tweed pants and a salmon-colored shirt under a white cotton sleeveless golf sweater. He seemed well hydrated and had a tumbler of what looked to be scotch in hand. Archer had another marker to test that hunch: The man reeked of it.
He squinted at Archer. “Don’t I know you, fella? You look familiar, and not in a good way.”
“Name’s Archer.” He showed the man his official ID. He thought maybe Jacoby had seen him at the casino, while he’d been losing at kiddie poker.
Jacoby’s face flushed as his anger hit another level. “A private investigator? What the devil are you doing showing up at my—”
“I’ll take care of it, Simon,” said a voice. A moment later Alice Jacoby appeared. Her hair was down and she had on a colorful bandana. She wore a pair of jeans with a green sweater and low heels. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked like she might have been crying. When she turned to the side, Archer saw a yellowish bruise on her cheek and a blackened mark around her eye. He glanced at her husband and felt his hand curl to a fist.
“Who is he?” demanded Simon. “What is he doing here? By God, if—”
She put a calming hand on his arm. “He’s trying to find Ellie Lamb. She’s gone missing. I told you, dear. I spoke to him before. It’s all right. It has nothing to do with... us.”
“D-damn right, it d-doesn’t,” he sputtered, glaring at Archer and finishing his drink.
“Mr. Archer, this way, please.”
Simon Jacoby shouted after Archer, “And a wife can’t testify against her husband. You remember that, Mr. PI.”
She led him quickly down the hall. Archer looked back once to see Simon Jacoby staring at the floor like he wasn’t sure what he was actually standing on.
She led him into a small study and closed the door, then turned and faced him.
Archer eyed the room. It looked insubstantial, profoundly wanting after the grand space he had been in previously here. And Alice Jacoby looked smaller, too, less significant, as though she had gone from the lead role to a bit player, diminishing the woman in every meaningful way.
“Did he do that?” asked Archer, pointing at her injured face.
She subconsciously worried at it with her long fingers. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“No, it was a beating.”
She shot him a dull-eyed glance, although it still carried gravitas.
“That’s how most men handle misunderstanding.” Then she pulled at her wedding band like it was a tumor she wanted to excise.
“Is that what he meant when he said you couldn’t testify against him? He’s wrong. You can if you’re the victim. If you’re in danger.”
“Which I’m not. Not really. He’ll be fine after he... after the drinks... ” Archer didn’t believe this and she didn’t seem to, either.
Archer took off his hat and twirled it between his fingers. “He sticking to his Vegas betting limit?”
“He has to, doesn’t he?” she said resignedly.
“Nice to hear. Gloria Mars is a good friend of yours, but friends have their limits, and she has her own misunderstanding to deal with at home.”
“Yes, I know. There’s an awful lot of misunderstanding in this town.” She motioned to one of the two chairs in the room. “Please, sit.”
He did so, while she remained standing.
“Do you need a drink?” he asked, staring at her.
Jacoby wouldn’t meet his eye. “I would very much love one, which is why I’m not going to have one.” She glanced in the direction of the hall, where her drunken husband was probably still standing and wondering where he was.
“A good friend of mine was shot last night, nearly killed.”
Her face flushed as she looked down at him. “What?”
“A block over from the Jade. The truck with a dope shipment was heading there. They’d already dropped off the people they sell.” He stopped twirling his hat. “Is that selling-people bit in Eleanor Lamb’s script? And how do you design a set for something like that, I wonder. Do you just describe the interior of the truck, or the shithole where they keep those poor souls before they get delivered straight to hell?”
He had decided on the way over how he was going to play this. Just blast it out like water from a fire hose. But it was actually a subtler move than it looked to be.
She first turned white, and then crimson, and then gray in her own little version of a bastardized rainbow.
Now she sat. It seemed her legs could no longer support her full-figured body. She took out a pink Kleenex from her jeans pocket and dabbed at her eyes.
Archer watched her. “Cecily Ransome was really bowled over by Lamb’s script. I think she wants to direct it, so your wish of working with her might come true. By the way, how did you and Lamb get inside the Jade to do the research? Or did you just feed her what she needed? Because my witness was right — you have been to the Jade, multiple times. Which means you lied to me.”
Jacoby rubbed her thighs, her hands moving in jerky motions as though she had partially lost control of them.
“See, my friend who almost died would like to know. And so would I. Because this is all tied to the Jade. And now, so are you.”
“D-does this have to be a p-police thing?” asked Jacoby hopelessly.
“I don’t know. Does it?”
She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes promising depth, but there was really nothing in them that Archer could see. Except stark fear. He could certainly understand that one.
“Do you know where Lamb is?”
She shook her head, the eyelids fluttering, like they had come loose from her face and were desperately trying to hang on.
“Do you know why she disappeared?”