A Gambling Man by David Baldacci (best short books to read txt) 📗

the stiffening ocean breeze. The sidewalk in front was missing a few chunks, like teeth punched out of a mouth.

He parked the car in front of the entrance and opened the single glass door, finding himself in a tiny lobby that smelled of stale tobacco, spilled gin, and a few odd odors that he couldn’t readily place but made his nose crinkle in displeasure. The space was badly lighted, and he had to blink a few times to transition his pupils from daylight to enforced dusk.

There was an occupant register on the wall. Though he knew the suite number, Archer wanted to check out who his potential neighbors might be. It didn’t take him long. There were only twelve suites in the building, three on each floor, and only four were currently occupied; the other eight had VACANT next to them.

There was a doctor on the first floor by the name of Myron O’Donnell. On the second floor was a chap named Bradley Wannamaker, attorney-at-law. Dash was on the top floor along with a business called Gemology Incorporated. There was no girl at the tiny reception desk in the lobby. A dusty telephone switchboard sat in one corner. There were no cobwebs covering it, but there easily could have been.

Archer saw the sign for the elevator and headed that way. He figured the stairs would be in the same direction. Ever since being in prison he did not like small, enclosed spaces where he could not open the door when he wanted to.

He came to the single elevator, where a black man who looked to be about a hundred, wearing an ill-fitting gray bellhop’s uniform with white piping down the legs and arms, sat on a small, ragged, pillow-topped, wooden dropdown seat just inside the car, reading a nickel copy of the Bay Town Gazette. He was short and too thin, with hands that bent upward, apparently against their owner’s will because he held the paper in an awkward grip. The unlit, short, cheap stogie in his mouth was rolling from one side to the other with delicate flicks of his tongue.

With an effort he put the paper aside, sat on it, and said, “What floor, young man?”

“It’s okay, I’ll take the stairs.”

He scratched his nose and looked interested. “Give me something to do if you let me take you. My first customer all day.”

“Aren’t Willie Dash and his secretary here?”

The man grinned. “Hell, they don’t count. They work here. I need me some fresh, smiling faces like yours. Keeps me going. You going to see Willie?”

Archer nodded.

“Fourth floor. Suite 401. Let’s get to it, young man.”

Archer hesitated for a moment, glancing at the wooden door with a wired pane of glass leading to the stairs for a few moments until the man said, “Time waits for no man, mister, and don’t I know it. I’ll be worm food before long.”

Archer stepped on.

The man closed the cage door and then hit the button for the fourth floor, which automatically closed the car’s outer solid metal door.

Archer sucked in a breath and felt his body stiffen and his pulse race. He shut his eyes and pretended he was outside with all sorts of possibilities for escape.

The man had swiveled around in his seat and stared at him as the car began its glacial ascent of thirty or so feet.

“When’d you get out, friend?” asked the man with a knowing look.

Archer opened his eyes. The old fellow smiled, showing off perfectly white teeth, and all of them real, as far as Archer could tell.

“Get out of where?”

The fellow snorted. “Come on, don’t BS me. The joint, man.”

“How do you figure that?”

“How do I not figure it, you mean. Been inside myself, lots of times, all together longer than you been alive. And carried lots of men up to see Willie who got the elevator disease, same as you. Stair doors you can open all by yourself.” He tapped the cage. “Not like these. Remind you of bars, don’t they?”

“Does it go away?”

“Look at me. I live in a goddamn elevator, son.”

“How long did it take you?”

“I won’t say ’cause I don’t want to discourage you.”

“I got on, didn’t I?” retorted Archer.

“Sure you did. Now stop sweating and looking like you gonna puke and we getting somewhere.”

Archer put a hand against the wall. “What can you tell me about Willie Dash?”

The man picked up his paper but his brown eyes stayed on Archer. “What you want to know?”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“You looking to hire him?”

“No, work for him.”

This surprised the man. He took a moment to light up his stogie, sticking the burned match in a metal cup that stuck out from the wall of the car. “Work for him? What, you a baby shamus or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, Willie is getting up there, all right. Can’t be doing this forever.”

“But he’s good at what he does?”

The man puffed on the cigar to get it going as the car slowly moved past the second floor and began its assault on the third. “You know he was a G-man with Hoover’s boys before he left to be a copper in Frisco.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“He was one of the best. Worked with that there Eliot Ness.”

“Why’d he leave?”

The man shrugged. “Who knows? Why’d he leave Frisco to come here and be a private dick?”

“So he’s really good, then.”

The man smiled slyly. “Hell, he caught me. It was his second day on the job as a detective in Frisco and he nailed my ass.”

“For doing what?”

“Held up a liquor store. Done my time at San Quentin. I don’t recommend it, son. Death row there. Used to hang ’em. Now they gas ’em.”

“Either way you’re dead,” said Archer.

“Now, Willie put in a real good word for me, so I didn’t get nearly as long a sentence as I might have and then I got time off for good behavior, and I was getting up there age-wise and they needed more room for younger