One Good Deed

by David Baldacci

  Tuttle considered this for a moment and then nodded. “It’s a deal.”

  “Okay, then. She’ll meet you at nine o’clock tonight. At her house.”

  Tuttle glanced at him in surprise. “Is that a fact? And where is her house?”

  “Number 27 Eldorado Street.”

  Tuttle wrote this down and then glanced up at Archer. “So you knew all along she was willing to meet with me? You could’ve just said so.”

  “I wanted to make sure you would agree to the deal first.”

  Tuttle looked at him in a new light. “You might make a pretty fine businessman, Archer.”

  “Well, let’s just start my career off with this one, then.”

  Archer pulled out the note papers. “Got the documents right here. Good as cash, Pittleman told me. You give me the five thousand dollars plus interest and my two hundred dollars, and you get these papers and the meeting with Jackie.”

  Tuttle took his time getting up from his desk as Archer watched him closely, but keeping one eye on the Remington, too, just in case.

  Tuttle walked over to the Mosler safe, worked the combination dial this way and that, and then spun the wheel and lifted the lever, and the heavy steel door slowly swung wide. Archer rose for a better look. Inside the maw of the safe were stacks of cash and coins, little cloth bags of something with string ties, what looked to be piles of stock and bond certificates, and a large stash of gold bars. It looked like what might be in a proper bank vault. It was more wealth than Archer supposed he would ever see again collected in a single place.

  “Holy Lord,” said Archer, which he followed up with an appreciative whistle.

  Tuttle spun around and caught the wonder on the man’s face. “This sort of thing doesn’t come easy, Archer.”

  “I never thought it did, Mr. Tuttle.”

  He closed the safe and walked back to his desk with a bundle of money as Archer sat back down.

  “The interest I calculated at one thousand five hundred dollars. All fair and square. Tell Marjorie I said so.”

  “Will do. Now, I got a question. With all that wealth you got in that safe, why did you need to take a loan from Pittleman in the first place?”

  Tuttle pointed at the Mosler. “When I took out the loan, Archer, that safe was empty.”

  “What changed then?”

  He next pointed to the map on the wall with all the pushpins in it. “What changed was they found oil on my land. Two of the largest oil concerns in this country are presently figuring out how best to bring it to the surface. And the contents of that safe reflect the value of their interest, with a great deal more to come, since I, like Hank Pittleman, drive a damn hard bargain.”

  “So you were near to broke before then?”

  “Six straight years of drought, Archer, would challenge any farmer no matter how competent. Fact is, it nearly did me in. The oil is the only thing that saved me. And it was a damn close call. One month or two the other way, this house and land are gone from me. I had been engaged in discussions with the oil folks before I took out the loan. They just didn’t have their reports back yet, and I needed the funds from Pittleman to keep things going, wages and bills to pay. Timing is everything in this world.”

  “Pittleman owned the bank, too. So why not just do a deal with those folks?”

  “I would have preferred that, but Pittleman’s bank turned me down for a loan. His doing, I’m sure. You see, he can charge a lot more interest if the loan was from him. And I believed he liked the fact that I had to come to him personally for my financial survival. He was just that sort of man. Loved nothing better than putting the screws to folks.”

  “I can see that.”

  “When the field reports came in better than anyone possibly thought they would, I struck my deal with the oil company and received initial payments. Being a savvy man, I diversified my holdings immediately: stocks, bonds, gold dust in those little pouches, along with cash and rare coins.”

  “And gold bars,” added Archer. “Now you’re rich again. Does your daughter know?”

  “The oil companies cannot act with stealth in a place like this. But no one knows that the reports came back favorably. And I would appreciate it if you would not tell anyone, including Jackie.”

  “Okay.”

  “You see, I would not want my daughter to come back to me solely because she thought I was now rich. I hope you can understand that.”

  “If I had a daughter, I guess I’d feel the same way.”

  Tuttle slapped his desktop. “God, I sometimes think that that devil of a man hypnotized her or something.”

  “Don’t know what to tell you there.” He glanced at the envelope in Tuttle’s other hand. He had put the cash from the safe in it. “Now, you added in my two hundred dollars to that sum, didn’t you?”

  “I actually made it three hundred, Archer.”

  Archer’s eyes widened in amazement. “Why’s that? Our deal was for two.”

  “Because I never really believed you would accomplish your task successfully. And I like to reward exceptional performance.”

  “She hasn’t agreed to come home yet.”

  “But you’ve given me the opportunity to talk some sense into her, and that’s good enough for me.”

  The men exchanged cash for promissory note. Tuttle extracted a match from a box on his desk, struck it afire, and placed it against one edge of the papers. Both men watched the document flame up until Tuttle tossed the inferno into the fireplace behind him.

  “I think that we’re finished here, Archer. I need to get some work done,” he added. “And if you see Jackie, tell her I will be at 27 Eldorado Street promptly at nine o’clock tonight.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Archer left the house, stepped off the front porch, and looked around.

  A whirl of dust in the distance was coming closer and revealed itself to be a man on a farm tractor. He was heading for the barn that lay about a hundred yards behind the house. Archer glanced back at the house to see if anyone was watching him and then headed that way.

  “Hey there,” he said when he came within earshot. The man had parked the John Deere tractor, and was presently checking its engine.

  It was the man who had driven Tuttle in the car. He didn’t have his chauffeur’s uniform on now. He wore dirty jeans, a checkered shirt, and a straw hat with a white band. Dusty, worn boots covered his feet, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing a mass of writhing muscles as he torqued a bolt with a long wrench.

  The man looked up, then set down the wrench, took off his hat, and wiped his forehead with a greasy cloth lying on the engine cover of the tractor.

  “Hey there, yourself.”

  “You were driving the Cadillac the other night.”

  “Sure was.”

  “Nice-looking car.”

  “It’s a beauty all right. You’re Archer, right?”

  “Yep. I was just here doing some business with Mr. Tuttle.” He put out his hand. “It’s Bobby, right?”

  “That’s right. Bobby Kent. Nice to meet you, Archer.”

  The men shook hands.

  Archer said, “Quite the farm he’s got.”

  “Yeah, but it’s been nothing but a pain in the ass for the last half-dozen years or so. Not nearly enough rain.”

  “But now I understand everything’s okay.” He gave Kent a knowing look.

  “You mean the oil?”

  “Didn’t know if you knew about it.”

  “I been showing them boys from Texas all over the dang place for about ten months now. They dig a hole here, then run their tests and do their calculations. And then dig another hole fifty feet over from the last one and do it all over again. Drove me crazy. Just give me a tractor to ride all day and soil to tend, and I’m a happy man.”

  “Well, it paid off for Mr. Tuttle.”

  “Guess it did, yeah.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Hell, fifteen years if it’s been a
day.”

  “So you knew Isabel and Jackie?”

  Kent put his hat back on and nodded, his expression turning somber. “Sure did. They’re both gone now. Isabel’s dead and Jackie left, oh, it’s been about a year gone by now for both.”

  “An accident, I heard?”

  Kent turned and pointed to the hay bale doors on the second story of the barn. “Happened right there. She fell out of there and got impaled on the upraised cone of a corn picker. It was damn awful. Bloody as all get out.”

  Archer thought back to the piece of equipment he had seen on an earlier visit here to one of the outbuildings while he was looking for the Cadillac.

  “Allis-Chalmers Corn-picker?” he said.

  Kent looked at him in surprise. “That’s right. You a farmer?”

  “I’ve done a little bit of everything over the years.”

  He wondered why Jackie had not added in this detail of her mother’s death, but then again, what did it matter? The woman was still dead, regardless of the exact particulars.

  “Who found her?” He knew what Jackie had told him, but remembering Shaw’s method, he wanted corroboration.

  Kent’s face twisted into disgust. “Poor Jackie did.”

  Archer looked over at the spot and imagined the daughter finding the bloodied corpse of her mother.

  “Maybe that’s why she left, huh?” said Archer, looking back at Kent.

  “Could be. She loved her ma. All’s I know is she was gone pretty soon after.”

  “Mr. Tuttle took her leaving hard, I understand. And he wants his daughter back.”

  “Don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Okay, well, good talking to you.”

  “See you around, Archer.”

  Archer retraced his steps, climbed into the Nash, and drove off.

  He felt the bulge of money in his pocket, which was a nice feeling. But what had happened to Jackie and her mother had left him with a level of sadness that he supposed was a little odd, since he’d never met Isabel and barely knew her daughter.

  Yet maybe there was a reasonable explanation.

  You might be an ex-con, Archer, but you kept your heart, despite a war and then prison. And that’s something. As bad as things might get, don’t ever sell yourself short on that.

  Chapter 36

  HE DROVE FAST back to Poca City. The wind whistling through the open windows felt good, liberating, and about as far from Carderock Prison as a man could get and still be on this earth, he reckoned. He dropped the Nash off at the garage on Fulsome, leaving the keys in the glove box, as Jackie had requested.

  Then he stood there in the heat of the falling sun, marveling at how he had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. And it felt damn good. And he had one person he needed to tell first.

  Jackie answered the door at Ernestine’s house dressed in a pair of zippered white trousers and a pale blue short-sleeved blouse. Her Veronica Lake peekaboo had been clipped back, and her feet were bare. Her lovely features were fevered and anxious. “Well? How did it go?”

  He held up the packet of money. “Your old man paid in full. Including three hundred for me instead of the two hundred,” he added with a grin.

  She hugged him tightly and then went up on tiptoe and gave him a congratulatory kiss on the cheek as he took off his hat. “This deserves a drink,” she said, after coming back down to her heels.

  She poured out two tumblers from the bottle of Rebel on the sideboard, and they sat and clinked glasses, then each took a drink.

  “Talked to a man out at your father’s today, Bobby Kent.”

  “Bobby has worked there a long time. He’s a good person.”

  “He, uh, he told me about the corn picker.”

  This was such an asinine thing to say, and Archer regretted it as soon as his mouth closed on the last word of it.

  Jackie’s features veered from happy to neutral and then all the way to stark disapproval. “Did you go out there to collect a debt or to ask nosy questions about my family history?”

  “I…It was stupid. I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I’m thinking.”

  He took a swallow of his drink and looked pensive.

  She gave him another pointed look. “Is there something you want to say in there, but just can’t work up the courage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure, you do know, Archer. A man like you always knows. You finished with your drink?”

  “I suppose so.”

  She yanked it from him and stood. “Well, you have the cash, so there.”

  “Thing is, I was hoping you could take it over and give it to Marjorie. I mean, I’ve met her a few times, but I don’t really know the woman.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “And you really think she’ll be happy to see me?!”

  “With six and a half thousand dollars as a peace offering?”

  She studied him for an uncomfortably long moment, before holding out her hand for the envelope, which he gave to her. “I’ll do it on the condition that you go with me.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s your job, Archer, not mine. I’m not being paid a dime to do this. In case you don’t get the picture, with Hank gone, I’ve got nothing.”

  He thought about telling Jackie about her father’s change in fortunes but decided against it. He had promised Tuttle, and he suspected that Jackie might make the wrong decision about going back home if she could be enticed by a mountain of wealth waiting for her. He didn’t know Lucas Tuttle, but he had enough misgivings about the man to make him pretty certain he didn’t want Jackie to go back to him.

  “I can give you a cut of mine, then.”

  “I don’t take charity, Archer, from you or any other man.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be charity.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “What then? I’m not a whore, either. Or do you think otherwise?”

  “’Course not, the thought never entered my mind.”

  “Yes, it did. Don’t lie to me. I’ll put up with a lot from a man, you’ve seen that for yourself. But I don’t tolerate lies. I just won’t have it.”

  “You called yourself chattel, not me.”

  “And I can’t believe someone who spent two damn years in college can be that stupid.”

  “How the hell did we go from celebrating to this, I wonder?” said Archer with a look of total bewilderment. “I mean, this is just a puzzle to me, truly.”

  “A puzzle? This is a man and a woman having a legitimate discussion about important things. But I’ll let you off the hook for now.” She opened the envelope, took out his three hundred, and handed it to him.

  He didn’t reach for it.

  “Archer, you earned it. Take the damn money.”

  He slipped the bills into his jacket pocket.

  She put the envelope with the rest of the cash into her pocket, then sat down, poured him another drink, and handed it to him.

  Archer looked bewildered at the woman’s mood swings but decided peace right now was preferable to what had just happened.

  “You got a smoke?” he asked.

  “Chesterfields.”

  “That’ll do.”

  She passed across a cigarette and he cupped his hand around hers as she lit him up.

  She stuck the burned match in an ashtray on the coffee table and watched him blow smoke sideways from his mouth. Then Jackie pulled a cigarette from her pack and lit up, too.

  “What else did you hear today at my father’s?”

  “He believes that Hank Pittleman hypnotized you or something.” Archer took the cigarette from his mouth. “Did he hypnotize you or something?”

  “Yeah, Archer, if you clap your hands just right, I’ll get on the floor and bark like a dog.”

  “I guess that means no.”

  “You miss being in the Army?”

  His jaw went slack at this abrupt inquiry. “You trying to be funny?”

  “No. I’m being serious.”

 
; “Why does that matter to you?”

  “Remember I told you I was a psychology major? I like figuring people out.”

  “You said I was complicated even though I don’t think I am.”

  “It’s the complex ones who think they’re simple, Archer. The simple ones think they have all this deep meaning in everything they do and say. And for the men it’s mostly trying to get into a woman’s bed.”

  “Well, I can certainly be guilty of that.”

  “But that’s not all that makes you tick. Not by a long shot. So, the Army? Do you miss it?”

  “You think I wanted to keep spending my days and nights killing and nearly being killed?”

  She blew smoke out before answering. “You were part of something, Archer. Something big and important. Now?” She shrugged. “What do you have, really? What do any of us have?”

  “I just got outta prison. Give me a chance. I mean to make something of myself.”

  “Must’ve felt good, though, being part of that.”

  “Didn’t think about that while I was doing it. Then, when I got home, I started thinking about other things. So I must have missed that part.”

  “I’d like to be part of something like that. Bigger than any one person, I mean.”

  “Let’s hope if you are, it has nothing to do with a damn war.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I need to find work.”

  “Why not try my daddy?”

  Archer smoked his Chesterfield down as he thought about this. “He did pay me an extra hundred dollars. So he must’ve liked what I did.”

  Jackie tapped her ash into the ashtray and nodded. “He’s a hard man to please, and don’t I know it.”

  “What are you saying, that I should go back out there and ask for a job?”

  “You got any other prospects?”

  “Shaw is paying me a few bucks to help him on the case.”

  “Really? Is that allowed? I mean, you’re not with the police. And you told me that he thought you might have killed Hank.”

  “Well, he doesn’t think that anymore, thank God. But he believes I might have the right qualities to be a good gumshoe.”

  “Is that what you want to do with your life?”

  “How the hell do I know? Does anybody know what they want to do after the world went to war and everything got blown up? What do you want to do?”