A Gambling Man

by David Baldacci

  Archer pointed out the window at the boat. “That’s a nice-looking craft. Does someone own it, or can it be rented?”

  The man said, “That there is Sawyer Armstrong’s vessel.”

  “Sawyer Armstrong?” said Archer, feigning ignorance.

  “Why, he’s the richest man around here. Has a big place up in the mountains. Grows olives. But he owns most of Bay Town.”

  “Oh, right, I think I’ve heard of him. But I’ve only just moved here.” Archer lit up a Lucky Strike and looked out at the boat. “Where do people go on boats around here? Are there islands and such?”

  “Sure. The Channel Islands.”

  “Channel Islands? Can you get out there fast?”

  “Depends on what you mean by fast, young man, and depends on which island. There’re eight of them in what they call an archipelago. Goes from San Miguel to the north to San Clemente on the southern side. Santa Cruz and Anacapa are the closest to us, but you’re still talking over an hour or more to get to them.”

  “Are the islands inhabited?”

  “Just Santa Catalina, really. The others are either empty or just have a few folks. Used to be Indians lived on the Channel Islands. Chumash on the northern islands and the Tongva tribe to the south. But the Spaniards came and moved them out way back when. Now, on Catalina some rich feller built a town out there, like a tourist destination, so to speak. Avalon, it’s called. Then he went broke and some other fellers tried their hand and kept building. Then they had a fire and money problems and had to sell out to other investors. Then that chewing gum feller, Wrigley, came along and bought most everything up. Spent millions out there, so’s I heard. Catalina Casino is real popular.”

  Archer blew out a mouthful of smoke. “Casino? I thought casinos were outlawed in California.”

  The man chuckled. “Ain’t no gambling there. ‘Casino’ is I-talian for ‘gathering place,’ at least some feller told me that. Anyway, Wrigley owned the Chicago Cubs. Team used to go there for spring training. Long time ago, I went over there once to watch ’em. Lotta fun. Then Mr. Chewing Gum died and his son took over and kept building it up. Then the military came in and took everything over during the war. They still do tests and stuff out there on some of ’em.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Catalina’s part of the Southern Channel Islands chain. Takes you about an hour or so by boat from way down in Long Beach to get there. Whole lot longer from here. Have to make it a full day trip.”

  “I hear there’s another island out there, a lot closer to us here. Sort of a man-made place the military put together.”

  The seaman eyed him suspiciously and tapped the smoking end of his pipe against his desktop. “You hear a lot for someone who just got to town.”

  “I like to keep my ears open. Is it true?”

  “Military folks did lots of things during the war. We don’t know them all, expect we never will. Hush-hush, right?”

  Archer eyed the man’s seafaring garb. “So you’ve never been out there? Thought you’d have been all over these waters.”

  “No reason to go that way.”

  “Can I get out there, just to see if it’s there?”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I like trying new things.”

  The man shrugged. “You know how to pilot a boat?”

  “I do, yeah. Army taught me.”

  “Funny thing for the Army to teach.”

  “You’d be surprised how much water you encounter in the Army.”

  “It’s a straight shot west of here, pretty much from where I’m sitting. Two hundred and seventy-one degrees on your compass. Three miles. About fifteen to twenty minutes with the typical sea conditions we have here. Don’t normally hit heavy water until farther out.”

  “Since you know the compass setting so exactly, then there is an island out there?” said Archer.

  “Never said there wasn’t, young feller.”

  “But you’ve never been there?”

  The man bit down on his pipe and said nothing.

  “So the military still owns it? Will I get in trouble if I go out there?”

  “Maybe. But it might not be the military you have the trouble with.”

  “Who then?”

  “Can’t really say, young man, ’cause I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.”

  Archer kept his gaze on the fellow, but the man’s mouth had closed up like a fish that had swallowed a hook.

  He eyed the darkening skies. “Can I get a boat out early in the morning? Around first light?”

  “Sure. Feller down near the port operations rents ’em out. You go that way there you’ll see his sign. He’s honest, or as close to it as you’re going to get. He opens at six. Five dollars is the fee for the day. Eight hours or eight minutes, it’s all the same. And that includes fuel.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Archer walked away and then glanced back to see the man now standing and staring after him.

  You might have just made a big mistake.

  But there might be a way around that.

  Archer picked up his pace.

  Chapter 46

  THE MAN RENTING BOATS WAS JUST ABOUT TO CLOSE when Archer reached him. At first, he didn’t want to provide Archer a boat so late in the day, but when Archer waved a sawbuck in front of his face and said he was only going about three miles out, the man took the bill and said, “Okay, mister, just dock it nice and tight in the same slip when you come back, ’cause I ain’t hanging around.”

  Archer filled out the necessary paperwork, and the man led him to the boat with a set of keys and a navigation map of the area. Along the way he grilled Archer on his seamanship and came away satisfied.

  “Even three miles out weather can turn fast, so stay alert. And use your running lights. Shipping lanes out there. It’s marked on the map. You don’t want to get swamped by a tanker.”

  “Right, thanks.”

  “And what’s so special about three miles out anyway?” said the man. “Nothing but water. Anacapa’s a lot farther than that.”

  “Just checking out a tip I got on a fishing spot.”

  The man eyed him with skepticism. “Yeah, right. You ain’t no smuggler, are you?”

  Archer tapped his pockets. “Well, if I am, whatever I’m smuggling is really small.”

  The varnish was so freshly applied and smelled so strongly that Archer felt like he’d been lacquered as soon as he stepped foot on board the trim nineteen-foot Chris-Craft Barrelback with an American flag flapping from a post set on the stern. He stowed his hat, powered up the motor, flicked the switch for the running lights, and steered the boat due west. As he sped up the wind increased and the ocean followed this nudge, with the result that foot-high seas confronted him about a half mile out.

  Archer pushed the throttle forward a bit more, and the heavy wooden boat handled the chop with ease. He kept his eye on his compass and then took a minute to look over the laminated map the fellow had provided, using a flashlight that had been clipped to a holder set on the dashboard. The island he was heading to was not marked on this map.

  After confirming his route he put the map away and kept his eye on the compass, holding his heading steady at 271 degrees. He was cruising along at twenty-four knots and figured he would be at the island in less than ten more minutes. He let his gaze run from left to right and then behind him, just in case. The seas became heavier at around the two-and-a-half-mile mark, and he throttled down a bit to compensate, working the bow at a forty-five-degree angle into the oncoming waves to cleave their power in half. The moon was up and visibility was good. Everything was going his way so far. He knocked on the wooden dash for luck.

  He had learned to pilot powerboats in these very same waters during his training back in 1942. The Army had worked with the Navy, and amphibious landings were going to be in his future, Archer learned. Thus, he had been given the skill set necessary for this, never realizing
it would come in handy so many years later, and in American waters. He had been in far worse seas than he was currently in, but, like the boat rental man had cautioned, things could change quickly if the weather turned.

  He slowed the boat as he approached a dark mass rising up out of the Pacific. He swung the light mounted on the side of the boat, much like a prowler’s beam, so that it strafed the contours of the island he was heading toward. He turned north and navigated down the island’s length, doing a rough calculation of its size and dimensions. Once he had returned to his starting point, he throttled down even more and pointed his bow at an enormous dock that his searchlight had revealed previously. There was another, smaller dock, about a half mile down on that side. He snagged two fenders and placed them on hooks on the gunwale on the port side to cushion the boat from the current pushing it against the wooden dock.

  He glided in at an angle, then cut the wheel hard toward the dock, killed the motor, and jumped out as the stern swung landward. He quickly tied up the boat, grabbed his hat and the flashlight, and walked off the dock and onto the island.

  He looked around, aiming the beam here and there. He was also wondering why, if the military still owned this piece of land, no one was here to challenge him for trespassing.

  He walked in a westerly direction, shining his light over the dirt. The land was reasonably flat but then elevated to about forty or so feet as he drew closer to the middle of the island, which made sense to protect against flooding. There had clearly been structures here, large ones, if their remaining foundations were any indication. Like an archaeologist he could roughly determine what had been here by what had been left behind. He saw discarded cables, stacks of used lumber, chunks of concrete, and an empty crate that had RADAR stenciled on the side. There were old tires, the remains of a Jeep buried in the mud, empty boxes that had been filled with C rations, a sailor’s white cap, an empty ammo chain for a machine gun, and a fifty-gallon oil drum that was labeled PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. A little ways away he saw the rusted undercarriage of a Mark VI railway gun mounted on a rotating platform. He had seen these guns while training on the Channel Islands. They could move around in a circle and take on both enemy aircraft and ships.

  Under the illumination of his light he spotted something interesting. He walked over and knelt next to a hole in the ground with a stake driven in next to it. Some number and letter markings were on the wooden stake, but he didn’t know what they meant. This very same thing was also at several other places, all on the elevated portion of the island.

  Then he saw another post in the ground with a name on it.

  LANCET SURVEYORS AND ARCHITECTURAL GROUP, BAY TOWN.

  There wasn’t a phone number or any other information on the post, but he wrote down the name in his notepad.

  Archer performed a run-fast walk until he reached the water on the other side of the island. He had measured his strides and gauged the island as being about three miles in width. He had earlier calculated it was about twice that in length. Three miles by six miles, or eighteen square miles in total. Not a lot of land, but certainly big enough to do something with, as the Navy apparently had. And it was an engineering marvel that they had created an island from basically a shallow spot in the ocean. And to his knowledgeable eye, the large dock located here could have handled the biggest destroyers the Navy had.

  Farther out there was a long, shadowy form. It took Archer a few moments to figure it out.

  A breakwater.

  That would make sense when you were docking ships out this far from the mainland.

  He looked up at the sky as the blinking lights of a plane buzzed overhead. Its angle of ascent showed that it had probably just taken off from the coast. It continued in a westerly direction, maybe on its way to Hawaii, he thought. To his practiced ear, it was a four-engine aircraft, and it would need all that horsepower to make it that far.

  He trudged back to the boat, feeling disappointed. He hadn’t really accomplished much of anything, and it had cost him ten bucks. Archer picked up his pace as a flash of lightning appeared far out over the ocean to the west. A storm was rolling in.

  He jumped into the boat, fired up the engine, untied his lines, and pulled away from the dock. He pointed his bow east and throttled up. He could feel the wind at his back, and then the barometric pressure dropped with a rush. This was nature’s warning sign of foul weather coming.

  He pushed the throttle down further, and the Chris-Craft’s powerful engine thrust the boat through the increasingly heavy seas. Archer listened to the cracks of thunder as the storm chased him all the way back to the California mainland. He slid the boat into its slip, tied it up, left the key under the seat as the man had instructed him, and hustled back to the Delahaye. He got the top on and the windows rolled up a few seconds before the rain began to fall in buckets. He sat in the car with the engine off and stared out to sea. Three miles out was an island. And he was pretty sure that that was where Sawyer Armstrong and those other men had gone. Now the question was why.

  Chapter 47

  MIDNIGHT MOODS WAS STARTING TO HIT ITS STRIDE as Archer valeted his car at the front entrance. Apparently, a brutal murder of one of its employees wasn’t going to interfere with business. People still wanted to drink, dance, gamble, and watch pretty young girls lift their legs and sing their hearts out.

  The rain had already passed through, but it was still drizzling and about fifteen degrees cooler than before the storm had hit. He spotted the valet captain in his hat, buttons, and military-style uniform at the key desk. Archer walked over and held up his PI license.

  The captain took a long look at the photostat copy. The gent was in his fifties, with thinning gray hair, a handlebar mustache, and a nervous tic at his right eye, which made Archer nervous just watching it. His lips and nails were stained yellow from his smokes. He was every inch of five-six, and that frame carried about thirty more pounds than it ideally should have.

  “Okay, what do you want?” he asked.

  “You know Sawyer Armstrong?”

  “No, never heard of the guy,” the man said, sarcasm dripping like the fake medals on his chest. “Oh wait a sec, ain’t he the man who owns this place?”

  “You can play me for a sap and this dance will just take longer than you want it to.”

  “The cops were already here, shamus. I talked to them but I don’t have to do the same to you. So scram.”

  “We’re working with Chief Pickett on this case, so you might want to rethink that position, chum, unless you want a trip downtown that might leave you black and blue, if you get my meaning.”

  The patronizing smile slowly faded from the captain’s features. “Okay, don’t get all tough, what do you want to know?”

  Archer put his license away and said, “You have any idea what time Armstrong left last night? He was with two of his ‘associates.’ They were basically gorillas in neckties but not as good-looking.”

  “Yeah, I know them all right. Hank and Tony. Not a pair you want to get on the wrong side of, mister.”

  “I got that lesson yesterday right here and real good. So you saw them?”

  “Yeah. I ordered Mr. Armstrong’s car up myself. It’s a Cadillac about as long as my house. He got into the back, Hank drove, and Tony sat in the passenger seat. Tony looked like he’d slipped and hit his face against something hard.”

  “Yeah, he did. So what time was this?”

  “Oh, I’d say eleven, give or take.”

  “Give or take how many minutes?”

  “Hey, what do I look like to you, buddy, a Timex? It was around eleven. They got into the car and drove off.”

  “Did you know the murdered girl, Ruby Fraser?”

  “Just to see her around.”

  “You ever see her with a guy?”

  “That’s sort of the point of Midnight Moods, ain’t it?”

  “She was a singer, not one of the cigarette-and-brandy gals or the afternoon boppers.”

&nbs
p; His lip curled back in a sneer. “Well, excuse me, I didn’t mean to speak ill of the dead. I’m sure she was a saint.”

  “So did you ever see her with a guy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Douglas Kemper, you know him?”

  “Sure, he’s here right now playing cards.”

  “You ever see him with Ruby?”

  “Nope. Where is this going, fella?”

  “Apparently nowhere. Thanks for nothing, Pops.”

  Archer walked over the drawbridge, checked his hat, and ordered a vodka martini that went down nice after his island hunting expedition off the coast.

  He was directed to the card club room by a cigarette girl who did her best to palm off a pack of Camels on him.

  “I only smoke Lucky Strikes,” he said.

  She looked him up and down and said in a husky voice, “You don’t look like you need that much luck, handsome.”

  “Damn, I finally run into a gal who gets me and I have to go.” He flipped her a quarter and took a pack of Luckys from her tray.

  A boy in buttons opened the door to the card club room and Archer ducked inside. It was a large space about forty feet square, with tables set up nearly chairback to chairback. It was only men in here; Archer didn’t know if that was a rule or not. The gentlemen wore expensive suits or high-dollar tuxes. They were smoking cigars, sipping what looked to be snifters of cognac, and looking amusingly content at their privileged status in life. Sitting on a tall stool in the middle of each table was a fellow with a colorful vest, sleeve garters, and a green visor who stood guard over the chute from which the playing cards were dealt.