Despite the fullness of the skirt, he could gauge her figure, which was shapely, perhaps more than that now that he thought about it. She had on flesh-colored stockings—and no doubt the seams would be lined up perfectly in back—and grim, low-heeled pumps. Her blond hair was done up in so tight a bun that it pulled at her face. Her chin was sharply defined, the cheeks nicely formed and riding high, the lips full, with not a trace of lipstick, which he’d already figured on because there had been none on the cigarette end. Behind black shell glasses, her eyes were blue and wide, the irises plump, with the overall effect being what he thought some might call vivacious. At least they held the potential if she let her hair down, in more ways than one. All in all, quite a looker, he concluded. And then he thought about the sick note residing in his pocket and he stopped thinking about the woman in that way.
Her countenance did fit her name, he concluded. It was a slab of granite with nothing behind it. The baby blue eyes, now that he studied them again, seemed bound to the surface of the fleshy sockets only. It was a cold and untrusting face peering back at him.
“You are Mr. Archer?” she said, coming forward after shutting the door.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“I am Ernestine Crabtree.”
“I figured, from the name on the door.” He put out his hand. “Been here a couple of minutes.”
She did not return the gesture. “Then you’re two minutes early.”
“I guess my watch has the runs.”
The granite only deepened a notch at his poor joke.
“Let’s get down to it then,” she said sharply.
She motioned to a chair set against the wall. “Pull that up across from the desk,” she commanded as she sat down in front of the typewriter, her back straight as a two-by-four.
She spun out the page in there and rolled in a fresh sheet with a few firm cranks of the wheel as he sat down across from her, his legs splayed wide, his hat dangling in one hand.
“Full name?”
“Aloysius Archer.”
“Middle name?”
“Never had one.”
“Really?” she said incredulously.
“I think they believed one name was good enough, and certainly Aloysius might, under some circumstances, be quite as good as two names.”
She stared at him for a long moment with what he thought were lips fighting to become a smile. In the end, the granite won out.
She asked for more personal information, which he readily gave, and that Crabtree promptly typed on the form.
“You have your parole papers?”
He presented the pages and she dutifully looked over them.
“I trust you have studied your list of dos and don’ts?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And you have adhered to these instructions since leaving prison?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“No drinking, no carousing?”
“And no women, loose or otherwise.”
She looked up from the papers. “I think you’re taking this matter far too frivolously, Mr. Archer. This is a serious business.”
“I can guarantee you that I’m giving it a lot of weight, ma’am. I don’t want to go back to prison. That life is not for me. It was worse than fighting in the war, and that’s saying something.”
The granite receded a bit, as she seemed pleased by his candid admission. “That’s the proper attitude.” She used a rubber stamp to imprint the seal of her office across the top of the first page and placed her initials and the date on a line provided by the stamp and passed the pages back to him.
“A fellow I met in the hall asked me to say hello to you,” he said.
She glanced up at him. “What fellow?”
“Willie Free. He’s with the law.”
Archer watched closely for her reaction. She did not smile; instead the woman grimaced. That told him a lot, maybe that he had already suspected from the way Free had looked and talked about her.
She cleared her throat. “I have some job interviews for you to go on. Gainful employment is absolutely vital to achieving your goal of never returning to prison.”
“Thing is, I already have a job.”
Her fingers paused over the drawer she was about to open.
“Excuse me?”
“I had an interview with a gent last night. He hired me.”
“To do what, exactly?”
“Man’s in the business of loaning money. He hired me to collect a debt he’s owed.”
“This is highly irregular. I’m not sure—”
He pulled the two twenties from his pocket and held the bills up. “He already gave me an advance.”