Page 71 of The Accomplice
Lake pressed it. Waited, and Bloch hung back, content to let him do the talking.
The steel viewing slot ripped open with a clang and a face filled the slot. A big face. Maybe the size of a dinner plate. The man had a perfectly trimmed pencil-thin beard that went around his jaw as if it had been drawn on with a Sharpie. His cheeks were so round and fulsome they looked as though they were trying to crush his nose.
‘Wat du want ?’ said the face.
‘We’d like to talk to Archie Bunsen, please,’ said Lake.
‘He ain’t here,’ said the face, and slammed the viewing slot shut.
Lake banged on the door, shouted, ‘Eddie Flynn sent us.’
Silence.
The slot slid open slowly.
‘Wat du want with Archie ?’
‘We want to talk, that’s all.’
The slot closed. The door stayed closed.
‘That’s okay. We can tell the FBI to come and talk with Archie instead,’ said Lake.
The door opened.
The face had a body to match. Bloch guessed this was Moonman. The guy was over six-five and four-hundred pounds. Not all of it fat. The face sat on a pair of well-developed traps that curved to his rounded shoulders, giving the appearance of rolling hills of muscle. Even if he did weigh as much as a Volkswagen, he could probably lift the same amount.
He turned around in the narrow hallway, not without some difficulty, and led them to a door at the end. He knocked on it, said, ‘Peeps here to see you. From Eddie Flynn.’
The door opened to reveal an office that looked like it had been robbed. Papers and files were strewn over the desk, the floor, on chairs, stacked high on tables, and paper stuck out of metal file cabinets groaningly full and unable to close. Behind a vast, ornate oak desk was a small, balding man in a yellow shirt, a pair of brown braces over his shoulders and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The shirt could’ve been white once, but the whole room was bathed in a saffron-colored haze from the one window on the left, which had a thick layer of nicotine on the glass. Bloch had smelled cigarettes from the hallway. An ashtray on the desk hadn’t been emptied in months. Cigarette butts had been stuffed into it, row upon row, until they stood proud of the lip of the ashtray like thick orange porcupine needles.
‘What’s up with Eddie ?’ said the man. His voice sounded like nuts and bolts rolling around in a bucket of wallpaper paste.
‘Are you Archie ?’ asked Lake.
‘You can call me Mr. Bunsen.’
‘We need some help. A loft in Manhattan was leased last year by one of your landlord clients. The FBI has been in touch with the landlord and he said he has no paperwork on the tenant. It was a short lease and the guy paid in cash. Eddie says no landlord in the city would lease so much as a hole in the wall without some kind of collateral and bank account information. You handle the paperwork for all the …landlordsin that area and—’
‘You meanslumlords, don’t ya ?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Lake.
‘No, but Eddie did. I don’t mind. I’m a plain speaker Mr …’
‘Lake, Gabriel Lake. This is my friend, Bloch.’
‘She don’t say much.’
‘She doesn’t have to. The FBI came up short on a paper trail, but Eddie knows you handle all the paperwork for your clients, and you might have some documents that could help us.’
‘And why would I give my client’s paperwork to you ?’
‘We need to find that tenant, urgently. Any paper trail of his is important to us.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t divulge any client information without a court order.’
‘Eddie told us you might say that. He said he would appreciate your help with this.’
