Fool's Flight (Digger) (5 page)

"There probably is," Digger agreed cheerfully.

"Good, I’m busy," Mannion growled.

"Never too busy to be nice, though," Digger said. "Thanks for seeing me."

He let himself out.

The plainclothesman said, "He’s not in a good mood since his car’s fender got banged up and the insurance didn’t cover it."

Digger looked at the nameplate on the desk. Detective Dave Coley.

"Listen, Detective," he said. "I’m in town to do some checking. Sometimes I can use a local cop. You interested? Do you do private work?"

Coley glanced over his shoulder to make sure Mannion’s office door was closed. "Sometimes."

"My company’s generous. Got a card?"

Coley fished one out of the desk drawer. He scrawled another number on the back of it.

"That’s my home number. If you want me, give me a call. I’m steady days here and most nights I’m home."

"Okay," Digger said. He pocketed the card. "This is just between us," he said.

Dave Coley nodded.

After he left Coley, Digger turned off the tape recorder. The Lauderdale heat slapped him in the face as he stepped outside the police building. He hated Florida. The heat and humidity mugged a person’s body. The whole state was fit only for people who spent their days and nights hiding away in air-conditioned bars or air-conditioned movies or were so old they needed incineration to convince themselves they were warm.

The public telephone booth on the corner near headquarters felt like a sauna as he stepped inside. Someday, someone was going to invent a good tape recorder, small enough for him to hide inside his sock, and he wouldn’t have to go around wearing a jacket all the time to conceal the giveaway bulge on his right hip.

He dialed his motel number.

"This is Mister Burroughs in Room 317. Any messages for me?"

"No, sir, the box is empty."

"Would you ring my room?"

"Sure. Hold on."

The telephone started ringing but there was no answer. Digger wanted to leave a message with the clerk for Koko but he knew the operator would never come back on the line. Digger could stay plugged into Room 317’s line until the telephone rotted in his hand, but the clerk would never come back on the line. Why did they do that?

Why did French designers make shirts with sleeves designed for people with sticks for arms? Why, after he had spent years learning to strike a match with one hand, did somebody decide to put the striker on the backside of the matchbook? Why did Italian bread go stale after just one hour in the refrigerator?

There were so many problems in the world. Why didn’t somebody solve them? Did they have to leave them all for him? Did he have to do everybody’s job?

Where the hell was Koko? She should have had enough sun by now. He slammed the receiver back onto the hook.

He looked at the phone directory under the shelf of the booth but the pages looked as if they had been the sole sustenance for a family of mice.

From information, he got the number of Inter-world Airways, called, and asked to speak to Timothy Baker, identified in his newspaper clipping as the president of the company.

"Mr. Baker’s on the other line. Who’s calling, please?"

"Never mind."

Digger hung up, satisfied that Baker was in his office. On the way back to his car, he stopped in a liquor store and bought a half-gallon of vodka for his room. For later.

Chapter Seven

The Interworld Airways company was headquartered in a quonset hut at the farthest end of the Fort Lauderdale airport. The building needed a paint job as did the company’s front door, although that could not be said about the secretary who worked inside.

She was a tall young blonde with a breathtaking bosom. It was early afternoon but she wore enough makeup to have just finished a modeling session for
Vogue
magazine. Light green eyeshadow that matched her eyes. Heavy mascara. Blusher. She had on a transparent, light-colored lipstick. She stood up when Digger entered to show off her chest and her equally remarkable waist and hips.

She was on the telephone and she motioned with her index finger for Digger to wait. He waited. For her, he would wait until he was eligible for Social Security.

Digger looked at a picture on the wall, a blowup of an old etching of the Graf Zeppelin. When the girl hung up, Digger nodded to the etching. "The pride of your fleet?" he asked.

"Can’t beat the gas mileage. Can I help you?"

"If you couldn’t, I’m beyond help."

She smiled, a warmer smile than he expected from someone lovely enough to have heard and suffered through every kind of come-on line imaginable.

"Your name is…?" Digger said.

"Me Jane. And you?"

"Lincoln. Elmo Lincoln. I’ve come to talk to Mr. Baker about insurance on the flight that went down."

She dialed on the intercom. "Mr. Baker, a Mr. Lincoln is here about the insurance."

Before she had even hung up the telephone, the door behind her desk opened and a slight man with thinning dark hair and a pencil-line mustache stepped out. He came toward Digger with the forward momentum of a man about to throw a punch and wanting to get everything he could behind it. The man wore heavy glasses with dark plastic frames; the lenses were tinted blue. Behind them, Digger noticed that Baker seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes. He blinked continuously.

"About time," he said. "Your name is…"

"Elmo Lincoln."

"Come on in, Mr. Lincoln."

Digger smiled at the young woman as he passed her. The inside office needed painting as much as the outside of the building did. There were water stains on the walls, and cancerous blotches where chunks of paint had peeled off. Baker almost shoved Digger into a seat in front of the desk, then walked around and sat behind it. He stared at Digger, his eyes flicking nervously.

"Well?" he said.

"Well what?"

"When do we get some money?"

"How much do you want?" Digger said. The office smelled of disinfectant. Or Timothy Baker did. One or the other.

"Now, Lincoln, I don’t want you jerking us off. I told the other guy that the replacement value of that plane is four million dollars."

"Sounds reasonable to me."

"I don’t think you can get away with that shit; that’s the book value of the plane. Sure, maybe it was old, but you find me one to replace it. You can’t. Four million dollars."

"You got my backing," Digger said. "You going to spend it all on a new plane?"

Baker blinked again. And again. "Maybe and maybe not. It depends on the market. I want to tell you…what’s your name…Lincoln…that your attitude is the first reasonable one I’ve run into since the tragedy."

"How do you think it happened?"

"Well, low-ranking people are always trying to make a name for themselves. A top man like you, he can do what’s fair."

"I don’t mean my attitude. I mean the accident. How do you think it happened?" Digger said.

"I don’t know."

"Was Donnelly a good pilot?"

Baker was drumming the fingers of both hands on his desk. When Digger asked the question, he began to drum faster.

"Donnelly was the best," he said. "He used to be a top captain at Pan-Am. He could fly anything."

"When he was sober," Digger said.

"He was always sober."

"Maybe now, but not always," Digger said.

"Oh, I know that he had a drinking problem years ago. Let’s face it, I don’t exactly get Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager in here looking for work. But Steve had straightened himself out. Even when he was drinking, he never flew with booze in him. He was always a good pilot."

"You think there was something wrong mechanically? How about a bomb?" Digger looked around the office and thought a bomb might be just what it needed to make it perfect. Cardboard lined one wall and in a corner there was a four-foot-high stack of
Wall Street Journals
. "The F.A.A. was in here and asking around. Maybe someday if they ever find any wreckage, they can tell what happened, but right now it’s all a mystery."

"Everything just went on schedule, the way it was supposed to? Nothing unusual?"

"No, except for the co-pilot and stewardess. Why are you asking so many questions? You know, you’ve got to pay no matter what was the cause."

"What about the co-pilot and stewardess?"

"Well, he shouldn’t have taken off without them. You know this doesn’t have anything to do with our claim." Drum, drum, drum, drum, drum. His fingers on the desk were going at four hundred beats a minute. His fingers could serve as transplant material for hummingbirds’ hearts, Digger thought.

"I know," Digger said soothingly. "Tell me about the co-pilot and stew."

"I told your other guys. After the co-pilot got sick, the stewardess went off with him to the crew lounge. And while they were gone, Donnelly took off and nobody does that, I mean, we’ve got regulations and he shouldn’t have done that."

"They around?"

"The co-pilot and stew? No. They’re on a run up around the northeast. They’ll be back tomorrow."

"What are their names?"

"Your other guy has all that in his file."

"Save me looking through paperwork," Digger said. He tried to look friendly and pleasant.

"Randy Batchelor and Melanie Fox. When do you think your company will move?" Baker asked.

"Mine’s moving now. Yours, I don’t know."

"What does that mean?"

"We don’t have the insurance on your plane," Digger said.

"What? Then who…what the hell are you doing here? Who are you?"

Digger handed forward a card from his company that did not carry his name. Baker snatched the card from his hand and squinted at it, his eyes blinking, like a high-speed still camera.

His fingers stopped drumming on the desk as if he needed all his energy to focus his eyes.

"Brokers’ Surety Life Insurance. What the fuck is that?"

"My company. Right or wrong, but my company."

"What are you here for?" Baker asked.

"Some of the people on the plane had life insurance with us. We’re just looking into it."

"What the hell do you want with me? What have I got to do with your goddam life insurance?" He was drumming again with the fingers.

"Nothing. I’m just trying to figure out how the accident happened."

Baker’s eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute…you people, you’re not thinking of trying to make us some kind of party to the claims against you, are you? Jesus Christ, Lincoln."

Digger shook his head. "That’s not my decision but I haven’t heard it mentioned."

"I’m just trying to get this airline established, for Christ’s sake."

"And a good job you’re doing, too," Digger said as he walked toward the door. He stopped and said, "Listen, we don’t have anything to do with your plane insurance but you know insurance people. They’re thicker than thieves so maybe my home office can do you some good."

"Can you do that?"

"I’ll try. I honestly will." When Digger left Baker’s office the blonde looked at him hopefully as he stepped back into her office. When the door closed, she said, "Everything go all right?"

"I’m going to try to help. What’s your name anyway? I can’t keep thinking of you as Beautiful Blonde Me Jane."

"Jane Block."

He leaned on her desk. "You been working here long?"

"Seven, eight months…jobs are hard to find."

"Not for you," Digger said and meant it. The young woman could have stepped out of the centerfold pages of a man’s magazine. "I heard so many stories about this town being Retirement Village, then the first person I meet looks like you."

"Aren’t you nice? There’s a few of us around."

"Where do the few of you hang out?"

"Here and there." There was no question about it, Digger thought. Coquettishness belonged to youth only.

"Mind if I tag along some night?" he said.

"No, not at all. Tourism is our most important product. The Chamber of Commerce’d be on me if I didn’t cooperate."

"Lucky Chamber of Commerce. I’ll remind you about that some time. Mr. Baker was telling me about poor Steve Donnelly. Tough accident. Did you know Steve well?"

"Kind of. He was a…nice man."

"Not your style?" Digger said.

"A little too churchy-preachy for my taste. But a nice man."

"Can I reach you here?" Digger asked.

"Yes. I’m in the book, too. My home number. Where are you staying?"

Digger thought of Koko and said, "I haven’t gotten moved in yet. Suppose I call you when I’m settled?"

Back at the motel, there were still no messages in his box. Koko was not in the room and there was no note.

Chapter Eight

DIGGER’S LOG:

Tape recording number two, 6 P.M., Tuesday, Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways.

Where the hell is Koko?

I bring her and her seven bikinis to beautiful Fort Lauderdale and plop her down in the lap of luxury and she’s not even around to untie my shoes after my busy day. What the hell happened to gratitude in this world?

Maybe I’m just too old for her. The generational divide. How old is she anyway? I keep forgetting. I think she’s twenty-six. The last birthday I forgot, I think was twenty-six. That’s a dozen years younger than me. I don’t know if I can deal with somebody that young and that inconsiderate.

To hell with it. Post time.

I didn’t tape the sermon by Damien Wardell yesterday morning. I wish I had; he’s good. His wife sings all right, too, but she moves funny. I’d like to hear Mother Candace let loose once and sing right. The Reverend Wardell’s taste in blondes is not bad, even though I don’t do blondes myself.

In the master file are two tapes. First we have an interview with Mrs. Trini Donnelly, wife of our late-lamented skipper. That home could not exactly have been Captain’s Paradise for Donnelly. He was a retired drunk turned religious zealot. Trini is a drunk but unretired. The two kids, Spazz and Tard, are typical examples of how, given latter twentieth-century American environment, bad kids can go worse. They know a little too much about fornication for me to believe that Trini has been any rival to Ulysses’ wife in the fidelity department. She seems, though, to keep faithful track of money.