Smoked Out (Digger) (12 page)

"Asshole," Digger said.

"That’s what I told him. Anyway, somebody knows you’re Julian Burroughs and you’re an insurance investigator."

"Yeah. Somebody explained that to me tonight while they were playing marimba on my ribs."

"What happened?"

"I was bruised a little."

"Why didn’t you say that right away?"

"I didn’t want you to worry."

"Bushwa. You’re just trying to freeze me out of your life again."

"You’re the only person in the world I want in my life."

"More bullshit. Digger, you are bloodless, uncaring, unfeeling, nonexistent."

"Don’t feel guilty just because you didn’t get a chance to talk to whoever came there after me. You didn’t set them on me."

"I’m not feeling guilty."

"Yes, you are, and so you’re dumping it on me," Digger said.

Tamiko hung up.

Digger replaced the phone.

Bloodless? Uncaring? Nonexistent?

He looked at the bed, so recently warmed with Sonje’s acrobatics. Maybe bloodless and uncaring but not nonexistent. Never nonexistent.

Coito, ergo sum
, he thought. Play that on your Oriental drum, he thought.

I fuck, therefore I am
. His Jesuit professors would be proud of him.

Chapter Thirteen

Digger’s Log:

Tape recording number 4, 2:30 A.M., Wednesday night—make that Thursday morning. Julian Burroughs in the Jessalyn Welles claim.

It is with heavy heart that I take microphone in hand, Kwash, to tell you that two goons tried to work me over tonight only minutes after you wished me dead. If your wishes are going to work out that well, why don’t you wish me rich?

I don’t know who sent them. It could have been Gideon Welles. But it could also have been Ted Dole or that bookie, Marty, or whoever was following me in that yellow car. Anybody could have gotten the license number of my car and checked it out. Maybe Alyne Gurney. Maybe even Lorelei Church. It’s wonderful to have so many potential friends, one of whom likes me so much that my Las Vegas identity was investigated. Goddamn that stupid bastard of a concierge whom I tipped fifty dollars last Christmas and who gets shit this year.

Scratch Lorelei as a suspect. She’s too dumb and, anyway, she maybe saved my life tonight, even if she did leave her police whistle home. Don’t hold that against her, Kwash; she meant well.

She got fired by Dr. Welles, and I’m going to talk to Frank about finding her a job in our L.A. office. She’d fit right in.

In the master file are two more tapes. Today’s meet with Dr. Etienne, with Alyne Gurney, who is Gideon Welles’s girlfriend—make that latest girlfriend—and with Sonje Bjorklund, who I guess thinks she used to be Dr. Welles’s girlfriend but is just a sports model who thinks somebody rich will stuff money in if she opens wide enough.

Etienne is a pathologist and doesn’t do medical examinations anymore, but he did one for Jessalyn because he’s a friend of the family. He says she was in excellent health. But he was nervous and he was lying. Alyne Gurney is in love with Welles. Matilda, the mound that walks like a woman, told me that at lunch. Does Welles love Alyne? I don’t know. The girl reporter told Pete Breslin that Alyne was "big money." But Matilda, between trying to swallow the world in one lump, said that Alyne is broke.

Welcome to California. Welles was screwing around on his wife. His wife was probably screwing around with her tennis pro.

Alyne was very vigorous about telling me that Jessalyn Welles did not commit suicide. Too vigorous. That means she knows the good doctor is in line for a lot of insurance money if accidental death holds up. I’ll file that for future reference.

A pliable lady reporter with perverted sex desires has been nice enough to provide for me, through a friend, a lot of clippings about the Welleses. Maybe I’ll read them tomorrow. I am too tired and sore tonight. I know that they’re going to give me a lot more suspects to think about and I hate the prospect.

I just wish Jessalyn Welles’s car had had defective brakes. Then I’d be back in Las Vegas.

I was planning to get out of here, but tonight’s meeting in the parking lot with the two Neanderthalers means I’m going to stay around a little longer. No one tattoos my head and gets away with it.

Meanwhile, I am working in my usual fashion. Intelligently, vigorously, with great economy of motion and money.

Today’s expenses. Gurney lunch, $20. Sonje, $20 in drinks—those squareheads can drink. Thirty in bribes to the bartender at the yacht club, $60 for dinner. Total, $140. Add a dime for a phone call I made from the hospital parking lot today. Ahhh, screw it, I’ll pick up the dime myself. Room by credit card. My gas tank is still half full.

I wish I knew who was following me today. I don’t think I was imagining it.

In case anybody cares, I was not beaten up that badly. Sometimes a little beating is good for a person. You can’t be whupped if you’re nonexistent. I ache, therefore I am.

Good night and God bless us everyone.

Time out. Here’s an added starter. If Jessalyn Welles’s death was suicide, then Gideon Welles had me beaten up tonight. Who else had anything to lose by my finding out it was suicide? But if she was murdered, then anybody who could have killed her could have had me beaten up tonight.

I hate this job. Everything is if and maybe and try-me-next-week.

And if her death was an accident, I have been spinning my wheels to no purpose.

No accident. People don’t get other people beat up over accidents. Leave me alone, world. I’m tired.

Chapter Fourteen

"Digger?"

"Who in California calls me Digger and gets up at, oh, God, six in the morning?"

"This is Pete Breslin. I have my faults, but sleeping late isn’t one of them."

"Neither is compassion, Too-Tall. What do you want?"

"That green Porsche? Are you awake yet? Do you want to call me back when you’ve drunk a cigarette and smoked some coffee?"

"No. Talk now. I’m passing into a coma. In a few minutes, I’ll have to call in dead."

"You drink too much. Frank Stevens said so. You’ve got to watch that."

"What about the green Porsche?"

"It’s registered to an Earl Collins, twenty, of 2719 Lifton Avenue, Los Angeles."

"Who’s he?"

"Do you expect me to do everything for you? I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t have any police record, except for speeding."

Digger fumbled in the end-table drawer and found the pen. He wrote on the back of the phone book. "Give me that again."

Earl Collins. Twenty. Of 2719 Lifton Avenue, L.A. He drives too fast. You get those clippings I sent you?"

"Yes, thank you. I know how you suffered to get them."

"Anything for a friend…or a partner," Breslin said.

Digger smoked a cigarette without moving. His body was sore, and when he touched his face it was swollen. But the part of his body that hurt the worst was his throat, raw from drinking and smoking strong cigarettes. When he stretched his neck, he felt pain in the tendons on the right side of his throat. The pain was chronic for him and frightened him, but he refused to see a doctor about it, under the assumption that what one doesn’t know might just as surely kill you, but at least that death need not be noisy and maudlin and well-announced.

The cigarette did not improve his mood. He found his company phone book in the end table and looked up a number. His watch said 6:12 A.M. He dialed.

"Hello," a voice growled.

"Good morning," Digger said. "This is Julian Burroughs, Mr. Landfill. I just wanted to let you know that I traced the owner of that green Porsche, so you can call off your hounds."

"Who? Who is this?"

"Oh, I’m sorry. I do believe I woke you up. Burroughs."

"Burroughs? Oh, yes. Burroughs. Yeah. Found green Porsche, did you?"

"Yes, found green Porsche, did I. Thanks for trying. Everybody was pleased with your office’s effort. Even Mr. Stevens. I remember his exact words. He said, that Landfill can’t do shit, but he certainly tries. I do appreciate it. We both do."

Digger tried to go back to sleep but soon got up, cursing a hypermetabolism that never rested, that lurked on the fringe of sleep, growling, poking a stick at sleep, waiting to spring into action if sleep dropped its guard just an inch. He was awake. Wake the world. Misery demanded company. Wake and the world wakes with you. Sleep and you sleep alone. Except last night. Sonje. He looked at the pile of clippings. He had glanced at them last night but couldn’t focus his eyes. He shoved them in a dresser drawer so the maid wouldn’t throw them out.

He showered, then called Koko. She was home.

"Don’t be mad at me," he said.

"If I get sacks under my eyes because of this call, I’ll hate you."

"I just wanted to tell you that I miss you," he said.

"That’s it?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Thank you. I’m sorry I called you nonexistent."

"That’s what I wanted to hear you say."

"Did you really get beaten up last night?"

"Yes. But not badly. I’m all right."

"Digger, be careful. If somebody killed that woman, he’s not going to mind punching your ticket."

"I know. Listen. In the back of the top shelf of my clothes closet, there’s a leather shaving kit. It’s got a little .25 caliber gun in it. It’s loaded. You remember; it’s the one you used that time we went out in the desert and I shot at bottles and you shot at sand."

"Yeah."

"Get it and put it in your purse and carry it around for a while. I don’t think anything’s liable to happen, but just do it."

"If you want me to."

"I do. So long."

"Call me every night," she said.

"If you’re home," he said.

"Goodbye, Digger," she said frostily.

Earl Collins lived on the top floor of a three-story apartment building that, if it had been a person, should have been told to get some rest, take it easy and eat a proper diet before his body runs down and can’t run back up.

Before entering the building, Digger drove around the block until he saw the green Porsche parked half a block away. It was the car from the cemetery. The license numbers matched.

Digger rang Collins’s bell fourteen times before there was a short, sharp burst in response. One angry jab on the bell from upstairs. Digger pushed the door open and walked upstairs.

Collins was standing in the open doorway. He wore jockey shorts and no shirt. His thick, blonde, curly hair was matted and his eyes were red with sleep. Looming at the top of the stairs over Digger, he looked like an Anglo-Saxon rendition of The Incredible Hulk. Sloping mounds of muscle ran from just below his ears to the tops of his shoulders. The size of his pectorals would have been the envy of most women. Digger wondered how he could get the normal complement of intestines into a waist so small.

Collins scratched his belly as Digger arrived on the landing.

"Aren’t you glad I’m not the Avon lady?" Digger said.

"Better the Avon lady than Rodney Dangerfield at this hour. Who are you?"

"My name is Julian Burroughs. I’m working with Lt. Breslin of the L.A. Police on an investigation."

"I didn’t do anything. Why are you persecuting me?"

"All right, Jean Valjean, stop the bullshit. I haven’t come to look at your candlesticks. I want to talk to you. Either let me come in or go put on some pants."

"Come on in. I’m not into clothes."

The apartment was less dirty than Digger had expected. Makeshift bookshelves had been slapped against the walls all around the single room. Digger glanced at the titles. They were a compendium of every bad idea promulgated during Earl Collins’s twenty years of existence on earth, ranging from Marcuse to Rubin and all the way down to the pits of Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis.

"You read these books or are you a fence for hot literary properties?"

"I read them. All the time."

"Do you work?"

"When the mood hits me."

Collins sat at the folding card table, which was both dining room and kitchen ensemble. Apparently, he had held an anarchist’s state banquet the night before because there were two half-eaten Big Macs on the table and a half-dozen other Big Mac wrappers crunched up and left on the table.

"When the bomb-throwers take over, the only place to hide will be a MacDonald’s hamburger stand," Digger said. "It’s the only thing you don’t want to burn down."

"Colonel Sanders, too. Man does not live by beef and cellulose alone," Collins said. "What can I do for you? You a narc?"

"No. This is a homicide matter."

"Wait, wait, wait a minute. Not me, pal."

"You don’t even know what I’m talking about and you’re denying it."

"I know, and in your cop eyes, that makes me a suspicious character."

"Time will tell," Digger said.

"Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides;…"

"…Who covers faults, at last shame them derides," Digger completed.

"Cops aren’t supposed to know Lear."

"Neither are murderers. Where’s your car?"

"Car?"

"Green Porsche. One of Germany’s greatest inventions. A hundred new Porsches can keep five-thousand repairmen working full time forever."

"It’s parked around the corner. If it’s not, I want you to take a report on a car theft."

"It’s there, I looked. Where was it Sunday?"

"Sunday? Sunday? With me. I worked Sunday."

"Where do you work?"

"I’m a free-lance gardener. I work for different people."

"Which different person did you work for on Sunday?"

"Sunday is Mrs. Walker’s day. I worked for her."

"What Mrs. Walker is that?"

"Don’t you take notes?"

"I have a terrific memory. Note-taking inhibits people, particularly the open friendly ones like you. Which Mrs. Walker?"

"Mrs. Moira Walker. She lives at 900–666 Lloyd Place, off Sunset Boulevard."

"You’re her gardener?"

"No. She does her own work. But I carry around the heavy stuff. She’s got money. She likes to get her hands dirty as long as she doesn’t have to, like most of the rich. But I carry around the bags of lime and peat moss."