Smoked Out (Digger) (18 page)

He went out to visit the lobby bar. The clock in the lobby said 7:00 P.M.

The desk clerk called him.

"Yes?"

"You’ve got a number of messages."

"Why didn’t you ring my room?"

The clerk looked confused. He was a beefy-faced man who had never recovered from a case of adolescent acne.

"I…we did. We were ringing all afternoon."

"Oh. Okay. I took something and I was sleeping."

The clerk nodded and handed Digger a thin stack of yellow slips. Digger thanked him and went into the bar. Before he was through the door, the bartender was pouring Finlandia into a rocks glass.

Shucks, Digger told himself. This time he had wanted Perrier water. But there was no point in making the bartender throw out good vodka. He took the drink to a table with a telephone.

He looked through the messages, then sorted them into two piles. A pile of four was from Walter Brackler, starting at about 3:30 P.M. and then calling every hour until 6:30 P.M. Each said the same thing. "Call immediately. Urgent."

Digger put them aside and looked at the important messages. They were from Lt. Breslin. They started at four-fifteen. "Call me." Then five-ten. "Have chemist’s report." Then six-fifteen. "For Christ’s sake." It left a telephone number that wasn’t the police department.

Digger dialed the number and Breslin answered.

"This is Digger."

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Work, work, work, work, work."

"Jim McArdle, the chemist, called me when you didn’t call him."

"What’d he say?"

"He said he liked doing business with another good ol’ boy. What kind of line of shit did you give him?"

"Never mind," Digger said. "What’d he say?"

"Let me look. I wrote it down to get it right. You gave him two envelopes. Envelope A, that was marked ‘Vial’. Those were aspirins. Envelope B, that was marked ‘Desk’. That was trimethadione."

"What?"

He pronounced it carefully in syllables. "Trimeth-a-di-one."

"What the hell is that?"

"Aaaah, something the big Las Vegas insurance genius doesn’t know. Well, don’t you worry. Your old friend and buddy knows you don’t know shit, so I asked McArdle. Trimethadione’s for epilepsy. Hey, you still there?"

"Yeah. Thinking."

"What about?"

"I was just thinking about Romeo and Juliet," Digger said.

"Why would you think about guineas when you’re talking to me? What about Romeo and Juliet?"

"You’re crass," Digger said. "Just a quote. ‘O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick.’ "

"Not that crass," Breslin said. " ‘Thus with a kiss I die.’ "

"Does everybody in Southern California know Shakespeare?"

"I played Romeo in high school," Breslin said. "When I still thought I was going to grow tall. Anything else you need from me?"

"All that other stuff I asked you for. Moira Walker. Her husband. Any business with Welles."

"I’m working on all that," Breslin said. "Maybe I’ll have something later. Anything else?"

"You got a spare head lying around?"

"You’re on your own, pal."

Digger hung up. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet on another chair and sipped the vodka. Then he quickly gulped it down and waved at the bartender for a refill.

Trimethadione. For epilepsy. And aspirins. The aspirins were in the vial in Mrs. Welles’s medicine cabinet. But who puts aspirins in a vial? Why not just leave them in an aspirin bottle?

Trimethadione for epilepsy. In Dr. Welles’s desk. Loose.

The bartender brought the refill.

"Give me a glass of club soda on the side, too, please."

"Sure."

Digger sipped the vodka. Aspirins in a vial in the medicine cabinet. Not that strange. Maybe the aspirin bottle had broken. But they made aspirin bottles out of plastic now. They didn’t break.

There was something he wanted to see in his mind, but he couldn’t bring it into focus. It was the medicine cabinet in Jessalyn Welles’s bathroom. He closed his eyes. He pictured himself walking into the room. The revolting wallpaper. The flowered toilet tissue. He could see it. Then he opened the medicine cabinet, and he couldn’t see the inside of it.

He drained his glass, stood up and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Almost as an after-thought, he took the pile of yellow message slips and walked quickly back to his room.

The tape he had made that morning after breaking into Welles’s home was on the top of the pile in his dresser. He inserted it into the recorder and spun it backward.

His whispering voice came hissing out of the machine at him. He was in the bedroom. He sped the tape forward.

"Flowered toilet paper." He was in the bathroom. "Puke wallpaper." Then "mirrored medicine cabinet." He could hear the click of the cabinet door opening. "Midol, Lysette douche, Neutrogena cream, Vitamin E caps, Comtrex, dental floss, Secret roll-on, Vaseline, bottle of Bayer’s Aspirin, half full, pill container."

Digger turned off the tape recorder and rewound it.

There it was. There was a bottle of aspirins in the medicine cabinet. So why would she have a vial of aspirins in there, too?

Because the vial wasn’t supposed to be holding aspirins.

What was it supposed to be holding?

There was trimethadione in Gideon Welles’s desk. Trimethadione for epilepsy. And Jessalyn Welles was occasionally ill. She had spells. She fainted. She froze in position.

She had epilepsy.

Digger didn’t know anything about epilepsy. There had been an epileptic child in his third grade class. The kid had taken fits. Digger and all the other assholes had laughed at him. The teachers didn’t know how to handle it, so their third-grade teacher tried to look the other way, tried to treat the child as if he were just another member of the class with no problem at all. But he had had a problem, a medical problem. If the teacher had tried to explain it to the students, maybe they would have acted human. But the teacher never did and the boy’s family moved away the next year.

He thought he knew one fact about epilepsy. That it doesn’t develop in adults. It was a childhood illness that hung on.

He thought he knew that but he had to be sure.

Why was her epilepsy medication in Welles’s desk?

He found the slip of paper with Peter Breslin’s home phone number and called it again.

"This is Digger."

"Hey, champ. Time out. Cut me a break. It’s the end of a busy week. I’m here cooking for me and that little piece of trim who’s going to be over here in ten minutes and you’re back again. Work human hours. My sauce will be ruined."

"Don’t you ever do police work?"

"I’m trying out for the sex-crimes unit," Breslin said. "Fuck you. Anway, this is police work. That reporter’s coming over. Goddamnit, my sauce is burning."

"Just one question. Stir it while you’re talking."

"All right," Breslin said.

"Do you remember what Jessalyn Welles had in her pocketbook after the accident? Did she have a pocketbook?"

"Yeah. The usual crap in it. Wallet, keys, sunglasses, comb, wallet, couple of bucks, etcetera."

"She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses."

"No. Guess not. They were in the pocketbook."

"Did she have any pills?"

"Let me think. Yeah. She had pills. They were aspirin. I checked. I tasted them."

"Let me guess. They weren’t in an aspirin container. They were in a little vial that you get medicine in from the druggist. But no identification on it, right?"

"Yeah, come to think of it." His voice turned quickly suspicious and interrogating. "Why is that important? What did I miss?"

"Thanks, Pete. I hope you score tonight."

"Don’t hang up now, you Irish-Jewish prick. What did I miss?"

"Stir your sauce. It’s burning."

Digger hung up. He did not want to think about what Breslin had just told him. The best way to solve a puzzle sometimes was to walk away from it and let the back of the brain work on it without your being aware of it. The unconscious mind could walk around a problem, take its time, look at it from all sides, and then stick an answer in your head while you were trying not to solve it. Because he wanted to be sure not to think, he called Walter Brackler at his home in White Plains, just outside New York City.

"Kwash, this is Burroughs."

"Have you talked to the L.A. office?"

"Why should I?"

"You’ve busted it this time, Burroughs. Really gone and busted it good and proper."

"For not calling the L.A. office?"

"Where were you this morning?"

"Sitting at the pool, working on my tan."

"Early this morning."

"Working."

"Dr. Gideon Welles, for your information, says you were breaking into his home. He has a witness to you and your car."

"The hell you say."

"Yeah. The hell I say. Try this. Welles has retained the services of an attorney. He is going to sue the ass off BSLI unless we pay his full claim immediately, and even then he might sue our ass off. Wait a minute, I got it here. He is going to charge an agent of our company, Julian Burroughs, alias Tom Median, alias Tom Lipton, alias Orville Fudlapper—"

"Fudlupper. Lupper, not lapper."

"Fudlupper, alias Rico Bravo, with harassment, character assassination and anything else he can think of. I bet you thought those names were cute. He might charge your idiot ass with burglary, you dumb shit."

"Now, now, Kwash. Don’t get upset."

"Upset? You don’t know about upset. He files a freaking suit and we look like the cheap, cheating assholes of the insurance industry in the whole freaking world, not wanting to pay off on our policies. Dumb shit like you pulled can ruin this company."

"It’s not that bad."

"It’s worse. Where were you all day?"

"Sitting by the pool working on my autobiography. It might make a good movie, Kwash, and I was going to talk to you about the company backing it. Then I made love to a beautiful redhead. It left us both dissatisfied and empty, so I’d rather not talk about it."

"Shouldn’t you be saving your strength, resting up for tomorrow’s burglary? Or what do you have planned next? An armed robbery? Try mugging, Digger. Mug Dr. Welles. That should get us a lot of good ink in the prints."

"What does Frank say?"

"Mr. Stevens said approximately what I just told you. I recommended to him that we pay up to Dr. Welles."

"That’s the wrong thing to do. We got this sucker now."

"How do we have him?" Brackler asked.

"I’m not sure yet. I need some help."

"What help? Hired assassins? I won’t pay for killers."

"I need the name of a doctor, preferably around here, who knows something about epilepsy. And I need Rochelle Lindsley’s phone number in Connecticut. She’s the mother of the dead woman."

"What’s epilepsy got to do with anything?"

"I’ll tell you about it after I talk to the doctor."

"All right. I’ll call Tom Langfill now. The L.A. office must have somebody. You call him at home later. You have his number?"

"Yes. We had a nice chat just yesterday. He’s the salt of the earth and he really likes you," Digger said. "We all do."

"If I get Mrs. Lindsley’s number, I’ll give it to Langfill. Otherwise, I’ll call and leave it at your desk."

"Thank you, Kwash."

"Goodbye, Burroughs. And don’t think that I’ve forgotten that mausoleum salesman."

Brackler hung up. Digger telephoned Frank Stevens at home. It was cocktail-party time. Voices buzzed and glasses clinked in the background.

"Hello, Frank, this is Digger."

"Digger. Ah, yes, you used to work for us, I believe."

"Still do, as I recollect."

"Oh, really? I had been told that you had embarked upon a life of crime."

"Who told you that?"

"Walter Brackler."

"Kwash is a shit."

"Yes, indeed. But he is a shit who knows who Tycho Brahe is. I don’t know what you said to him, but last Monday he came into my office and just had to know who Tycho Brahe was. What did you tell him, anyway?"

"I told him Tycho was an insurance salesman with a silver nose."

"He seemed relieved to find out that he was an astronomer. Relieved at the knowledge, angry at the fact that you misled him."

"I don’t make his life easy, do I?"

"No, you don’t."

"Good," said Digger. "You don’t sound disturbed about this Gideon Welles lawsuit business."

"Why should I be upset?" Stevens asked.

"It could be bad publicity."

"Yes, that’s true. And it could cost us some money. But you, on the other hand, will probably spend the rest of your life behind bars. So I thought I would leave everything—the saving of the money, the salvation of the company—I thought I would leave it all in your fine Machiavellian hands."

"The right hands. We’re not going to have to pay Welles anything."

"I’m glad of that."

"I am, too," Digger said. "I’ll square this away for you."

"Good. Just do it by tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes. Our Los Angeles office is meeting with Welles’s attorney tomorrow."

"That’s short notice."

"If it were easy, Digger, anyone could do it. I have great faith in you."

"I’ll try, sir, to make you and the rest of Her Majesty’s Navy proud of me."

"Good night, Digger."

Digger looked up the number and called Tom Langfill. The line was busy. He waited five minutes and called again.

"Hello."

"This is Julian Burroughs."

"The telephone number you wanted in Connecticut. Do you have a pencil?"

"Yes."

Langfill read the number for Mrs. Rochelle Lindsley. "The doctor’s name is Martin Kertzner. He lives on Bowmont Drive in Beverly Hills. He does a lot of work for our company. He’ll see you in the morning. He opens his office at 9:00 A.M. I don’t mind telling you, Burroughs, that I—"

"Thank you, Landfill."

Digger hung up. He wanted to work, but talking to Walter Brackler and Tom Langfill in the same night had depressed him. So he went out to the lobby bar to drink more vodka. He nursed his first drink, pleased as ever with his ability to put his job totally out of his mind and concentrate instead on alcohol.