Expenses. Gas, twenty dollars. All that driving up and down Belton’s dirt bowl. Drinks to wash away the dirt and to research the intrinsic socioeconomic factors and the infrastructure that makes Belton, PA, such a unique American community, twenty-five dollars. Eight bucks for the cab to take me back to my car after that idiot cop hauled me in. Fifty bucks to try to bribe Deputy Dawg, who took the money, didn’t report it and took me in anyway. Total, one hundred and three dollars, and the day has only just begun. And don’t think that’s the end of it. If I suffer permanent emotional trauma from being threatened today, you guys are going to have to pay for the shrink. Maybe I’ll take my ex-wife and What’s-his-name and the girl. We can probably get a group rate.
See how upset I am. I forgot to say that this is Tape Recording Number Two, it’s 7:00 P.M., Friday, there’s still no answer at Koko’s house, and I am going to take a shower and wash away this crud and then, maybe, slip off someplace to have a nice cocktail before my drinks.
If you’re listening to this, Kwash, it means I’m dead. Think kindly of me. Remember. I always tried to do my best.
Chapter Nine
Downstairs, Gus told Digger that there had been a phone call for him.
"Why didn’t you put it through? I was in my room."
"He didn’t want to be put through."
"He?"
"Yeah. Some guy. He wouldn’t give his name."
"What was the message?" Digger asked.
"Orleans."
"Orleans?"
"That’s right. Orleans."
"What the hell is Orleans?" Digger asked.
"There’s a jazz club outside town called Orleans. Maybe that’s what he meant."
"You better tell me exactly what he said."
Gus said, "He called about fifteen minutes ago. He said he wanted to leave a message for Julian Burroughs. I said I’d ring your room. He said, no, he just wanted to leave the message. I said, okay what’s the message? He said Orleans. I said, just like you did, Orleans? And he said it again, Orleans; then he hung up."
"No name?" Digger asked.
"No."
"Did he sound old? I’m expecting a call from Lucius Belton."
"No, I know Belton’s voice. It wasn’t him. I don’t know who it was."
Gus gave him the directions to the Orleans jazz club, and as Digger walked out to the car, he wondered who had called and why. It wasn’t Koko, which was the only call he wanted, and it wasn’t Lucius Belton. Who? Cody Lord? Ben Spears? Doc Leonardo? Deputy Dawg? It could have been anybody. It seemed like everyone in town knew he was visiting. Maybe it was Huckleberry Slockbower calling to give the name of the latest maid he had deflowered. And what kind of ridiculous word was "deflower," anyway?
It was probably Cody Lord.
Inside the Orleans, a four-piece combo labored with "Perdido." The music was bad but blessedly low-volumed. A dozen people sat around the big inside room at tables, but the bar was empty. The bartender looked at Digger as if he resented his disrupting the pristine, empty purity of his establishment.
"Vodka, rocks. You have Finlandia?"
"No."
"Anything as long as it’s not Russian."
When the bartender brought the drink, Digger said, "Start me a tab. I think I’ll be here awhile."
The bartender stuck the bill in the bar molding in front of Digger.
"Maybe you can help me with something," Digger said.
"That’s why I’m here."
"A friend of mine, Vernon Gillette—"
"That’s easy. He’s dead."
"He used to hang out here?" Digger asked.
"Yeah."
"I never knew he liked jazz."
"He liked our piano bar," the bartender said.
"Oh?"
"You’ll see why when this set is over," the bartender said.
Digger was two drinks into the evening when the quartet finished, almost simultaneously. The spotlights that had illuminated the musicians’ stage went off and another dim light came on in a corner of the room, shining on a small grand piano with a bar built around it. Digger picked up his drink and headed for the piano bar.
He sat at the seat closest to the piano’s bass notes. He was alone there, and he felt like a fool, sitting in the spotlight. Maybe he should hop up on the piano’s top and tap dance. Fred Astaire always looked good doing it. Somehow he doubted that Fred Astaire ever had to pay later for a new piano top. Kwash wouldn’t go for a piano top.
The light came on brighter and Digger felt somebody brush behind him. He turned to see a woman with shoulder-length flame-red hair, wearing a green evening gown cut so low that her bosom seemed ready to spill out.
She could have been thirty or she could have been forty. She had a tiny cherub’s face with cupid’s bow lips. Tiny laugh wrinkles at the outside corners of her eyes seemed to tell more about her sense of humor than her age. She nodded at Digger as she squeezed by him and sat at the piano.
Digger asked a waitress for a refill "and one of whatever the lady here drinks." The pianist nodded approval to the waitress, then said to Digger, "Never saw you here before."
"Never been here before," Digger said. "A friend of mine told me about this place…and its attractions."
She started to play softly the opening chords of "Everything Happens to Me."
"Who was that?"
"Old school chum. He died. Vern Gillette."
He heard just a moment’s delay in her smooth piling-up of chords, then she caught herself and mumbled to Digger, "Later," and put her attention back on the piano.
She played smoothly, toying with the outlines of the melody, pumping into it clusters of tight packed ten-finger chords. In the center of the number, she built the song up to crescendos that would have seemed appropriate for a concert stage, and then she began to peel away, one at a time, each of the blocks in the musical house she had built until she was back to the basic melody, playing it clean and uncluttered and simple, with an elegant power that she could not have captured if she had attacked the piano with both fists flying, like a lumberjack running amok in the forest.
She finished to a light smattering of applause and looked at Digger, almost shyly, as if beseeching him for approval.
"I knew I’d find it if I looked hard enough," he said.
"What’s that?"
"Something classy in Belton, PA."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said and cocked her head to the side in a parody of a bashful child. It was a cute gesture and it made her not one bit less lovely. Digger liked women who could do cute.
When the waitress returned with the drinks, the pianist and Digger clicked glasses.
"Cheers," she said.
"To good friends," he said.
"If we’re good friends, I ought to know your name."
"Walt," Digger said. "Walt Brackler."
"I’m Marla Manning."
"I know. Vern mentioned you to me," Digger said.
"He did? What’d he say?"
"He told me you were beautiful and talented."
"How nice."
"Vern was always given to understatement," Digger said. "He didn’t tell me how beautiful or how talented."
"Careful, Walt, I may steal you from your wife."
"Sorry. The divorce courts beat you to it." He raised his glass again. "Here’s to divorce courts."
"Listen to the music," she said. "After this set, we can talk."
"My pleasure," Digger said.
They were at a table in a dark corner.
"Yeah, sure," Digger was saying. "Vern and I were in college together out in California. It’s funny, you know, how he always had this image of Mr. Absolutely-Straight-as-a-Dime, but when he wanted to be, he was a wild man."
"I know," Marla said.
"So we surfboarded and partied and clowned our way through California. It was just like him, though. He graduated magna cum laude and I barely sneaked out. Then he came east and I stayed west, but we stayed in
touch all these years. You don’t like to lose a good friend."
"No, you don’t. What do you do, Walt?"
"I got hooked up with a tool company out on the coast. Slaphammer Incorporated. I’m kind of a troubleshooter."
"Oh. What kind of troubleshooter?" she asked.
"If you’ve got any trouble, I’ll shoot it," Digger said. "Heh, heh, only kidding. Tell me, what’s a nice dish like you doing in a sink like this?" But he already knew the answer. For the last half-hour, Marla Manning had been matching him drink for drink. He knew very few men who could do that for long, and no women. It was just simply a matter of body size. Digger was almost twice as big as most women. Even if he hadn’t had a natural talent with alcohol, it still would have taken twice as much liquor to bring him down as it would have taken for a smaller woman. That Marla Manning was trying to stay with him told him all he needed to know about her problems.
She searched his face across the candlelit table. The quartet was playing softly in the other corner of the room.
"Oh, I’ve worked around," she said. "Then I kind of lost my energy, scratching out a living in a lot of places. And I knew I wasn’t going to be a star."
"You’re good," he said honestly.
"But not great. I’m not Evans or Oscar or Tatum or Thelonious. They’re genius and I’m good. I used to try. I was young and I was in love and I was doing the dope and the booze. A young guitar player. He was beautiful—Christ, was he beautiful. But he was a junkie. And we played our lives away in this hazy kind of mist. I never knew that he was dying, a little bit every day, right in front of my eyes. One night, he got really sick and I was taking him to the hospital in my car. It’s a wonder I didn’t drive into a building—I was so zipped. Then there was this awful sound and I looked over and blood was gushing out of his mouth, like a fire hydrant just turned on, and it was all over the car and all over me. He died on me, just like that, in some shitty car, in some ratty-assed section of the East Village, and I said to myself, you’re next. So I got straightened out and I came up here about five years ago. I’ve got steady work and I like what I do. I still drink too much. Maybe if I were great instead of just good, maybe I wouldn’t, I don’t know. But I do and I can live with it. At least I’m going to die in bed. I’m going to be a hundred years old and I won’t have a tooth in my face, but I’ll die with a smile and a bottle in my hand. It beats dying blowing your guts up in some rotten car in some rotten city."
Digger covered her hand with his. "I’m sorry," he said. "I didn’t mean to bring up something unhappy."
She smiled sadly, then looked out the window as if there was a future there where everybody was a genius and nobody died hemorrhaging in autos. Digger didn’t let go of her hand.
"Vern was special to you, wasn’t he?" Digger said.
She nodded, still looking away. "I loved him, Walt."
"He loved you too."
She turned back. "Did he ever say that, Walt?"
"He didn’t have to. It was all over his letters. Hell, the way he talked, well, tell the truth, I thought you two were going to hook up someday. Marriage, the whole thing."
She shrugged. "Would have been nice. You know, we got together right after he got up here, and it was funny, we really used to have to sneak around ’cause Vern said he was going to be president of the company or something and what’s-his-name, Lucius Belton, wouldn’t hold still for any hanky-pank. Then it all went sour."
"How sour?" Digger asked.
"After a while, it seemed like Belton didn’t have any use for him anymore. That’s what Vern said. It was like they were ignoring him, wishing he’d go away."
"Why was that?" Digger asked.
"He didn’t know. Didn’t he tell you about it?"
"You know Vern," Digger said. "He liked to put a good face on things. I just never got the sense from his letters that anything was wrong. It’s funny, though. With the pressure off him from the company, why not marriage?"
"I was afraid to ask," she said. "Afraid he’d think I was pushing too hard. So it was Wednesday and Saturday for a year and a half. They were good Wednesdays and Saturdays, Walt. We never missed one. I’m ready for another drink."
"I’ve been waiting for you," Digger said.
"A man after my own heart."
"It’s not just your heart I’m after," Digger said and Marla squeezed his hand.
By unspoken arrangement, Digger knew he was to wait for her to finish work that night. He watched her from the corner table and thought that she just might be wrong about herself. If she wasn’t great, she was awfully close to it.
During her second set, he found the telephone and called Gus’s LaGrande Inn.
"Julian Burroughs, Gus. Any calls for me?"
Gus’s voice was excited. "Hey, Lucius Belton called. Himself. He left a number for you to call. You know, he didn’t give his name, but I could recognize his voice. I didn’t know if I should tell him to try the Orleans. Is that where you are?"
"Yeah."
"I didn’t know whether to tell him to try there, but he didn’t give his name or anything so I didn’t."
"You done good, Gus," Digger said. "No call from a woman?"
"No."
Where the hell was Koko?
Digger called the number Lucius Belton had left and when a man’s voice said hello, Digger knew how people could recognize Belton’s voice over the telephone. The voice was crackly and high-pitched, with almost an electric intensity to it. It was the kind of voice you expected to break out into a cackle any moment.
"This is Julian Burroughs. I was told to call this number."
"I am Lucius Belton."
"Thank you for sending the welcome wagon after me today," Digger said.
"I’m sorry for that. Sometimes people mean well but don’t execute well."
"I think Deputy Dawg would have been glad to execute me if you had given the okay. So what do you want?"
"Would you be able to meet with me tomorrow?" Belton asked. Digger had a feeling the man was trying to hold his anger under control.
"What time?"
"Noon at the plant."
"I can’t make noon," Digger said perversely. "Eleven-thirty or twelve-thirty would be better. If it’s eleven-thirty, I can only give you a half-hour."
"Twelve-thirty then," Belton said. "The security guard will show you to my office."
"All right. Is that all?" Digger asked.
"Yes."
Digger hung up.
Marla Manning did four sets and by the time she finished the last, she was very drunk.
Vernon Gillette had been the second great love of her life. When she’d found out that he had died—she read it in the paper—she went on a solitary binge, drinking in her home for three days.
"When’d you see him last?" Digger had asked.
"I don’t remember. Before he died," she said. "If only…"
"If only what?" Digger asked.
She shrugged.
She had not gone to the funeral. She didn’t want to see Louise Gillette, couldn’t stand the thought of another woman weeping for her Vern.
As they left the Orleans, Marla held tightly to Digger’s arm, a grip more frantic than friendly and required by her obvious inability to walk very well.
"My car’s over here," Digger said.
"’s all right," she said. "I just live across the street. No car. Unless you going to park in my living room." She giggled.
"Okay. I’ll walk you over," Digger said.
"Everybody walks me over," she said. "That’s not what I mean. Mean men walk over me. All my life. They walk over me and then they die on me."
"I won’t," Digger said. He helped her up the steps of the small house and waited while she fumbled for her key.
"You’re coming in for coffee," she said.
"Well, I…"
"Walt, you’re coming in for coffee. What are friends for if they don’t have coffee? Anyway, you can’t drive in that condition. You’re too blu
rry already." She giggled again.
Marla led him into her living room, a heavy leaden room decorated around a grand piano and a lot of plants that seemed to be on the verge of death.
"I gotta go tinkle," she said.
"I’ll make the coffee," Digger said. He was glad the bathroom was on the first floor because he wouldn’t have trusted her trying to find her way up a flight of steps.
He put a saucepan of water on the stove to boil, and found instant coffee in a cupboard over the built-in wall oven. He used the lid of the coffee jar as a spoon to put some coffee into two clean cups he found on the sink.
When Marla came back into the kitchen, Digger was standing by the stove, counting.
"Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…"
"What are you doing?"
"I’m giving that water twenty more seconds to boil. If it doesn’t, I’m using it anyway."
"That’s stupid," she said.
"The hell it is," Digger said. "I always do that. You’ve just got to make up your mind who’s running things. You or water. Twelve, eleven, ten, nine…"
"This way you get cold coffee."
"Sometimes," Digger admitted. "But you don’t get high blood pressure from being frustrated by water."
"Get out of my kitchen. I’ll make the coffee."
They sat on her couch sipping their coffee. Marla had her head on Digger’s shoulder; his arm was draped loosely around her. But instead of sobering her up, the coffee seemed to make her more drunk.
She turned her head and said to Digger, "You’re spending the night, aren’t you?"
"If you want," he said.
"I want." She reached up and pulled his hand down around her shoulder and into the top of her dress, then pressed it with her own hand against her opulent breast.
Three minutes later she was asleep and Digger extricated himself from her, arranged her on the couch, put a pillow under her head and covered her with a handmade afghan he found draped across the back of a chair.
Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) Page 9