Smoked Out (Digger)

by Warren Murphy

  "Right. You want to-hear some Hollywood talk?"

  "Sure."

  "Take dinner with me tonight?"

  "Yes. I love to eat."

  "What time?" Digger asked.

  "Can you dance?"

  "If nobody’s watching."

  "Nobody watches. I’ll meet you at the Golden Goose. That’s on Sunset Strip. Seven-thirty. I live right near there."

  "Golden Goose, Sunset Strip, seven-thirty, got it."

  At 11:45 P.M., Digger and Lorelei returned to his room. Lorelei was drunk.

  They sat on the bed and she slipped her hand inside Digger’s shirt and felt the wires of the tape recorder.

  "What’s that?"

  "A pacemaker for my liver," he said. He gently moved her hand.

  "Oh, sick, huh?"

  "I’ve got a misnomer."

  "Aw, that’s too bad. I hate sickness. I’m like never sick. I don’t know what it’d be like if I had to deal with being sick all the time, like some people. I get that from my mother. She was never sick, right up until she died. But my father is always sick. He drinks. But not me. Is that catching or anything?"

  "Only if you eat my liver."

  Lorelei giggled, took her hand out of Digger’s shirt and let herself fall back onto the bed. Her breasts shook under her thin blouse.

  "I don’t give liver," she said. "I only give head. I give good head. I’d rather give head than fuck. Maybe I can start giving liver. All kinds of freaks out there."

  "Leather, latex and liver," Digger said.

  "You can be my manager."

  "I’ll handle the finances," Digger said.

  "Yeah. You handle the money and I’ll handle liver." She paused a moment. "That’s like hand-deliver. Handle-liver, get it? I’ll give you head, save liver for customers. ’Cause I’d rather give head then fuck. Did I tell you that? That’s ’cause I’m oral. The tub therapist says that’s why I talk a lot, ’cause I’m oral. Give head, not liver. Give…"

  She was breathing noisily, sipping air through her mouth as if her nose were stuffed.

  "Fine," Digger said softly under his breath. "Go to sleep before I even find out what a tub therapist is." She snored at him.

  He disconnected the tie-clip microphone, then removed his tie and shirt and hung them neatly on the back of a chair. He slid the wire of the recorder out from under the two patches of tape on his side, then unstrapped the recorder. He put it on the table with the built-in pole lamp and took a fresh cassette from his dresser drawer. He took off his pants and hung them from the top of the closet door.

  He sat in the easy chair, next to the table, watching Lorelei sleep peacefully and noisily on his bed.

  Then he removed the tape that was in the recorder and put in a fresh one.

  Chapter Six

  Digger’s Log:

  Tape recording number two, midnight, Monday, Julian Burroughs in the Jessalyn Welles claim.

  In the master file are two tapes. One is of an interview with Lt. Peter Breslin of the local policia, trying to beat me out of show tickets in Las Vegas or phone numbers of women or anything else I might have stuffed in my pocket. No importance to the case, but I’ll probably have to deal with Breslin later on. Anyway, I like him. He has a highly-developed sense of greed, and that makes him predictable and trustworthy.

  The rest of that tape is an interview with a thing called an Alphonse Rizzioli, who thinks the Mafia owes him one because he checked and found out that Jessalyn Welles’s car was not mechanically defective when it went off the road.

  The second tape is an interview this afternoon and tonight with Lorelei Church at the Occidental Gift Shop owned by Mrs. Welles and at the Golden Goose Disco and Dining Emporium where, I am assured, all the swell people meet. I learned two things from this encounter. One: I will never be a threat to Disco Danny. Two: Dr. and Mrs. Welles had arguments on kind of a regular basis at the store. He seemed to visit only on Fridays during Lorelei’s lunch hour, and he and his wife often argued. Probably about money, Lorelei said, because the store was a losing proposition.

  Why would she argue with her husband about money? What was it the paper called him? A doctor to the stars. He should roll in money.

  What do I care, anyway? I’m stubborn but not stupid. Welles was in Frisco when his wife bought it.

  Anyway, the store made no money. Sales were barely enough to pay Lorelei’s salary. Mrs. Welles had pills in the office, but they weren’t there today. Thinking about it tonight, Lorelei decided someone had been in the store over the weekend, after she closed on Saturday, because her vitamin pills had been moved in her desk. It’s funny. You take somebody to a disco or someplace noisy where everybody is shouting to be heard and they think they can tell you anything because nobody’s going to hear it anyway.

  So Dr. Welles didn’t kill his wife. Okay. What’s left? Suicide? But why? And if she was going out to purée herself, would she be having a friendly conversation with some neighbor a minute before she went off a cliff? Not likely.

  It begins to look like I’ll be leaving here soon and old Benevolent and Saintly will have to pay the million. I’ll just mosey around some tomorrow just to satisfy my own curiosity. Maybe Lorelei murdered Mrs. Welles. Maybe she figured the woman was going to rip off her zinc tablets. So what? It’s none of my business. I’m going to do a good job tomorrow. Kwash will be proud of me. Koko, will you be proud of me? I know, I know, just as proud as I am of you and the way you make your living.

  You’d like Lorelei. Neither of you can drink worth a shit. She had four banana daiquiris and she’s unconscious on the bed. Don’t worry. It’s purely platonic. She likes me because I know more about kelp than she does. I know more about everything than she does. I could never say that about you, Koko.

  Scratch what I just said, Tamiko. You wouldn’t like her, you’d hate her. She’s got a bigger chest than you have. She’s got enough chest for everybody. I could balance coffee cups on her breastworks and she’s so dumb she wouldn’t ask me why I was doing it.

  When I first met her, I thought she might be hiding something. Not her. The only thing she’s hiding is anything resembling consciousness.

  Did I say that Mrs. Welles’s car was mechanically sound when it went off the cliff? So was Mrs. Welles, at least according to the insurance application. Lt. Breslin says she wasn’t drunk but I’d like to see the autopsy report. File that for future reference.

  Breslin says this whole thing was an accident—a strange accident, but an accident. I just wish that Mrs. Welles had had a heart attack or the tires had blown out or something. Just driving off a cliff is a puzzle, and I don’t like unsolved puzzles.

  What is a nice person like me doing in a job like this, anyway? Jews—even half a Jew like me—aren’t supposed to be private detectives. They aren’t supposed to be alcoholics, either, so I’m two for two. When I went to St. Paul’s College and studied accounting, how did I ever figure to be a gumshoe? Loyola said, "Give me a boy until he’s five and he’s ours." Now I’m his, but I didn’t think he was setting me up to work for a freaking insurance company.

  Tamiko, I wish you were home. It gets old, not being able to talk to you by telephone and having this amazon in my bed who would not mind if I pork her. You hear that, Koko? She will not mind at all.

  I won’t though. This is a milestone. The first time a woman came to my room, said she’d rather give head than fuck and will sleep the night through without doing either.

  Expenses: Fifty dollars to Alphonse Rizzioli with another hundred to come. Seventy-five dollars for dinner and drinks. Fifteen dollars for parking and tolls. Owning a car is very expensive in Los Angeles. Fifteen dollars miscellaneous. Total, one hundred fifty-five dollars. Room on credit card. Good night.

  Chapter Seven

  Digger thought about sleeping on the couch or in a chair.

  Then he said aloud, "Bullshit." He walked to the bed and called the front desk to leave a wakeup call for 5:00 A.M.

  He crawled unde
r the sheet next to Lorelei. He turned his body on his side to face her back, snuggled up close to her, put his left hand under her left arm and fastened it over her left breast.

  Then he fell asleep.

  Chapter Eight

  It was still predawn dark when Digger drove the white Mazda from the Sportsland Lodge parking lot and headed slowly west along Ventura Boulevard.

  Only freaks were out in Los Angeles this late, or this early, he thought. The massage parlors along Ventura were flashing their neon signs in the darkness. So were the motels that advertised free adult movies and water beds in every room. The East Coast’s water crisis could be solved by draining California’s beds. He turned into Coldwater Canyon Drive and followed it down until it crossed Mulholland. At Mulholland he turned left. Just before he reached Laurel Canyon Boulevard, he saw the blue and white overhead street sign aiming him right into Cliff Cove Drive. The road was only five hundred yards long, snaking up from its entrance off Mulholland, around the side of a hill, then down until it exited on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. There were only nine houses on the road. He passed the house of Dr. Gideon Welles. It was built twenty yards back from the roadway on a flat table of rock that was cantilevered out from the road surface over the cliff.

  He slowed down as he passed the house. Forty-five yards farther along the road the street curved, but Mrs. Welles hadn’t. The sun was just coming up now, and he put on his sunglasses against the bright morning rays shining directly into his eyes. He pulled his Mazda off to the side of the roadway out of the path of any occasional car that might drive past.

  He walked back to look at the accident spot. There was a small white picket fence along the rim of the dangerous curve, just before Cliff Cove Drive turned down and wound its way into Laurel Canyon Boulevard forty yards below. Mrs. Welles had gone over the edge and dropped the forty yards end over end. The white pickets of the fence were two feet high. Ten feet had been ripped out of the fence’s center by Mrs. Welles’s car driving through. The remaining sections of fence on each side of the gap were rickety and leaning.

  Digger walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. He could trace the path of Mrs. Welles’s car down to the rocks by a faint scar through the brush and grass. Already, he thought, nature had started to spring back. In a few days, that deadly path would be gone. Too bad people couldn’t rebound the same way. On a large rock formation below, he could see streaks of unnatural gray from the Mercedes-Benz. It had hit that rock. On the ground were mirrored flecks of light flashing up into Digger’s eyes. He wondered what they were for a moment before he realized it was chrome plating that had been ripped off the car’s bumper and grill.

  He looked at the fence. It was the kind of pre-made fence that was available in most lumberyards. Along its twenty-five-foot length, the fence posts had been anchored every five feet in shallow little pits of cement. The fence was flimsy pine. He touched his finger to the wood to feel its surface.

  "Fucking ghoul."

  Digger turned around. Gideon Welles, wearing a blue jogging suit with a large red stripe that went up the side from ankle to shoulder, was standing ten feet behind him. On a leash, he held a Doberman Pinscher wearing a spiked collar. When Digger looked at the dog, the animal bared its fangs, and Digger wished he were back in Las Vegas. He reached behind him casually and turned on his tape recorder.

  "Dr. Welles, I presume."

  "You’re a fucking ghoul." Welles’s face was twisted in anger. His skin was red, but sweat poured down his face. Digger felt better to know his color was the result of activity, not passion. The dog must have noted this faint improvement in Digger’s condition because he growled Digger back to terror.

  "You’ve got me wrong, Doctor. Tom Median, State Highway Advisory Council. We have to check out accident scenes. I came early so I wouldn’t put you out any. I didn’t think you’d be up at this hour."

  The anger seemed to soften on Dr. Welles’s face as he squinted at Digger, the morning light coming from behind Digger and hitting him full in the face. Then the anger came back.

  "I saw you at the funeral. A lot of fatal car crashes in the graveyard?"

  Digger shrugged. "I go to funerals. I always did. Just a habit. I’m not from here. Show me a graveyard and I’ll know a lot about a town. Driving habits and all. You need different kinds of things for different areas. What’ll save a life somewhere might take a life somewhere else. Highway safety isn’t an exact science yet. We don’t want anybody to share the tragic fate of Mrs. Welles. Nice dog."

  "You wouldn’t think so if I let him loose. Scylla, sit. Who’d you say you were with?"

  "Highway Safety Advisory Council. How long has this fence been here?"

  "Is that part of the government?" Welles asked.

  "Not directly. Privately funded and we make recommendations. Like this fence. It’s not sturdy enough to prevent anyone from going off the edge here. How long’s it been here?"

  "What’s your name again?"

  "Median, Tom. Now this fence. I don’t generally like to get involved like this, Dr. Welles, but I think you’ve got a legal case here against the agency that put this fence up. If you put up a fence, it means you recognize something’s inherently dangerous. Once admitting that, as they did by putting up the fence, the agency’s got an obligation to make sure the fence will do the job. This fence doesn’t do it. Oh, no. It just doesn’t do it."

  "I don’t believe in getting rich off a tragedy," Welles said. He was holding the dog close to his side, his hand on the leash just above the animal’s collar.

  "A gracious attitude," Digger said. "But wrong, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. If we don’t band together and force these governments to do whatever they do and to do it right, this country will be unlivable. God knows they do little enough now."

  "I don’t understand why you were at the funeral," Welles said.

  Digger shrugged. "Actually, Doctor, I’m not from California. I had heard so much about Sylvan Grove Cemetery that I went out to see it. I saw you there."

  "I thought you were one of these goddamn curiosities who come up here looking to see a place where somebody died."

  "No, sir. I’ve seen enough accidents to last us both for the rest of our lives. Strange accident, though."

  "Why strange?"

  "It looks as if Mrs. Welles just drove straight through the fence without making any effort to stop or swerve. Terrible fence."

  "Yes," Welles said. "I don’t know why." He glanced at Digger’s car. "If you’re with the Highway Safety whatever, how come you have Nevada plates?"

  "Safe Highway Advisory Commission," Digger said. "I just moved here. Haven’t even had a chance to switch them over." He saw that Welles was committing the license number to memory.

  "Sometimes cases like this are suicide," Digger said. "People in a flash decide they can’t take it any more and on impulse do a thing like that. Drive right over a cliff. Now, I’m not saying Mrs. Welles did that. Of course not. Sometimes there are darker forces involved."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Murder, sir. Murder most foul. I remember a man once who sprayed oil on an area of road that he knew his business partner traveled at high speed. At a particularly dangerous curve, the car went off the road and the driver died. The killer had known that it was going to rain heavily that night and it would wash away all the traces of oil. The body was found the next morning."

  "How do you know what was on the man’s mind? Did you solve the case?"

  "Yes, sir. We most certainly did."

  "How?"

  "The killer expected rain, but it didn’t rain. It was the hottest, driest day of the year. Nobody can trust weathermen for anything. When the body was found, there was all this oil on the road. It’s lucky half-a-dozen people weren’t killed. So you see, sir, murder does enter into it once in a while. This fence, sir, do you remember when they put it up?"

  "They? Who’s they?"

  "Whoever put it up. The highway depart
ment, I suppose. The town government? I don’t know. I thought you could tell me."

  "Look, my wife’s just died in an accident. I’d rather not talk about it. Leave me alone, will you, please?"

  He turned and walked down the roadway toward his home. Digger, glad to be away from the baleful gaze of the dog, walked to his car. As he opened the door, he called out, "Dr. Welles?"

  Welles turned. The dog growled.

  "You said ‘accident,’ sir." He waited and Welles said nothing. "But we don’t know that, do we? Not for sure. We’ll have to look into this carefully before we can say that. It could be anything. Suicide. Even murder."

  "The police said it was an accident," Welles said.

  "The police are often wrong," Digger said. He got into his car and turned off his tape recorder. As he drove off, he saw Welles and the dog still standing at the side of the road, the doctor looking at his car, the dog snarling.

  When he was out of sight, Digger pulled over to the side of the road, took a deep breath and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly. That had been too close and he had finessed it, but it was only temporary. The razzle-dazzle had confused Welles, but he was probably too smart to miss the obvious question: If Digger had just happened upon the funeral of Mrs. Welles, why was he passing around a sympathy card for people to sign?

  Welles had missed it for the moment, but he would think of it soon.

  By that time, Digger would be away from here, away from Welles, away from Scylla.

  Back in his room, there was a note next to the telephone. "Dear Tim. Please call me. Lorelei."

  Tim? Who was Tim? Digger thought for a moment, then remembered that he was Tim. Tim Kelp. But that was yesterday. Today he was Tom Median. He wondered how long it would be before he was known only as patient number 3546 at the Clark County Hospital for the Mentally Ill.

  Lorelei’s note had been written in lipstick on the back of a paper bathmat. In the drawer under the note was a pen and stationery provided by the hotel which she had ignored. He thought she would be wonderful company for him at the funny farm.