Smoked Out (Digger)

by Warren Murphy

  "Her mother told me about it. Fainting spells. Maybe that caused the accident," he said.

  Sonje shrugged. "I guess it might have," she said.

  After dinner, they had another drink at their table and then, as if by prearrangement, they left to go to Digger’s motel room.

  Digger poured them each a glass of vodka and then went into the bathroom. He stripped off the tape recorder and adhesive tape and microphone and wrapped them in a towel. When he walked out of the bathroom, he quickly stuffed the towel into the top of his clothes closet.

  Sonje was lying on the bed, pillows propped up behind her head. She was holding her vodka glass in her hand. She was naked.

  "Welcome to California," she said.

  Digger sat on the edge of the bed next to her. "It’s nice to know the natives are friendly."

  He took the glass from her hand and put it on the end table next to his. She helped him off with his clothes, making a game of it, taking each garment and tossing it over the bed and onto the floor. When he was naked, she pulled him down on top of her with surprisingly strong arms. He reached a hand out for the lamp switch, but she caught his hand in hers.

  "Leave it on," she said. "I want to see your face when I fuck you."

  She was good, very good, with the kind of talent that comes, not from natural ability, but from many years on the practice field. Her legs were over his shoulders, around his waist, between his legs. Her heels tickled the backs of his knees.

  Her tongue was in his mouth, in his ears, licking his neck. Her fingers probed and roamed his entire body. He wondered if she followed a set pattern for the movements or if she varied them each time. If they made it again, would she do the same things in the same order? He wanted to ask her. He decided he was going crazy. The booze was softening his brain. He no longer could give anyone a straight answer. He used so many aliases that he sometimes had trouble remembering his real name. His mother had always said he’d wind up no good. Jewish mothers always said their sons would wind up no good. At least, they said that to their sons. His mother, though, might turn out to be right. Julian Burroughs was getting whackier and whackier.

  He tried not to, but he wasn’t able to avoid comparing Sonje with Koko. Koko was gentle in her lovemaking, never straining, never forcing. If it touched her right, there was wildness, but there were other times when she just purred from pleasure.

  The thought came that he was trying to suppress. That was how Koko made love to him. But how did she make it to other men, to the high-rollers she escorted around Las Vegas for the company? With them, was she like this woman beneath him was with Digger? A professional, working hard to give a dollar’s value for a dollar spent?

  He didn’t want to think about it anymore and he was glad when she started making preorgasmic sounds.

  "I’m coming," she whispered to him.

  "Go ahead. Don’t hold back. Let it happen naturally," he said. Did she know he was talking nonsense? She bit her lip. He realized he had never seen a woman bite her lip who wasn’t faking an emotion. People who were really emotional didn’t bite their lips; they might just bite the damn things off. He wanted to tell her that it was the only thing she had done wrong, the only sour note she had hit in an otherwise virtuoso performance.

  It probably wouldn’t have been the smart thing to do. She was bucking and writhing and groaning and moaning and finally she let out a gasp and her body spasmed, then went limp under him. Because he didn’t want to have to go through that again, he released himself, surprised as always at how good it felt.

  He let his weight collapse onto her body, lay there a minute, then rolled off her onto the bed. He had forgotten to check the desk to see if he had received any messages. He would check them as soon as he got rid of Sonje.

  She was saying something, but he couldn’t recognize what it was. Then he remembered. She was saying, "Tom, Tom, Tom." That was his name. Thomas Lipton, master yachtsman. He turned to her, and she smiled and said, "Kiss me."

  He did, then slid away from her arms as she tried to encircle him and pull him down to her. He retrieved their vodka glasses from the end table and handed her the one with lipstick stains. He knew he was supposed to say something. But what? Could he give her stars, like a review? Three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four. If she hadn’t bitten her lip, definitely four stars. He couldn’t give her stars.

  He said, "Wow. Golly gee."

  She had been looking at him questioningly, but when he spoke, she smiled, relaxed and squirmed upward in bed so she could sip at her drink. And then she napped. They always napped afterwards. He hated it when they napped. They should just go home when they were done.

  He should have let her follow him in her own car, he thought, because he had to drive her back to the yacht club where she was parked and then follow her home to make sure she got home safely.

  She apologized for "having to run."

  "You know, I’ve got to go to work in the morning. Rent doesn’t pay itself."

  He gave the expected response. "Maybe someday soon we’ll take care of that."

  She kissed him good night, grinding her body against his in the shadows near the front door of her small garden-apartment building. After she was inside, he wrote the address down inside a match-book in case he had to look up Sonje Bjorkland again.

  There were no parking spaces in front of the Sportsland Lodge, so Digger had to pull into the large parking lot at the far end of the building. The car that pulled into the driveway behind him double-parked in front of the building.

  Digger was walking back toward the main entrance, abreast of the double-parked car, when he sensed people coming at him. He wheeled, and his head was grazed by a roundhouse right thrown at him by one of the two men who had run toward him from the double-parked car.

  Digger felt hard knuckles bruise his temple, but he instinctively ducked away from the punch, bent low, then came up with a straight, short right-hand that he buried into the man’s stomach.

  "Ooooof," the man grunted.

  Before Digger could turn from him, he was punched in the side by the second man. Digger fell back toward the wall of the building, moving through the low bushes. He shook off the pain. With the wall at his back, he’d be able to see how many were attacking him and where they were coming from. There were two.

  Both men lunged toward him. Digger took a punch in the chest that knocked the air from his lungs, but he managed to bring his knee up and bury it into the solar plexus of one of the goons.

  As he brought his leg down, he wheeled and put his left elbow across the chin of the other man. Both slowed for a moment, backed off, then were on him again. They rained punches on him. He felt them in his chest, his shoulders, bouncing off his head. He hunched his body over, almost into the shape of a question mark, so that his shoulders protected his jaw and his chest protected his stomach. He lashed out with elbows and fists and knees. He struck a lot, even as he told himself the two men would win. One of them would get lucky and Digger would go down. Once on the ground, he was a piece of meat.

  "Wise ass, Burroughs," one of the men grunted. Digger punched him in the face for his pains.

  But he took a shot to the temple that crossed his eyes and blurred his vision. He shook his head to try to clear it.

  Then he heard the scream. A woman’s scream.

  "Stop," the voice screamed." "Leave that man alone. Help. Police. Stop. Leave that man alone. He’s got an electric liver."

  He heard footsteps running toward him and then there were no more punches. He heard two car doors slam and a motor roar and a car speed away with the screech of tortured tires.

  And Lorelei Church was in front of him.

  "Tim. Tim. Are you all right?" she asked.

  "I don’t know," Digger said. He came up out of his crouch. He could stand without unreasonable pain. He felt his face, then his chest and stomach. Nothing was broken. He breathed deeply. His ribs weren’t fractured.

  He touched his face.
/>   "You’re not bleeding," Lorelei said.

  "Thank you."

  "Is your pacemaker all right? Is there something I should do?"

  "I’m not wearing it tonight." Digger looked around. The car was long gone. "How’d you get here anyway?"

  "I came to talk to you but you weren’t in. I thought I’d wait. I was sitting in my car when I saw you and those two men."

  "You ever see them before?"

  "No."

  "Let’s go inside," Digger said.

  As they approached the entrance door, the desk clerk came out.

  "Anything going on here?" he said.

  "No," Digger said. "Go back to sleep."

  In his room, Lorelei poured him a glass of vodka while he went into the bathroom to check himself. His face was puffed and bruised, but he wasn’t cut. His body ached from the pounding, but he had taken worse and lived. He would be all right. Outside, he checked the closet to make sure his tape recorder was still wrapped safely inside the towel. It was.

  Lorelei handed him the drink.

  "What’d you want to talk about?" Digger said as he sank into the chair. Lorelei sat on the couch facing him. For the first time, he noticed that she looked nervous and ill at ease. "What’s wrong?" he asked.

  "I got fired tonight."

  "By Welles?"

  Lorelei nodded. "He came into the store just around closing time. He wanted to know if somebody that sounded like you but was named Burroughs or something had been nosing around the store. I told him no, Tim. And then he fired me, just like that."

  "No explanation?"

  "He said he was closing the store. I guess he doesn’t need me working there if he’s closing the store."

  "Guess not."

  "Now what am I going to do?" she asked.

  "You’ll find something."

  "I’d better and pretty soon."

  Digger felt sorry for her. There had to be jobs in a big office like BSLI’s Los Angeles branch. "I know some people around here," he said. "I’ll see what I can do."

  "Thank you, Tim. Who were those men tonight?"

  "I don’t know."

  "Why were they beating on you?"

  "I don’t know. Muggers, maybe. Maybe I look rich."

  "You don’t look rich, you look tired. Do you take vitamins every day?"

  "Most days."

  "Do it every day," she said. "You ought to go to bed. You want me to stay and go to bed with you?"

  "Not tonight, Lorelei."

  "All right. I’m going home, then. If you hear anything, call me. I’m in the book."

  "Okay." Even though it hurt him to move, Digger walked outside with the girl and made sure she was safely in her car. Before she drove away, he leaned through her window and kissed her. "Thanks," he said. "Maybe you saved my life."

  "I wish I had my police whistle," she said. "I usually carry my whistle, but I left it on my dumb dresser tonight. If I had it, I would have blown it and scared the pants off them."

  "I bet you would have," he said. "You did all right without it."

  Back in the lodge, Digger stopped at the desk and asked for messages from the clerk, who had seen him tonight with two beautiful women and now looked at him with new respect. There were two messages and a large Manila envelope with P.B. initialed in the upper left corner. Walking back down the corridor toward the elevator to his room, Digger glanced inside the envelope. There was a thick sheaf of clippings from the local papers about Dr. and Mrs. Welles. Apparently Lt. Breslin’s orgy had gone well; his girl reporter had looted her paper’s files.

  He glanced at the two messages.

  Walter Brackler must have gotten a call from Sylvan Grove Cemetery in answer to his query about a pink mausoleum with wine cellar and hot tub. His message said, "Very funny, Burroughs. I may buy one and give it to you. I hope you can use it. Soon."

  The other message was from Koko. "Call me. Important," it read.

  She was home.

  "Digger, are you all right?"

  "Yeah. I’m okay. Why?"

  "There was a guy here tonight checking on my car. I wasn’t here, but he talked to that dumb bastard who works downstairs at the desk. He opened his heart and soul to him."

  "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 enou
gh 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."