Smoked Out (Digger)

by Warren Murphy

  "I don’t know," Breslin said.

  "It could be worth your while in other ways, too," Digger said.

  "What ways?"

  "You could come to Las Vegas. Be my guest for a while. My company can be very generous."

  "That’s a bribe offer," Breslin said.

  "Exactly."

  "You’re sure you’re not from the commissioner’s internal security squad?"

  "They wouldn’t have me. I’m too honest."

  "I ought to arrest you now for trying to bribe an officer."

  "And when they make the movie of that, I’ll play both roles ’cause I’m tall. You get shit," Digger said.

  "I don’t know," Breslin said. "There’s a risk. Suppose you hand me up?"

  "First of all, I won’t hand you up. What do I get out of that? Second, look at the risk-reward ratio. Do you risk a lot to win a little? No. That’s stupid. But I’m asking you to risk a little to get a lot. It’s like believing in God."

  "What is?"

  "Risk-reward. Everybody ought to believe in God. The risk is kind of little, going to church once in a while, maybe saying a prayer when there’s nothing good on television. Probably there isn’t any God. But if there is, the reward is pretty damn enormous when you’re dead, sitting up there on a cloud, watching all those atheists skulking along with pitchforks stuck up their asses. Risk and reward. The ratio is what’s important."

  "I don’t know."

  "Shut up and drink for a while," Digger said. "I get more persuasive if the guy I’m talking to is all slammed up."

  "Do you have until Sunday? It takes me that long to get drunk."

  "Save me from the fucking Irish," Digger said.

  "What are you?"

  "An Irish Jew," Digger said.

  "Poor bastard."

  Four drinks later, Breslin said, "I don’t know."

  Digger took a card from his wallet and handed it to Breslin, who read it aloud.

  "Frank Stevens. President, Brokers Surety Life Insurance Company. So?"

  Digger took the card back and wrote on the back of it.

  "Here’s his home number. Call him now. Call him collect. Use my name and he’ll accept the charges. Don’t even tell him your name. Just ask him if I can be trusted."

  "I never talked to an insurance company president before. What do I call him?"

  "Mister President’s always good, but you can try Frank."

  "All right."

  Breslin stood up beside his bar stool. He had probably been wearing his suit all day, but it looked as fresh as if it had just come out of a dry cleaner’s bag.

  "Don’t you ever wrinkle, for Christ’s sakes?" Digger said.

  "No. And I don’t sweat, either. Do you know how good I’m going to be on the set when I’m discovered? I’ll be right back."

  He walked away from the bar, clutching the business card. Digger ordered two more drinks.

  Ten minutes later, Breslin returned and took a gulp of his drink.

  "Well?"

  "He had a lot to say."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. He calls you Digger."

  "Everybody does. What’d he say?"

  "Don’t lend you any money. You’ve been stealing on your expense account for years and you should be independently wealthy by now. Don’t get involved in any harebrained schemes with you. You’re liable to get me to try to swim the channel in irons. Don’t try to match you drink for drink. Nobody in the world can. And if you tell me something, I can put it in the bank and it’ll draw interest." Breslin looked up from his drink and smiled. "Let me tell you what I think," he said.

  "I’m sure you will."

  "I think you’re pulling your pudding. I think you’re trying to promote an accident into something that it isn’t. If you’re wrong and I’m right, I won’t shed any tears."

  "That’s fair enough," Digger said.

  "Okay, pardner, where do we start?"

  Chapter Ten

  Digger’s Log:

  Tape recording number three, 11:00 P.M., Tuesday, Julian Burroughs in the Jessalyn Welles claim.

  Shit, hang on. Somebody at the door.

  It’s all right. Room service bringing me a snack from Finland.

  Two more tapes are in the master file. The first is my interview this morning with Gideon Welles and Fang. He remembered me from the funeral. The goddamn sunglasses disguise didn’t work again. Next time I wear my Polack baseball cap. It lowers the IQ fifty points and nobody recognizes you.

  Welles took down my license number, so I warned Koko about what to tell him when he checks out the car. I finessed him some, but sooner or later he’ll be after me. I have to find out something about that little picket fence that his wife drove through. Welles seemed to dodge it whenever I talked about it.

  The second tape has an interview with Ted Dole, a tennis pro at the Hillfront Tennis Club. I think he and Jessalyn Welles were having an affair. He said that Dr. Welles had some history of trouble at the club for cheating at cards. He thinks Welles is a shit doctor. Dole has a mean and nasty look about him for someone who smiles so much. I’m going to check him out a little.

  Also on the tape is an interview this afternoon with Lt. Breslin. I’ve erased certain sections of the tape because they dealt with personal matters. After I left Breslin, I broke the law by stealing from his parked car a copy of the reports on the Welles accident, and that has been my evening: Reading them and reading all the insurance shit I got from the L.A. office. All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

  I hate shuffling through papers. It makes me feel like Kwash. But it’s necessary sometimes. I cleared up one mystery. That little fuzzy guy at the funeral with the handwriting I couldn’t read. His name is Amos Etienne, M.D., and he did the medical exam on Mrs. Welles when she got her insurance policy, which is interesting. His signature was on the application.

  What’s also very interesting is that he is the chief of pathology at the Hospital in the Hills. That’s Dr. Welles’s hospital where Welles’s wife was on the board of trustees.

  The autopsy was a naught. Cause of death was trauma from injuries received in the accident. No sign of drugs or alcohol in the blood, no breakfast in the stomach.

  Romeo Rocca, the patrolman on the scene, looked carefully for skid marks. There weren’t any. Mrs. Welles just drove that car off that cliff, just as if she had aimed it. No losing control, no hitting a slippery spot and skidding. Just straight off, like throwing a frigging dart. That still makes no sense to me. But there’s a police statement from her neighbor, an Ernest Pleuss, who said he talked to the woman, she seemed fine, she drove off, and then the car went off the cliff.

  I give up. I was thinking of packing all this in after today, but I think I’ll hang out a little more and see what turns up.

  The police interviews with Welles and Mary Beckwith, the housekeeper, were brief. Welles was in San Francisco at a seminar sponsored by the Center for Research into Involuntary Systems, whatever the Jesus that is. Dr. Lemuel Bogley, is the director of the center. Welles was there the entire week, but he talked to his wife every day by telephone. She had not been depressed and was in excellent health. Mary Beckwith was off on the day of the accident. She’s off every Friday. But she agreed with Welles. Jessalyn was in good spirits.

  There isn’t anything here, not for us, anyway.

  Bullshit.

  What was it Willy Stark said? "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption. He passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

  There sure as hell is and I’m going to find it.

  I want to know more about that little white picket fence. I want to know about Jessalyn and Ted Dole.

  Looking at Gideon Welles, I would bet my last ten dollars on the fact that he has warmed a number of beds in this general area. I want to find out whose. Why does a doctor cheat at cards, particularly a "doctor to the stars"? Why did Jessalyn and her husband argue about money? Who is Alyne Gurney? She s
igned the sympathy card, but I haven’t run across her yet.

  What I need to put this all together is a computer, preferably a twenty-six-year-old Oriental computer, human model, with a Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago, a warm heart and a wonderful bosom, even though she doesn’t believe the last.

  Expenses today. Another tankful of gas, twenty-five dollars. It’s a pain in the ass driving all around this place. The hundred dollars that I owed Alphonse Rizzioli, which I had a bellhop deliver to him because I couldn’t stand to look at his ugly, thieving face again. Ten dollars to the bellhop for suffering through the assignment. Five dollars for cocktails at the tennis club. Twenty-two dollars for an interview at the Cup of Ale cocktail lounge. Total: one hundred sixty-two dollars. At that daily rate, if I stay here for, say, seventeen years, it would have been cheaper for old Benevolent and Saintly to pay Welles the million.

  Trust me, Kwash. It won’t take that long. Good night, world.

  Chapter Eleven

  "Dr. Etienne, my name is Julian Burroughs."

  "Pleased to meet you. I’m very busy. What can I do for you?"

  "I’ll only take a minute. I’m with the Brokers Surety Life Insurance Company. Mrs. Jessalyn Welles’s life was insured by us."

  Dr. Amos Etienne nodded. He was a small man, with thin delicate fingers that held a yellow pencil. His bald head was surrounded by a ring of thin brown hair, like a monk’s tonsure, and his pate was pale. He looked like a man who would wear a hat in Southern California, Digger thought.

  "We’re just doing some routine checking before settling the claim. You examined Mrs. Welles for her policy. What was the state of her health?"

  "It’s all on the application form. Her health was excellent." He gripped the pencil harder.

  "Do you know if Mrs. Welles was under any medication?"

  "I don’t know. Certainly not for anything chronic. Aspirins, perhaps. Or she might have been taking something for a minor ailment. I’m not her family doctor, so I wouldn’t know. Her general health was excellent."

  "Who’s her family doctor?"

  "Dr. Welles, I suppose."

  "I see. What I’m getting at, Dr. Etienne, is the nature of the accident. Mrs. Welles drove straight through a fence and off a cliff. Apparently, she made no attempt to swerve or stop. That is sort of strange. I thought that she might have been taking sleeping pills or tranquilizers or something that might have caused that behavior."

  "I wouldn’t know."

  "You see my problem. It’s just a small question. The chances are she just lost her concentration or the car was defective or something like that. But I just have to be sure to mark this book closed."

  "I wish I could help. Jessalyn was a friend of mine. So is Dr. Welles." His knuckles were white now on the pencil, the folds of skin inside the wrinkles reddened. Digger thought that one more question would snap the pencil.

  "Okay, Doctor Etienne. Thank you for your time."

  Digger stood up. Etienne stood behind his desk. He put the pencil down.

  "One thing, Doctor. You’re a pathologist, isn’t that right?"

  "Yes. I’m the hospital’s chief of pathology."

  "Isn’t it unusual for you to be conducting medical examinations for insurance policies?"

  "Not really. When I first started out in practice, I did a lot of medical exams for BSLI. I’m still on their list of doctors. Pathologist or no, I’m still a physician."

  "I see. Have you done any other similar examinations recently?"

  "None that I recall."

  Walking down the hallway toward the main entrance of the Hospital in the Hills, Digger saw Gideon Welles turn the corner and walk toward him. Digger stopped to look at a bulletin board, turning his back toward Welles.

  He heard the man’s footsteps approach him, even with him, then pass him.

  Digger turned again toward the entrance and walked away. As he turned the corner toward the front door, he glanced back. Dr. Welles had stopped in the corridor outside Etienne’s office and was looking at him, shaking his head slowly, as if disappointed.

  From a telephone booth in the parking lot, Digger called Tom Langfill at the B.S.L.I. office.

  "This is Burroughs. Did you get that Porsche identification yet?"

  "Not yet," Langfill said. "You’ve only got a partial plate. Do you know how many numbers there must be?"

  "Yeah. Exactly one hundred. From IBW-1 zero-zero to IBW-1 ninety-nine. And how many of those hundred are going to be green Porsches? You’re hopeless, Landfill."

  He hung up and drove to the police station.

  Breslin motioned for him to shut the door behind him.

  "What do you need? You find anything?"

  "Nothing much in the reports," Digger said. "I need a make on a license plate."

  "What is it?"

  "It’s a partial. A green Porsche. The plate is IBW-1-something. Can you check it?"

  "Yeah. I’ll work on it today. Anything else?"

  "Do you know who Alyne Gurney is?"

  "No. Who is she?"

  "She was at Mrs. Welles’s funeral. Tall blonde, looks like money, Beverly Hills type."

  "Let me find out."

  Breslin dialed the telephone.

  "City desk," he said. "Jenna Morning."

  He winked at Digger.

  "Hello, Jenna, this is Pete…. No, I tried to call you, but you’re always out on a story. When you’re not out, I’m up to my ass in stiffs…. I love it when you get mad. You know what I love even more? When you sit on my face and wrap your thighs around my ears. I need a favor…. I’ll do that, too, if you promise to watch…. No, really, it’s important…. Okay, who is Alyne Gurney? She mean anything to you?" Breslin nodded and picked up his pencil. He wrote a few lines. "She have any connection with Jessalyn Welles, the doctor’s wife in that accident?…Just money people in general, huh?…. Something else I need. I need all the clippings you’ve got on Jessalyn Welles and Gideon Welles and anybody they might be connected with…. You know I can’t tell you that, but when I can you’ll be the first one to know…. Sure. You’re a honey…. You know I love you…. You’re just after me ’cause I give good head…. Okay, tonight, if you’re that horny. But remember, bring those clippings."

  He hung up. "I hope you’re aware of the sacrifices I make in the name of our partnership," he said.

  "What does she look like?"

  "Like Sophia Loren. With knockers."

  "My heart really goes out to you," Digger said. "You want me to step into the breach for you?"

  "I’ll get into her breach myself," Breslin said.

  "Then stop bitching. Who’s Alyne Gurney?"

  "Alyne Gurney runs the Hills Playhouse up in Hollywood Hills," he said. "She lives in Beverly on Lomitas Avenue. That means bucks. Member of this, member of that, the usual bullshit. She’s a widow, by the way. Her husband was a banker. Died about four years ago. What’d you say that license plate was on the green Porsche?"

  "IBW-1-something."

  "Okay. Anything else?"

  "No. Thanks, Pete."

  "All right, Digger. Keep me posted."

  The Hills Theater was located in a remodeled barn off Los Feliz Boulevard. The hilltop was flat and could accommodate probably a hundred cars. The sign outside the front door of the barn read "Came-lot Tryouts, Thursday, 11:00 A.M. on."

  Digger walked inside. There was a stage at the front of the building. Below the stage, at the level of the main floor, was a piano. One woman was sitting at the piano. Standing alongside her was the tall, blonde Alyne Gurney.

  Digger walked down the darkened aisle of the theater building.

  "I’m here," he called out.

  "And who might you be?" Alyne Gurney hesitated as he drew close. "Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?"

  "I’ve starred everywhere I’ve been," Digger said. "Maybe you saw me. Or my reviews. I’ve got one of my reviews in front of Harry Tracey’s clam bar in Topeka. Right out in front. Under glass. People c
an see it right from the street when they walk by. Old Harry says it really draws them in, coming in, you know, hoping to touch the hem of a great celebrity. That must be where you heard of me. Harry Tracey’s. Great clams. You can’t get great clams many places in Topeka."

  "What’s your name?"

  "Orville Fudlupper, but you wouldn’t know me under that name. Rico Bravo, that’s what it always says in lights." He looked at her hopefully.

  "Well, er, thank you. What do I call you, Mr. Fudlupper or Mr. Bravo?"

  "Rico will do. My friends all call me Rico. Everyone does except my mother. She calls me Sonny. My father used to call me Orville. He died. I don’t think it was cause and effect, though."

  "Well, Mister Bravo…"

  "Rico, remember?"

  "Yes, Rico. What exactly are you here to do?"

  "I’m here for the part of King Arthur. ‘It’s true, it’s true, the crown has made it clear. The weather must be pair-fect all the yeee-ah.’ Send everybody else home. The part is filled."

  "Actually, if you saw the sign out front, the tryouts are tomorrow. Thursday. This is Wednesday. It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t listen to all those who want to try out."

  "Your time should be too valuable to waste that way, Miss…"

  "Gurney. Mrs. Gurney. And this is Matilda."

  "Yes, of course it is," Digger said. "Actually, Mrs. Gurney, I just want to save you some time."

  He hopped lightly up onto the stage and nodded down toward Matilda. Her scowl looked as if it had been sealed onto her face with polyurethane varnish. Digger thought she could play with her bosom if there was ever any demand for six-octave block chords.

  "Matilda, please."

  "What do you want?"

  "Play. Do it right and when I go on tour, I’ll take you with me."

  "What should I play?"

  "Anything. I know that show frontward and backward."

  "Key?"

  "Usually women ask for my key after I sing, not before."

  "Singing key. What key?"

  "B-flat, I’ll try not to. Heh, heh."

  Matilda was not amused. Alyne Gurney backed up to sit in the first row. Matilda began to play and Digger started to sing.