Smoked Out (Digger)

by Warren Murphy

  Digger sat in a chair in the darkened room and waited, looking at the plants that lined the far wall. A minute or so later, Moira Walker entered through the drapes behind Digger. The room was splashed in light for a moment, then went dark again as the drapes swung closed.

  The woman was wearing a dirt-smudged gardener’s skirt, a short denim jacket and heavy leather gloves. From a canvas hat hung a heavy gauze mask that looked three or four layers thick in the dimness.

  Digger turned, saw the woman in silhouette for a moment against the sunlight, then could see nothing as the room again darkened.

  "Don’t get up," she said. Her voice was surprisingly musical. Looking at the beekeeper’s helmet, he realized he had expected a croaking baritone that might have fit in one of the Man-in-the-Iron-Mask movies. "Forgive my appearance. I’ve been working in the garden."

  Digger found the entire impression of the scene eerie. In the darkened room, Mrs. Walker sat ten feet away from him on a piano bench. Her voice seemed to come from behind the bee mask like a ventriloquist’s voice from out of nowhere.

  "You went to Jessalyn Welles’s funeral, Mrs. Walker?"

  "Yes."

  "May I ask why?"

  "She was my friend."

  "But not recently," Digger said.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I looked you up in the newspaper file. There were pictures of the two of you on this committee and that board, going here and going there, and then, for the last six months or so, nothing."

  "We kind of drifted apart. Exactly what business is this of yours, Mister Burroughs?"

  "I’m looking into the death of Mrs. Welles before my company pays an insurance policy."

  The woman did not groan. She was probably too ladylike for a groan to slip out. But she took a long sip of air. Digger waited.

  The woman asked, "A large policy?"

  "Very large."

  "What is it you want of me?"

  "Do you think Mrs. Welles’s death was an accident?"

  "What do you think, Mr. Burroughs?"

  "I don’t think, Mrs. Walker."

  "Life is simpler that way, isn’t it?" she said. "I have no reason to believe it was anything but an accident. And now, if you’re done with me…"

  "Ted Dole, Mrs. Walker. Do you know him?"

  "A tennis instructor."

  "Was that all? After all, you were very close to Mrs. Welles."

  "I don’t think there’s anything more to say."

  "Alyne Gurney?" Digger asked.

  Mrs. Walker shrugged.

  "Lorelei Church?" Digger asked.

  The woman rose to her feet.

  "I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore, Mr. Burroughs. I have this feeling that you are not really a nice man."

  "You’d get very little argument on that, ma’am. Why did you borrow a car to go to Mrs. Welles’s funeral?"

  "I really would appreciate it if you left, Mr. Burroughs."

  Digger stood. "One last question, Mrs. Walker."

  "No more."

  "Had Mrs. Welles been ill?"

  "Please go." There was nothing but anguish in the voice. It was the sound of someone who had just looked through the gates of hell and knew that it waited for her.

  Mrs. Walker stood up.

  "I can let myself out," Digger said. "Thank you very much. I know this is painful and you’ve been very kind." He walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

  Digger waited by the front door for three long minutes. Upstairs, he could hear a vacuum cleaner running and the faint sound of a woman singing tunelessly over the noise of the appliance.

  Digger walked back to the room on the far right side of the hall. He paused outside the door, listening, heard nothing, then stepped inside.

  The room was empty but it was now awash with sun. The floor to ceiling drapes were open and the sliding glass doors leading to the garden were open. Digger could see Moira Walker, her back to him, kneeling down over a mound of earth. There were no beehives in the small yard. On the ground next to the woman was her beekeeper’s helmet. From behind, the woman’s hair was fiery red. Most red hair looked rusty, but her hair was almost purple. It was a natural color that only one lucky woman in a hundred thousand had.

  Digger waited by the glass doors. Mrs. Walker turned to pick up a garden tool and Digger recoiled into the shadows of the room. He felt a chill raising the hair on his arms.

  The beautiful woman’s face that he had seen in all the clippings, the cool, imperious loveliness, was gone. Moira Walker’s face was twisted and scarred. Her right eye looked taped open, wide, as if the flesh around the socket had been ripped off, and all that was left was a gigantic eyeball floating around inside a hollow socket. One corner of her mouth was pulled downward as if a weight had been attached to that side of her lip. The once-smooth skin of her face was cratered with the thick red lesions of scars that had not healed.

  Digger waited until the woman had turned back to her gardening and left the room. He had a lot of questions to ask Moira Walker.

  But not now.

  And maybe not ever.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Digger drove a block away from Moira Walker’s house, then pulled to the curb and turned off the motor. He lit a cigarette and tried carefully not to think about the scarred woman.

  "Sure," he said aloud. "Sure. Easy. Swell. Shit."

  Lt. Breslin looked up from behind his desk as Digger entered his office. He pushed aside some blue report sheets and motioned Digger to a chair. "You look like somebody kicked the mess out of you."

  "Somebody did. When the hell are you going to make an arrest?"

  "Who did it?"

  "I don’t know."

  "What’d he look like?"

  "Them, not he. I don’t know. It was dark and I was too busy blessing myself to get a good look."

  "Well, with all those leads, apprehending the perpetrators should be a chip shot. Will four o’clock be too late for you?"

  "Laggard. I don’t know what I pay taxes for."

  "Like the rest of us. To promote domestic tranquillity. What can I do for you? I bet you were all slammed up when you got mugged."

  "I was sober, or close enough. I want to talk to Mary Beckwith."

  "Who’s she?"

  "Dr. Welles’s housekeeper. I want to talk to her, but I don’t want to go up there in case the bastard’s around. Can you get her here?"

  "Sure."

  Breslin dug around in his desk for a file folder, scouted through the pages, found a number and dialed it. Digger heard only half the conversation.

  "Is Dr. Welles in?…Oh, is this Mrs. Beckwith?…This is Lt. Breslin at police headquarters. We met last week after that awful accident?…Yes, sure. I’m sorry to bother you but I was wondering if you could come to headquarters to identify something for me…. No, it’s nothing serious…. Fine. I’ll send a man up there…. Swell. He’ll meet you at the gate. Say twenty minutes. He’ll be in a green Cadillac. I wouldn’t want the neighbors to see you driving off in a squad car…. Thank you, Mary."

  Breslin hung up. "Welles is out. He won’t be back until late. She’s done with the day’s work, anyway." He pulled car keys from his pocket and tossed them to Digger. "You go get her. Take my car. Is that all right?"

  "Pete, you’re a model of efficiency."

  "Really, who worked you over?"

  "Two goons. I don’t know who sent them."

  "Okay. When you find out, let me know."

  "Can I use your phone?"

  "Go ahead."

  Digger remembered Sonje Bjorklund’s address and got her number from information. She was home.

  "Hello. This is Tom Lipton." He smiled as Breslin lifted an eyebrow.

  "I don’t want to talk to you," Sonje said.

  "What’s the matter?" Digger asked.

  "Too many people don’t like you," the young woman’s voice crackled over the telephone.

  "I love the way you say yoooooo-ew," he sai
d.

  "I don’t want to talk to you."

  "Who doesn’t like me? Welles?"

  "I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t call me anymore."

  "Bumpus?"

  "He doesn’t like you. Goodbye." The girl hung up. Digger replaced the phone.

  "Who’s Bumpus?" Breslin asked.

  "I hoped you’d know. He’s a bookie. Can you find out anything about him?"

  "I’ll try."

  "And check out a Ted Dole for me, too."

  "Who’s he?"

  "The tennis pro at the Hillfront Club. Another phone call all right?"

  "Go ahead."

  "It’s long distance. I’ll use my credit card."

  "Ahhh, hell. Dial it. Who’s it to?"

  "My bookie," Digger said.

  "Sweet Jesus. That’s all I need. Use your credit card. You’re going to have me making little ones out of big ones yet."

  "Sleep with dogs and get up with fleas," Digger said. "This is Digger," he told the man who answered the phone. "Is Ernie there?"

  He waited a moment.

  "Ernie, Digger. Yeah, good. Everything’s all right. Can you check out something for me? There’s a Hollywood doctor. His name’s Gideon Welles. Yeah. G-I-D-E-O-N-W-E-L-L-E-S. Find out if anybody owns him. Yeah. I think he’s a gambler with money troubles. No. I’ll call you back. Thanks, Ernie."

  He hung up. "I’ll go get Mary now," he said.

  Digger wore sunglasses when he picked up Mary Beckwith, who was waiting for him outside the gate. Before they got to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, he had learned that there was a button under Welles’s nameplate next to the gate which automatically unlocked the gate. Mrs. Beckwith was a woman born to talk. Aim her in a direction and she would talk about it until you stopped her and aimed her in another direction, and she would start talking about that without missing a beat. She neither listened to people nor cared what they said. Altogether, she made Digger think of a character from a story. The man was convinced that people never listened to greetings. He was introduced to a duchess. She said, "Charmed."

  He said, "In your hat, Duchess."

  But he smiled, so she smiled back.

  "I’m glad you could come," the duchess said.

  "And over your ears," he said.

  And the duchess smiled and went on to the next guest.

  Mrs. Beckwith, however, didn’t smile. She sighed a lot, as befitted one who was overworked and underpaid and had been placed on earth merely to tempt people to take advantage of her kind and giving nature. She talked without pausing for breath, as if any kind of stop might encourage someone else to charge the podium. Her life, such as it was, was filled with what she said to people and what they said to her.

  Digger interrupted only to steer her.

  Mrs. Welles’s health.

  Mrs. Welles had fainting spells and took medication. "And I said to her, I said, ‘Mrs. Welles, you should be getting a second opinion,’ and she said to me, she said, ‘But Dr. Welles is a doctor, Mary,’ and I said to her, I said, ‘But you aren’t getting any better and here you are….’"

  Mrs. Welles’s habits.

  "…leaving lights on all the time and those silly lights in the bedroom, but I didn’t talk much to her about it, because I thought, well, you know, ladies don’t talk about certain things, and whatever people do in privacy, I always say, is their business, as long as they don’t go trying to make all the rest of us do it, but once I said to her, ‘Mrs. Welles,’ I said, ‘what about those funny lights?’, but she didn’t even remember…. She left them on a lot and why would you have dance lights in your bedroom unless you were a dancer, but none of my business, I always say, and…"

  How did Welles and wife get along?

  "…so if they wanted lights, let them have them, because you never saw a more loving couple and such a nice man, every day he called Mrs. Welles at five o’clock in the morning from San Francisco. I says to her, ‘Mrs. Welles,’ I says, ‘that’s awful early,’ but you know how doctors are, starting the day real early, and he always does that, running every morning from six until seven. I always say to him, ‘Doctor, you’ve got to be careful you don’t have a heart attack’ but he’s one of those, what do you call them, jockers who believes you’ll never get a heart attack if you run a lot, but I don’t believe that, because I think the good Lord built your heart with just so many beats in it and when you use them up, you’re going to die and running must just make you use them up faster, so I says to the doctor, ‘You’d never catch me running,’ and to myself I says, stupid, I say, but he is a doctor…."

  Yes, but how’d they get along?

  You should have seen them in his little study there, sometimes all hours of the day and night and him talking real gentle to her, not that I listen, but you could hear him almost whispering and you knew he was telling her love things…."

  How long had Mrs. Welles been ill?

  "…and he really took care of her because Mrs. Welles was never strong and always took medicine but lately she had seemed to get worse and I know he worried a lot about her, you could see it in his eyes when he looked at her, the last five months or so since her father died. I would think that he didn’t seem as happy like he always was before, and her so busy and all with that store and maybe that made him more worried about her, such a burden, but such nice people and so young for such a terrible thing to happen, but when the Lord calls you, he wants you with Him, I always say, and my mother used to say that, too, God rest her soul, a good woman…."

  Mrs. Beckwith’s mother must be making God very happy having her in heaven with Him.

  "Worked herself to death, she did, and I would too if I didn’t catch myself once in a while and that’s why I always make sure I get a day off no matter where I work, like tomorrow is my Friday, my day off so I’ll take tonight and tomorrow off like I have all five years I worked for the Welleses, such a nice lady and so young to have such a terrible accident…."

  In your hat, Mary, and over your ears.

  "Well, I do believe we are at police headquarters already and weren’t you nice to pick me up."

  Digger took her into Breslin’s office, where the officer greeted her effusively and apologized for causing her so much trouble and said she reminded him of his own sainted mother, God bless her. Before Mary could talk, Breslin put a cheap, gold-plated brooch on his desk.

  "Have you ever seen that?"

  "No. It’s not mine."

  "Someone found it not far from the accident and I was just checking. I thought it might belong to Mrs. Welles."

  "No, it’s not hers. I would know it if it was hers. I knew everything she had. I took care of it all. And she wouldn’t wear something like this because, well, you know, it not being real and all and she had—"

  "Thank you, Mary," Breslin said. He took her arm and led her out the door. From the hallway, Digger could hear him offering her a police-car ride home. She said the bus passed right in front of the door and not to bother, but he was sweet to think about her.

  Breslin came back into the office.

  "It must be your native Irish charm," Digger said.

  "What?"

  "Getting rid of her in less than a week."

  "I know the race," Breslin said. "Give them a chance and they never shut up. So, instead, you smile, nod and put them on the bus. You ever hear ‘The Irish Washerwoman’? The melody is the same over and over again. It was written for all the Marys of the world. You find out what you wanted to know?"

  "Getting closer."

  "Christ, you look awful. You want a bodyguard? We got policewomen who hire out at night for dances and things, keeping order. Forty bucks a night, cash, and one of them’ll tail you around."

  "What do they look like?"

  "Like they could protect you."

  "Screw it. I’d rather be mugged. Hey, something Mary said."

  "What?"

  "Disco lights in the bedroom, Mrs. Welles’s bedroom. You see that?"

  "Yeah. They were o
n when we went to the house. I turned them off. I asked Mary, but she didn’t know anything. I think she thought they were for taking dirty pictures."

  "Did it strike you as odd?"

  "You haven’t been in Hollywood long enough. If I had gone into that bedroom and seen Spectacular Bid screwing a stuffed giraffe, I’d ask the owner if Bid had enough oats to last the night. Disco lights in the bedroom? Shit. I ran into a producer once who had a TV camera built into his steering column so he could take tapes of broads blowing him while he was driving. What’s he spend, a couple of grand on that shit? That rents a lot of motel rooms. This town is fucking nutty, Digger. Forget Vegas. Forget New York. This is the nuthouse of the fucking world. Before I forget."

  "What?"

  "Lorelei Church. The clerk at the store?"

  "Yeah."

  "She has a record for petty theft. She worked in a store in Santa Clara, rifled the register, got picked up and probationed. Owner said let her go. That help?"

  "Just confuses things. When did this happen?"

  "Four years ago," Breslin said.

  "She was just a kid then. Probably didn’t have but a size thirty-eight bust. But I’ll keep it in mind."

  "Dole came up empty," Breslin said. "I asked around the neighborhood station about him. Nobody’s got a line on him. And no record. Bumpus is something else, though."

  "What’s he about?"

  "You’re right. A bookie. Does a lot of action. Works out of a motel in Venice City."

  "I know the place."

  "He’s not a nice person," Breslin said. "A long rap sheet, assault, guns, union extortion. He probably owns the motel, but it’s under a phony name so he can’t be closed down. Watch him. He’s bad news."

  "Yeah," Digger said. "I think I met some of his delivery boys last night."

  Marty Bumpus was still sitting at the bar in the motel where Digger had seen him the day before, the telephone still glued to his ear.