Fool's Flight (Digger) (18 page)

"Hello," Digger said. He glanced at Koko. She slept on blissfully, unaware of telephones or the world waiting outside to annoy him. How a woman could sleep like that knowing that Cora and the two kids were even now steaming toward Fort Lauderdale was beyond him.

"Is this Burroughs?" a male voice demanded.

"Yeah."

"This is Lieutenant Mannion at headquarters. I’ll have a car there for you in five minutes. I want to talk to you."

"This early? I’m warning you. I’m not charming this early."

"I don’t want charm, I want information. Five minutes, the car’ll be in front."

"Make it ten so I can brush my teeth."

"Ten."

"What’s this all about?" Digger asked.

"Ten minutes," Mannion said. "Be ready."

Lieutenant Marvin Mannion looked as if he had been up all night. There were deep bags under his eyes, and a faint stubble was showing around his jowls.

"Sit down there," he growled as Digger entered his office. "Do you know a Randy Batchelor?"

Digger sat down.

"What’s this all about?"

"I’ll ask the questions," Mannion said.

"Good. You answer them, too."

"I can arrest you, you know."

"And I can get sprung in three minutes and you can hold your hand on your ass waiting for answers. What do you think insurance companies do, anyway, with all the money we steal from fender repair swindles? We hire smart lawyers. I’ll be out of here in a flash, so listen, I haven’t had any coffee and I haven’t had much sleep and spending my morning with you isn’t high on my list of must-dos, so why don’t we be civil and you tell me what this is all about and I’ll tell you anything I know."

Mannion sipped some coffee from a Styrofoam container as he thought the offer over, then pushed the coffee over toward Digger.

"Here. You can have some of my coffee. All right, Batchelor’s dead. You know, you’re a brazen bastard."

"Not another plane crash," Digger said.

"Different kind of crash. A bullet crashed into his head."

"Shit," Digger said.

"Where were you last night?"

"In my room at the motel."

"Can you prove it?"

"I had a witness from all day up until about eight o’clock. And then from about eleven o’clock on."

"From eight to eleven, you’ve got no witness," Mannion said.

"At eight-thirty, I got a phone call in my room. That puts me there then. Then I was playing tapes and making a tape recording. No proof of that. When was Batchelor killed?"

"We don’t have a report yet. Sometime between last night and early this morning. You had an argument with him yesterday?"

"An argument?"

"Burroughs, maybe you’re dumb but you’re not deaf. An argument."

"Oh. It wasn’t really an argument. I was out at Interworld Airways, nosing around about this accident. He was there. He came out to talk to me in the parking lot."

"What’d you talk about? Witnesses said it looked like you were arguing."

"Hell hath no fury," Digger said. "The girl who told you that, Jane, was wrong. She’s just pissed at me because my girlfriend is prettier than she is. We weren’t arguing. I was trying to find out why that plane went down. I told him that I thought he might be involved. He denied it. I thought he might know something but I couldn’t get him to talk."

"Why’d you think he might know something?"

"He seemed ready to say something," Digger said. "That and the way he conveniently got sick and got off the plane just before it took off. His little mustache. I didn’t like his looks. I think he pushed dope."

"You didn’t like his looks so you suspected him?"

"Yeah. That’s the way it generally works," Digger said.

"Why’d you think he pushed dope?"

"I was at a party. He was handing out coke like jelly beans."

"Where was the party?"

"I don’t know," Digger said. "Some big old house. Melanie Fox would know. She’s the stewardess that flew with him a lot."

"I know who she is," Mannion said. "You didn’t kill him?"

"No. I was just thinking, Lieutenant. I was making a tape recording last night in my room and I had the TV on. It was a ballgame. The background noise on the tape would be the game. That’d fix the time I was in the room."

Mannion nodded briefly. He seemed unhappy about Digger having an alibi.

"Do you have any idea who might want to kill him?"

"I don’t know," Digger said. "If he was doing drugs, who knows? If there was something phony about the plane crash, well, then, that’s something different. Maybe somebody who had something to do with that, might have had something to do with Batchelor’s death."

"What about the plane crash?" Mannion asked, his voice hardening with suspicion. "You haven’t turned up anything yet, have you?"

"Nothing yet but I’m still looking. Where was he killed?"

"At the Oedipus Motel."

"Maybe some chickie shot him ’cause he couldn’t get it up."

Mannion shrugged. "If that’s a reason, my wife would go for my lungs twice a week," he said.

"Who rented the room at the motel?" Digger asked.

"Some woman. Mary Grissom. Dark hair, sun-glasses. You know her?"

"No."

"She paid cash. She gave an out-of-state license plate but we checked and it’s a phony. Goddamit, Burroughs, why the hell aren’t you the murderer so I could close this up and get a night’s sleep?"

"Sorry, Lieutenant, I do my best to please but that’s above and beyond. How’d you find me, anyway?"

"Coley out there. Don’t look shocked. I knew he was doing some work for you. He told me about it. I thought it was all right if you were going to find out something we didn’t know about that plane crash."

"So far all I’ve done is eat up my boss’s money."

"I guessed as much. Okay, you can get out of here, but don’t leave town without checking with me."

"I will." Digger got up from the hardbacked chair. "Anybody see this Mary Grissom’s car?"

"No. She described it on the application as a white Ford."

Digger walked to the door.

"One last thing, Burroughs."

"Yes."

"A woman was in here yesterday with some lunatic story about Interpol and the Bermuda Triangle. Said some guy from Interpol came and took a letter from her and put a guard on her house. She wanted to know if it was safe to go out. The letter had something to do with one of the crash victims."

Digger laughed. "You really get the half-decks in your business, Lieutenant. I didn’t look. Was it a full moon yesterday?"

"It’s a full moon everyday in this business. Don’t leave town."

"No, sir. I couldn’t. My ex-wife and children are coming to visit."

Digger took a cab to Melanie Fox’s apartment but she did not answer the bell. When Digger insisted on the doorbell, the upstairs resident of the two-family house finally came to the front door.

"You really know how to ring a bell, don’t you?" the woman said. She had a long straight nose, framed by two bulbous cheeks. Her face was blotched red and her hair looked as if it had almost rusted away.

"Sorry to disturb you. I’m looking for Melanie."

"Who are you?"

"A friend of hers. Elmo Lincoln. I was checking out some insurance matters for her."

"Well, you’ll have to wait. She went away. Said she had to visit her folks."

"When’d she leave?"

"Yesterday afternoon. She said she’d be a couple of days. Asked me to watch the apartment."

She stopped as if suddenly realizing that Digger might be the advance man for a gang of burglars who specialized in cheap furniture. "I’ve got my Doberman running around down there every night," she warned.

"I’ll be sure to wait until she gets home," Digger said. "Thank you very much." He turned to go, then stopped.

"By the way, she asked me to look into car insurance for her. Do you know what kind of car she has?"

"A Buick, ’79 or ’80."

"What color is it?"

"Black."

"Thank you."

Digger had kept the cabdriver waiting and he next directed him to Trini Donnelly’s house.

He told the cab to wait again and walked to the house. The two sociopaths were nowhere in sight, but Trini was standing behind the screen door, looking at him as he came up the steps.

"What do you want?"

"I’ve got a question," he said.

"Send it to Dear Abby. My answers are all used up."

"Trini, it’s important."

She had seemed ready to slam the inside door but she hesitated briefly.

"Why didn’t you tell me your husband was sick?"

"I told you, he stopped drinking," she said.

"I’m not talking about drinking."

"Then I don’t know what you’re talking about," she said.

"Cancer. Terminal cancer."

"Oh, my god."

"You didn’t know?" Digger asked.

"Go away. Please go away."

Digger said, "Will you be all right?"

"Just go," she said. She closed the door. Diggerstood there for a moment. From inside, he heard sobbing.

Koko was in the room, playing the tapes Digger had left in the dresser drawer. She took the ear plug out of her ear.

"Where’d you get the tape player?" he asked.

"I went out and bought it. It’s a cheapo but I didn’t know how late you’d be and I thought maybe listening would help some."

"Did it?"

"I don’t know. Where were you?"

"Police headquarters, by special request. They found Batchelor murdered this morning. They don’t know who did it."

"What’d they call you in for? You’re not a suspect, are you?" Koko asked.

"No, I don’t think so. The lieutenant just doesn’t like me and he dragged me in on general principles."

"How was he killed?"

"Bullet in the head while he was lying on the bed, fully clothed in Room 17 of the Oedipus Motel. That’s some motherless name for a motel."

"Digger, that’s where I lost that cowlet last night in the black car. At that intersection. I remember thinking what a stupid name for a motel."

"That’s interesting because the room was rented by a woman with black hair and sunglasses. Just like you saw. But her name was phony and the car description was a phony," Digger said. "Tell me about the tapes."

"I’m sorry, Digger, but I don’t want to talk about it. You know I think differently from you."

"I know. You like to stick raw material in your head and forget about it and let it percolate around until answers jump out in a flash of insight," he said.

"Right. And you like to worry things to death like a puppy with a bone, never letting go, never letting it out of sight, never letting it loose until you bite it in half."

"My way’s better," Digger said.

"For you it is. That’s because you have an antic mind and if you don’t keep after something, you’re liable to forget it. Hell, sometimes you can’t even remember your own name."

"I remember important things," Digger said. "Like right now, Gorilla Monsoon and What’s-his-name and the girl may be in Georgia. Minute by minute, the distance is closing between us and them. Do you think you might stick that information in the back of your brain and tell it to hurry?"

"You can’t hurry genius," Koko said.

"Okay, genius. But a couple of other factors for you to think about. Melanie Fox, our dark-haired stewardess with the substantial chest, is out of town. Her landlady said she left yesterday afternoon but she might have left later than that or she might still be in town for all we know. She has a black car. A Buick. That help?"

"I don’t know cars," Koko said.

"Added piece of information number two. I don’t think Trini Donnelly knew her husband had cancer."

"Okay. About those tapes of yours," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have to hit on every woman you talk to? You’re really awful, you know. And the things you said about me, did you mean them?"

"I meant the good ones; the other ones I said in a fit of horny pique. And as far as hitting, the fastest way to a woman’s mind is through her pubis. Get them tingling, they’ll tell you anything."

"You don’t really believe that, do you?" she asked.

"Of course I do," Digger said. He took off his jacket. "Time to get out of this hot tape recorder and into a cold vodka. Who the hell could live in Florida year round?"

"Dig, we live in Las Vegas."

"Yeah, but we don’t pretend it’s not miserable there. People around here make believe they like this weather."

He stripped off his clothes and peeled off the tape that held the recorder wires to his side, and went to take a shower. He stood for a long time under the cold water, then dried himself, put on fresh underwear and came out to the main room of the motel.

Koko was in bed, under a sheet.

Digger went back into the bathroom, and poured the last drops of vodka from the bottle in the toilet tank. He sat in the living room chair. The wheezing air conditioner squirted a trickle of cool air into the room.

He sipped the cool vodka and saw Koko looking at him.

"Come on over here and feel me up a little," she said.

"I knew if I waited long enough, you’d weaken."

"I’m just taking pity on you, you sex-starved, miserable creep. Before you turn gay in desperation."

"Okay. Well, all right," Digger said. He carried his glass over to the bed.

"I’ve got it," Koko said.

Digger talked softly into her ear. "Twenty seconds more and I’ll have it, too."

"Stop screwing around. This is important."

"It can’t wait twenty seconds?" Digger asked.

"That’s why you’ll never amount to anything. Your mind is ruled by your groin, just like you complain about women for," she said.

"That’s right," Digger agreed.

"All right," Koko said with a sigh. "Make love as long as you want. It’ll wait. Meanwhile, Madame LeFarge and the two demons are drawing closer, closer, closer. I can feel their hot breath even now crossing the Alabama line."

"We’ll make a deal," Digger said.

"What?"

"Give me twenty seconds more."

"Okay. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. You done yet, Ace?"