Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) (11 page)

That’ll fix your ass.

I’m coming back to this. I have to get a drink first.

Okay, that’s better.

Two more tapes in the master file—and I had the insane naïveté to believe there wouldn’t even be a master file. Hah!

Tape Number One is Ben Spears, director of planning for Lucius Belton and Sons. He was Vernon Gillette’s nominal boss. But Gillette answered only to The Old Man. In capital letters. I bet they don’t call Belton that to his face. He’s seventy or something. You always call the commander The Old Man in capital letters when he’s a young man. When he really gets to be an old man, in small letters, then you call him The Chief or something like that. Maybe I will meet with him and call him The Old Man to his face. In both small and capital letters.

Anyway, Ben Spears didn’t like Vernon Gillette. He was jealous of him and his access to the boss. And Ben Spears doesn’t have any company insurance. Why did Gillette have it? Spears anyway confirmed what I thought. The Belton hunting cabin in the hills was a little love nest away from home. If Gillette was really murdered, count on it. It was by some broad that he conned into coming up there, and then she couldn’t get off.

"Excuse me, miss, do you have any books on female orgasms? Yes, sir. Come with me."

So I got Ben Spears on tape and I have Dr. Vincent Leonardo, who confirmed that Gillette was perfect in every way. Oooops, no. He had a scar on his right hand. He probably got it from trying to rub off the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. And Dr. Leonardo thinks that Louise Gillette is a bit of a screwball too. Everybody does. So did Ben Spears.

Leonardo did the autopsy. No heart trouble. No trouble of any kind judging from the physical they gave Gillette before he came to work at Belton and Sons.

Okay, that’s Tape One.

I apologize for the quality of Tape Two. It was made through the window of a car while Deputy Dawg was trying to browbeat me. I hate that ugly cop. I hated him on sight. First time ever. Not even you, Kwash, qualified for that honor, but this guy made it. I lust for the moment when I square things with him.

Deputy Dawg Harker, it seems, was sicced on me by Lucius Belton—first to follow me and then to stop me if I got close to Belton’s house. Why?

I don’t know why.

And how did Belton even know I was in town? Everybody talks around this damned town. I doubt if there’s a person left who doesn’t know who I am and what I want.

Maybe I’ll meet with Lucius Belton tomorrow and maybe I won’t. Let him call me, if he wants to. I may just stay around this town forever, annoying people, living in this room, looking up at that silly red dot on the chandelier and trying to exorcise the spirit of Sappo Muckenmire.

I do not like the work I do for a living. I was happier when I was a degenerate gambler, living in Las Vegas on what passes for my wits. You’ve always wondered, Kwash, what I had on Frank Stevens that he ever hired me to work for Old Benevolent and Saintly. Since I’m leaving you this tape in my will and now that I’m dead, I can tell you, Kwash.

I can but I won’t. Let you guess on forever. Just let me give you a tip out of the depths of our friendship. If you’re ever in Las Vegas and you meet the president of an insurance company and he’s just been ripped off for five hundred thousand dollars in negotiable securities, don’t volunteer to get them back from the hooker who swiped them. I won’t say I did that, Kwash, but if I did, look where it got me.

Expenses. Gas, twenty dollars. All that driving up and down Belton’s dirt bowl. Drinks to wash away the dirt and to research the intrinsic socioeconomic factors and the infrastructure that makes Belton, PA, such a unique American community, twenty-five dollars. Eight bucks for the cab to take me back to my car after that idiot cop hauled me in. Fifty bucks to try to bribe Deputy Dawg, who took the money, didn’t report it and took me in anyway. Total, one hundred and three dollars, and the day has only just begun. And don’t think that’s the end of it. If I suffer permanent emotional trauma from being threatened today, you guys are going to have to pay for the shrink. Maybe I’ll take my ex-wife and What’s-his-name and the girl. We can probably get a group rate.

See how upset I am. I forgot to say that this is Tape Recording Number Two, it’s 7:00 P.M., Friday, there’s still no answer at Koko’s house, and I am going to take a shower and wash away this crud and then, maybe, slip off someplace to have a nice cocktail before my drinks.

If you’re listening to this, Kwash, it means I’m dead. Think kindly of me. Remember. I always tried to do my best.

Chapter Nine

Downstairs, Gus told Digger that there had been a phone call for him.

"Why didn’t you put it through? I was in my room."

"He didn’t want to be put through."

"He?"

"Yeah. Some guy. He wouldn’t give his name."

"What was the message?" Digger asked.

"Orleans."

"Orleans?"

"That’s right. Orleans."

"What the hell is Orleans?" Digger asked.

"There’s a jazz club outside town called Orleans. Maybe that’s what he meant."

"You better tell me exactly what he said."

Gus said, "He called about fifteen minutes ago. He said he wanted to leave a message for Julian Burroughs. I said I’d ring your room. He said, no, he just wanted to leave the message. I said, okay what’s the message? He said Orleans. I said, just like you did, Orleans? And he said it again, Orleans; then he hung up."

"No name?" Digger asked.

"No."

"Did he sound old? I’m expecting a call from Lucius Belton."

"No, I know Belton’s voice. It wasn’t him. I don’t know who it was."

Gus gave him the directions to the Orleans jazz club, and as Digger walked out to the car, he wondered who had called and why. It wasn’t Koko, which was the only call he wanted, and it wasn’t Lucius Belton. Who? Cody Lord? Ben Spears? Doc Leonardo? Deputy Dawg? It could have been anybody. It seemed like everyone in town knew he was visiting. Maybe it was Huckleberry Slockbower calling to give the name of the latest maid he had deflowered. And what kind of ridiculous word was "deflower," anyway?

It was probably Cody Lord.

Inside the Orleans, a four-piece combo labored with "Perdido." The music was bad but blessedly low-volumed. A dozen people sat around the big inside room at tables, but the bar was empty. The bartender looked at Digger as if he resented his disrupting the pristine, empty purity of his establishment.

"Vodka, rocks. You have Finlandia?"

"No."

"Anything as long as it’s not Russian."

When the bartender brought the drink, Digger said, "Start me a tab. I think I’ll be here awhile."

The bartender stuck the bill in the bar molding in front of Digger.

"Maybe you can help me with something," Digger said.

"That’s why I’m here."

"A friend of mine, Vernon Gillette—"

"That’s easy. He’s dead."

"He used to hang out here?" Digger asked.

"Yeah."

"I never knew he liked jazz."

"He liked our piano bar," the bartender said.

"Oh?"

"You’ll see why when this set is over," the bartender said.

Digger was two drinks into the evening when the quartet finished, almost simultaneously. The spotlights that had illuminated the musicians’ stage went off and another dim light came on in a corner of the room, shining on a small grand piano with a bar built around it. Digger picked up his drink and headed for the piano bar.

He sat at the seat closest to the piano’s bass notes. He was alone there, and he felt like a fool, sitting in the spotlight. Maybe he should hop up on the piano’s top and tap dance. Fred Astaire always looked good doing it. Somehow he doubted that Fred Astaire ever had to pay later for a new piano top. Kwash wouldn’t go for a piano top.

The light came on brighter and Digger felt somebody brush behind him. He turned to see a woman with shoulder-length flame-red hair, wearing a green evening gown cut so low that her bosom seemed ready to spill out.

She could have been thirty or she could have been forty. She had a tiny cherub’s face with cupid’s bow lips. Tiny laugh wrinkles at the outside corners of her eyes seemed to tell more about her sense of humor than her age. She nodded at Digger as she squeezed by him and sat at the piano.

Digger asked a waitress for a refill "and one of whatever the lady here drinks." The pianist nodded approval to the waitress, then said to Digger, "Never saw you here before."

"Never been here before," Digger said. "A friend of mine told me about this place…and its attractions."

She started to play softly the opening chords of "Everything Happens to Me."

"Who was that?"

"Old school chum. He died. Vern Gillette."

He heard just a moment’s delay in her smooth piling-up of chords, then she caught herself and mumbled to Digger, "Later," and put her attention back on the piano.

She played smoothly, toying with the outlines of the melody, pumping into it clusters of tight packed ten-finger chords. In the center of the number, she built the song up to crescendos that would have seemed appropriate for a concert stage, and then she began to peel away, one at a time, each of the blocks in the musical house she had built until she was back to the basic melody, playing it clean and uncluttered and simple, with an elegant power that she could not have captured if she had attacked the piano with both fists flying, like a lumberjack running amok in the forest.

She finished to a light smattering of applause and looked at Digger, almost shyly, as if beseeching him for approval.

"I knew I’d find it if I looked hard enough," he said.

"What’s that?"

"Something classy in Belton, PA."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said and cocked her head to the side in a parody of a bashful child. It was a cute gesture and it made her not one bit less lovely. Digger liked women who could do cute.

When the waitress returned with the drinks, the pianist and Digger clicked glasses.

"Cheers," she said.

"To good friends," he said.

"If we’re good friends, I ought to know your name."

"Walt," Digger said. "Walt Brackler."

"I’m Marla Manning."

"I know. Vern mentioned you to me," Digger said.

"He did? What’d he say?"

"He told me you were beautiful and talented."

"How nice."

"Vern was always given to understatement," Digger said. "He didn’t tell me how beautiful or how talented."

"Careful, Walt, I may steal you from your wife."

"Sorry. The divorce courts beat you to it." He raised his glass again. "Here’s to divorce courts."

"Listen to the music," she said. "After this set, we can talk."

"My pleasure," Digger said.

They were at a table in a dark corner.

"Yeah, sure," Digger was saying. "Vern and I were in college together out in California. It’s funny, you know, how he always had this image of Mr. Absolutely-Straight-as-a-Dime, but when he wanted to be, he was a wild man."

"I know," Marla said.

"So we surfboarded and partied and clowned our way through California. It was just like him, though. He graduated magna cum laude and I barely sneaked out. Then he came east and I stayed west, but we stayed in touch all these years. You don’t like to lose a good friend."

"No, you don’t. What do you do, Walt?"

"I got hooked up with a tool company out on the coast. Slaphammer Incorporated. I’m kind of a troubleshooter."

"Oh. What kind of troubleshooter?" she asked.

"If you’ve got any trouble, I’ll shoot it," Digger said. "Heh, heh, only kidding. Tell me, what’s a nice dish like you doing in a sink like this?" But he already knew the answer. For the last half-hour, Marla Manning had been matching him drink for drink. He knew very few men who could do that for long, and no women. It was just simply a matter of body size. Digger was almost twice as big as most women. Even if he hadn’t had a natural talent with alcohol, it still would have taken twice as much liquor to bring him down as it would have taken for a smaller woman. That Marla Manning was trying to stay with him told him all he needed to know about her problems.

She searched his face across the candlelit table. The quartet was playing softly in the other corner of the room.

"Oh, I’ve worked around," she said. "Then I kind of lost my energy, scratching out a living in a lot of places. And I knew I wasn’t going to be a star."

"You’re good," he said honestly.

"But not great. I’m not Evans or Oscar or Tatum or Thelonious. They’re genius and I’m good. I used to try. I was young and I was in love and I was doing the dope and the booze. A young guitar player. He was beautiful—Christ, was he beautiful. But he was a junkie. And we played our lives away in this hazy kind of mist. I never knew that he was dying, a little bit every day, right in front of my eyes. One night, he got really sick and I was taking him to the hospital in my car. It’s a wonder I didn’t drive into a building—I was so zipped. Then there was this awful sound and I looked over and blood was gushing out of his mouth, like a fire hydrant just turned on, and it was all over the car and all over me. He died on me, just like that, in some shitty car, in some ratty-assed section of the East Village, and I said to myself, you’re next. So I got straightened out and I came up here about five years ago. I’ve got steady work and I like what I do. I still drink too much. Maybe if I were great instead of just good, maybe I wouldn’t, I don’t know. But I do and I can live with it. At least I’m going to die in bed. I’m going to be a hundred years old and I won’t have a tooth in my face, but I’ll die with a smile and a bottle in my hand. It beats dying blowing your guts up in some rotten car in some rotten city."

Digger covered her hand with his. "I’m sorry," he said. "I didn’t mean to bring up something unhappy."

She smiled sadly, then looked out the window as if there was a future there where everybody was a genius and nobody died hemorrhaging in autos. Digger didn’t let go of her hand.

"Vern was special to you, wasn’t he?" Digger said.

She nodded, still looking away. "I loved him, Walt."