Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) (8 page)

Gus stopped in front of the woman. Digger heard them mumble, then watched Gus mix her a Scotch and soda. Gus walked up to Digger.

"Lady says she’d like to buy you a drink. Says she knows you."

Digger looked past him at the woman, who met his eyes briefly, then glanced down at her drink.

"I think she’s mistaken," Digger said aloud. "I never forget a beautiful woman and I don’t know her. But I’ll drink. Move me around the bar."

Digger sat on the stool next to the woman, who still did not look up from her drink. Gus put his vodka glass in front of him.

"Cheers," Digger said, holding his glass up to click with the woman’s. "Where do we know each other from?"

The woman looked up and smiled at him. "Why how quickly you forget, Mr. Barff. With two
f
’s. As in fellatio."

Digger looked at her carefully, then smiled back.

"All right, Dolly," he said. "You win. You had me going. I didn’t recognize you without that haymow on your head."

"Don’t forget the beauty mark on my lip. That’s gone too," she said.

"The mark’s gone. The beauty stays," Digger said.

"How gallant."

"I haven’t even started yet. Now I know why you were wearing that sweater. In something tight, I’d know you anywhere."

"Something like that," she agreed.

"I’m glad you found me. I might have spent the whole night driving the streets of Belton, looking for a house with a platinum wig drying in the window."

"That’s nice," she said, "but somehow I get the idea that you probably would have just spent the rest of the night sitting here getting ripped."

"Only problem drinkers prefer to drink alone," Digger said.

"You’re not a problem drinker?"

"It’s never given
me
any problem," Digger said. "Well, sometimes it does. Like I used to drink Russian vodka and then I got to hate the Russians, so I stopped drinking their vodka. That was a problem. It would have been a bigger problem if only the French made vodka besides the Russians, ’cause I hate the French too. Fortunately, though, everybody makes vodka. I drink vodka from Finland. But the Japanese make vodka and so do the Red Chinese. I haven’t forgiven them for Laos and Cambodia yet, though, so I won’t drink their vodka either. Polish vodka either."

"You’re rapidly running out of world," she said.

"Don’t worry. The Third World’s going to start making vodka soon. They’re going to make it out of crocodile sweat. That’ll give me another thirty countries to hate."

"You’re a very complicated man."

"You’re the second beautiful female to tell me that today."

"Oh?"

"The other one was eight years old."

"Is that what you’re doing up here? Visiting family? It’s Julian, isn’t it?"

"Julian Burroughs. But everybody calls me Digger. You can call me Dig. That’s special, for good friends."

"Thank you," she said. "You were telling me what you were doing up here?"

"No, actually I wasn’t, or at least I hadn’t started to yet, and I was making up my mind whether to tell you the truth or to lie."

"Why would you lie?" she asked.

"The truth is a dull and colorless thing. And I’m a very imaginative liar."

"Try the truth for size," she said. "Dig," she added.

Digger noticed that Gus LaGrande was back at the end of the bar, repiling his bills. One thing had to be said about the man—he didn’t intrude on customers’ musings or conversations.

"All right. I work for an insurance company. I came to town to try to talk some woman into taking some of our money."

"Were you successful?"

"No. She turned me down cold."

"Obviously, you were talking to the wrong woman," Dolly said. "If you wanted me to take some of your company’s money, I’d be glad to."

"I wish I had known that before I got my company committed to this other woman," Digger said.

"Why won’t she take your money? That doesn’t make any sense. Did she have a death in the family?"

"Yes. And we think it’s an accident and want to pay her double indemnity and she says it wasn’t an accident and won’t take the extra money."

"Is it a lot of money?" she asked.

"The difference between six digits and seven digits," Digger said.

"Well, obviously she’s crazy," Dolly said with disgust as she swallowed a large portion of her drink.

"Oh, you’ve met Louise Gillette," Digger said. He put his hand on Dolly’s shoulder.

"Gillette, Gillette…I don’t think so," Dolly said. "Who died?"

"Her husband in some kind of accident."

"You say," Dolly said.

Digger removed his hand. "Right. He died in some hunting cabin the Belton people own—electrocuted or something."

"Wait. Was that last fall?"

"Yes," Digger said.

"I remember reading about it," Dolly said. "And then there was a lot of talk."

"What kind of talk?"

"People around town. They were saying that what’s-his-name, Gillette, he was going to be the next president of Belton and Sons, that’s why I remember it."

"You never met Gillette though," Digger said.

She shook her head. "I don’t think so."

Digger patted her free hand on the bar. "Too bad," he said. "From what I’ve heard so far, he was Jack Armstrong and Superman rolled up into one."

She shrugged. Digger squeezed her wrist gently, then released it.

"Is that what you do?" Dolly asked. "Go around, convincing people to take money? I shouldn’t think that would be a very hard job under most circumstances."

"No, it wouldn’t, but that’s not what I do. Actually, I’m an investigator but because they think I’m a little crazy, they give me all the crazies to deal with."

"That man you sent the drink out to today? Was he another one of the crazies?"

"A friend of the family." Digger nodded. "Another crazy. Who owns you?"

"I beg your pardon," Dolly said.

"Today, you said that Eddie, your boss, didn’t own you but a lot of people did. Who are the lot of people?" He put his hand on her back, just below the neck.

"You have a good memory, don’t you?"

"Yes. And the truth. We’re doing truth tonight," Digger said.

"Okay," she said. She paused and took a deep breath as if to enable herself to tell it all at once. "Three years ago, I was doing the housewife number down in Bavington. That’s a little town near Pittsburgh. My husband was a plumber. Two kids. House. All very middle America."

"Sounds nice," Digger said. His right index finger touched her fine silky hair.

She nodded. "Yes, it was. My husband was a wonderful man. Kind and thoughtful and…well, he’d do anything for our two kids and me." She paused and looked at her glass before drinking off some of the amber liquid. "Except stop riding his motorcycle. Three years ago, he went over the line and wound up under a truck."

"I’m sorry," Digger said. He opened his hand fully and placed it on the middle of her back.

"You’re sorry because you think he died," she said in a flat voice. "I’d be happy if he died. But he didn’t. He lived. In a way. Dig, my husband’s a vegetable. He can’t move. He can’t talk. All he can do is sit or lie down. Nothing else. He has to be fed like a baby. He has to be cleaned like a baby."

There was nothing Digger could say so he looked across the room.

"He had no insurance and no pension money. I tried to work, but we lost the house because we couldn’t keep up payments. The medical bills were killing me. I had to sell everything. Even my wedding ring. I had to come back here to live with my mother, with him and my two sons. That’s who owns me, Digger. My husband, my two boys, my mother, my obligations. Any more questions?"

"I’m sorry, little girl," Digger said. He squeezed her shoulder warmly. "But why the wig? Why the floozy impersonation?"

"When I got here I looked for work. There weren’t many jobs then, and those that there were didn’t pay enough to eat. I thought about waitressing ’cause I used to do that once, but even those jobs were hard to come by. I even tried up here at this place. An older fellow owned it then. No luck. Then one day, just on an impulse, I bought that wig and did the chorus girl-makeup number and the swishy walk and the push-up bra and I went around applying for jobs. I had to sort out the offers. Eddie’s was the best. He gets a lot of driving-through truckers and they tip big for a big-titted smile. And the regulars like to ogle me and make dirty jokes behind my back, and I play stupid and make believe I don’t understand. The tips are worth it, so I put up with it. A lot of them don’t even know what I really look like or where I live. And I’m careful not to get involved. Telling lies about me is one thing; telling the truth about me would be something else."

"All right. Enough," Digger said. "I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s change the subject. Tell me about Belton."

"Not much to tell. It’s a company store. Lucius Belton owns the factories and the plants and the movie theaters and the groceries and the banks, and if you tried to breathe while you’re outside, even the air."

"What kind of man is he?" Digger asked.

"I don’t know. We don’t exactly travel in the same social circles. I saw him once riding in the back of a limousine in a parade. He’s as old as death. But I guess he’s got something going for him ’cause he’s got a young wife and they have a new baby. Can you imagine that? He gave the company a day off when the baby was born. It was like the whole town was closed down. People wandered around the streets and didn’t know what to do."

"As long as they didn’t try breathing," Digger said. "Did you ever hear anything else about Vernon Gillette?"

"Who?"

"The guy who died in the cabin. The accident," Digger said.

"Hey, you’re an investigator. You’re not investigating this like it’s a murder or something, are you?"

"No, I don’t do that kind of work," Digger said. "You never heard anything else about Gillette?"

"No."

They drank together for another hour when Dolly looked at her wristwatch and said, "That’s enough drinking. It’s getting late."

"You have to go?" Digger asked.

"No," she said.

In his room, Dolly sat almost nervously on the sofa and when Digger sat next to her, she said, "I don’t want you to get the wrong idea why I’m here."

"I won’t," he said.

"I came here to make love to you," she said.

"Nothing wrong with that idea."

Dolly shook her head. "I wasn’t fooling. My husband is paralyzed. He’s not a man anymore, but I’m still a woman. Does that make me awful?"

"No," Digger answered, as he was expected to. "That just makes you a woman. A beautiful woman." He touched his hand to her smooth cheek even as he glanced up at the red crystal droplet hanging incongruously from the chandelier. Watch this, Herbie Handlebar, he thought. I bet you weren’t this smooth when you climbed into Koko’s pants.

"It’s just that…well, I know you’re just passing through and…well, I can’t go having my name…"

He put his index finger across her lips.

"Shhh," he said. "I know. No obligations. No recriminations. Just a need being filled."

She nodded and Digger covered her lips with his as he put his hands under her sweater and around her bare cool waist.

Later she slept, her smooth body plastered to his in sleep as if she feared slipping away from him for even a moment. Digger sipped from his glass of vodka on the end table, then, trying not to move and disturb her, fumbled for his watch. Instead he got hers and in the dim light from the small lamp across the room saw that it was 2:00 A.M. Then, he turned over the gold watch and read the inscription on the back:

To Dolly. Love, Lem
.

He wondered if that was her husband’s name.

Chapter Six

One of the nice things about being outside of New York was that the farther one got away from the city, the better sausage seemed to taste. Digger thought about this as he ate a breakfast of sausage and eggs in the LaGrande Inn, but could think of no reason for it to be true. So he put it on his list of life’s imponderable mysteries along with the purpose of the little red electrical switch on the wall inside everybody’s cellar door and why someone would open an eatery and decide, presumably with a straight face, to call it The Terminal Cafe.

Fifteen minutes later, he was driving down into the bowl toward the main headquarters of the Great Belton Dirt Factory.

His tires made a crackling sound as he drove over the grit that coated the driveway and parking lot and everything unfortunate enough to have been stationary in the area for more than twenty minutes.

Lucius Belton and Sons was a compound of buildings, and when Digger got out of his car, he noticed that all the buildings looked alike. He chose the building outside which were parked the largest, newest cars and went in there. He was right. It was the executive office building and he found the personnel department just inside the front door.

There was a young woman sitting at a desk just inside the door. She had enough teeth to make a piano jealous, and Digger wondered if exercise could make teeth bigger because she exercised hers with gum that she snapped as she spoke.

The nameplate on her desk said MISS BUFFET. She was eating with a plastic spoon from a container of yogurt.

"Yeah?" she said to Digger.

"All out of curds and whey?" he said.

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Do you have a guy working here named Vernon Gillette?"

"Sorry, you’re out of luck. He died."

"Ohhhh. And I came all this way from Katmandu just to see him. Do you mind if I sit down for a moment? This is an awful shock."

"That far, huh? Well, I’m sorry, but he’s dead."

"How’d he die? Did the liquor finally get him? Some husband, I bet. Some woman’s husband finally caught up with him and plugged him," Digger said.

"We talking about the same guy?" she said. Snap, snap went the gum. "Vernon Gillette? Nah, he had an accident. Got electrocuted."

"I told him and I told him not to try to change light bulbs by himself," Digger said. "No one ever listens to somebody who’s trying to give them good advice."