Smoked Out (Digger) (15 page)

"You a friend of his?"

"Not really. Just met him once. But bettors are all friends. We all belong to the biggest, dumbest, least exclusive club in the world."

Digger put a ten-dollar bill on the bar to pay for his drink, then counted off $120 for his bet on the Vikings over the Rams. If he won the bet, he would get back his $120 and the bookie’s $100. The need to bet $120 to win $100, six to win five, was what made bookies solvent. Their advantage was called vigorish, or vig, and it could be shopped like a new car. Digger could pick up a phone and call his bookie in Vegas and have to put up only $110 to win $100. Plus, he could deal in credit. Vinnie took $1.75 for Digger’s drink, then took the $120 off the bar. He nodded and walked to the end of the bar.

Marty Bumpus had put down the telephone. Vinnie spoke to him. Digger could see Bumpus look down the bar at him, recognize him, then scowl. He shook his head no.

Vinnie came back, the money still in his hand.

"What if you’re a cop?"

"Sure. That’s fucking ultraviolet money and I’ve got a clever camera pasted to my head under my hair. Everything’s on tape and you’re all under arrest. Stop the bullshit, will you? I’m just trying to get a bet down."

"Sorry, pal." He handed the money back.

"How about you? Privately? You, me?"

"Marty’d get upset. Sorry."

Digger put the cash back in his pocket, where his fingers scraped some change.

He finished his drink and motioned for a refill. He went to the phone near the Space Invaders game, dropped a dime and dialed a number. The operator came on and Digger told her to charge the call to his credit card. He gave her the fourteen-digit code.

A moment later, his call was answered in Las Vegas.

"Yeah?"

"You know who this is?" Digger asked.

"You got questions, call the public library."

"Suppose I call your wife and tell her how I hauled your ass out of the Mustang Ranch just before she arrived."

"Digger, how are you? Oh, I got it. You don’t want to say your name. Sure. How are you? Christ, two phone calls in one day. What do you need?"

Talking loudly, Digger said, "The Vikings twenty times on Sunday."

"The Vikings suck."

"I know, but so do the Rams."

"Four points?"

"Right. Thanks, Ernie. Vikings, twenty times, taking four."

"That guy you wanted to know about, that doctor?"

"Yeah?"

"He’s got his lungs out on loan. He owes a couple of casinos in town two hundred big ones. Every book in California’s got a piece of him. His check’s always in the mail, but it never arrives. He may need a doctor."

"Thanks, Ernie."

"When you coming around? Where the hell are you?"

"Out of town. Talk to you."

Digger hung up and returned to the bar and his drink. Marty Bumpus unscrewed himself from his barstool and walked up to him.

"What you just done is illegal."

"I won’t rat if you don’t," Digger said.

"We run a good place here. We don’t go breaking no laws and we don’t like no troublemakers using a public phone for the purposes of gambling, which is illegal." He pushed a finger into Digger’s chest. "Got that?"

"What happens to troublemakers?" He brushed the finger away.

"Maybe they get kicked around in parking lots," Marty said.

"I take it Doc Welles promised to pay you what he owes you."

"And why would you take that?"

"Because if he hadn’t, you probably wouldn’t have supplied the goons who tried to work me over last night."

"What’d you say your name was?"

"Tom Lipton."

"I don’t know nothing about no Tom Lipton," Marty said with a tight-lipped smile. "Now, maybe some guy named Burroughs makes me nervous. But I don’t know anybody who’s mad at any Tom Lipton." He chuckled. "Understand?" he said, and stuck the forefinger in Digger’s chest again.

"Well, if you ever run into anybody who is mad at Tom Lipton, just tell him for me that Tom Lipton’s going to pur´ee his balls. And then he’s going to pur´ee the balls of the guy who sent them. And then the guy who hired them." He swiped aside Bumpus’s finger and jabbed his own finger into the other man’s chest. Bumpus staggered back.

Digger finished his drink. Bumpus seemed torn between conflicting emotions: whether to charge or to flee.

"Age-old question," Digger said. "Fight or flight. Pick right. Mistakes can hurt."

"Aaaaaah," Bumpus said. He waved his hand at Digger in dismissal and lumbered back toward his seat at the end of the bar.

Digger left. On the sidewalk outside, he turned off his tape recorder.

Digger went back to the Sportsland Lodge and drank in the little five-seat bar in the lobby. It was eight-thirty when he returned to his room. There was a message for him from Koko that he should call his mother. He dialed a New York number.

"Hello."

"Ma, it’s Julian."

"You do call at terrible hours, don’t you. I was almost in bed."

"Sure. You were going to slip off as soon as you finished watching the Johnny Carson show in another hour."

"Don’t you ever sleep, Julian?"

"Ma, it’s eight-thirty here. If I go to sleep now, I’ll be up at midnight."

"That’s only a half-hour from now. You ought to get some rest. And don’t drink so much. You drink too much."

"I’m going to stop, Ma. I really am."

"When?"

"When I get like Uncle Morris. Remember? Remember how funny he looked when his liver exploded and spattered yellow all over the Bronx?"

"That isn’t funny, Julian. Your Uncle Morris was a sick man. Why do you always call to attack our family? Just once couldn’t you say, ‘Hello, Mother, it’s Julian’."

"I think I said that."

"No, you didn’t. You insulted the Johnny Carson show. Just because I watch that for the little pleasure—"

"Ma, you called me before. What did you want?"

"I hate to have to reach my own son through that person."

"I got the message, Ma."

"You know what next month is?"

"November?"

"Besides that."

"The last month of the rest of my life?"

"It’s our wedding anniversary."

"I didn’t know we were married."

"Your father and me."

"How many years?"

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-eight."

"Then it’s our fortieth anniversary. You could remember that if you tried. We were married two years before you came. You could remember that, couldn’t you?"

"I’ll give it to my secretary to keep track of. Well, happy anniversary, Ma. Give my best to Pop."

"Not so fast. We’re having a small celebration. Some of our friends, relatives, people who care about us are coming. And you, too."

"Hold on. You’re not inviting Cora, are you?"

"And why shouldn’t I invite the woman who happens to be the mother of my only two grandchildren?"

"Because you can have the mother of your two grandchildren or the father, but not both. If you invite her, I don’t come. You’re doing that Dolly Levy matchmaking crap again and I won’t have it."

"Listen, you don’t have to explain things to me a hundred times. I know that she won’t take you back again. It doesn’t matter. A lot of children grow up in one-parent households and don’t get into any serious trouble."

"Remember when you invited us both for Thanksgiving dinner?"

"That was all a mistake."

"Yes, it was. Should I remind you of what Cora said?"

"You don’t have to be gross, Julian."

"I feel the same way about her as she does about me."

"I won’t invite her. Does that make you feel better?"

"Yes."

"You’re not going to bring that person, are you?"

"Ma, Koko isn’t black. You don’t have to stick your head in the oven."

"She isn’t our sort."

"She’d be the first to agree with that."

"I’ll let you talk to your father."

"Julian, how are you?"

"Hi, Sarge. How’s OTB treating you?"

"Win some, lose some. Where are you?"

"Hollywood."

"How do you like those California women?"

"All tits and no brains."

"Ah, son. There’s nothing wrong with tits, and brains in a woman can be a curse."

"Mother’s gone out of the room, I take it. Listen, Sarge, work on her, will you?"

"She’s a willful woman."

"I know. But I’m not coming to your anniversary party if Cora’s going to be there."

"Bring Koko?"

"If Ma won’t have a stroke."

"I run this house and I say you bring Koko. I like that little Japanese thing. Tell me, son, there’s something I always wanted to ask…"

"No, Pa, it doesn’t."

"Ah, another illusion shattered. You come. I’ll keep that ex-wife of yours at bay."

"Thanks, Sarge. I love you."

"I know."

Chapter Sixteen

Digger’s Log:

Tape recording number four, 10:00 P.M., Thursday, Julian Burroughs in the matter of Jessalyn Welles.

I don’t want to talk to Moira Walker anymore. I want to go home. I’m tired.

There are two new tapes in the master file. On the first one is Earl Collins, an itinerant who works for Mrs. Walker and is a compendium of the worst ideas of twentieth-century man but doesn’t know anything about this case. He lent his car to Mrs. Walker so she could sneak past Jessalyn’s funeral. I guess she just doesn’t ever want to be seen again. Okay. I can buy that. What I can’t buy is why her friendship with Jessalyn ended so quickly after her accident. I’m going to have to find out a lot more about her. That same tape has Ted Dole, who has been following me around. He says he didn’t put those goons to jumping on my bones, but I’m not ready to write him off yet.

Mrs. Walker’s also on that tape. She just doesn’t want to talk about anything.

The second tape is my travelogue discussion with Mary Beckwith and my brief meeting with Marty Bumpus.

Mary is a talky old biddy, but she keeps her eyes and ears open. I don’t care how much you love somebody, you don’t call them every morning at five o’clock. Why not 6:00 A.M. Explain this to me, God. Explain to me disco lights in the bedroom. Maybe Breslin’s right. Hollywood kink.

Goons are the same everywhere. They’re actually flattered if you talk to them and they want to show they can talk just as good as real people. So they’ll tell you anything. Marty Bumpus made it pretty clear that he had somebody work me over as a favor to Dr. Welles.

Tomorrow is another day. Friday. Mary Beckwith’s day off. I hope the weather is nice so Dr. Welles can have a nice long run.

I told my father tonight that I loved him. I don’t think I ever did that before. I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that before. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. This week, Sarge. Next week, Koko. The week after that, the world. Including my mother and ex-wife.

No expenses today. I’ll pay for my own football bet. Unless I lose.

I hate this work.

Chapter Seventeen

Gideon Welles closed the front gate behind him. Holding the Doberman on a short lead, he started running off down the hill away from his home. He was wearing a new red and white sweat suit with tan stripes down the outside of both arms and legs.

Digger watched from his parked car. He waited three more minutes to make sure the man would not remember he had left the kitchen stove on or the water running, then got out of the car and walked to the iron gate.

He found the button, recessed into the bottom of the wooden name plaque on the brick column on which the gate was mounted. The plaque read simply "Welles." Digger pressed the button; the gate clicked open, well oiled, swinging easily. Digger let himself in and pushed the gate closed.

He walked quickly to the front door of the house and slipped the lock with a plastic card he kept in his wallet for that purpose.

He stopped inside the doorway and listened. The house was as silent as it should be. Mary Beckwith’s day off. No one else lived in the house, and Gideon Welles and Fang should be gone for another fifty-five minutes. Digger turned on his tape recorder. Softly, he described the house as he walked through it.

The master bedroom upstairs was bigger than most New York City apartments. The king-sized bed was neatly made, with a heavy Navajo-style spread pulled up over the three pillows across the top of it. The walls of the room were lined with heavy built-in wooden furniture, cushioned benches, end tables, stereo and television. Digger hated the style. "Frank Lloyd Wrong," he mumbled.

There were two small suites leading from either side of the bedroom. The one on the right, its walls done in browns and sand tones, was a man’s walk-in closet, filled wall to wall with racks of suits, shirts and trousers, neatly hung. Digger guessed that Gideon Welles had fifty suits. He looked at one of the jacket sleeves. Hand stitching. The label, over the inside billfold pocket, reported that the suit had been handmade exclusively for Gideon Welles.

Pretentious?
Moi?

Through a sliding glass door was a small sauna room and beyond that a full bathroom with a mirror-doored medicine cabinet filled with all the things men normally had in their medicine cabinets except that Gideon Welles seemed to lean, a bit more than most, to Vitamin E ointments and Jojoba Oil skin creams.

On the other side of the bedroom, Jessalyn Welles had the same layout: a dressing suite filled with expensive clothes, many of them long gowns still in the thin plastic sleeves from the drycleaners. Her bathroom had a large picture window that looked out over the sloping hills beyond.

Her medicine cabinet was as typically female as Welles’s was male. He recited into his tape recorder the contents. It was filled with creams and douches and ointments, lotions, makeups, a bottle of aspirins, Midol for menstrual cramps, Comtrex, dental floss, deodorant and vaseline. And a small vial of white tablets. Digger looked at it. It held a dozen pills. The container was unmarked, with no pharmacy identification. Why should it be marked, he thought. Doctors got so many free samples from drug houses, it made no sense for their kin to pay for prescriptions. He pocketed the small vial and closed the medicine cabinet.