Smoked Out (Digger) (16 page)

He checked his watch. Still forty minutes left.

Maybe.

There were two light switches on the side of the door and, although the bathroom was brightened by the morning sun, Digger turned them on out of curiosity. A throbbing stroboscopic light began pulsating. It was built into the ceiling where some bathrooms had an infrared heating lamp to warm the body after a shower or bath. Digger watched the bulb flash for a moment, on and off, on and off. What the hell for?

He turned off the lights.

In the main bedroom was a panel of four light switches. Two of them lit lamps. The third turned on the television. The fourth turned on four disco lights, one in each corner of the room, all pulsating in unison, on together, off together. Why?

Digger turned the switches off. He looked around the room again to make sure he had missed nothing of importance. On impulse, he went to check the end tables on either side of the bed. The table on the side nearest Mrs. Welles’s dressing room contained only a television guide.

The drawer on the other side of the bed held some handkerchiefs and, behind them, a small .32-caliber revolver. Digger picked it up. It was fully loaded. He replaced it and left the room, checking his watch again as he went.

Thirty-five minutes.

Downstairs, he found Dr. Welles’s study in the far right corner of the house. He left the hall door ajar so he could hear if anyone returned. The office had a bank of floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the Welles’s flowered back yard. The other three walls were lined with books and bric-a-brac.

Welles’s desk was in the center of the room facing the door. Behind it was a swivel chair and on the left side of the desk a soft leather chair, apparently for patients. There was a couch on the far side of the room behind the entrance door, with another soft leather chair next to it.

Digger stopped for a moment to listen. The house was still quiet. There was a sliding door in the wall-length window wall that would let him out into the yard if Welles should return.

He opened the doctor’s desk drawer.

"Welles gives good desk. The center drawer is neat. An address book. Yes, and there’s Sonje’s phone number, listed just under the initial
B
. Four promotional flyers from drug companies. Something that looks like a small battery charger. What the hell is he doing with a battery charger? A small sample bottle of a drug. Let’s see. Me-prob-a-mate. Why are drug names always complicated? Why not big-pink-pill? Little-blue tablet. There’s a handful, maybe two dozen, of loose pills in the bottom of the desk drawer." Digger looked at the plain white tablets. They seemed identical. He pocketed two of them. He reached into the back of the desk and felt a piece of paper. It was a note on pink paper. He glanced at it. It was addressed to "G" and was signed "M." On a hunch, he stuck it into his pocket and closed the drawer.

It was time to get out. He had the most important thing he had come for—Mrs. Welles’s medicine from the upstairs bathroom cabinet.

He paused again to listen. Still silent. He turned off the tape recorder and walked toward the door. He flicked on the two light switches next to the door. Simple overhead lights. No disco lights. He turned off the switch and opened the door.

Standing in the doorway, teeth bared in an evil rictus, was a Doberman pinscher. The muscles of his front shoulders quivered. His growl raised the hairs on Digger’s forearms in an involuntary chill.

The dog’s eyes were black and the whites were red-tinged, as if it had overdosed on a diet of living, bloody flesh.

"Hi, big fella," Digger said softly, hopelessly, knowing that kindness would not work with this beast.

It didn’t.

The dog took a step inside the room and growled again. Its short-cropped tail was not waving from side to side. Digger tried to remember everything his father had told him about dogs. He couldn’t remember anything, but he knew this bastard was about to attack. Digger glanced to his left. He couldn’t reach the door to slam it in the dog’s face.

All this effort, the whole week, had come down to this. Being eaten alive by the fucking hound of the Baskervilles in the study of a private home he had broken into, his pockets filled with stolen pills. He could see tomorrow’s headlines: "Junkie Killed in Theft Attempt at Hollywood Doctor’s House."

Fucking-a wonderful peachy swell.

He couldn’t run to the far sliding door to the yard. The beast would be on him before then. This dog was not wearing the studded collar he had seen on Welles’s dog before. Where was Welles? Could it be?…

He saw the dog tensing, crouching back on its legs, ready to spring forward at him.

Digger retreated two steps into the room, then quickly lay down on the floor. He raised his arms and legs into the air. The dog lumbered forward, his growl a deep maniacal rumble of hatred and suspicion.

But he did not charge. He walked toward Digger, growling all the while. He put his face next to Digger’s while he lay there, his arms and legs stupidly extended above his body. The growling in his ear was deafening. Digger decided he would fight rather than give up his goddamn ear to a dog.

Hot spittle from the dog’s mouth slobbered onto Digger’s neck. The dog grabbed the shoulder of Digger’s jacket in his teeth. They looked two inches long at this close-up distance. The dog shook the jacket back and forth a few times before letting it loose.

But it did not bite.

Digger cursed himself for not stealing Welles’s gun from the bedroom. With his arm in the air over his head, he could see his watch. Close to six-thirty. No more than fifteen more minutes. He couldn’t stay here. Even uneaten, this would be a Laurel and Hardy finish for Welles to find him lying on the floor of his study in a canine attitude of submission, guarded by a hundred-and-twenty-pound Doberman with paws as big as a bear’s.

The dog circled Digger, sniffing his suit, still growling, obviously wondering what this man was doing surrendering like a dog.

He came around to the other side of Digger’s face, anointing that with slobber, too. Digger stayed ready to roll fast, to try to defend himself if the dog should suddenly come back from lunch and snap out with that huge open mouth.

The dog grabbed Digger’s lapel in his teeth and began to shake it from side to side like an old spit-soaked rag.

Then he stopped growling. The dog seemed suddenly to lose interest. Digger watched it walk toward the sliding glass door to the backyard, and, as the dog thumped away, Digger rolled and sprang for the office door. He got his hand on the knob as he rolled through and pulled the door closed behind him.

Inside the study, he could hear the dog growling and clawing at the wood of the door. Digger made sure it was closed tight.

He got up and took a deep breath. His body and face were soaked—his body with his own perspiration, his face and throat with dog spit.

He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes.

No time.

He took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face and neck as he walked toward the front door. He let himself out and ran up the flagstone walkway toward the gate. He pressed the inside gate release. The gate swung open and he stepped out of the yard onto the small sidewalk, pulling the gate closed behind him.

"Hello, there."

Digger wheeled. An old man in yellow Bermuda shorts that were four inches too long was standing on the sidewalk behind him.

"Looking for Dr. Welles?"

Digger shook his head. "No. I had the wrong house. I checked the address and I’m way on the wrong side of town."

"Doctor’ll be right back," the man said. "Running. Always runs this hour."

"No, I’m not looking for him," Digger said. He started to walk by the man. "Got the wrong address. I feel like a fool."

"How’d you get in there, anyway?"

"Gate was unlocked." He was past the man now and walking away from the house. "Wrong address."

"Who’d you say you were looking for?"

"Crater. Joseph Crater. Got the wrong address."

Digger was out of reach now. He was still close enough to hear the man but not so close that he had to stop to answer. He walked around the bend toward his car. Something, somehow, had changed. He got into the car and lit a cigarette, exhaling fully, trying to blow the tension and fear and anger out of his body. Why the hell didn’t somebody tell him that Welles had two Dobermans? Why the hell didn’t he think? Scylla. If there was a Scylla, there had to be a Charybdis. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it. Damn near a case of terminal stupidity. Wait. Something was different.

What was different? He looked around. The fence, the little white picket fence that had been of no value in preventing Jessalyn Welles’s fatal fall, was gone.

He started the engine. He had two problems now. If he drove straight off, he was likely to pass Welles, who would surely recognize his car. But if he turned around and drove off in the other direction, he would pass the old man, who probably was one of those nosy old bastards who wrote down license-plate numbers as a hobby. In this case, he was the lesser of two evils.

Digger made a K-turn in the narrow road and drove off down the street past Welles’s house, where the old man still stood near the gate. Go home, Digger wanted to yell. Go to hell home and eat your gruel. As he reached the end of the straightaway, the morning sun shone in his eyes, the light no longer broken into pulses by the little white fence. On impulse, he pulled up alongside the old man. Might as well be damned for a goose as well as a gander, he thought.

"Hey, mister," he called.

"Yes."

"Didn’t there used to be a fence there?" Digger asked.

"Yeah."

"What happened to it?"

"Doc Welles took it down after the accident."

"Who put it up?"

"Dr. Welles."

"That’s where his wife died, huh?"

"Yep."

"You saw the accident?" Digger asked.

"Yep."

"She drove right through that fence, right off that cliff."

"Sure did," the old man agreed.

"You see it happen?"

"I saw it go right off."

"Did she try to stop?"

"How’s that?"

"Her brake lights? Did you see them come on?"

The old man thought a moment, sorting out that memory from seven decades of other memories.

"Nope. Didn’t see any brake lights."

"Thanks, old-timer."

Digger put the car in first gear and snapped out on the clutch, burning rubber, hoping that he kicked up enough dust and gravel behind the car to prevent the old man from checking his license plate.

He glanced into the rear-view mirror. The old man was looking at his car, but the morning sun was in his eyes, too, and he was squinting.

He turned at the narrow corner and sped off down the hill, reaching into his pocket and feeling better that the vial of pills and the two loose tablets he had taken from Welles’s office desk were still there.

He wondered what Welles would think when he got back and found his other dog locked in the study.

Chapter Eighteen

Digger had showered. He put his spit-ruined suit into the brown paper laundry bag provided by the hotel, briefly considered sending it to Walter Brackler express collect, then left it for room service to pick up.

He called Alphonse Rizzioli who, yeah, sure, naturally remembered Mr. Borose.

"Alphonse, when you checked that car for the boys…."

"Yes, sir?"

"Did the brake lights work?"

"The bulbs was busted and the battery was shit, but I put in new bulbs and hooked it up to a different battery and the lights worked, so they was working."

"So the brake lights would have flashed if Mrs. Welles had stepped on the brakes before the accident?"

"That’s right, Mr. Borose."

"Thank you, Alphonse. The boys will remember this."

He was about to call Lt. Breslin at headquarters when he remembered the note he had taken from Welles’s desk. He fished it out of the pocket of his suit, then lay back on the bed to read it. It was written in a strong female hand, undated and deadly.

It read:

"
G. Don’t ever think that I will forget what you and Jess have done to me. It was bad enough to lose Harry, but to find that I am penniless because of your swindling…. I will find a way to even this account. When tragedy comes, or death…remember me, because I’ll be there. Laughing. Perhaps those are the only laughs I’ll have left. M.
"

Digger read it again, then put the paper over his face and closed his eyes for a moment. He sat up on the edge of the bed and called Lt. Breslin.

"Breslin."

"Digger. I need a couple of favors."

"Jesus Christ, how are you fixed for spit?"

"Stop your shit. When I publish my reminiscences, I’m going to make you famous."

"And until then you’re going to make me crazy. What do you want now?"

"Get hold of that filthy, disgusting, perverted reporter that you’re always slobbering all over."

"Sounds good. And?"

"And get me anything you can on Moira Walker’s accident. Especially if her husband’s name was…" Digger looked at the pink note. "…Harry. Maybe he was in business with Gideon Welles or like that."

"All right. What else?"

"I need a decent commercial laboratory. You got one?"

"Yeah. Why do you need it?"

"Don’t ask."

"It’s my duty to warn you that anything you say can and will be used against you."

"Raquel Welch."

"The lab’s the McArdle Lab on Highland Avenue. Here’s the phone number." He read off a number. "The owner’s name is Jim McArdle and you can mention my name. He’ll remember me. I helped one of his kids out of a jam once."

"Is there anybody in California who doesn’t owe you?"

"Four people, but I’m working on them. Keep in touch. Let me know what you’re doing."

"Right,"

Digger dialed again.

"McArdle Laboratories."

"Jim McArdle, please."

"One moment."

"Jim McArdle." The voice was a thick mumble. Digger resented him, envious of anyone able to get drunk so early in the day.