Smoked Out (Digger) (17 page)

"Mr. McArdle, my name is Burroughs. Lt. Breslin said I could call you."

"Yeah, sure. How is Pete?" McArdle wasn’t drunk. The thick mumble was a mush-mouthed southern drawl. Without wanting to, hating himself for doing it, Digger slowed down his own voice.

"Fine," he said, "Pete’s just fine."

"What can Ah do for you, Mister…"

"Burroughs. Ah need an analysis done of some tablets."

"How soon?"

"Today, if possible."

"We’ll try. When can we get them?"

"Ah’ll have them there in less than an hour."

"Okay. Is this a personal job or police or company or what?"

"It’s for the Brokers Surety Life Insurance Company. Ah work for them."

"All right. Send ’em right over."

"They on they way."

Digger took several tablets from the container he had found in Jessalyn Welles’s medicine cabinet. He put them in a hotel envelope. He marked the envelope "A—Vial." He took one of the other two tablets he fished from his pocket—the ones that had been loose in Welles’s desk—and put it in an envelope that he marked "B—Desk." He sealed the other tablet from the desk in another envelope and put it and the vial in a dresser drawer under his shirts.

Digger called the bell captain and asked for a bellhop to come to the room. While he was waiting, he wrote a brief note: "Mr. McArdle, Will call you later. J. Burroughs."

When the bellhop came, Digger tipped him twenty dollars and told him to take the tablets personally to Jim McArdle at the McArdle Laborator ies on Highland Avenue. "Don’t trust them to a cab driver. Take them yourself. It’s important."

"They’ll be there in twenty minutes, Mr. Burroughs."

"Swell."

He thought about breakfast, but he thought harder about vodka. He put on his bathing suit and a tee-shirt and took his tape recorder to poolside, where he ordered a double Finlandia, and, as a sop to good health, an order of toast and a cup of coffee. "Better yet, bring a bottle of Finlandia," he told the waiter.

He settled back in the lounge chair, clipped the microphone to the neckband of his shirt and began to dictate.

"This is the life that asks the question: Can a poor boy from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado, find wealth and happiness as the husband of a wealthy and titled Englishwoman. Scratch that, it’s been done before. I’m going to talk my life story to find out if lunacy, like Shakespeare’s greatness, is something I was born to or I achieved or I had thrust upon me. I be wedded to this goddamn tape recorder, courtesy of one pliable young woman in freshman accounting who typed like a charm, screwed like Wanda Whizbang and was crazy about me and transcribing my tape-recorded notes. I think this recorder is my only friend.

"My name is Julian Burroughs and everybody except my parents calls me Digger. I was about to say my friends call me Digger, but I have no friends, unless you are into counting part-time Japanese hookers and presidents of insurance companies who are full-time drunks and this recorder. This doesn’t bother me. I’ve lived my life without friends. Judging by people I know who have them, friends are people who call you up late at night to help them make bail, who call for advice when their sluttish children are pregnant, or who think you have an obligation to lend them money. Two of those examples require money, so they leave me out. The third? I’m sure I wouldn’t know what to tell the parents of a little slut. What do you say? Throw her one for me? I’m unqualified for friendship, so perhaps things are better as they are.

"It has ever been thus. I’ve been close to people, but I don’t think friends are people you are close to. I think friends are people you let get close to you. If that’s a given, I’m friendless. I’m also thirty-eight years old, six-feet-three inches tall, with hair so blond it might be bleached and a temper that on its down days makes sane men leave the room.

"Once I was married. I was happy until the honeymoon plane landed in Los Angeles and my wife wanted to go back onto the plane to get the chewing gum she left in the seat pocket. I stayed married for the children’s sake for a dirty dozen years. And then one day I saw something that may have saved my life. I was in the kitchen and saw my kids pouring catsup on sliced tomato sandwiches, and I knew they were already lost to the civilized world. There was nothing I could do to save them. The only person left for me to save was me, so I left. My kids will have to get along without me, and maybe it’s God’s will that there be two more fans of ‘The Gong Show’ later on.

"My mother told me I was irresponsible. Sure. What do you expect from somebody who’s half a Jew and half-Irish. What do you get when you cross an Irishman and a Jew? I don’t know. A guilt-ridden drunk? Yes, if you listen to my mother. How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None. That’s all right. I’ll just sit here in the dark. That last is courtesy of my father, retired Police Sergeant Patrick Burroughs, who has collected Jewish jokes, beginning with my mother, for forty years. He tells them to her family at Seders and Bar Mitzvahs. Each of us has his own way of getting even. I’d still rather be in Philadelphia.

"So I left my wife and my children and my home and my job managing the credit office of the loan company and I moved to Las Vegas with some money I had come into that my wife didn’t know about. Time out for bellhops."

"Here you go, Mister Burroughs. Can I get you anything else?"

"Just make sure you keep the ice container full."

"I will, sir. It’s still full."

"Thank you. As I was saying, I live with this tape recorder. I also live in Las Vegas with this Japanese girl named Tamiko who looks as fresh and young as a daisy and is as corrupting as crab grass. Her nickname is Koko. Lord High-Executioner. I was living in Las Vegas about six months when I ran across her. In an apartment hallway. I heard all this shouting and I…time out for a beautiful woman."

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

"Be my guest. But let me warn you…"

"You bite?"

"By invitation only. I talk. But only to my tape recorder. I’m telling it my life story."

"Can I eavesdrop?"

"If you don’t snicker at the good parts."

"I promise."

"You can have a glass of my vodka, if you want. A small glass."

"Thank you."

"As I was saying, there was all this noise in the hall outside my apartment. I looked out into the hall and there was this pretty little Japanese woman standing there naked, looking like she didn’t know whether to try to kick down the door or run away before the police came. And she had this pretty little body, not buxom and chewable like the redhead who just sat down on the chaise next to me, but all smooth and delicate lines, as if God had ruled out sharp turns and all angles of more than thirty degrees when he made her.

"She looked at me when I opened the door and I said, ‘Get the hell in here, will you? You’re scaring my tropical fish.’ She didn’t know what to say to that, so she came in.

"What do you do with a naked woman who steps inside your apartment door? I’m not Allen Funt. I offered her a blanket. Or a tablecloth. I told her the tablecloth might go better with her dark eyes because the blanket was brown. She said that she could make do with a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. I figured she was a hooker and liable to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, so I made her walk with me into the bedroom and I got the clothes out of a dresser and I stayed there while she put them on. Or, rather, wrapped herself in them. I’m almost a foot and a half bigger than she is. Then she came back into the living room with me and I asked her what happened.

"I guessed it’d take her two sets of lies to get to the truth, but she blurted it out. ‘I’m here on vacation. I’m not supposed to drink, but that guy across the hall fed me some drinks and then invited me up here ’cause he wanted to go down on me, he said. When I took my clothes off, he pushed me out into the hall. And he’s got my clothes and my purse with all my money. Call the fucking cops.’

" ‘That’ll teach you,’ I said. ‘Teach me what,’ she said. ‘That man does not live by head alone,’ I said. ‘Woman, neither.’

" ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘Who says you can’t find a metaphysician when you need one?’

" ‘For that,’ I said, ‘I’ll get your clothes back. You don’t want the cops.’ I knew the guy across the hall. He was some kind of blowhard from Georgia, leisure suits and white patent-leather shoesies, so I knocked on his door. I knocked loud and long and finally he opened it, with his mouth ready to snarl and growl at the little Japanese girl he expected to find there. Instead, he saw me, and I’m too big for most people to growl at. The best he could do was a curt, ‘What do
you
want.’ I said, ‘My cousin’s clothes and pocketbook. With all the money in it.’ And he said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ and as things worked out, I kicked him in the balls.

"While he was lying on the floor, I went inside and found her clothes on the bed and her purse with them. I looked inside the pocketbook and saw money inside the wallet, so I figured he hadn’t stolen anything, just a good ol’ boy having a leetle fun. So, to give him some, I stomped on his ankle when I left the room. I brought the stuff back to my apartment, the key to which I had cleverly stuck in my pocket, and gave it to her. Koko said, ‘Let me get dressed so I can thank you.’ And I said that was exactly the wrong way to do it, but she got dressed, anyway, even though she knew that I was going to undress her later. Women like that. She kind of hung around from then on."

"Wait a minute."

"Are you talking to me?"

"Of course I am. There’s nobody else at the pool. This Koko, did you give her what she wanted that night you met her?"

"Do I look like the kind who eats and tells? You said you weren’t going to interrupt. And that’s a pretty big glass of vodka."

"The woman had needs, you know. We all do."

"You, too? Besides most of my vodka?"

"Absolutely. You think I can lie here listening to the memoirs of Casanova without feeling it?"

"Do you think anybody’ll buy it?"

"Buy what?"

"My memoirs. After I get all this tape-recorded and all, you think somebody might want it?"

"Of course. With your reputation."

"You’ve heard about me," Digger said.

"Yes."

"You want to make love to me?"

"Yes. My room or yours?"

"Well, if you’re going to argue about it…" Digger said. He turned off the tape recorder. The redhead stood up at the same time he did. She was almost five-feet-ten.

"One thing first," Digger said.

"What?"

"Do you type?"

"No. Does it matter? I’ll learn if I have to."

"Not really. You carry the vodka. I’ve got the tape recorder."

Even by Hollywood standards, Digger thought it was three miles shy of a meaningful relationship. The redhead had a body that looked as if it should have a fluffy white tail glued to the butt. All tit-and-ass fantasy. But it seemed as if she had taken lessons from Sonje. She moved at all the right times, made the right sounds, was strategically moist where necessary. But all very practiced and routine. Even the music that she found on the radio fit in. All Los Angeles stations played bubble-gum music, Digger had learned early. Music to have a root canal done by. The redhead had managed to find a classical music station. It was playing
Carmina Burana
, a piece of music that Digger considered the epitome of classical vulgarity. The woman never asked his name.

"You’ve found the only piece of music that could accompany this wonderful thing between us," Digger said.

"Not Ravel’s
Bolero?
"

"God, no."

"Wasn’t that a good movie?"

"Grand. The best thing I’ve seen since Eisenstein’s
Potemkin
. I can’t wait for the sequel. The next dozen sequels, all the way up to twenty-two."

"Do you write that kind of movie?"

"No."

"What kind do you write?"

"Training films for the Army. You know,
The Seven Warning Signs of Chancre
. Starring Sperma Toesies and Spiro Keats and like that."

"Then what was all that dictation before into the machine, the scenes and stuff, the little Jap girl and all that, what was that all about?"

"That’s my autobiography."

"You mean, it’s true?"

"It’s the curse of most autobiographies. You should have seen the one I wrote for General Patton. It was a beaut. And all true."

"You’re not Alrod Jettson?"

"No. Who’s he?"

"You’re not a screenwriter at all, are you?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Catching a murderer."

"Oh, fuck."

"We just did."

"You’ve cost me the whole fucking day."

"It was good for me, too."

"What a bastard you are."

"I’m sorry. I thought it was the start of something beautiful."

The redhead jumped out of bed. She ran into the bathroom. Digger heard the water running briefly, too briefly for a shower. It was a whore’s bath, crotch and armpits. The redhead was back out, adjusting her bikini top, stuffing her feet into her high-heeled shoes.

"I thought you were somebody else."

"I guess this is goodbye for us."

"I hope the guy you’re chasing kills you."

"He already tried that."

"Goodbye, jerk-off." She slammed the door behind her. Digger looked at the door. He yelled at it. "For this, I give up my shot at literary immortality?"

He reached for the dregs of the bottle of vodka. He drank from the bottle and carefully replaced it on the end table before he fell asleep.

Chapter Nineteen

When he opened his eyes, Digger thought how merciful the telephone had been not to ring to break his sleep. He looked through the window. The sun had set and dusk was gathering. His mouth felt stuffed with cotton. He needed something to drink. He went into the bathroom and ran a glass of water. He saw the washcloth crumpled up on the sink, left there by the redhead, and he picked it up delicately between right thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the corner where he neatly dumped his dirty towels.