Dead Letter (Digger) Read online

  "I guess," Digger said.

  "But Daddy didn’t send you up here to see where I’m living, did he? Can I call you Digger?"

  "Everybody does, since your father tagged me with that name, so go ahead. No, he didn’t send me up to see where you were living. He thought you were depressed."

  "I’m not depressed."

  "He thought you were upset about some guy’s death." Digger took the clipping from his wallet and handed it to Allison.

  "Oh," she said as she looked at it. "That’s funny. I was a little bit upset. I didn’t think my father would notice."

  "Allison…" Digger began.

  "Allie. Everybody calls me Allie, except my parents. Allison was my mother’s idea. God, she might have named me Kimberley."

  "And given you a borzoi hound for your seventh birthday."

  "Exactly. And sent me to skiing school."

  Digger said, "Actually, your father notices everything about you. He knew you were upset and he couldn’t understand your being upset about some saloonkeeper dying. What would you know about saloonkeepers? I mean, I thought you were a campfire girl from listening to Frank talk."

  "All right, don’t needle me because I’m normal. I’ll tell you what happened. A few weeks ago, somebody put up a piece of paper on the bulletin board downstairs. It was like a list. The heading was ‘God’s Mistakes. People we can all do without.’ Everybody had a good laugh. Then we started putting down names. You know, the dean of students, college president, that kind of thing. I added Wally Strickland’s name because a lot of us in this dorm, we kind of hung out over there in Rick’s Place, and he never bought a drink, and he was always trying to hit on the girls. Well, then, he died and well, Jesus, I just felt guilty. Suppose I jinxed him by putting his name on that list. I didn’t wish him dead. It was just supposed to be a joke, but he died. I felt awful about it, as if it were my fault. But Danny finally talked me out of it. It wasn’t really my fault."

  "Of course it wasn’t," Digger said. "So that was it?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "If that’s the worst thing you ever have to worry about in your life…" Digger began.

  "It’s not," she said. "Now I’m worrying about you. What are you going to tell my father? I’m taking tests now and I’m graduating in two weeks…."

  "I love the way you study," Digger said.

  "That’s just it. You tell my father and I’m going to be yanked out of here and matriculate at some school for wayward girls."

  Digger shook his head. "I’m not your average run-of-the-sewer snoop. I have my standards."

  "Where do I fit into them?" she asked.

  "Your lifestyle’s not my business, so your secret’s safe with me. Your father asked me to check and see if there was some reason for you to be upset about this Strickland’s death. I checked that out, and so now I can go on about my business."

  "What is your business, anyway?" she said. "Are you in Boston on some big case for B.S.L.I.?"

  The sun glinting through the windows behind the young woman cast a fuzzy halo about her face and body. But in the dim light on her face, Digger could see the flash of her youthful, happy smile. God, she was beautiful.

  "No," Digger said. "This has nothing to do with old Benevolent and Saintly. I’m up here to see a friend and get a physical."

  "You look fine. You’re not sick, are you?"

  "No, just an annual checkup."

  "And you’re not going to tell my father anything about Danny?"

  "Of course not."

  "Good. Then I won’t have to wish you dead." She paused. "I’m sorry. I guess that wasn’t funny. Danny’s my boyfriend, did I tell you that?"

  "I kind of gathered."

  "He’s a genius," she said. "Certifiably."

  "What does he genius at? Besides seducing the most beautiful girl on campus?"

  "He’s a psych major. He does theoretical work in human behavior. You’ll hear of him someday."

  "Where’s he from?"

  "Why? Oh, I get it. You just want to be sure I’m not getting roped in by some guy who’s after Daddy’s money."

  Digger started to protest but she said, "Come on, admit it."

  "Okay. I guess it was something like that. Where’s he from?"

  "Pittsburgh. His father owns a steel company. They’ve got more money than they know what to do with. He doesn’t need ours. Feel better?"

  "Immeasurably," Digger said.

  "And we were hanging out together here, studying, and Danny was depressed ’cause somebody swiped his car and we just kind of naturally wound up in bed," she said with a broad smile.

  Her teeth were large white pearls in the glowing frame of her face.

  "Naturally," Digger said. "Remind me to look you up if I’m ever feeling depressed."

  "I could tell by looking at you that you would probably understand," she said. Suddenly, she called out:

  "Danny!"

  The door to the next room opened immediately and Danny Gilligan walked in. At just over five feet tall, he was a full half-foot shorter than Allie Stevens. Digger had thought, on first thought, that he looked like a gnome, but he looked more like a cherub. His eyes twinkled and his face was smooth-shaven. He looked like the product of a beginning class in cartooning in which students drew people out of ovals and circles. He was all ovals and circles.

  He looked at Allie first, then at Digger.

  "Danny, this is Julian Burroughs. He’s a friend of my father’s."

  Gilligan looked puzzled and nervous, but Digger said, "A circumspect, close-mouthed friend of her father’s," and the two men shook hands.

  "He’s going to stay with us for lunch," Allie said.

  "Oh, I am?" asked Digger.

  "Sure," she said. Danny still stood near Digger, his hands clasped behind his back in the Napoleonic posture that small men often adopted just to remind people that another small man had once terrorized the western world.

  "Oh, Danny," Allie said. "Loosen up. Everything’s all right. Digger’s cool."

  "Who’s Digger?" he asked.

  "I am."

  "And he’s staying for lunch."

  On the first floor, they passed a bulletin board mounted on a wall next to the staircase. Digger stopped to glance at it quickly, but there was nothing there except the usual listings of class cancellations and eight banks of neatly printed for sale notices. Digger decided there was a surplus of stereos in the building because everyone seemed to be selling one. Also guitars.

  Allie and Danny led him through the lounge toward a smaller room in the back of the building. Double doors leading to it were open and Digger could see five small square cafeteria-type tables with metal folding chairs set around them.

  "Hello, Little Miss Sunshine," a voice called out as they walked through the lounge.

  Digger glanced over. The man who had called out was the same sleepy-eyed man who had tried to stare Digger down as he came into the building earlier. Around his neck, he wore an Egyptian ankh cross. It was carved of wood and he wore it upside down on a leather thong. He was casually smoking a marijuana cigarette, sprawled on a lounge chair, one leg up over the arm. He was barefooted. Sitting next to him on a couch with his feet up on a coffee table was the muscleman. He held a copy of Playboy open in his lap, open to the centerfold, but he was looking up now at Allie. Digger noticed that the sleepy-eyed man appeared to be in his later twenties, a little older than the usual college student.

  Allie glanced at the man who had called to her.

  "Hello, John," she said coolly, not slowing her stride.

  "How’s the munchkin lady today?" he called out, but she ignored him and led Danny and Digger into the small dining room.

  "Don’t pay any attention to him," Allie whispered to Digger. "He’s an obnoxious creep."

  The small dining room was empty and they took the table in the far corner, near a large window that looked out onto a small, well-kept garden.

  "Where’s the food?" Digger asked.
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br />   "There’s a little kitchen in the back," Allie said. "We hire a lady to come in and she makes a big pot of food once a day and just keeps it on the stove. No selection, no choice, no arguments, no problems. Today, I think you can have spaghetti and meatballs. If you don’t like that, you can have meatballs with spaghetti."

  "I’ll have the meatballs and spaghetti," Digger said. "Only plebeians eat spaghetti and meatballs."

  "Coke or beer?"

  "Beer. You think I’m some kind of philistine eating Coke with spaghetti? I went to college too, you know."

  "We’ll get it," she said. "Come on, Danny, give me a hand."

  They walked out into a hallway and Digger lit a cigarette and looked out the window at the small garden. College had changed since he had been a student. He had gone to a small school in the center of a city, a block from police headquarters, and the only flowers anybody saw were in the lapels of people going to Sunday mass on Mother’s Day. Pink for living; white for dead.

  He heard someone enter the room and turned to see the two men who had been in the dorm lounge.

  The man named John was taller than Digger had thought. He moved with an easy arrogance, followed by the muscular second banana, still carrying his copy of Playboy.

  They sat at the table next to Digger’s.

  "You a friend of the dwarf’s?" John said to Digger. His thin lips curled back over his teeth in a look that could have been a smile or snarl.

  "Yeah," said Digger. "I’m his older brother."

  Digger watched carefully but saw nothing resembling an apology on the other man’s face. Instead, it bore the look of one who apologized for nothing; who had, after all, given the world his greatest gift by deigning to live in it. Digger didn’t like him.

  "What do you do?" John said.

  "I’m a zoo keeper. Danny told me there were a lot of interesting specimens up here and I came to check them out before graduation. Make the freaks an offer, you know, before Barnum and Bailey get to them. You booked yet?"

  Digger noticed that it seemed to be slowly seeping into the head of the muscleman that Digger was insulting them because he made an extra effort to pump up his biceps.

  Digger smiled at him.

  "Ah, life in a cage," said John. He snapped his fingers and the muscled one dug a cigarette and lighter from the pocket of his yellow T-shirt, lit it, and handed it to the other man. "But isn’t all life a cage? Camus."

  "Horseshit," Digger said. "Jesuit mind-bending 102."

  John fingered his ankh. "Nothing endures," he said, "except the horseshit. We are born maggots in a dung pile, we live our lives in dung, and when we die, we fertilize the grass so that horses may make more dung. It’s not much of a prospect."

  "If you assume that man is just the sum of his bodily parts," Digger said. "But there is art and there’s beauty and there’s the purity of the mind. Men leave legacies that are never dung. Of course, if you think that life somehow is just a blood-gorged bicep, then a life which must end in death is worthless. But there are other muscles. Between the ears, for instance. Why do you wear that ankh? Doesn’t it symbolize a culture and history that endured, long after the pyramids themselves began to crumble?"

  "But I wear it upside down. I reject what it stands for. I reject the worship of the sun god just as I reject the wallowing before the great god of life. I think that only by returning to darkness are we made fully human to come into a new life."

  The muscled one nodded.

  "The Manichean heresy," said Digger, suddenly bored. "As stupid now as when it was first promulgated in Iran, which seems to have a corner on the stupid market. If you believe that light is bad and dark is good; if you believe that life is bad and death is good, then the simple way out is to commit suicide and go to that big darkness in the sky. Stand up for your beliefs. Jump off a building. Pick a high one. And take him with you."

  Digger turned back to the window again until Allie and Danny returned to the dining room. She was carrying a tray filled with plates of high-piled spaghetti. Danny carried two Cokes and a bottle of beer.

  Digger nodded to them as they sat at the table but he felt a hand on his arm. It was John.

  Digger turned to him and John said, "But don’t you think life is really humdrum? Dull? Boring?"

  "Only to bores," Digger said. He winked at Allie who was setting the plates out in front of them.

  "Get us some food," John ordered the muscled one, who jumped quickly to his feet and lumbered toward the rear kitchen.

  "You’ve met John Paul?" Allie said.

  "Yes," Digger said. "We’ve just been discussing his lunatic excuse for philosophy. I haven’t heard such crap since the last time I heard the David Susskind Show."

  The other man got up from his table and sat in the empty chair at Digger’s table. Digger slid the empty food tray over in front of him, but the young man reached over and put it on the table behind him.

  "We haven’t actually been introduced," he said to Digger.

  "Why try to tamper with perfection?" Digger said as he concentrated on his plate of spaghetti.

  "John, this is my friend, Julian Burroughs. This is John Paul Rampler. The one in the kitchen is Mark Rolan."

  "Charmed," Digger said. "Now can I eat?"

  When Rolan returned with two plates of spaghetti, Rampler took one and continued to sit at Digger’s table. Rolan was banished to sit alone at the table behind them.

  Rampler pointed with his fork toward Allie. "Look at her," he said to Digger. "She even eats with a smile on her face."

  "If you’d leave, I’d laugh aloud just to please you," she said.

  She was interrupted by a professorial type who walked quickly into the small dining room. He was medium height with thinning sandy hair. Although he must have been around forty, he had a brace of childlike freckles running across his nose and under both eyes. He wore tan slacks, an open-necked beige shirt, and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.

  He held a paper in his hand.

  "Well, well, Dean Hatcher," Rampler said. "How is the custodian of the students’ commonweal today?"

  "Fine, fine," the man said distractedly. "Allie, this just came in the mail. I opened it by mistake."

  He handed the young woman a folded paper. Allie took it and nodded toward Digger. "Henry, this is a friend of mine, Julian Burroughs. Julian, this is Henry Hatcher. He’s dean of students here."

  "Among other things," Rampler said.

  "I think you ought to look at that," Hatcher told the girl. Digger noticed the man was sweating.

  She opened the folded letter, looked at it, and Digger saw her face, that window to her happy heart, darken as abruptly as if someone had turned off the light inside. Her lips trembled and she looked at Digger helplessly. He thought he saw the beginning of a tear in her eye.

  Digger took the paper from her hand and read it. It was a Xerox copy of a typewritten letter. It read:

  CHAIN LETTER

  Kill the person whose name appears at the top of this list. Then cross out that name and insert, on the bottom of the list, the name of somebody you want killed. Xerox this letter and send the copy to a friend. When the name you’ve inserted reaches the top, that person will be killed.

  1. Wally Strickland.

  2. Professor Otis Redwing.

  3. Jayne Langston.

  CAUTION: This letter has been around the world three times. Those who have broken the chain have suffered dire consequences. John F. Kennedy broke the chain. The Shah of Iran broke the chain. Anwar Sadat broke the chain. You break the chain at your own risk.

  The name of Wally Strickland had a line drawn through it.

  "Who’s this from?" Digger asked as he handed the letter back toward Allie, but Rampler quickly snatched it from his hand.

  "I don’t know," Allie said. She looked up to Henry Hatcher who still stood behind her. He shrugged.

  "I don’t, either," he said. "There was no return address on it. It came in the day’s mail and I opene
d it by mistake. When I saw what it was, I looked at the envelope and saw it was addressed to Allie. The mailman must’ve left it at my house by mistake."

  Rampler handed the letter toward Allie but Danny Gilligan took it from him and read it.

  "At least, whoever wrote that letter has taste," Rampler said.

  "Oh?" said Digger.

  "It’s a good list. Strickland was an asshole and he’s gone. Otis Redwing teaches history, but he doesn’t know anything about history. He got his job because he’s an Indian and, really, I suppose you have to have minorities, but they’re so tired and dull."

  "And Jayne Langston," Allie said.

  Rampler turned toward Digger. "The college shrink. She doth make neurotics of us all. She’s ripe for the picking."

  "The bastards," Danny Gilligan said. "Who the hell sent this?"

  "You don’t seem very concerned," Digger told Rampler.

  "What’s to concern? Maybe it’ll liven things up around here."

  Digger took the letter from Gilligan and put it into his jacket pocket.

  "Come on, Allie," said Digger. "We’ll go out and get some air."

  Hatcher put his hand on Allison’s shoulder. "Will you be all right?" he asked solicitously. "You know, this is just some twisted mind’s idea of a prank."

  Before she could answer, Danny Gilligan rose and pushed Hatcher’s hand roughly off the young woman’s shoulder. "Yes, she’ll be all right. We’ll take care of her."

  Digger led Allie toward the door, while Gilligan started clearing the table of dishes. Digger noticed that Mark Rolan, the body-builder, was looking down, intent on eating his spaghetti.

  Digger and Allison sat on a park bench in the middle of the grassy field. The frisbee players had gone and the kite-flyer was on the far side of the clearing.