Fool's Flight (Digger) Read online

  Koko is always ragging me that I should have stayed with my ex-wife. I should have kept managing that small loan company instead of moving to Las Vegas and becoming a degenerate gambler. I should have stayed with my kids, What’s-his-name and the girl.

  I think that’s why I like Koko. When she wants to talk to me, she talks to me. My first wife used to want to talk about talking. "We’ve got to talk," she would say and I would say, "We are talking," and she’d say, "No, really talk." And then she’d talk for twenty minutes about talking. By the time she got around to what she really wanted to say, her time was already up.

  I hate that. I just want to talk and be talked to. I don’t like to have plans for talking laid out as if talking were some kind of cathedral to build or mountain to climb. You just open your mouth and let words come out and that’s talking. Koko understands that. She just talks.

  If love were possible, I’d love her.

  Just for that.

  Where the hell is she?

  None of these tapes would be complete without the best and most creative part of the day. Recapitulation of expenses. Don’t get upset, Kwash. I’m spending for two days and I’m spending for two.

  Yesterday: two phone calls to Las Vegas, fourteen dollars. Parking at the airport to pick up Koko, five dollars. Tips to skycaps, five dollars. Somebody had to carry all her bikinis and I’ve got a bad back. Took her to dinner at this fancy French diner, thirty-nine dollars with tip. Total, sixty-three dollars. Room and rental car by credit card.

  Today: phone call to my room, forty cents ’cause I hung on a long time letting it ring; lunch, nine dollars; phone call to Interworld Airways, ten cents; supplies for my room, eleven dollars, Finlandia’s not cheap; total, twenty fifty, hell, I’ll pick up the fifty cents myself.

  Car, room by credit card.

  Two-day total, eighty-three dollars.

  And so to drink.

  Chapter Nine

  "Where have you been? It’s almost eight o’clock."

  "I’m not allowed out until eight?" Koko asked.

  "You didn’t leave me a note."

  "You never read notes. If I left one at the desk, you’d forget to pick it up. If I left one in here, it’d stay unread forever. You’d use it to empty your ashtray into. Get off my case."

  "Your notes I read. I always read your notes. I look for them and anticipate them with great pleasure."

  "This no-frills motel of yours cut out paper and pen first thing. This place is so fucking cheap that the Gideons didn’t even leave a Bible in the drawer. If they had, I could have left you a message by underlining key words. In lipstick. There isn’t any pen, remember."

  "All right. Where were you? Did you find the beach? You don’t look tan. You still look yellow."

  "I didn’t go to the beach," she said. "I was helping you. After you left this morning, a messenger came with a list from Brackler of all the plane victims and addresses and Xeroxes of their insurance applications and so I thought I’d go and check some of them out."

  "I knew you couldn’t help meddling. So what’d you find out?" Digger asked.

  "Nothing. I checked the first four names on the list."

  "You had to find out something. Remember Edison?"

  "Yeah, I know. Now I know nine hundred things that don’t work. I know all about that. I didn’t find out anything. Even Edison couldn’t find out anything about these four guys. It was easier to invent the light bulb."

  "How’d you get around?"

  "I took cabs. Sometimes I walked. Do you want to know what little I’ve got or do you want to ask irrelevant questions?"

  "Yes, I want to know, but we have to do this right. Let me set up the tape recorder. And when I ask you how much you spent on cabs, double the amount."

  Digger put a fresh tape in the recorder. Mean-while, Koko took off her flowered blouse and pink skirt. From a dresser drawer she took a pair of shorts and T-shirt and went into the bathroom. Digger watched her walk away. She had wonderful legs, strong and straight. He wondered how a woman could be both long-waisted and long-legged at the same time, but Koko seemed to pull it off.

  "When you come out, bring the vodka," he called. "It’s in the toilet."

  "What’s it doing in the toilet?"

  "Actually it’s in the back of the toilet in the water tank. This place doesn’t have ice cubes, either, so I keep it cold that way."

  She came out a few minutes later, holding the vodka. She was wearing white shorts and a white T-shirt with a long printed legend. It had a picture of Uncle Sam, looking ferocious, recruiting poster style, pointing an index finger at the looker. Underneath it was printed:

  JOIN THE ARMY.

  TRAVEL TO FARAWAY, EXOTIC LANDS. MEET

  INTERESTING, EXCITING PEOPLE,

  AND KILL THEM.

  She was twenty-six. Digger remembered now because he had forgotten her birthday and a week later bought her the T-shirt for a birthday present. It was one of the few gifts he gave her that she had really liked. Mostly he remembered special occasions with bottles of liquor, always vodka, which she accepted gracefully and then reminded him that she didn’t drink.

  She splashed vodka into Digger’s authentic plastic motel glass, recapped the bottle, and returned it to the bathroom. The bottle was only half full, Digger noticed. He probably hadn’t put the cap on tight enough and some of it had leaked out. Or evaporated.

  Koko returned and sat in the chair. A gold-colored frog that he used as a tie clip was attached to his portable tape recorder by a wire.

  "Talk right into the frog," he said, "I don’t have any extra mikes."

  "Master tape, number three," he announced. "Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways, interviewing Miss Tamiko Fanucci, resident of Las Vegas, regarding background checks of air crash victims. Now Miss Fanucci…"

  "You can call me Koko. Back at the home office, they know we sleep together."

  Digger clicked off the tape recorder and rewound it to the beginning. "Koko, we’ve got to be all business here. You never know what these tapes might be used for."

  "C’mon, Digger. You always erase the tapes when you’re done with a case. I’ve seen you. Nobody ever hears these things but you."

  "You never know," he said darkly. He pressed the record button. "Master tape, number three. Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways, interviewing Miss Tamiko Fanucci regarding back-ground of air crash victims."

  "Las Vegas," she said.

  "What?"

  "You forgot to say I was a resident of Las Vegas. You did that on the other recording."

  Digger sighed. "Skip it," he said. "Now, Miss Fanucci, would you tell me where you went when you left your room today?"

  "Our room. I never would have rented a dirt-bomb like this place. I left here and took a cab to 415 Jesper Street, address of…let me look at my notes."

  The tape continued to run as she went to her purse and fished out a small spiral-bound notebook and a pen.

  "Where’d you get the pen?" Digger asked.

  "I bought it."

  "Be sure to keep track of it," Digger said.

  "The notebook, too," she said. "I went to check on the last known address of Walter Smith. Four-fifteen Jesper Street is a dump. It must have been designed by the same architect who designed this motel. There’s a candy store downstairs and four little apartments upstairs. The candy-store owner, Joseph DeRosa, owns the building and rents the apartments. I had a long talk with him. Walter Smith had lived upstairs in the smallest apartment for about nine months. He was a drunk…and was in his sixties. He was collecting some kind of Army disability pension. He drank in his room and sometimes, if the weather was good, he’d come down and sit on the stoop and drink wine out of a bottle."

  "He lived alone, Miss Fanucci?"

  "Right. No relatives that DeRosa knew of. No mail except his check every month. DeRosa didn’t know where he came from but he thought Smith had mentioned New York City once."

  "That’
ll be easy to trace," Digger said. "Walter Smith from New York City. We can ask his brother John about him."

  "He had no belongings."

  "Everybody’s got belongings," Digger said. "It’s part of belonging."

  "Not anymore. He had some belongings. He had two pairs of pants and two shirts. He had some underwear and socks. He didn’t have a picture or a note or a letter or a newspaper clipping. He had a couple of back copies of Sports Illustrated."

  "What happened to that treasure trove?"

  "DeRosa kept it for ten days and when no one came, he put it in the garbage. The apartment’s already been re-rented. I talked to the new tenant. She’s a whore. She said she didn’t find anything there that belonged to Walter Smith."

  "You believed her?"

  "Yes. While I was walking back down the stairs, I heard her moving furniture around. She thought because I was there, he must have had something that she hadn’t found yet, but, by God, she was going to as soon as I left."

  "Did you get her name, Miss Fanucci?"

  "Yeah. Why? You horny?"

  "Unbearably."

  "Good. I got her name and phone number. Rhonda Horne."

  "Rhonda Horne?"

  "Yeah. It’s a joke, like a stage name. Round-the-horn, get it? Very heavy sexual connotations. I complimented her on it. Hookers love it when you tell them they have great names."

  "What else, Miss Fanucci?"

  "For God’s sakes, stop calling me Miss Fanucci. Then I went to check out Charlie McGovern."

  "Address please."

  "Ninety-three Leeson Avenue. It was walking distance. It’s a flophouse. McGovern stayed there occasionally. A buck-fifty a night, share a barracks and a toilet. One old guy, let’s see, Melvin Langsden, knew McGovern and said he used to work at the supermarket carrying bags once in a while but he didn’t know anything about him except that he was a boozer. He didn’t know where he came from, either. Charlie was around a couple of years, in and out. Nobody knew anything about him."

  "That’s not unusual in flophouses, Miss Fanucci. Did he have anything to do with Reverend Wardell, did your friend Melvin know?"

  "Oh, yeah. Wardell. Just a minute." She turned back her notebook pages. "On Walter Smith, DeRosa told me he used to go to Wardell’s church regular, once a week, and for a day after, he’d sober up but then he’d be drinking again." She turned the pages again. "Melvin told me about McGovern, let’s see, he said, ‘he goes to church a lot but it don’t seem to do him much good, ’cause he ain’t never got no money and he still sleeps here. Where is he anyway?’ See, he didn’t know Charlie was dead. I told him."

  "How’d he take it?"

  "Hard. He asked me to buy him a drink."

  "Did you?"

  "I gave him two bucks."

  "Be sure to put it on your expenses, Miss Fanucci."

  "Oh, I will, Mister Burroughs. Yes, sir, Mister Burroughs. I’m going to put it right down there, that two bucks, and if Mister Brackler comes to town, I’m going to play up to him and see if I can get it up to four dollars, Mister Burroughs."

  "Goddamit, now I’m going to have to erase that part of the tape."

  "Leave it on, erase it later if you want. So from Charlie McGovern’s flophouse, I took a cab, I’ve got a note on it here, three-fifty including tip, and I went to check out James Ernlist. He existed, but just barely. He was a waiter at the Silver Spoon Restaurant. No family, he lived alone in a furnished room in a private house. His landlady, a Mrs. Sylvie Portloy, said that he was nice and quiet and didn’t bring anybody home to his room. She said he talked about Reverend Wardell like he was some kind of god or something. He lived there about a year. She kept his personal effects and let me look through them. She thought it was kind of thrilling that somebody from her house was killed in an accident. There wasn’t anything in his stuff. A couple of yellow newspaper clippings about Fred Ernlist setting touchdown records at Union Hill High School. That’s in Union City, New Jersey. The clippings looked like they were twenty years old. There was a clipping about Fred dying in Vietnam. It said he was survived by his father, James, predeceased by his mother, Mildred. No mention of brothers or sisters. So the way I figure it, that was his kid who died and maybe he went to the bottle because he didn’t have a family and he wound up down here."

  "Probably," Digger said. "That sounds right. If you’re going to be miserable anyway, you might as well be warm."

  "I double checked at the Silver Spoon Restaurant. He had worked there about three years. The manager, a Dominick Attas, said that Ernlist was a drifter. He was a good waiter but he missed more than his share of days, out sick. He had a drinking problem, Attas said. He never talked about his family and he didn’t have any friends or girlfriend or anything. He had a cable television hookup in his room. He watched sports like twenty-four hours a day. They’ve got some kind of sports network…."

  "I know," Digger said. "You can use it to watch last week’s car races. It’s as exciting as watching water evaporate. Did you cab it to the Silver Spoon?"

  "No, I walked again. It was only a couple of blocks from Ernlist’s room."

  "And where from there?"

  "The fourth name on your list was Anthony Montivini. His address doesn’t exist. It’s an empty lot."

  "Maybe the building was just torn down."

  "No, I checked. It was always an empty lot."

  "Well, you’ve already earned your salary," Digger said. "I don’t think the company has to pay if the guy put down a spook address."

  "You mean I already saved your company a hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

  "It looks that way."

  "Shit, Digger, this work’s easy."

  "Don’t let on. I’ve got Brackler conned."

  "Well, I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to take some of that saved company money and you’re going to buy me dinner tonight at a place with real paper napkins and genuine stainless steel forks."

  "Should we do that before or after making love?"

  "Instead of," Koko said coldly. "I haven’t forgotten how you tricked me into coming down here."

  Chapter Ten

  DIGGER’S LOG:

  Added to the master file is an interview conducted by me at approximately 8:30 P.M. tonight with Miss Tamiko Fanucci, resident of Las Vegas.

  Miss Fanucci, on temporary duty for old Benevolent and Saintly, attempted to find the background data on four of the persons believed to have died in the Interworld crash. Those four are Walter Smith, Charles McGovern, James Ernlist, and Anthony Montivini.

  The Montivini address given on the insurance application is nonexistent and Miss Fanucci could find nothing about him. The other three men lived at the addresses they gave. None of them had families. Each was known to have known Reverend Wardell.

  I spoke on the telephone tonight with Detective David Coley who will run the passenger list through the police department records to see if there is someone with an interesting police record.

  The investigation is continuing. I guess I am going to have to talk to the Reverend Wardell. I want to meet the man who is so universally loved that forty people made him their insurance beneficiary. Just before their plane conveniently vanishes.

  Koko is sleeping. We had dinner tonight. She knows how to find expensive restaurants, that’s for sure. But she may have saved the company a hundred and fifty thousand dollars today so I’m sure Kwash will approve.

  She’s keeping her own record of expenses. My expenses tonight: dinner for two, one hundred and seventeen dollars. I’ll pick up the dime for the telephone call to Detective Coley.

  Koko is wearing all her underwear. Jane Block gets more and more interesting. Even if I don’t like blondes.

  I wish I knew why that plane went down.

  Chapter Eleven

  Koko had already left the room when Digger dialed Interworld Airways.

  "Hello, me-Jane, this is me-Elmo. I was wondering if you were free for lunch. Failing that, are you reasonable for lu
nch?"

  "I would have been more reasonable for dinner last night, but okay."

  They met at a small pseudo-French café just off the strip of million-dollar-a-millimeter ocean front-age that made up Fort Lauderdale’s famous Galt Ocean Mile. Jane was wearing a red-and-white-striped pullover shirt and short white shorts and white high heels.

  "Kind of casual wear for the office, isn’t it?" Digger said.

  "You know our office. It’s not exactly overrun by tourists, but I keep a wraparound skirt in the closet in case I have to look decent in a hurry."

  "You’ll never have that problem with me. Indecent will do just fine." Digger ordered a vodka for himself and looked at her.

  "I don’t drink," she said. "Just a Perrier."

  "I knew there was something that kept you from being perfect," he said.

  When the drinks came Jane asked for a menu. Digger passed.

  "Aren’t you eating?"

  "I’m drinking."

  "You can’t do both?"

  "Not if I want to concentrate on my drinking. Go ahead, don’t let me inhibit you."

  While she studied the menu, Digger studied her. The young woman was breathtakingly beautiful. The thought of her buried away from the world in a quonset hut at the end of the Fort Lauderdale airport was as big an obscenity as thinking of diamonds never mined, laying for all eternity under twenty feet of dirt and stone.

  When the waiter came back, Digger said, "She’ll have the rabbit food."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "The chef’s salad. With roquefort dressing. Moldy cheese made into goo is just what rabbit food needs to make it a perfect meal."

  "Very good. And you, sir?"

  "Another vodka."

  "Will that be all?"

  "No. Make it a double."

  "What kind of a name is Elmo?" Jane asked.

  "My father wanted a girl. He wanted to name her after my rich aunt, Aunt Alma. I guess he figured that was the way to get her money when she died. Then, instead of getting a girl, he got me. Well, he couldn’t call me Alma. Well, maybe he could if he was Johnny Cash. I mean, you can name a boy Sue. But Alma? But he thought if he named me Elmo, he might be able to get over on my aunt, impress her with the depth of his devotion."