Fool's Flight (Digger) Read online

  "Excuse me," he told the wall.

  "So there you are, you son of a bitch," Koko said.

  "Shhhhh, you’ll wake me up," he said.

  "Where the hell have you been?"

  "Looking for you."

  "Did you try here?" Koko asked.

  "This was my last hope."

  Koko turned on the lamp and the light flooded the dark room, stabbing Digger in the eyeballs. When he could see, Koko was pulling the sheet up to her neck. They stared at each other.

  "So it’s you," he said. "I was wondering who was in our room."

  "You’re whacked. What the hell time is it, anyway?"

  "I think it’s four o’clock."

  "You’re a son of a bitch."

  "You’re opinionated, obnoxious, and much too short," Digger said.

  "Four o’clock," she intoned.

  "Time for beddy-bye," Digger said. He struggled out of his clothes which he dumped onto a chair. When he got down to his shorts, he peeled away the surgical tape that held the microphone wire to his side and unhooked the thin belt that held the tape recorder around his waist.

  He crawled into bed before deciding he needed a cigarette to sleep properly. He got up and brought the pack and lighter back to bed, where he sat down. His head reeled a little. All this getting up and down was not good for him.

  Sitting down, he lit a cigarette, then, gingerly, slid under the light sheet.

  Koko turned off the light and he felt her shift around and turn her back to him.

  "Who were you with?" Her voice seemed to echo in the darkened room.

  "The stewardess who was supposed to be on the flight. Her and two hundred other people. Before that, everybody and his brother. The co-pilot who didn’t go. The girl from the airlines office."

  "Did you have to make it with her?" Koko asked.

  "Who?"

  "The stewardess."

  "I didn’t make it with her. I don’t think I did."

  "You did."

  "No, Koko. I really didn’t. I think."

  "I don’t understand it, Digger. You’re not that good looking. How the hell is it that women bust their bloomers every time you walk near them?"

  "It’s a trick."

  "What’s the trick?" she asked.

  "You really want to go into this now?"

  "What’s the trick?"

  "All right. It’s the only way I’ll ever get any sleep, I guess," Digger said. "You start out with all women are in love with their fathers, especially the young ones. So maybe I don’t look like their fathers, but I’m big enough to at least look the masculine role model. When I meet them, I touch them a lot. Hands, arms, shoulder, backs. The way their fathers used to touch them. It breaks down their physical resistance. Then I call them things like ‘little girl.’ It makes women melt. It’s a thing their fathers might have called them. Sometimes they don’t melt, they ooze."

  "How freud-ulent of you, you heartless bastard."

  "Koko, you asked me. I didn’t volunteer. Remember, this is my job. This is what I do, make people talk. That’s another thing women ooze over me for. I listen to them. Really listen. Do you know how seldom somebody listens to a woman, particularly a man? They pretend they’re listening but they don’t. They’re just figuring out what motel they can go to and did they bring enough money and should they take one car or two cars and is she going to want to eat dinner first and all the time she’s talking and he’s saying ‘uhuh, yes, oh really,’ and he doesn’t hear a fucking word. But I listen. I like to hear women talk. Want to go to the beach tomorrow? Did you go today?"

  "No. I worked today. Maybe tomorrow. Get some sleep, Digger."

  He stubbed out his cigarette and turned to kiss her but her back was resolutely, coldly toward him. She was wearing panties and bra and a long T-shirt. He turned back, unkissed, and closed his eyes. He would pass up his final quiet cigarette of the day.

  "Digger?"

  "Yes."

  "I’m a little on edge. My sister called tonight and she might have to have an operation."

  "What for?"

  "Women problems."

  "You mean there’s an operation for suspicion and narrow-mindedness?"

  "Go to sleep," she said sourly.

  "Okay."

  "Digger?"

  "What now?"

  "I was out today checking that list. There’s something really strange going on here."

  "Like what?"

  "I’ll tell you about it in the morning. When you’re sober."

  "I hate being told things like that."

  "You know, your company is a pack of assholes?"

  "Only wake me up for something important," he said.

  "So are you," she said.

  "I said important," he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DIGGER’S LOG:

  Tape recording number three, Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways, 11 A.M. Thurdsay.

  Koko has gone to the store to get us some coffee. She is off the snot from last night, praised be the name of Jesus, but I have to take her to the beach. I hate the beach. Anyway, I don’t know if I deserved her wrath last night. I didn’t hit that stewardess, I don’t think. Maybe I hit somebody else. I’m not sure. I remember being on a bed with somebody next to an itchy tan jacket. So what?

  In the master file are three new tapes, interviews with Jane Block and Randy Batchelor and Melanie Fox and Miss Tamiko Fanucci, resident of Las Vegas.

  Jane says Timothy Baker is getting a little heat from his investors in Puddlejumper Airlines. Yes, the crash is a tragedy, etcetera, etcetera, but the insurance money might let him buy some better equipment. He talks about that a lot. Maybe he dreams about it and plans for it and schemes for it and blows up his own plane for it? I just wish Baker could focus his eyes. He makes me uncomfortable.

  Randy Batchelor. A pilot with a brown Porsche and FLYBOY on his license plates might do anything, particularly when he’s a little nervous. When I was talking to him yesterday afternoon, I suddenly had a feeling that this guy would not be above smuggling stuff from the Caribbean back into America.

  Then last night I saw him passing out cocaine like lollipops, so maybe. There was no bad blood between him and the dead pilot. At least, he said so and Melanie confirmed it.

  He got sick after drinking some of Donnelly’s coffee. How convenient that both of them got off the plane and it took off without them. Suppose they knew the plane was going belly-up? Suppose they arranged it because they were bringing stuff into the United States and Holy Roller, God-fearing Steve Donnelly was going to drop a dime on them? Suppose? Anyway, though, I’ve got to ask Mrs. Donnelly about that coffee of his.

  I think Detective Coley should run a check on these people for me. He checked out my whole list of passengers yesterday, and except for assorted drunk arrests, there wasn’t anything there. Thank God I remembered to leave him the four hundred dollars when I got in last night. Otherwise, he might have rung my bell this morning. I need my rest.

  Melanie is a loser. Ex-lover of the dead pilot. She seemed a little protective of Batchelor but I don’t know if that’s just normal protectiveness of crew for crew. She and Randy confirmed that Donnelly used to drink but didn’t anymore. But she said that he was back recently to being depressed. Show me depression and I’ll show you a reason for it. What reason?

  Melanie has no love for Mrs. Donnelly, either. Triangle? Kill the man they both love so her rival can’t have him?

  No, not after all these years. But maybe, just maybe, she’s shitting me about Donnelly. Maybe she’s hooked up with Batchelor and Donnelly was going to squeal on them about something? Maybe. Crew can easily smuggle a bomb on a plane.

  She said the passengers were juiced when they got on the plane. I guess they suddenly realized they were flying Interworld Airways. I mean, I know this airline, I know what it’s like. In a real airline, when the pilot announces that he’s taking off and the stewardesses should assume the position, I want them to
lie on their backs and spread their legs. Interworld…I can see it, stewardesses huddling in corners, covering their hands and eyes and ears with their hands. That’s the kind of airline this is. I’m afraid to go to their goddam offices. Who would willingly go on one of their planes?

  One thing that was puzzling me. Why didn’t Randy and Melanie—Jesus, it sounds like an adagio dance team—why didn’t they tell the controllers at the airport that Donnelly was flying alone? She said not to get Donnelly into any trouble.

  It’s logical. And maybe it’s true.

  The last segment on the tapes is my interview this morning with Miss Fanucci, regarding her activities yesterday in searching out relatives and friends of the accident victims.

  She said last night that everybody in my company, me included, was an asshole. This morning she proved it to my satisfaction. Yesterday she went to the airport insurance machine and picked up one of B.S.L.I.’s handy-dandy applications. Part A, Paragraph One, says it covers "Injuries received while the insured, as a passenger and not as a pilot or crew member, is riding in et cetera, et cetera…." Steve Donnelly’s insurance was invalid. B.S.L.I. doesn’t have to pay anything to anybody on his death because it’s specifically not covered. Pilots can’t buy those policies. Why didn’t Brackler or somebody in his office catch this? Is it up to me to do everything? Anyway, I don’t think I’m going to tell anybody about it right now, just in case it can do me some good to have people thinking Donnelly was insured.

  I think Frank Stevens should send Koko an engraved citation. Already she’s saved the company three hundred thousand dollars—first on that nonexistent address, second on the Donnelly policy. The girl ain’t half bad.

  She also came up with another interesting item. First of all, she went to six more addresses of the victims and found five more places where men used to live who had no family and no friends, no past, no present, no future. Most of them were drinkers. That’s confirmed by Detective Coley’s reports. Two of the five used to go watch Reverend Wardell preach, according to neighbors. The others might have.

  The sixth address she went to was something else. This was the furnished room of Charles Stermlieb, the one passenger who didn’t have insurance. His landlady, Hildie Walters, said that in the morning hours after the crash, there was a burglary at her house, and the burglar ransacked Stermlieb’s room. Nothing appeared to be taken.

  But Hildie used to do an occasional piece of laundry for Stermlieb and she found in the pocket of his weary old blue jeans, lo and behold, a filled-out insurance application on one of those airport forms. Koko charmed it out of her. The insurance form is filled out in a neat, precise little hand, block printed, and signed in this illegible scrawl by Stermlieb. I have to ask Kwash to look at the other applications we received and find out if there are any similarities in the handwriting.

  Very interesting. And what would someone burgle this nondescript’s furnished room for?

  Koko is worth her weight in sushi. So far, she’s tracked down ten of the forty passengers. She thinks it’s significant that ten out of ten were pretty much social castoffs. So do I.

  I guess I’ll have to go to that frigging beach. I hate the beach. If you just want to lay around, why do it where there are flies? Why not on your own bed in your own eight-dollar-a-night room.

  Koko’s civil this morning but she’s still mad at me. I can tell. She tied my shoelaces together. Too bad. If she could only learn to control her temper, when I haven’t done anything at all wrong, she’d be an exceptional woman. Off-the-scale genius, phi beta kappa at 20, mathematical wizard, knows everything, beautiful, sensitive. Yeah. And a part-time hooker.

  Maybe we’re reaching the end and we’re going to have to find new roommates. Well, if this is the end, then let it be the end, fast and sure. No dragging it out.

  A busted romance is like a bird with a broken wing. You keep looking at it and you keep hoping it’ll get well, but it never does. It just hops around a little and then it dies.

  The day’s expenses. Lunch, Jane Block, forty dollars, the girl eats hard. Dinner, Melanie Fox, seventy-eight dollars, she eats even harder. Telephone calls, sixty cents. Research services, four hundred dollars. Total, five-eighteen-sixty. Big day but we saved another hundred and fifty thousand by reading the policy. Kwash, doesn’t anybody in your office have any brains?

  There’s Koko at the door. Hop Harrigan signing off.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The telephone rang just as Koko came into the room and she picked it up as she set down the paper bag with the wet bottom.

  Digger watched as she chatted. The young woman had an infinite capacity for being beautiful. Her skin was as smooth as freshly stirred paint and her eyes actually sparkled. She smiled often, her teeth appearing almost pearlescent against the rose lips that needed no lipstick. She was filled with energy and vitality, but not herky-jerk or frantic, and even as she walked around the room, the phone propped between shoulder and ear, she moved with a dancer’s grace.

  Finally, she said, "That’s really good news. Thanks for calling me. I’ll talk to you."

  She hung up.

  "I don’t have to go home. That was my sister and she doesn’t need that operation."

  "Do you know how many times I’ve been trapped or tricked into a motel room because a woman told me that her sister or her mother or her daughter needed money for an operation? You’re refreshing, I’ll say that for you."

  "Just honest is all." She ripped the bag open and handed Digger a container of coffee. She also handed him a piece of pastry wrapped in waxed paper, then brought her own over and sat across the table from him. He opened the wax paper slowly.

  "Those are almonds," he said.

  "These days, that’s a find when you buy almond Danish."

  "I hate almonds. I specifically asked for cheese Danish."

  "No, you didn’t. You said you wanted Danish. Cheese, if they had it. I heard you. They didn’t have it."

  "I hate almonds. Now I have to pick all the almonds off the top of this Danish," he said.

  "Eat them, Dig," she said.

  "You’re in a good mood," he said.

  "Yeah, I am. I just came to a decision in my life."

  "What’s that?" he asked.

  "That you’re never going to change."

  "I could have told you that. I’m always going to be kind and witty and handsome and brilliant. Don’t you know better than to talk with your mouth full?"

  "You’re always going to be crass and insensitive and promiscuous and thoughtless and I guess if I want to put up with you, I put up with that."

  "You don’t want to change me?"

  "How long did your ex-wife try?"

  "How long did I know her?"

  "Exactly," Koko said. "I’m not even going to try."

  "Does this mean we’re going to go through life irritating each other?" Digger asked.

  "Probably. You can’t change. I won’t change. This is good Danish. Stop picking off those almonds."

  "I hate almonds. They’re so goddam skinny in those little slivers and they get between your teeth and hide there for weeks and when they finally come out, they’re mushy."

  "Is there anything else you don’t like?"

  "Yes. I don’t like French designer shirts ’cause they make them for fags with wrists like broomsticks. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I don’t like most jockey shorts ’cause you can’t get it out and once it’s out, you can’t get it back in."

  "Getting it back in never seemed to be much of a concern to you," Koko said.

  "Quiet. I don’t like cocktail lounges that have those glasses with bumps on the bottom because they always drip water on your pants and it looks like you made wee-wee."

  "What else?" she asked.

  "I don’t like double crostics, because I can never understand the rules. I don’t like my mother."

  "Reasonable. Nobody likes your mother. Not even your father."

  "She never tried to feed m
e almond Danish," Digger said. "I hate almond Danish. What do you think about this case?"

  "I don’t know what to think. Ten people, every one of them a cipher. How often do you scratch ten people and find ten without some kind of family?" She shook her head. "But somebody burglarized Stermlieb’s room." An almond was stuck to the side of her lip. "I don’t understand it," she said. She picked off the almond and ate it. "Save me your almonds, I love them. Listen," she paused, "isn’t it about time you went after Wardell? Doesn’t everything come back to him and the money?" Koko asked.

  "I told you. I went to see him preach. I was impressed."

  "I don’t mean watch him perform. I mean go talk to him."

  "Yeah," Digger said. "I guess I’ve got to do that. But I’m really delicate at this kind of work. I don’t just go plowing ahead."

  "No? Let’s ask that stewardess. She’d probably swear that you’re great at plowing ahead."

  "Stop that. No, first I like to study the accident, and then I like to hang around the edges for a while and see who’s there and then I jump into the middle."

  "That’s very logical. Do you really do that?"

  Digger thought for a moment. "I guess not," he said. "I guess I do whatever amuses me at the moment." He nodded. "You’re right. It’s time to talk to Wardell."

  "Tomorrow," she said. "Later. Not now. Now we’re going to the beach."

  "I hope they have a stand that sells cheese Danish."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Back from the beach. Digger had taken a long cold shower to try to take some of the sting out of his back and shoulders and arms and chest and thighs and calves and knees and neck and face. He congratulated himself on having had the good sense to keep his insteps covered all the time. They weren’t burned. That meant, when he committed suicide from the pain, he’d be able to die with his shoes on.

  He was shaving delicately in the bathroom, when he heard the telephone ring, and Koko’s voice say: "Who?"