Fool's Flight (Digger) Read online

  The she said, "Just a moment."

  She cooed, "Oh, Elmo. It’s for you."

  He came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist and saw Koko covering her face with her hand hiding a mock smirk.

  "Here, Elmo," she said sweetly.

  "Hello."

  "Elmo, this is Jane. That your boss?"

  "Yeah."

  "She sounds like a bitch."

  Digger looked at Koko who had collapsed back on the bed, still wearing her bikini, silently mouthing at him "Elmo" and then giggling.

  "That she is," Digger said.

  "Listen, I’m sorry it took me so long, but I couldn’t find Donnelly’s records in the file. And then today I looked again, and they were there. Good health, no problems, I can’t read all that stuff, but the doctor’s letter said okay. He was due for his physical next month. Dr. Richard Josephson, Harborview Avenue, is the doctor."

  "Thank you. That helps."

  "You ever going to be able to get away from her?"

  "I’m trying," Digger said. "Really trying. I’ll let you know."

  "Okay. I’ll be around."

  Digger hung up the telephone.

  "If you say anything, I’ll slug you," he said.

  "Elmo? Elmo what?"

  "Elmo Lincoln."

  Koko started giggling again.

  "Elmo Lincoln," she said. "How’d you meet that one? She come swinging in on a vine?"

  "Very funny."

  "Why’d you pick the name of some movie Tarzan?"

  "I asked her what her name was and she said ‘Me Jane.’ I couldn’t say ‘me Tarzan,’ could I? Elmo Lincoln just came to mind."

  "You’re beautiful, Digger. Why didn’t you tell her your real name?’

  "I forgot. She asked me kind of fast."

  "You’re crazy. Who is she, anyway? You jump her bones, too?"

  "Jane something. She works at the airline. No."

  "What’d she say about me?"

  "She said you sounded like a particularly evil, but lustful, sex-driven, horny, beautiful bitch. She said she bet I was going to service your account right away."

  "And you agreed?"

  "Yes."

  "Tarzan has more brains than that. So did Cheetah, for that matter. You ain’t got a chance, sucker."

  "How long are you going to punish me? Didn’ I take you to the freaking beach?"

  "Sure. You’re a bag of fun. You slept all day until you turned the color of a peeled tomato. Then you asked people on the beach if they had cheese Danish to sell. Then all you did was bitch about the sun." She smiled. "You want to make love? Good. We’ll do it on the floor. You lay on this genuine indoor-outdoor steel wool rug. I’ll get on top. Watch me squirm. Your back will love it."

  "I never realized until this minute just how evil and sadistic you Oriental-Sicilians are."

  "You don’t know anything yet. I’m going to take a bath in musk."

  "Musk?"

  "Yes. Horny mink musk. And then I’m going to bed and I’m going to smell like a French whore in estrus and if you touch me I’m going to stab you in the balls with a stiletto. I’ll teach you to mess with me, Elmo. Elmo. Do you really think I’d give it up to somebody named Elmo?"

  Digger went into the bathroom to pour himself a drink, and when he came out, he sat in the chair in front of the television set. Koko went into the bathroom to take a bath. When she came out, Digger was sleeping in the chair. She let him stay there.

  At 6 A.M., Digger looked up Dr. Josephson’s telephone number and dialed. A tape-recorded message told him that office hours began at 10 A.M. and he could leave a message at the signal, but if he really needed emergency service, fast, Grade-A emergency service, the best thing to do was to go to a hospital. Any hospital.

  Digger looked at Koko. The sheet had slipped from her body and her bare breasts invited him to come to bed. He thought about it for a moment, then sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her. She slept on her back in what psychologists called the royal sleep mode, the position assumed by someone who feared no enemies or no danger. She was not just beautiful; she was perfect. Her face was a delicate bronze and her hair was not dark brown but black. Her face, so quick to smile, was unlined.

  She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman. She was beautiful and smart and funny and warmhearted. She had never been married and she never talked to Digger about marriage. He couldn’t tell if she even thought of being married to him.

  They had met in a hotel hallway. She had been naked and just a little drunk. She suffered from a common Japanese inability to handle alcohol, but it was like her not to accept life’s or genetics’ verdict. She had tried to drink. Someone bought her a drink, then tried to take advantage of her, wound up stealing her purse and pushing her naked into the hallway of the hotel. Digger, in a room across the hall, had gotten back her purse and her clothing and he had gotten her not long after.

  Digger had left his wife and children and moved to Las Vegas to gamble. He was just getting over the fever. Soon after, with a little pocketful of winnings, he had bought a condominium on the Las Vegas strip. Then he had done a substantial favor for Frank Stevens, the president of B.S.L.I., and had gotten an occasional job as a claims investigator. And had also gotten his nickname of Digger.

  Koko was by then a dealer at the Araby Casino and she had moved in with him.

  He worked occasionally. So did she. She dealt at the casino, but once in a while, the casino asked her to "entertain" a visiting high roller with a penchant for oriental women.

  Digger couldn’t bring himself to complain about it. Maybe it was, in a way, his insurance policy. Could a hooker, even a part-time hooker, expect him to say "let’s get married?"

  But what if she weren’t what she was? What would he do then?

  He looked at her again.

  Some kinds of beauty were beyond words.

  He checked himself from reaching out and touching her hand, tossed up childishly on the pillow beside her face. There was the hint of a smile on her lips.

  "Tamiko," he said softly. "I’m an alcoholic and am more than a little crazy. I don’t much like myself and I don’t think I can like anybody else, much less love them. Except maybe my father. But if I ever loved anybody, it’d be you. Maybe…someday…ahhh, bullshit. We’re going to be too busy forever, laughing at each other’s jokes, telling each other stories. Never happen, kid. And ain’t it a fucking shame."

  Then he got up and went inside to shower and brush his teeth and look at his beet-red body and curse the sun and the woman who exposed him to it.

  Koko was still asleep when he came out. He taped his recorder under his shirt, made sure he had several extra cassettes in his light tan jacket pocket, and wrote her a note with the pen he found in her purse.

  "Koko. Went out to find me a kind woman who’ll give me some. I don’t know if I’ll ever return. Have a nice day. Digger."

  It was obvious to Digger that Dr. Josephson, for all his medical education, had never been exposed in childhood to the Peter Slump and Peter Posture health books. He sat behind his desk like a soft pile of wet laundry.

  "Dr. Josephson, my name is Julian Burroughs."

  Josephson shook his head. "I’ll never understand. You New Yorkers come down here and refuse to believe that this is the real sun. You hang around out there all day boiling like a lobster, and then come running to a doctor. Did you put anything on that burn?"

  "I didn’t come for my sunburn, Doctor. I’m fully prepared to suffer in silence for the sin of stupidity."

  "What’s the problem then?"

  Digger handed the doctor one of his business cards. "I’m with the Brokers’ Surety Life Insurance Company."

  Josephson nodded. He was a huge man and after he stopped nodding, his jowls continued to flap up and down in agreement for what seemed to be another full round trip.

  Josephson handed the card back.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I’m doing some routine checkin
g for my company before we pay off on some insurance involved in that Interworld air crash a couple of weeks ago."

  "Whose insurance did you have?"

  "A couple of passengers."

  "And how can I help?"

  "You were Steve Donnelly’s private physician?"

  "That’s right."

  "He was due for a company physical soon."

  "Is it a year already?"

  "Time flies," Digger said. "At least better than Interworld’s planes. I want to know the state of Captain Donnelly’s health."

  "I’ve told you people, I don’t talk about my patients to third parties. Was Steve one of your insured?"

  "I don’t really know, Doctor, but I doubt it. Do pilots insure themselves on their own flights?"

  "No, probably not. I’m afraid I can’t help you."

  "You said you told ‘us people’ that. What people?"

  "You and that other fellow yesterday."

  "Was he an insurance man?"

  "Yes. I don’t remember his name though."

  "What’d he look like?" Digger asked. "My office messes everything up and it’d be like them to have two men on the same job and not tell either of us."

  Josephson shrugged. "I don’t know. Nice-looking fellow. Had a mustache."

  "Dark wavy hair?" Digger asked. "Kind of good looking?"

  "Sounds like him," the doctor said. "I told him like I’m telling you. I don’t give out information on patients."

  "Could I see Captain Donnelly’s file?" Digger persisted.

  Josephson glanced toward a file cabinet alongside his desk, before he said, "Of course not. I can’t do that."

  "It would facilitate my paperwork, Doctor. Get people paid a little faster."

  "Sorry, but that’s not my concern."

  "How would you release the records? To Mrs. Donnelly?"

  "Why should she want them? No."

  "You’re the family doctor?" Digger asked.

  "Yes. Steve, Trini, the kids, they’re all my patients."

  "Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your giving me this time."

  Mrs. Donnelly was not home when Digger telephoned and neither was Koko. However, The Church of the Unvarnished Truth announced that the Reverend Wardell would have private consultations beginning at noon.

  Digger hung up and had a drink before driving to Wardell’s. He had never met a Messenger of God before and he wanted to be fortified.

  The Wardell parsonage was an old white frame building directly behind his mission tent. It was separated from the tent by a private parking lot, large enough for a dozen cars. Digger parked and went up the three stairs to the porch and followed the somewhat-Germanic printed instructions on the door to "Ring Bell, Then Enter." Somewhere, he thought, there was a leftover Nazi from World War II, and he had made a career out of writing America’s signs. Keep off Grass. Shut Door Tight. No Noise Allowed. Jawohl, mein führer.

  He found himself, without instructions, in a large room whose walls were lined with sofas and chairs. He had expected to see some evidence that the Damien Wardell Bible-Reading and Tub-Thumping Society had begun to spend its six-million-dollar windfall, but the sofas and chairs gave no evidence of it. They looked as if they had last been used to furnish Noah’s Ark. He sat in one of the chairs, felt a loose spring under his butt, and moved to another chair. He lit a cigarette, but when he could not find an ashtray, he went to the door and tossed the cigarette out into the parking lot.

  When he went back inside to sit down, he looked at the magazines on the old cocktail table in front of the sofa. You could tell a lot about people by looking at the magazines in their waiting rooms. Doctors favored Time magazine, perhaps to impress the point that time was flying by and they would appreciate your handling their bill promptly before it was too late. Dentists went for golf and boating magazines. Presumably this was to give the victim something pleasant to envision doing when the bloodletting and agony were over and the upper plate still didn’t fit. The Reverend Wardell leaned to Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics. Build your own solar power generator. Heat your swimming pool for three cents a day. Some startling conclusions about the safety of mopeds. The lowly bean: solution to the world’s hunger?

  It made Digger wonder what kind of world Wardell envisioned after the second coming. He could picture hordes of smiling drones, mopedding their way, in flatulent bliss, between their bean farms and their heated swimming pools with a solar-powered organ huffing "Amazing Grace" for background music.

  His musings were pleasantly interrupted by a door opening. He looked up to see a tall blond woman with an angelic face and devilish body standing in the doorway, crooking her finger toward him. She had green eyes, the exact color of mid-season oak leaves, and a thin band of freckles across her nose. She was wearing tight white jeans that molded themselves snugly around her narrow waist and across her smooth full butt, and a loose-fitting light blue shirt that could not hide her opulent bosom.

  "Heavenly," Digger said as he stood.

  There was no answering smile on her face. "You are early," she said accusatorily. "The reverend’s hours don’t begin until noon."

  "I couldn’t wait to be saved," Digger said. "You got to get up early to beat the devil."

  She stared at him for a moment, then turned away. "This way, please," she said.

  As Digger followed her through the door, he noticed a large blue handkerchief, matching the color of her shirt, tucked into her left rear pocket. She led him into a small office, nodded him toward a chair and sat down behind a small metal desk. On a stand next to her desk was an old Remington manual typewriter.

  "Guess you’ll be getting a new typewriter soon," he said casually.

  "I beg your pardon," she said.

  "Typewriter. That one’s pretty old. You’ll probably replace it soon," he said.

  "It works perfectly well," she said. She opened a manila file folder and picked up a magic marker. "You’ve come to see the reverend?"

  "Yes."

  "About what, if you can tell me?"

  "I drink."

  "Oh, one of those. Name please."

  "Prester," Digger said. "One of what?"

  "Drinkers," she said. "There are a lot of drinkers." There was no apology in her voice at all, and Digger decided the woman had all the natural warmth of a whorehouse madam. This was no Jane Block. Too bad. He wondered whether her coldness was natural or the result of the good reverend’s admonishments.

  "Is that your last name or your first name?"

  "Last name. First name’s John. Prester, comma, John," Digger said.

  She wrote it neatly that way on the file folder. From inside the folder, she took a printed sheet of paper and wrote that information on it also. She asked Digger his address and when he gave her his Las Vegas address, she asked what he was doing in Florida.

  "I’m on vacation. With my girl friend. We’re living in sin. Should I tell the reverend about it?"

  "If you want."

  "Can I try it out on you first?"

  There was no reaction from her at all. "Next of kin?" she said.

  "None. I’m an orphan."

  "Occupation, Mr. Prester?"

  "I’m a degenerate gambler. I don’t work," he said.

  She seemed to find that no more interesting than his breast-baring about his immoral sex life.

  "Maybe I’m too much for the reverend," Digger said. "Maybe I shouldn’t even be here. It’s probably too late anyway."

  She looked at him sharply. "No, you’re not too late. You’re early." She glanced at the wall clock. "Fifteen minutes early."

  "You don’t think I’m a lost cause?" he asked.

  "Please go back outside and wait, Mr. Prester. The reverend will be with you shortly."

  "Thank you. Listen, Miss…" He paused but she volunteered no name. "I don’t have a lot of money. Between gambling and women and liquor, you know…what will this cost me?"

  "There is no charge," she said crisply. "The Reverend War
dell does not ask a fee for bringing sinners to God." The statement sounded like a scolding.

  Digger mumbled "Thank You." He returned to the waiting room but was seated only several minutes before the door opened again and the blonde said, "The reverend will see you now."

  She waited in the doorway for him but drew back sharply as he walked past her, clearing her bosom only by inches.

  "First door on the left," she said. "Go right in, he’s expecting you."

  Damien Wardell was sitting behind his desk when Digger entered. He wore reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and he pushed them back atop his blond hair when he rose to greet Digger.

  The study was a large and comfortable room, its walls lined with bookshelves. The desk was piled high with a half-dozen books and Wardell had been writing with a fountain pen on a yellow, legal-sized pad. A Bible was open on the desk and alongside it, Digger could see the manila file folder with his name on it. Prester, John.

  Wardell was smaller than he had appeared on the stage, but his handshake was firm and his eyes, electric blue, seemed to rivet themselves to Digger’s.

  "Sit down, Mr. Prester. Coffee?" he asked.

  "Please."

  Wardell walked to an electric pot on a shelf in the corner and began to pour two cups. "I love coffee," he said. "Thank heavens, there’s no biblical proscription against it."

  Here, in the room, the voice was softer and muted but it still seemed to hint of the power it displayed on stage.

  "Accident of time," Digger said. "Coffee came after the Bible. If it had been around then, there would have been a prohibition, count on it."

  Wardell turned away from the coffeepot and smiled.

  "Judging from your accent, that sounds like a cynical New York view of the Bible," he said.

  "Not really. But I read Leviticus when I was a kid. You can’t eat a hawk but you can eat a grasshopper. If it’s got four legs, but two of them are above the other two, then you can eat it. Unless it creeps, then you can’t eat it. And if you get a white spot on your skin, well, you’re all right, unless the spot is lower than your skin and your hair turns white, then you’ve got leprosy, and you can’t wear wool, unless your skin is green, except if you bought a house and the owner wants to reclaim it inside a year, then there’s a different rule. Black, please."