Fool's Flight (Digger) (17 page)

"Your supervisor, no doubt," she said.

Digger shrugged. "Some days she looks better than others."

Randy Batchelor turned from Jane’s desk to see who she was talking to. "Oh, it’s you," he said.

"Haven’t seen you since the party," Digger said. "Didn’t get a chance to tell you what a good time I had."

"You’re awful," Jane told Digger.

Digger walked toward the door. "I’ll call," he told Jane.

"Don’t bother," she said.

He had gotten only a few steps from the hangar building when Batchelor caught up to him.

"Hold on, I want to talk to you," he said.

Digger turned around. "Sorry I missed you at Mrs. Donnelly’s," he said. "And the doctor’s. You’ve been busy."

"We all have," Batchelor said. "I thought you said you were a cop."

"No.
You
said I was a cop. I just told you I was looking into the crash."

"You’re an insurance snoop?"

"That’s about it," Digger agreed.

"And just what the hell is your name? Lincoln? Or Burroughs?"

"Depends on who you talk to," Digger said. "Why’d you go see Dr. Josephson?"

"Who’s he?" Batchelor said.

"Steve Donnelly’s doctor."

"Sorry. Don’t know the man," Batchelor said. "Well, what have you found out?"

There was something smug about his manner, Digger thought. He knew something but it was clear that he wasn’t going to say what.

"Damned little," Digger said. "I don’t know why that plane went down but I still think that somebody gave it a push. Maybe somebody with something to hide caused the accident. Maybe somebody who found some way to be off the plane when it took off."

"Hold on," Batchelor said. "You can’t…"

"I’m not. I’m just thinking out loud."

"Well, don’t think like that. It wasn’t that way at all."

"What way was it?" Digger asked.

Batchelor smiled, a sly, unwarm smile. "Maybe someday
you’ll
tell
me
."

"I hope so," Digger said, "I hope you can live with the answer."

Batchelor walked away and Digger strolled back to his car. Didn’t anybody ever get a day off at Interworld Airways? Saturday morning and Baker was working and Jane was working and Batchelor was hanging around. Maybe they were all just waiting for the mail, hoping an insurance check for the lost airplane would arrive.

"Who was that man?" Koko asked as Digger got into the car.

"Batchelor. The co-pilot who stayed home."

"He doesn’t like you," Koko said.

"So few people do nowadays," Digger said. "But he likes you just fine. I heard him. He said you were glorious."

"Good taste," Koko said. Digger started the engine and looked over at her. She was busy reading the Donnelly medical file she had just stolen from Dr. Josephson’s office.

"Anything interesting in there?" he asked.

"Not yet. Not unless you find something intrinsically interesting in a surgically corrected hernia."

He had gotten only a few blocks from the airport when Koko said, "Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my."

"What is it?"

"I think Donnelly had cancer."

"Mister Burroughs?"

"Yes."

"This is Doctor Riesner." The voice crackled sharply over the telephone, in sharp contrast with the appearance of the short, tweedy, pipe-smoking man at whose home Digger had left the medical reports a few hours earlier.

"Yes, Doctor. You find out anything?"

"Your man, Mr. Donnelly, has liver cancer. Very advanced, very terminal."

"Had, Doctor. He’s already dead."

"Yes. Well, that was to be expected. Those tests and reports were very clear that he would die any day."

"No chance of remission, no last-minute miracle cure?" Digger asked.

"Afraid not, Mr. Burroughs."

"Thanks, Doctor Riesner. I’ll be back for the reports tomorrow."

"Where did you get these, anyway?"

"I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you ask that. Good night, Doctor."

Chapter Twenty-One

DIGGER’S LOG:

Tape recording number five, 10 P.M., Saturday, Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways Crash.

Busy, busy, busy, busy. I should have known that a day that started off with a phone call from Kwash was going to be ruined.

Koko’s gone. She decided that she ought to go see the Reverend Wardell for herself. The rich Reverend Wardell.

That’s all very interesting, a millionaire who walks away from a fortune to go preach the gospel. And he’s got a sense of humor. The Church of the Unvarnished Truth. Paid for with his paint millions. He’s got style, you’ve got to admit that.

We have on tape Trini Donnelly, being hung over and seductive and admitting that Mrs. Wardell called her about not suing.

Anyway, I let Mrs. Donnelly know that maybe I was going to tell the company to sue. We’ll see what that brings.

There is no tape of my visit to Dr. Josephson’s office, where by sheer tenacity and willpower I persuaded him to give me a copy of Steve Donnelly’s medical records. Terminal cancer, going to die any day.

Of course, that doesn’t have anything to do with the insurance policy. It was accident insurance. But he could have had an attack or something while flying. I can understand Donnelly wanting to fly to the bitter end, particularly with all those bills he owed, but he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy to endanger passengers that way.

The ultimate pilot error is dying at the controls.

I wouldn’t put it past Trini to put a bomb on a plane to get rich on insurance. But who kills forty to get one? And she might be a horny drunk, but she’s got enough sense to make sure the insurance is made out in her name, even if it were payable, which it’s not. She didn’t know about that insurance policy at all. I’m sure of that.

Kwash says all the policies were made out in a couple of different handwritings. So who did them? I don’t know.

I guess I’m not going to play Tarzan for Interworld Airways’ Jane. Too bad. She saw Koko. It’s a lot of bullshit about women respecting other women’s rights to a man. They don’t. But they say they do and it takes awhile for you to get them past that nonsense and I don’t have a lot of time to do anything. The Mongol hordes are on the way. Cora, What’s-his-name and the girl are probably sleeping now. But then, tomorrow, inexorably, like some goddam glacier crushing everything in its path, they’ll be on their way here. I’ve got to get out before it’s too late.

And what is Batchelor doing? First going to see the doctor, then Mrs. Donnelly, pumping, pumping. He goddamit knows something but I don’t know what it is. He’s a sleaze with his yacht caps and little blue blazers and Clark Gable mustache. I just don’t trust him, he’s up to no good. He looks like a smuggler to me. Who else gives away cocaine at parties?

I hope Koko gets back soon.

Expenses: breakfast, Mrs. Donnelly and me, twenty-one dollars, the woman’s a big eater. Lunch, Koko, thirty dollars. I round all these numbers off to the next lower dollar. I hope you appreciate this, Kwash. Dr. Riesner, who analyzed Donnelly’s records for me, will send a bill to B.S.L.I. Room and car by credit card. Total, fifty-one dollars. Another cheap day.

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Well, that was an experience," Koko said. She was wearing blue jeans, a white blouse and white high-heeled shoes, her generation’s idea of Saturday night go-to-meeting best.

"What’d you think of His Holiness?" Digger asked.

"Charisma, but he’s a nut-case." She walked back and forth along the shabby rug, imitating better than Digger ever could Wardell’s speech rhythms, punctuated by the footsteps along the stage. "‘Prosperity is just around the corner. Good health is just around the corner. Happiness is just around the corner.’ Digger, this guy’s the king of around the corner."

"You think he’s a phony?"

"That’s the problem. I don’t. I think he’s on the level and it annoys me. I wanted to be able to come back and tell you, Digger, go get him, it’s him, but I can’t."

"Me, neither. I don’t picture him as the kind of guy to bring down a plane of forty people," Digger said. "I think he’s a manipulative power-junkie, but I don’t make him a killer."

"Did you hear from the doctor?" Koko asked.

"Yes. Donnelly had cancer. Maybe only days to live."

"All right," she said. "Pilot error. Or maybe pilot incapacitation. Maybe he had a cancer attack. Do people get cancer attacks? Like migraines and menstrual cramps?"

"I think so," Digger said. He got up from the bed and Koko flopped down on the other side of it.

"Well, that’s a possibility, then," she said. "It’s a lot more possible than your idea that somebody brought the plane down."

"Except," Digger said sourly, as he started to pace the floor of the room.

"Except what?"

"Except for that damned insurance," Digger said. He kicked the closed drawer of the plastic-veneered dresser.

"Easy on the furniture," Koko said. "Unless you got ten dollars to replace it all."

But Digger wasn’t listening. He was walking the floor, talking as much to himself as to her.

"Except for that damned insurance," he said again. "Forty passengers on that plane, all with insurance made out to one man, the man who’s sending them on the trip. And then the pilot who is terminal turns out to have insurance made out the same way."

Digger kicked the dresser drawer again. The cheap mirror on the dresser rattled against the wall.

"And why does the pilot take off without his crew when the co-pilot conveniently gets sick?" he asked aloud. "And the co-pilot has the look of a hustler or smuggler or something and now he’s nosing around, trying to find things out, and I think he’d down every commercial aircraft in the country to get money to buy a bigger Porsche."

Digger gulped the dregs of vodka from his glass. "And then we’ve got Timothy Baker," he said. "In deep money trouble and that plane going down might just be the best thing that ever happened to him. And the pilot’s wife sleeps around, and when she was talking about suing over the insurance, Mrs. Wardell talked her out of it. Why? And how? And the whole plane was a planeful of losers. No family, no friends, no future. If ever a plane was meant to go down, it was this one."

He looked at Koko imploringly. "Except this, except that, except everything. There are too many damn excepts in this case."

She kicked off her shoes and stretched her hands above her head as Digger kicked the dresser one more time.

"This is an awful job you have," she said. "Nothing’s ever simple and nothing’s ever what it seems to be."

"That’s the fun of it," Digger said.

"I know. I like puzzles, too. But just once in a while, don’t you wish something was slambang, whammo?"

"The only thing I want to slambang whammo is you," Digger said.

"Fat chance."

Later, they lay in bed with the lights out, Digger smoking his last cigarette of the night, even though smoking in the dark was totally unsatisfying. If you couldn’t see the smoke you could barely taste it. That was true of all cigarettes but especially of Digger’s low-tar, low-nicotine brand, about which he complained that he had to suck so hard for smoke, his teeth were coming loose.

"Digger," Koko said.

"You know I don’t like to talk during my last cigarette. Now I’m going to have to light another one. This is my quiet-thinking cigarette of the day."

"I’m sorry."

"Well, as long as you started, what is it?"

"This probably doesn’t mean anything, but you know how Wardell’s tent is kind of hooked up to his rectory building or parsonage or whatever they call it."

"Yeah."

"When Wardell was preaching, someone came up the ramp and slipped his wife a note. She got up and left the stage. She went down that ramp. It struck me as odd, her going like that. Anyway, he was preaching and I had heard enough, so when she left, I nipped out the back of the tent and ran around the side to see what she was up to."

"You see anything?"

"She walked into the parsonage. I thought, hell, maybe she had to go to the bathroom. But then I thought of that note that she got. So I waited awhile, and in a couple of minutes, somebody else came out of the house."

"Who was it?"

"Some woman. She had black hair and big knockers. Sunglasses, too. She got into a car and drove out of the lot."

"What kind of a car?"

"Don’t interrupt. I had my car parked in the front of the lot and so I got in my car and tried to follow her."

"How’d you make out?"

"I followed her for about a mile to that big fork in the road, you know that six-way intersection with the gas stations and the motels and some cars got between us and I lost her."

"What kind of a car?"

"I drove around the block a few times but I couldn’t see her. Then I went back to the tent and the show was just letting out so I drove right home here."

"What kind of a car?" Digger asked.

"Dark color."

"Oh, that helps. That’s good. A dark car."

"I don’t know what kind of a car. You want me to tell you it was a 1951 Malibu coupe with double-barrel carbs and California headers and mouse-fuzz upholstery and a million-liter engine, you got it. Go look for it. I don’t know from cars."

"Women never learn the important things in life like what kind of car somebody is driving."

"It was black, that’s all I know. Do you think this is important?" Koko asked.

"I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me before?"

"I didn’t know whether to or not. I thought you might get all twisted because I was gumshoeing around and when I thought about it, it all seemed kind of trivial and pointless. Maybe Mrs. Wardell was sending somebody out to get orange juice for breakfast."

"Maybe," said Digger. "And maybe not." He was thinking of Melanie Fox, dark-haired and big-chested.

"All right," Koko said.

"Koko. You did good."

"Thank you. Good night."

He smoked another cigarette before falling asleep.

When he fought his way back to consciousness, it seemed as if he’d been sleeping only for five minutes. But the sun was up, streaming into the room through the threadbare curtains. Why did he wake up? The telephone. The telephone was ringing.