Read Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) Online
Authors: Warren Murphy
Lucifer's Weekend (Digger)
Lucifer’s Weekend (Digger #4)
Warren Murphy
Copyright © 1982 by Warren Murphy
Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.
www.ereads.com
For Ed and Christine,
Bob and Anna and Billy
and Karen. Friends.
LOCAL MAN DIES IN MISHAP
BELTON, PENNSYLVANIA—Vernon Gillette, an electronics and planning specialist with Belton and Sons Industries, was discovered dead yesterday morning in a small hunting cabin in the north hill section on the outskirts of the town of Belton.
Police said that Gillette was apparently electrocuted while working on the cabin’s electrical system. He had been at the cabin to hunt deer. In the cabin, which is owned by Belton and Sons for the use of their employees, police said they found an electrical fuse next to Gillette’s hand. The man’s body was lying on the floor in the bathroom.
Gillette, 41, was a native of California and was educated at U.C.L.A. Considered a specialist in the design and operation of electronic information systems, Gillette had several college degrees, including those in electrical engineering and computer systems science. He worked in New York until two years ago, when he moved to Belton to join Belton and Sons.
Gillette is survived by his wife, the former Louise Randisi, and their 8-year-old daughter, Ardath.
Chapter One
"Digger, you have done some disgusting things to me in your life, but this is low, even for you." Walter Brackler looked nervously over his shoulder toward the crowded dance floor.
"What’s the matter with dancing?" Digger asked. "I love to see people dancing. I think they’re kind of graceful."
"They’re men dancing," Brackler said. "With each other." He leaned forward. "It’s a fag bar, Digger. A fag bar," he whispered angrily, before sitting up straight and glancing over his shoulder again.
Julian Burroughs shook his head. "No, no," he said. "It’s a ‘gay’ bar, not a fag bar."
"What’s the difference?"
"Fourteen leather jackets and twenty pounds of chains," Digger said. "Seventy-eight key rings, ninety-seven switchblade knives and fourteen thousand arrests for loitering."
"I should have known," Brackler said glumly. "When I got here, I looked at the outside of this place and I said to myself, Julian Burroughs is getting mellower. Usually, I have to meet you in these terrible grungy places, but this place looked clean. I thought, maybe Digger will not be on the snot today. Maybe we will transact our business like real human beings and I will leave this place not hating him. Not a chance. You are a despicable human being."
"If you play your cards right, I can fix you up," Digger said. He drained his glass of vodka and waved toward the waiter for another round.
"None for me," Brackler said. "Who knows what they do with the glasses when the customers aren’t looking?"
"Wash them, I suspect," Digger said. "So what’s on your mind?"
"And the music is awful, too," Brackler said.
"You’re not into Marlene Dietrich impersonations?"
"So loud? Does it have to be so loud?"
"If it weren’t loud, you wouldn’t be able to hear it over the panting and slurping," Digger said.
"Disgusting. This is absolutely the last time I meet you anyplace except in the offices of Brokers Surety Life Insurance Company. That is my last fucking word on the subject," Brackler said.
"This place has Finlandia vodka," Digger said.
"Who gives a shit?" Brackler said.
"I’m sorry you’re so offended," Digger said. "I thought you knew it was a gay bar."
"How would I know that?" Brackler asked.
"By the name. Danny’s. Give me a bar named Danny’s and two times out of three, it’s a gay bar. That’s a proven fact. I thought you knew that. I thought everybody knew that."
"I don’t have your deep knowledge of the seamy underside of life," Brackler said. He saw the waiter returning, mincing across the floor with a drink tray in his hand, so he turned slightly in his chair, then pressed closer to the wall. The waiter set two drinks on the table and removed the empties. He smiled at Digger, then at Brackler, before turning away.
"He thinks you’re the cutest little thing," Digger told Brackler.
"Work, right? Here. Read this." Brackler took a newspaper clipping from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Digger, who unfolded it and lay it flat in his left palm to read, while raising his glass of vodka to his lips with his right hand.
Digger glanced off to the right and saw their waiter staring at their table. He was struck by how much the waiter reminded him of a younger Walter Brackler. Both were barely five feet tall, small boned and delicate. Except the waiter was friendlier. Everybody was friendlier to Digger than Walter Brackler.
"The clipping, Digger," Brackler said.
Digger’s eyes flickered down to the paper for a few seconds, then back up to meet Brackler’s.
"All right, so Vernon Gillette died in an electrical accident. I take it he was insured by ’your company," Digger said.
"
Our
company as long as you live off our paychecks," Brackler said. "Yes, that’s correct."
"A large policy," Digger said.
"Correct again."
"And you want me to go up there and prove it was suicide so that you don’t have to pay, you cheap bastards," Digger said. "Or is it
we
cheap bastards?"
"Wrong," Brackler said. "We want to pay."
Digger clapped both hands to his chest. "I don’t know if my heart can stand the strain." He looked up to the ceiling. Small light bulbs embedded in the blue stucco ceiling twinkled, like stars in a nighttime sky. But there were six crescent moons on the ceiling. What kind of sky had six moons? Maybe homosexual heaven would have a moon for everybody.
"Try to bear up while I explain it to you," Brackler said.
"All right, but no more sudden shocks," Digger said.
"Vernon Gillette had a large policy with us. A half a million dollars, paid for by Belton and Sons. Of course, it is double that for an accidental death."
"So you owe Mrs. Gillette a million dollars," Digger said.
"Your mathematics are, as ever, impeccable," Brackler said.
"So pay up," Digger said. He shook his head. "I don’t understand you insurance people. Insurance is a gamble. It’s like a game and you’re the casino. When people live, you win, and when they die, you lose. And you win some and you lose some, but the casino always wins in the long run and you guys always get your tenor twenty-or eighty-percent profit or whatever it is you’re gouging out of your victims right now. So why is it that you hate to pay off ever? That you want to win every hand? What’s wrong with you people? God, I hate insurance men."
"I love it when you jump to conclusions," Brackler said, "because it shows how narrow-minded and anti-establishment you truly are. The fact, Mr. Julian Burroughs, social critic extraordinary, is that we want to pay. We want to pay Mrs. Gillette one million dollars."
"Damn it, Kwash, that’s wonderful," Digger said. "Just for that, I’m going to buy you another drink."
"I told you I won’t drink out of their glasses," Brackler said. "I haven’t even touched this one."
"I’ll buy you your own bottle. You can drink right out of the bottle. There’s not much they can do with a bottle. At least a full one," Digger said.
"I’ll pass. Let’s just conclude our business so I can get out of here," Brackler said.
"All right," Digger said. He cleared his throat, sat up straight in his chair and folded his hands on the table in front of him like an attentive schoolboy. "Tell me how your willingness to pay somebody a million dollars is any business of mine. Tell me how this guy’s accident is any business of mine. Tell me what we’re doing here."
"We want to pay the million, but the dead guy’s wife…"He snatched the clipping off the table and looked at it again. "…This Mrs. Gillette won’t let us. She says that it’s insulting to her husband’s memory to suggest that he was so stupid that he’d electrocute himself changing a fuse or something. She says he was an electrical genius and he couldn’t possibly die that way. Her words, not mine."
"A noble woman," Digger said. He raised his glass in a toast. "If you went right now to my ex-wife’s house and told her that I died by driving carpet tacks into my own skull with a sledgehammer, she’d believe you. This Mrs. Gillette’s quite a lady."
"She’s a gone job," said Brackler, "but that’s not here or there. She says that her husband must have died of a heart attack. She won’t take a penny more than five hundred thousand dollars."
"So pay her the five hundred thou," Digger said. "You and I can split the rest. We’ll buy this place—every place named Danny’s is for sale—and we’ll turn it into a hairdressing salon. You can handle the gay trade, I’ll take care of the women. What do you say?"
Brackler expressed his opinion with a silent stare, cold enough to kill death. Digger said, "Okay, we’ll cut Frank Stevens in for some. Not that he needs it. I mean, he’s the president of BSLI and he can steal all he wants without stealing from what you and I steal, but if you want to cut him in ’cause he’s the boss, all right."
"This is serious," Brackler said.
"So pay the lady, Kwash. What do you want from me? Hand her the check myself? There’s a guy over there making eyes at you."
Brackler carefully did not turn around to look. "Which one?" he asked.
"The one that looks like a walking tattoo parlor. With the leather dog collar around his neck."
"Oh, my God," Brackler said. "I’ve got to get out of here."
"Business, first," Digger said. "How quick you people are to forget what’s important. What do you want from me?"
"We can’t pay her just the five hundred thou when she’s due a million. She might turn around later and sue us for our shirts," Brackler said.
"So you want me to go out there, to Belton… where the Jesus is Belton, what state?"
"Pennsylvania."
"So you want me to go to Belton, PA, and convince this dingdong to take an extra half a million dollars."
"Exactly," Brackler said.
Digger drained his glass of vodka. "Not a chance," he said.
"Why not?"
"First of all, where’s Belton, PA?"
"It’s about fifty miles north of Pittsburgh," Brackler said.
"That’s one reason," Digger said. "I’m not flying into Pittsburgh. Not now, not ever. Not even for you."
"Do you mind telling me what you have against Pittsburgh?"
"I don’t have anything against Pittsburgh. It’s that goddamn airport in Pittsburgh. You know how in airports things are nice and they have pretty little signs and they say rest room this way or rest room that way?"
"I suppose so," Brackler said cautiously.
"Well, in Pittsburgh Airport, they’ve got these big blue-and-white signs and they say toilet. That’s tacky. It’s like having some guy scream over the loudspeaker, ‘This way to the crapper.’"
"That’s ridiculous," Brackler said.
"Tell the people who run Pittsburgh Airport," Digger said, "not me. And another thing. Everybody in Pittsburgh Airport wears a cowboy hat. It looks like the freaking O.K. Corral. I always figure I’m gonna get involved in a goddamn gunfight. What’s that old song? ‘Red, white and blue.’ Red-neck, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer. No thank you, you go to Pittsburgh."
"You can drive," Brackler said. "Skip the airport. The company will rent a car for you."