Smoked Out (Digger) by Warren Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

’cause I’m oral. The tub therapist says that’s why I talk a lot, ’cause I’m oral. Give head, not liver. Give…"
    She was breathing noisily, sipping air through her mouth as if her nose were stuffed.
    "Fine," Digger said softly under his breath. "Go to sleep before I even find out what a tub therapist is." She snored at him.
    He disconnected the tie-clip microphone, then removed his tie and shirt and hung them neatly on the back of a chair. He slid the wire of the recorder out from under the two patches of tape on his side, then unstrapped the recorder. He put it on the table with the built-in pole lamp and took a fresh cassette from his dresser drawer. He took off his pants and hung them from the top of the closet door.
    He sat in the easy chair, next to the table, watching Lorelei sleep peacefully and noisily on his bed.
    Then he removed the tape that was in the recorder and put in a fresh one.

Chapter Six

    Digger’s Log:
    Tape recording number two, midnight, Monday, Julian Burroughs in the Jessalyn Welles claim.
    In the master file are two tapes. One is of an interview with Lt. Peter Breslin of the local policia, trying to beat me out of show tickets in Las Vegas or phone numbers of women or anything else I might have stuffed in my pocket. No importance to the case, but I’ll probably have to deal with Breslin later on. Anyway, I like him. He has a highly-developed sense of greed, and that makes him predictable and trustworthy.
    The rest of that tape is an interview with a thing called an Alphonse Rizzioli, who thinks the Mafia owes him one because he checked and found out that Jessalyn Welles’s car was not mechanically defective when it went off the road.
    The second tape is an interview this afternoon and tonight with Lorelei Church at the Occidental Gift Shop owned by Mrs. Welles and at the Golden Goose Disco and Dining Emporium where, I am assured, all the swell people meet. I learned two things from this encounter. One: I will never be a threat to Disco Danny. Two: Dr. and Mrs. Welles had arguments on kind of a regular basis at the store. He seemed to visit only on Fridays during Lorelei’s lunch hour, and he and his wife often argued. Probably about money, Lorelei said, because the store was a losing proposition.
    Why would she argue with her husband about money? What was it the paper called him? A doctor to the stars. He should roll in money.
    What do I care, anyway? I’m stubborn but not stupid. Welles was in Frisco when his wife bought it.
    Anyway, the store made no money. Sales were barely enough to pay Lorelei’s salary. Mrs. Welles had pills in the office, but they weren’t there today. Thinking about it tonight, Lorelei decided someone had been in the store over the weekend, after she closed on Saturday, because her vitamin pills had been moved in her desk. It’s funny. You take somebody to a disco or someplace noisy where everybody is shouting to be heard and they think they can tell you anything because nobody’s going to hear it anyway.
    So Dr. Welles didn’t kill his wife. Okay. What’s left? Suicide? But why? And if she was going out to purée herself, would she be having a friendly conversation with some neighbor a minute before she went off a cliff? Not likely.
    It begins to look like I’ll be leaving here soon and old Benevolent and Saintly will have to pay the million. I’ll just mosey around some tomorrow just to satisfy my own curiosity. Maybe Lorelei murdered Mrs. Welles. Maybe she figured the woman was going to rip off her zinc tablets. So what? It’s none of my business. I’m going to do a good job tomorrow. Kwash will be proud of me. Koko, will you be proud of me? I know, I know, just as proud as I am of you and the way you make your living.
    You’d like Lorelei. Neither of you can drink worth a shit. She had four banana daiquiris and she’s unconscious on the bed. Don’t worry. It’s purely platonic. She likes me because I know more about kelp than she does. I