Read Smoked Out (Digger) for Free Online

today."
    "All right. I’m at the Sportsland Lodge. Call me there. Room 300. If I’m not there, leave your number and I’ll call you back."
    Digger gave him twenty dollars. Rizzioli asked, "When do I get the other eighty?"
    "You don’t think the boys are good for it?"
    "No, no. Just wondering, is all."
    "I’ll stop by tomorrow and pay you the rest. There could be more where that came from. And we don’t have to tell anybody about it. This is cash. Between me and you. No IRS reports…you know what I mean."
    "Sure I do, Mister Borose. I’ll phone you as soon as I’m done."
    "Thank you, Alphonse. This is a fine thing you’re doing. Our people won’t forget you. And they can do you some good. I’m going to tell them how you cooperated with us. I don’t have to tell you that you must keep this quiet, right?"
    "You can trust me, Mr. Borose."
    "I know I can, Alphonse. That’s a noble name, Alphonse. You should walk proud. Walka proud."

    On his way into Beverly Hills, Digger stopped to buy a newspaper. There was a brief story on the funeral of Mrs. Welles. He cursed under his breath when he read that Mrs. Rochelle Lindsley, the dead woman’s mother, had left immediately for her home in Connecticut. He had wanted to talk to her, but now it would have to wait.
    When he got to Wilshire Boulevard, Digger was surprised to find that the Occidental Gift Shop, three blocks from Rodeo Drive, was open. The store’s small display window was filled with California’s high-class rendition of New York schlock. In New York, junk shops sold cheap, sprayed-gold reproductions of the Empire State building made of genuine plaster. In California, they sold three-inch-high models of California cliff-houses made of genuine wood, complete with rope and wood bridges and shingled roofs. The display window also featured shells. Digger liked shells, often having thought that his ex-wife belonged in one. She had been a woman with no discernible backbone, developing one only when she got him into divorce court.
    Digger pressed the button that turned on his tape recorder. He could feel the faint vibrations against his back. A bell over the door rang as Digger walked inside. A young woman with dark brown hair sat at a small desk in the rear of the store. She seemed intent on a cluster of pill bottles spread out on the desk in front of her. Digger recognized her. She had been at the funeral. Lorelei Church. Miss Surf’s-Up of 1981, 2 and 3. The one who thanked him.
    Without looking up, the woman called, "Be with you in a minute."
    Digger walked to her desk in the back. The woman still didn’t look up. He took the occasion to look at the number on her telephone and memorize it.
    "I’m surprised you’re in today, Miss Church."
    "Aaaaah, I can’t figure out what I took this morning. I wasn’t thinking so well." There were six bottles in front of her. "I was a little out of it. I took some vitamins, but I don’t know which ones, so I don’t know what I have to take now."
    "Take the kelp," Digger said.
    "If I took it this morning, I don’t need it now."
    "Take everything but the A and the D. Nothing else will hurt you." The girl still had not looked up.
    "I’m not sure. I don’t like taking stuff I already took. Won’t too much kelp make you green?"
    "There has never been a case of it," Digger said. "In the last five years, according to the Harvard Medical News , there has not been one case of kelp o.d. in the United States. Oh, there was one in Venezuela, but it was a shipwrecked Etruscan sailor. He lived on seaweed and kelp for eight weeks."
    She finally looked up. "What happened to him?" There was not a glimmer of human sentience in her large, green eyes.
    "Sad story," Digger said. "He was finally rescued by a fishing boat, but when they helped him ashore, he was attacked and eaten by sea gulls. Left nothing but bones. Green bones."
    "That’s awful," she said.
    "Any man’s death diminishes us all," he said.
    "You a doctor?"
    "No."
    "A