Fool's Flight (Digger) Read Online Free PDF Page B

courteous."
    Digger got up. "Okay. Hang onto my card for him, though, will you?"
    "Sure thing."
    Digger had his hand on the doorknob when he heard a voice bellow behind him.
    "Burroughs."
    He turned around to see a man shaped roughly like a refrigerator standing in the door to one of the side offices.
    "Yeah?"
    "I’m Mannion. Come on in but be quick about it."
    Digger followed Mannion inside. If Hollywood had been casting about for a cop to play Broderick Crawford, instead of always the other way around, Mannion would have been a natural. He was big and square. His hair was thinning on top and his voice had an echo, almost as if it rattled around inside the massive body before finally escaping from the mouth. Mannion had bags under his eyes and big puffy jowls that made him look vaguely like an orangutan.
    "What do you want?" Mannion asked. He sat behind his desk but didn’t invite Digger to sit. Digger sat anyway.
    Digger fished another business card from his wallet, checking first to make sure it carried his real name.
    "I’m Julian Burroughs, with Brokers’ Surety Life Insurance Company." He handed Mannion the card. The policeman looked at it, then dropped it in the wastepaper basket alongside his desk.
    "That won’t stop me," Digger said. "There’s more where that came from. My printing budget is unlimited."
    "What kind of a name is Burroughs?"
    "Two syllables, nine letters, your usual kind of name."
    "That’s not what I mean. You know what I mean."
    "It’s Irish."
    "You Irish?"
    "My father’s Irish," Digger said.
    "You’re not?"
    "I’m half-Irish."
    "What’s the other half?"
    "Jewish."
    "You Catholic or Jewish?"
    "Neither."
    "You an atheist?"
    "I’m a born-again drunk."
    Mannion looked at him as if he were a gravy stain on a favorite tie. Finally, he said, "What do you want here anyway?"
    "My company had insurance on that plane that went down a couple of weeks ago. I’m looking into it."
    "What for?"
    "Before we pay. Just a normal check. I just wanted to stop in and let you know I was in town."
    "You always do that?"
    "I try to. I think it’s a good idea. If my name comes up for any reason, you’ll know who I am."
    "If your name comes up for any reason, it’ll mean that you broke the law and if you break the law, I’ll arrest your ass."
    "You know, Lieutenant Mannion, I get this idea that you don’t like me."
    Mannion’s big hands clenched and unclenched. Why would he want to hit me, Digger wondered. The big policeman leaned back in his chair and said, "You are right. Now I guess we understand each other."
    "I guess we do."
    "What are you going to be looking into?"
    "Survivors of everybody dead on the plane. Beneficiaries. Things like that. You know anything about Reverend Damien Wardell?"
    "Nothing bad. He runs a church. He doesn’t cause trouble. He doesn’t push shit and he doesn’t fence hot stuff. He leaves us alone and we leave him alone. Good advice for some other people to take."
    "You know him personally?" Digger asked.
    "No. Why, you interested in him?"
    "He’s going to get some money out of the accident. Any idea what caused the accident?"
    "What do I know from planes?" Mannion asked. "Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe they all flew away to go drink Kool-Ade in Africa. What do I know? The F-A-whatever the hell it is was in. They do things like that. I don’t. Maybe if it crashed on the Galt Ocean Mile, I’d get involved. But it didn’t, so I don’t."
    Mannion sat up straight in his chair, then leaned forward toward Digger. "Listen," he said. "You find out anything and I want to know. If there’s anything fishy, I want to know. If something went down that shouldna gone down, I want to know. You got that?"
    "You’ll be the first one I tell," Digger said. He rose from his chair. "I’ll be going now."
    "You handle car insurance?" Mannion asked.
    "I don’t sell insurance."
    "I don’t mean you. I mean your company."
    "Only life insurance."
    "Another scam. There ought to be a law