Fool's Flight (Digger) by Warren Murphy

sixties. He was collecting some kind of Army disability pension. He drank in his room and sometimes, if the weather was good, he’d come down and sit on the stoop and drink wine out of a bottle."
    "He lived alone, Miss Fanucci?"
    "Right. No relatives that DeRosa knew of. No mail except his check every month. DeRosa didn’t know where he came from but he thought Smith had mentioned New York City once."
    "That’ll be easy to trace," Digger said. "Walter Smith from New York City. We can ask his brother John about him."
    "He had no belongings."
    "Everybody’s got belongings," Digger said. "It’s part of belonging."
    "Not anymore. He had some belongings. He had two pairs of pants and two shirts. He had some underwear and socks. He didn’t have a picture or a note or a letter or a newspaper clipping. He had a couple of back copies of Sports Illustrated ."
    "What happened to that treasure trove?"
    "DeRosa kept it for ten days and when no one came, he put it in the garbage. The apartment’s already been re-rented. I talked to the new tenant. She’s a whore. She said she didn’t find anything there that belonged to Walter Smith."
    "You believed her?"
    "Yes. While I was walking back down the stairs, I heard her moving furniture around. She thought because I was there, he must have had something that she hadn’t found yet, but, by God, she was going to as soon as I left."
    "Did you get her name, Miss Fanucci?"
    "Yeah. Why? You horny?"
    "Unbearably."
    "Good. I got her name and phone number. Rhonda Horne."
    "Rhonda Horne?"
    "Yeah. It’s a joke, like a stage name. Round-the-horn, get it? Very heavy sexual connotations. I complimented her on it. Hookers love it when you tell them they have great names."
    "What else, Miss Fanucci?"
    "For God’s sakes, stop calling me Miss Fanucci. Then I went to check out Charlie McGovern."
    "Address please."
    "Ninety-three Leeson Avenue. It was walking distance. It’s a flophouse. McGovern stayed there occasionally. A buck-fifty a night, share a barracks and a toilet. One old guy, let’s see, Melvin Langsden, knew McGovern and said he used to work at the supermarket carrying bags once in a while but he didn’t know anything about him except that he was a boozer. He didn’t know where he came from, either. Charlie was around a couple of years, in and out. Nobody knew anything about him."
    "That’s not unusual in flophouses, Miss Fanucci. Did he have anything to do with Reverend Wardell, did your friend Melvin know?"
    "Oh, yeah. Wardell. Just a minute." She turned back her notebook pages. "On Walter Smith, DeRosa told me he used to go to Wardell’s church regular, once a week, and for a day after, he’d sober up but then he’d be drinking again." She turned the pages again. "Melvin told me about McGovern, let’s see, he said, ‘he goes to church a lot but it don’t seem to do him much good, ’cause he ain’t never got no money and he still sleeps here. Where is he anyway?’ See, he didn’t know Charlie was dead. I told him."
    "How’d he take it?"
    "Hard. He asked me to buy him a drink."
    "Did you?"
    "I gave him two bucks."
    "Be sure to put it on your expenses, Miss Fanucci."
    "Oh, I will, Mister Burroughs. Yes, sir, Mister Burroughs. I’m going to put it right down there, that two bucks, and if Mister Brackler comes to town, I’m going to play up to him and see if I can get it up to four dollars, Mister Burroughs."
    "Goddamit, now I’m going to have to erase that part of the tape."
    "Leave it on, erase it later if you want. So from Charlie McGovern’s flophouse, I took a cab, I’ve got a note on it here, three-fifty including tip, and I went to check out James Ernlist. He existed, but just barely. He was a waiter at the Silver Spoon Restaurant. No family, he lived alone in a furnished room in a private house. His landlady, a Mrs. Sylvie Portloy, said that he was nice and quiet and didn’t bring anybody home to his room. She said he talked about Reverend Wardell like he was