Free The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins Page A

roaring drunk. So, naturally, she stopped in at the Shrine with your daughter to get things off to a proper start. She said you were out in Las Vegas and she was in shopping and stopped in at the Shrine to say a prayer for your safe return. Nothing sinister about that, is there?”
    “No,” the Digger said, “I didn’t mean that. I just didn’t know she was in there, is all. She can do what she likes.”
    “How’d you happen to be in Las Vegas?” Paul said.
    “Oh, you know,” the Digger said, “one thing and another. I know this guy, he’s inna travel business, he had this deal, he had some room onna plane and did me and some of the guys want to go. So, you know, we hear a lot about Vegas, yeah, we’ll go. So, you pay five bucks, you join this club, then they can give you the plane fare, practically for nothing. They got this kind of a special deal with the hotel, so, really, it’s pretty cheap, you do it that way. It’s almost all the way across the country and all. You get your meals, couple of drinks, you can play golf. I played golf. It’s really a pretty good deal.”
    “You like Vegas, huh?” Paul said.
    “It’s pretty hot,” the Digger said. “During the day it was awful hot. See, that’s one of the reasons you can get the rate, going out this time of year. It’s so hot, a lotof people don’t want to go. So the hotels, you know, they pay part of it. But it was still hot. One of the days it got up to a hundred and fifteen. I wouldn’t want to live there. I just wanted to see what it was like.”
    “Of course the main attraction’s the gambling,” Paul said.
    “Well, but they have a lot of big-name entertainment there too,” the Digger said.
    “Who’d you see?” Paul said.
    “It was kind of funny, actually,” the Digger said. “I was going to, they had this opera fellow that was supposed to sing there, Mario Lanza?”
    “Mario Lanza’s been dead about ten years,” Paul said.
    “Must’ve been somebody else, then,” the Digger said. “Like I say, I forget his name. Anyway, he was sick. Nero. Franco Nero?”
    “The only one I ever heard of,” Paul said, “was Corelli. I doubt he sings out there.”
    “I dunno,” the Digger said. “Whoever it was, he was sick. So they just had, it was some guys I never heard of. They had a comedian and they had this floor show and a guy sang popular.”
    “What was the floor show, Jerry?” Paul said.
    “Gee,” the Digger said, “well, you know, it was a floor show.”
    “I don’t know,” Paul said. “Tell me about it. What am I missing?”
    “Well,” the Digger said, “they had these dance numbers. They had these girls come out in the headdresses and all, and then they got this number, they wheel out a big glass staircase, you know? And the girls come out and they stand on it.”
    “They just stand on it?” Paul said. “People pay money to see that?”
    “Paul,” the Digger said, “they don’t have any clothes on.”
    “ Okay ,” Paul said. “Now, that I can understand. I’ve got a couple friends in the parish that go to Las Vegas from time to time, and they’re the kind of men that I would imagine probably get around a little. And they’ve invited me to go, and of course I’ve always said, ‘No.’ I don’t think the Bishop’d like it. Well, they think that means I disapprove of them going, and actually, I guess I do. Although they can well afford it, whatever it costs. But that means I never get to hear what it is that I missed. I just wanted to know what it is that I don’t think the Bishop’d want me to see, whatever it is.”
    “You can’t actually see that much,” the Digger said. “I was sitting away back in the place, you know? They were naked, I could see that. But otherwise, nothing much.”
    “That’s from being a regular churchgoer,” Paul said. “You’re so used to sitting at the back so you can leave early, you just automatically sit at the back, now. Your old habits’re too much for you.