by John Lutz
Nudger didn’t quite buy that; most of the dead passengers had families. “Is that why he committed suicide? Guilt? Grief?”
Vanita sighed. Swallowed. Suddenly her hands were still. “No way was it suicide. Ropes was murdered.”
Zoom went Nudger’s stomach, up into his throat where his heart moved over to make room. Murder was perhaps the word he liked least.
She said, “This is really about diamonds.” As if somehow that negated what had happened to Flight 243 and might put his mind at ease. Heck, diamonds had caused little enough trouble in this world.
“Jewelry or baseball?” Nudger asked. Always he tried to be cute when he was scared. Even he understood it was a defense mechanism, but he couldn’t control his reaction.
“Neither. Unmounted diamonds. Over a million dollars’ worth. They were stolen from a diamond merchant in New York. Ropes helped set up the deal, for a commission. And everything went as planned. But afterward he got adventuresome and tried to steal the diamonds from the thieves. They found out and got them back. That’s when he phoned me from his hotel in New York. Ropes always came to me when there was trouble.”
“You were lovers?”
“For a while. But even after things cooled off between us he still sort of depended on me. We stayed more than friends, less than lovers. This’ll sound silly, but Ropes never knew his mother, and I’m a few years older than him—than he was.”
“Older and wiser?”
She gave him that intense look. “In some ways.”
“So he phoned from New York and told you about this diamond thing,” Nudger said, prodding her to continue.
“And he told me the precaution he had taken in case the original thieves discovered who’d stolen the diamonds from them and came to get them back. He had them in an attaché case, in with some bath salts, so you’d have to pour out the contents of the bottle to see which crystals were diamonds. The other stuff in the case was what lots of overnight business travelers would carry. Some computer printouts, a fresh shirt, shaving kit, that sorta thing. Even some dirty underwear to discourage anybody from looking real close. But Ropes learned about demolition in the army. And the attaché case itself was lined with Semtex.”
“Semtex?”
“It’s a powerful plastic explosive. The attaché case was actually a bomb. The detonator was in the lead-lined handle so it’d pass undetected through airport X-ray equipment.”
A weakness swept over Nudger. Ninety-three people. Why hadn’t airport security been more alert? His voice quavered. “Where was the timing device?”
“That’s just it, there was none. The attaché case was set up to explode the second time the lid was opened and closed. That way whoever stole the diamonds would check on them, put them back in the case, and take the case to wherever they were going. Where the next time they opened and closed it they’d be killed. At least that was how Ropes had it figured.”
“Obviously his figuring was wrong.”
“Tragically wrong. He told me that two of the men who’d stolen the diamonds from the merchant came to his hotel and made him reveal where they were. Threatened him with a knife until he talked. Then they’d taken the diamonds and the case, along with his airline ticket, and left. They knew he couldn’t go to the police, so there was plenty of time for them to do what they wanted with him if they had revenge in mind. They told him that before they left. Said they wanted him to think about it.”
Nudger nodded, understanding. “So you knew someone was ,on the plane in Rupert Winslow’s seat, carrying a briefcase that couldn’t be opened and closed one more time without an explosion.”
She worked her jaw muscles, then said, “That’s right. So I wanted to come to the airport to ... make sure the plane got down all right.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No. Probably the man with the attaché case wanted to check its contents one more time before getting off the plane.”
“And when the surviving diamond thieves heard on the news about the bomb going off, they realized they’d lost the diamonds. So they went back to the Meridian Hotel and took it out on Winslow.”
Vanita’s voice was soft. He had to strain to hear it. “That must have been how it was. They made it look like he’d killed himself. And in a way he did, when he stole the diamonds. He always pushed his luck, Ropes did. This time he pushed it over the edge.”
Nudger looked out the window. The pigeon on the ledge looked in at him and cocked its head.
“Mr. Nudger?”
“You have to go to the FBI,” he said. “Tell them what you told me.”
“Like I said, I can’t. I knew about the diamond theft, so I’m an accessory. Knew about what was in the attaché case, so I’m an accessory to that crime, too. Even though I was sitting in the airport crying and praying it wouldn’t happen.”
“I’ve gotta give this information to the authorities,” Nudger said. “Professional obligation. You must have realized that before you came here.”
“I came here because I thought when you heard me out you’d decide not to pass on what I told you. For a number of reasons.”
Nudger said, “Start ticking them off.” What the hell, give the woman her say.
“First of all, the airliner bombing’s been solved by the authorities. Ropes really is guilty. Legally, anyway. And the identity of the passenger who traveled in his place will probably never be learned. So the plane getting blown up is closed business.”
“What about the diamond theft? I’m supposed to report a felony to the police. Might have to find some other line of work if I don’t.”
“I don’t know anything about the original theft. Only that it took place and there were several men involved. Honest, that’s all Ropes told me.”
Nudger leaned back in his chair. Sqeeeeeeek! He thought about that.
“Also,” Vanita said, “if you tell anyone about this conversation I’ll deny it took place. You can’t prove I told you any of this, you know.”
Point.
“Then there’s this,” she said. She reached into the black purse resting against a chair leg and drew out a thick white business envelope, unsealed. She tossed it onto Nudger’s desk. The crisp green corners of folding money peeked out the top. “A thousand dollars, Mr. Nudger. Your retainer.”
“For doing what?”
“This morning my phone rang. When I picked it up nobody talked to me. All I heard was this wheezy kinda breathing.”
“Kinky sex?”
“I doubt it. The breathing was more like somebody was sick. Somebody who called just to check and see if I was home. I got scared, then I got out of the house. Remembered you and found your card in my purse. I need your help, Mr. Nudger.”
It took Nudger only a few seconds to see what she was driving at. He didn’t blame her for being skittish. “Listen, don’t play around with this. You need to go to the police. Tell them what you told me.”
“I will, but only if what I want you to do doesn’t work.”
“That’s a crazy way to look at your situation.”
“Maybe. But if it gets too dangerous I’ll do as you say and go to the cops. I promise.”
Don’t listen, Nudger told himself. Hold your ears.
But he did listen, all the time staring at the envelope on his desk. Thinking about Eileen and Henry Mercato, who at that moment were possibly working out legal strategy against him. And here in this envelope was the solution to his problems—at least for a while.
Vanita said, “The people who stole the diamonds might think I have them. Or that Ropes mailed them to me and I’ve got them or I’m about to receive them.”
“How would they even know about you? Know about the phone call?”
“I’m not sure. Ropes called me from a public phone, not the one in his room. So the hotel would have no record. But he carried my photograph, along with my phone number, in his wallet. It’s, uh, the kind of photo that leaves little doubt about our relationship. At least the kind o
f relationship we used to have. And the news account of his death said his wallet was missing. My guess is whoever used the plane ticket took it, just in case identification was needed that matched the name on the ticket.”
“Ah!” Nudger said, wondering about the photo. It had no doubt been destroyed in the explosion, along with the wallet and whoever was carrying it.
“I want you to protect me,” Vanita said. “But just as important, I need you at some point to convince whoever’s after me that I don’t have the diamonds.”
“At which time you’ll no longer need protection.”
“Exactly.”
Nudger said, “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have the diamonds.”
“No. I’m telling you the truth.”
“I thought you said the thieves knew the diamonds were in the attaché case. They left the hotel room with them.”
“That’s what Ropes told me. But the friends of the man who died on the plane might think they were paste. Might not think Ropes would deliberately blow up the loot. Maybe the plan was for all of them to be somewhere when the bomb went off, and that would leave only Ropes still alive and with the diamonds. It was just the sorta thing Ropes might have planned.”
A thousand dollars.
“Mr. Nudger? Am I your client?”
Nudger said, “This sounds dangerous.” He was trying to talk himself out of it. She wanted him to push his luck, the way Rupert Winslow had pushed his, over the edge.
“But you’ll do it?”
He looked out the window again. The pigeon was still there, puffing out its chest and staring insolently at him as if he, Nudger, had no right to be in the office. No right to be in the world. Couldn’t even fly. The blissful confidence of stupidity, all wrapped up in feathers.
“I’ll do it,” he said, still looking at the pigeon.
He heard Vanita sigh in relief. “I’m glad you want to help me. Even if it’s for the money.”
“It’s not just the money,” Nudger said. “I’vé got this thing about tilting at windmills.”
But he wondered, was it only the money? Old root of all evil?
He thought he could afford to play the job a little light and not be totally terrified. Because Vanita was wrong about one thing: If the diamonds were on that plane, FAA investigators would find some if not all of them. It would take more than an explosion to destroy diamonds, which were even harder than Eileen’s heart. And every inch of ground would be scrutinized at the crash site.
As soon as news of the diamonds got out, whoever was after Vanita would realize she didn’t have them and back away from her. That would be that. And Nudger would have earned his thousand dollars. Well, not earned actually...
That was how he had it worked out, anyway. He thought he had a handle on the situation.
He and the pigeon.
5
“Got any relatives here in the city?” Nudger asked. “Anyplace you could go and stay outa sight for a while?”
“I only have one living relative,” Vanita said. “Marlou. Only I don’t wanna get her involved in this in any way. She’s not like I am and doesn’t deserve this kind of trouble, even secondhand.”
“Marlou?”
“My baby sister. Her name’s really Marcy Lou Dee. Dee’s my maiden name. Lane’s the name of my ex-husband. He died seven years ago in a car accident.”
“Marcy Lou Dee,” Nudger repeated. He thought it sounded like a Woolworth’s perfume.
“Everybody’s called her Marlou since she was young,” Vanita said.
He studied her. “What do you mean when you say your sister’s not like you?”
She smiled slightly and looked off to the left, the way psychologists say right-handed people do when they’re searching their memories. Nudger had never put much stock in that one. “We’re only a few years apart, and we grew up down in southwest Missouri near the Arkansas line.”
“The Ozarks,” Nudger said.
“Very much so. Anyway, I got outa there soon as I could. Went off to state college in Cape Girardeau. Truth is, I was kinda ashamed of my hillbilly origins. Marlou never was. Still isn’t. Country girl and proud of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I guess. Only, sorry, it’s just not the way I was built. She didn’t leave home till our parents died and there was nothing there for her. Then she came to the city four years ago and I helped her get a job. We still see each other at least once a month.”
“Marlou know Rupert Winslow?”
“She met Ropes a few times, that’s all. We lead different lives. I told you, we’re nothing alike. She’s two-step and I’m fox-trot.”
Could be the next Barry Manilow hit. “Anyplace you’d be missed if you danced out of sight for a week or two?”
“I arrange loans for an investment company. There won’t be any questions asked if I call and tell them I’m taking a few weeks off.”
Nudger stood up, rapped on the window behind the desk, and watched with satisfaction as the startled pigeon flapped away. He noticed it had defecated messily on the window ledge. They always did that. He smiled at Vanita, showing her he had everything under control, knew exactly what to do. “You drive here?”
She nodded, staring up at him with those blue, blue eyes. Why was he such a sucker for blue eyes? Claudia’s eyes were brown. So he was a sucker for brown eyes sometimes, too. He said, “I’ll follow you back to your place, then you can pack some things and we’ll get you checked into a motel.”
She looked uneasy, as if she might be considering arguing. It was no fun staying cooped up in a motel room for an indefinite period, especially for a woman like this—fox—trotter and lover of the late Ropes Winslow. But she said, “Sounds like the smart thing to do,” and stood up and smoothed her slacks over her shapely thighs.
She bent over and lifted her purse from the floor, smiled at him and said, “Well, let’s go.”
Nudger followed her late-model blue BMW west on Manchester out to Lindbergh, then north. She turned onto St. Charles Rock Road, drove a short distance, and made a right turn. Almost immediately she made a hard left onto a side street that led to a modern apartment project. It was a sprawling, two-story complex of beige brick buildings with flat roofs and black wroughtiron balconies. Sunlight sparked blue off a swimming pool visible between two of the buildings. Nudger heard the resonant sprong of a diving board, a faint splash.
Vanita had a second-floor unit in the first building. Spacious and airy, with wall-to-wall green carpeting, glass-topped tables, a low-slung leather sofa, and chrome-framed modern prints on the walls. Place looked as if she’d hired a decorator to choose color and texture and match this with that. Or maybe she’d bought the furnished display unit when the project sold out. It had that feel about it; a place where strangers walked through and were afraid to touch anything.
“Nice apartment,” hypocrite Nudger said, as she bustled down the hall toward a back bedroom.
“Used to be a display unit,” she called back. “I bought it completely furnished.”
He sat down on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head, and smiled. You’re some detective, he told himself.
He heard Vanita moving around in the bedroom for a while. Sliding closet doors rumbled on their rollers. Dresser drawers growled open and shut. Something soft but heavy went thump!
After about ten minutes she labored back into the living room dragging a gigantic red suitcase and carrying a long matching garment bag stuffed with so many clothes it was almost round.
“Got everything you need?” he asked.
“I think so.” She’d missed the irony.
“You probably won’t be coming back here till this is settled,” he told her.
“Yeah, I understand that. You don’t mind, I wanna drop by my bank. Pick up some cash to take with me.”
“Good idea,” Nudger said. He was glad the thousand dollars she’d given him hadn’t cleaned out her account. Apparently she made good money arranging financin
g. Might be richer than Eileen. Nudger didn’t feel so bad now about accepting the generous cash retainer.
Like a pre-Friedan gentleman he relieved her of the burden of the luggage. It was even heavier than it looked. Vanita didn’t say anything when he grunted with effort as he hoisted the suitcase.
She locked the apartment door carefully, then led the way down the stairs to the vestibule. The suitcase, and the bag slung over Nudger’s shoulder, bumped banister and wall. Taut nylon scraping over plaster made a sound that set his teeth on edge as if he’d been sucking lemons.
After he’d fitted the luggage into her car’s trunk, he got in the Granada and followed her to a savings and loan in Northwest Plaza shopping center. He went inside with her to breathe a little air-conditioned oxygen. Few places were cooler than institutions that handled large sums of money. It wasn’t called cold cash for nothing.
He watched her make her transaction at the counter, then they went back outside into heat that felt all the more fierce and drove from the parking lot. This time he led the way in the Granada.
They drove south on Lindbergh, then east on Watson Road. By the time the Granada led the BMW into the parking lot of the Dropp Inn Motel, Nudger was sweating heavily. His shirt was plastered to his shoulder blades. The temperature was skyrocketing outside, and the Granada’s air conditioner still thought it was a furnace.
The Dropp Inn was a holdover from the time Watson Road had been old Route 66. It was made up of individual, peakroofed cottages larger than ordinary motel rooms. Architectural style was of the Hansel and Gretel school. The place was rundown but clean, and Vanita would have some space as well as privacy. The roof of each cottage was topped with an aluminum crosslike TV antenna, though a sign above the office had bragged of cable TV with Home Box Office.
As they stood inside the door of Cottage 13 and looked around at mismatched furniture, dime store still-life prints, the old blond television set, and the antique iron bed, Vanita said, “I’d have chosen a place with more class.”