by John Lutz
Nudger told it.
Hammersmith sat there like Buddha taking it easy and listened, staring at a point high on the opposite wall until Nudger was finished. Nothing on his broad, smooth features indicated any sort of reaction.
Finally he lowered his eyes to look at Nudger and said, “Think the two guys followed you home from the funeral parlor?”
Nudger knew what Hammersmith was thinking. Had to disappoint him. “My impression was they’d been waiting for me a while. You might check with Martini, but I’d bet he didn’t see these two.”
“Ah, you noticed Martini at the funeral home.”
“Only because I know him,” Nudger said. “Otherwise I’d have thought he was just another mourner seeking solace in goldfish.”
“Whazzat?” Hammersmith made a move as if to reach for the cigar. He wouldn’t take much lip from Nudger today.
“Just an expression,” Nudger said.
Hammersmith said, “Your description of the two badmen in your apartment doesn’t strike a chord.”
“I’m not surprised. They figure to be diamond thieves from New York. And they say they’re the ones who killed Vanita Lane.”
“I hope you get a chance to mention that in court.” Hammersmith levitated his great weight from his chair and said, “Wait a minute, Nudge.” Coasted from the office with his peculiar bulky grace. As if Mikhail Barishnikov had gained fifty pounds and joined the department.
Hammersmith returned five minutes later with a set of mug books and a long, green-and-white, fan-fold computer printout. “Computer tells us the names on this list have East Coast connections. Wanna check on them here in the office or in one of the interrogation rooms?”
“Be more comfortable in a room,” Nudger said. “Less bother, too.”
“For sure, Nudge.”
Hammersmith led him down the hall to a small institutional-green room. It had a single wire-reinforced window and an overhead light fixture encased in what looked like a small metal cage. Reminded Nudger of the bird cage last night in his apartment. Made his stomach lurch.
“Lemme know when you finish with those,” Hammersmith said. “We need to, we’ll get you some more.”
He closed the door and left Nudger alone.
The only furniture in the room was a rectangular oak table, old and scarred. Darkened at the edges from desperate sweat. Two mismatched, sturdy oak chairs. Nudger looked around at the bare walls and tiny dust-coated window, grateful he wasn’t claustrophobic.
He chose the more comfortable-looking of the two chairs and sat down. Consulted the computer printout, then opened the first mug book and scanned it page by page as if it were a family photo album.
It wasn’t until the third set of books that he flipped a page and saw the younger but unmistakable features of the man who’d crushed the canary. The man’s name and some vital statistics were listed, along with an arrest record: Roger Bobinet, A.K.A. Bobby Rogers, A.K.A. Roger Bing. He’d been thirty-two years old at the time of his arrest for car theft. Made him thirty-six now. He was 5’8”, 185 pounds, said the book. Hair black, eyes blue. No distinguishing marks. His mug shots looked like publicity photos for a confident, aspiring young actor. As if the prison garb and the number across his chest were props on a clean-cut straight arrow playing the Humphrey Bogart bad-ass role in a college production of Petrified Forest. Not even his eyes gave him away. Few mothers would object to the handsome Bobinet showing up at the door to escort their daughters.
Some of those mothers might not see their daughters again.
Nudger kept the heavy mug book open to the telltale page and carried it toward Hammersmith’s office. A cop he knew, leading a handcuffed suspect down the hall toward the holdover cells, nodded to him. The suspect, a shirtless, muscular black man, kept repeating, “No justice, no fuckin’ justice ’less you got money for some hightone lawyer ...” The man was dragging his feet like a kid not wanting to get to school. There might be something to what he said, Nudger thought.
Hammersmith was on the phone. He made a face at Nudger, who sat down again in the chair by the desk, the mug book open in his lap. Then Hammersmith ignored Nudger and stared fixedly at the ceiling as if there were an escape hatch up there he might want to use. He said “Yes. Yes. Yes” into the phone. Said “No. No. No” and then hung up without saying good-bye. Couldn’t have been Headquarters.
Nudger said, “Found one.” He leaned forward and laid the open mug book on Hammersmith’s desk, then touched a fingertip to Roger Bobinet’s profile shot.
Hammersmith propped his fleshy chin on a fist and stared down at the photo Nudger touched. “Looks like one of my teenage son’s friends.”
“He’s thirty-two there,” Nudger pointed out.
“Could be nineteen or thirty-nine. One of those faces, huh? Like Johnny Carson a few years ago.”
Nudger saw no resemblance between Carson and Bobinet but said nothing. The cigar was still propped like a Minuteman missile against the ashtray.
“What we’ll do,” Hammersmith said, “is run this through NCIC.” He stood up, lifted the mug book still open, and cradled it in a pudgy arm. “Only take a minute. Miracle of the microchip.” NCIC was the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, a kind of computer data base of criminality. The main computer at FBI headquarters contained approximately twenty million records of wanted or missing people, stolen property, and criminal histories. It had been set up over twenty years ago and had proved itself useful.
Nudger said he didn’t mind waiting. The odds were good that if Bobinet was in the St. Louis records for auto theft, the FBI would have a sheet on him.
Hammersmith returned in less time than it had taken him to get the first set of mug books, another green-and-white computer printout flapping in his right hand.
He was smiling almost sadly, in a way Nudger didn’t like. “This Bobinet is some pumpkin,” he said. He settled down behind his desk and scanned the printout. “Did time in New Jersey for rape when he was sixteen. At nineteen a stretch in New York for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon—a crossbow, of all things. Then he grew up. Put his childish toys behind him, as it says in the Bible. Or something like that. Arrest but no conviction for the torture killing of a barmaid in Newark. There’s a warrant out for him now for the abduction and murder of a twelve-year-old girl in New York.” Hammersmith dropped the printout on his desk. “Bobinet’s not one of the white hats, Nudge. Best you be careful.”
“Caution’s my middle name.”
“You got a string of names, and ‘Dumb’ is in there somewhere.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, let’s make it ‘Stubborn’ instead of ‘Dumb.’ But sometimes that amounts to the same thing. ‘Dead,’ it can be, in this case.”
Nudger knew Hammersmith was right. Though he preferred “Persistent” instead of “Stubborn.”
Hammersmith said, “Guys like this Bobinet, so normal on the outside, but with this sorta sheet, are the most dangerous kinda psychos. They’re like members of another species that’s learned to adapt but never become really human. He might kill you casual as a farmer doing in a chicken, only he’d probably take longer and enjoy it.”
Nudger didn’t like thinking of himself as sacrificial poultry, but he got Hammersmith’s point. “How long ago’d he kill the kid in New York?”
“Allegedly,” Hammersmith reminded Nudger.
“Okay. Bobinet or somebody else.”
Hammersmith squinted down at the printout. “That was ... hmm, eighteen months ago. I got a list of Bobinet’s known associates, too. Had the computer do a cross-check. None of them fits the ID of this guy you said looked like a skeleton.”
“He could have changed,” Nudger said. “Might be sick. Even his features wouldn’t look the same with a lot of weight loss from illness.”
“Possibly. I’ll request photos from NCIC. It’ll give me a chance to use the fax machine.” Hammersmith leaned back and finally unwrapped the cigar. He got out his silver lighter
with the blowtorch flame. Fired up the cigar and grinned around it. Conversation over.
Nudger held his breath until he’d stood up and gotten his nose where the air was still unfouled by green smoke. He said, “Thanks for your help, Jack.”
“Nothing, Nudge.” Hammersmith rested the cigar in the ashtray. Smoke uncoiled from it like a charmed cobra. Probably just as deadly. “This Bobinet and the other guy’ll no doubt contact you by phone. Let me know when that happens.”
“Why don’t I set up a meeting with them? You can be there and make the collar.”
“That’s a laugh. They’ll never agree to a meeting. You’ll see them next unexpectedly—when they choose.”
“Wanna put a tap on my phone?”
“It wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Old hands like the people you’re mixed up with’ll use a public phone and not stay on it long.”
The thick curl of smoke from the cigar seemed to notice Nudger and twisted toward him with malice. He backed toward the door.
“I’ll let you know when they call me,” he said.
“If they do contact you in person, Nudge, be sure and let me know that, too, soon as they leave. If you can.”
Nudger swallowed; his stomach was convulsing. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or the cigar smoke.
As he was walking out the door he heard Hammersmith say, “Teach you to hand your card to strange women.”
16
The phone was jangling when Nudger walked into his office. He lifted the receiver, then stretched the cord and his left arm so he could switch on the air conditioner. It made its irritating pinka! pinka! pinka! noise until he slapped it.
“Mr. Nudger?”
He recognized the soft country drawl of Marlou Dee. Told her he was indeed Mr. Nudger, but just Nudger would do.
“You ain’t got a first name?”
“I do, but I don’t like it.”
“Okay, Nudger. What I called about is, I think somebody’s, like, been in my apartment.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, things ain’t quite like they was when I went out this morning for about an hour to get some groceries. I mean, it ain’t like the place is a mess, or that anything’s actually missing or even been moved. Well, stuff’s been moved, I’m sure, but, like, hardly more’n a few inches here and there. Sometimes less’n that. Even my spices in the kitchen drawer ain’t quite in the same order. The turmeric is shoved way near the back. Sage is where the turmeric used to be.”
A neighbor out to steal fennel seed, Nudger thought. “Check the silverware?” he asked, realizing he wasn’t taking this as seriously as he should. Maybe because it figured Marlou would be a bit paranoid after the run-in with Edward Franks yesterday. Who wouldn’t be?
“Got mostly cheap metal knives an’ forks I filched from Steak ’n’ Shake restaurants, Mr. Nudger. Nobody’d steal that stuff. What I’m talking about’s not just in the kitchen, though. Like, in the living room the sofa cushions are sorta cattywampus, like they been taken off and shoved back on in a hurry and not been sat on since. And the coffee table’s at a funny angle.”
Nudger was reminded of the comedian who claimed that everything in his apartment had been stolen and then replaced by an exact duplicate. Only there was nothing funny about this. It was possible the skeleton and Bobinet had learned Vanita had a sister. It was also possible Nudger had led them to Marlou. Nudger the kiss of death. He shivered.
Said, “I’ll drive over and have a look at things.”
“ ‘Preciate that, Nudger. I guess I’m a little skittish lately.” She sounded apologetic. Sorry to be putting him out even in the slightest.
“I’m skittish lately, too,” Nudger told her. “It’s going around like flu. See you in about half an hour.”
She opened the door before he had a chance to knock. Wearing a halter top and Levi’s today. Levi’s seemed to be her basic uniform when she wasn’t at funeral homes. This pair was threadbare and faded and incredibly tight; he imagined she had to lie down and squirm into them inch by inch in order to pack them with Marlou. He pushed away the image that formed in his mind. Her halter top was a vibrant aquamarine and made of some sort of elastic material that clung to her nublike breasts. The ridges of her ribs were visible through the material when she twisted her torso. She was one of those women who’d be built like a teenager until menopause.
She smiled with her gapped front teeth and stepped back to give him room to enter. As he moved past her he caught a mingled scent of perfume and perspiration that was oddly appealing.
The old window air conditioner was flailing away at the heat and not doing a bad job; the apartment was cool. Nudger wasn’t sure how long that would last ; condensation on the unit’s plastic grill was already forming a blanket of ice that would stifle air flow.
Marlou noticed him looking at the air conditioner and said, “I gotta turn it off every other hour or it freezes up and gets useless as tits on a boar hog. Landlord’s been s’pose to fix it. Till then I’m cool half the time.”
Nudger said, “I’m glad I got here during one of the on hours.”
“Fifty-fifty’s better odds than on most things in life.”
“Wise girl.” He walked slowly around the living room, then went into the kitchen, where Marlou showed him how things in the drawers and cabinets had been slightly rearranged. Tiny spice bottles and boxes shuffled around. Whoever had been here knew nothing of spices. Had no sense of thyme. She closed the spice drawer, stirring a pungent whiff of air that almost made Nudger sneeze. “Even the mayonnaise was, like, shoved way to the back of the refrigerator,” she said. “I never keep it back there. Use it all the time for sandwiches.”
“Never ketchup or mustard?”
“Not on sandwiches. In some ways I’m a finicky eater.”
“What about your bedroom?”
“Stuff in my closet and dresser drawers looks like it mighta been gone through, too. Wanna look?”
“No, I’ll take your word for it.” Nudger had already decided she was right; the apartment did show unmistakable indication it had been searched by people who knew what they were doing. But despite TV shows and crime novels to the contrary, no one could conduct a really thorough search and not leave some signs that would be noted by whoever lived on the premises. Especially if that person was a nervous and observant young woman who used only mayonnaise on her sandwiches.
“So watcha think, Nudger?”
“The place has been tossed?”
“Searched, you mean?”
“Yep.”
“For those diamonds, I guess. That Mr. Franks, you figure?”
“I hope so, but I doubt it.”
“The police?”
“Not likely.”
“Who, then?”
“Somebody you don’t know. And I don’t want you to meet them.”
Her naive green eyes got wide, but she seemed more intrigued than scared. “The diamond thieves, huh?”
He nodded. “The same men who killed Vanita.”
On target. She looked scared now. Her lips tightened over her protruding teeth and her Adam’s apple danced. “God, they was right here in my apartment.” She glanced around as if someone might still be here, hiding and waiting for the chance to get her alone. Not impossible at that. Nudger’s stomach stirred.
“What are your plans for the day?” he asked.
“I gotta work someplace from noon till five, then I was gonna go stay at the funeral home till it closed.”
“Where do you work?”
“I don’t have a regular job. I’m filling in a couple of weeks for a receptionist at a realty company.”
“Can they get someone to take your place?”
“Today, you mean?”
“For an indefinite period, starting tomorrow.”
“I s’pose they could if I asked. I was gonna be off tomorrow anyway, for Vanita’s funeral.”
“I’ll drive you to work,” Nudger said, “then pick you up at
five. I’m gonna stay close to you, spend the night here on the sofa. Then I think you better leave town. Be unavailable for a while.”
“Hide out, you mean? Like Vanita was doing?”
“Not like Vanita,” Nudger said quickly. More than a little defensively. “Out of town where you won’t be found. Vanita said she and you were from southwest Missouri, so I plan to put you up someplace northeast. Far away, but not so far that I can’t get to you by car in a few hours. Say, Hannibal.”
“Mr. Nudger, I can’t afford—”
“I’ll pay. Your sister gave me a retainer.”
She gnawed on her lower lip and looked as if she were trying to make up her mind. Breathing hard beneath the halter.
“There isn’t much choice, Marlou. Remember what happened to Vanita.”
“Can’t forget it.”
“No, I guess you can’t.”
“But, like, why would those men think I got the diamonds?”
“You’re Vanita’s sister. They probably only suspect you know something about the diamonds, but that’s enough for them because they’ve got nothing else to go on.”
“Heck! I betcha them diamonds never left New York.”
“You’re probably right. But the way they figure it, Rupert Winslow could have mailed them to Vanita, and she might have given them to you for safekeeping or told you where she’d hidden them.”
Marlou glanced around bitterly at her meager possessions. “Hah! Me with a million dollars in diamonds. Ain’t it a weird thought?”
“One we all think from time to time,” Nudger said. “But the men who killed Vanita are thinking it all the time, and they’ll do anything to make it come true.”
She sighed. “I s’pose you’re right.”
“It’s eleven-fifteen,” Nudger said. “When do you want to leave for work?”
“I was gonna have some lunch afore I go. Wanna join me? Be just a sandwich and soda, but everything’s fresh from the store.”