Diamond Eyes (Alo Nudger Book 7)

by John Lutz

  The room was near the pool. It had orange carpet and a kingsize bed, a newish color TV. Marlou gazed around, then ambled into the bathroom, which was gleaming blue-and-white tile from floor to ceiling. Clashed like hell with the carpet that stopped at its door. “Lookit there,” she said, pointing to the complimentary shampoo and plastic shower cap, next to a hair dryer mounted on the wall. Aunt Polly already mothering her. “Something, huh?” She turned and smiled at Nudger, who was standing behind her. “I think I’ll be okay here.”

  “Me too,” Nudger said, “or I wouldn’t try to hide you here.”

  They brought her clothes in from the car, and he sat on the edge of the bed and waited while she placed a few things in drawers and hung up what was on hangers. Then she stood with her hands on her hips and turned in a slow circle. He could see she was trying to settle in and feel at home. When the circle brought her around to face Nudger she said, “What was that noise?”

  “My stomach. It wants lunch. Do you?”

  “I could eat. Yeah.” She seemed to brighten to the idea. Time healing. Vanita, this morning, already blurring in memory and dropping into the past. The human mind was a wonderful and terrible thing.

  Nudger drove her to the Mark Twain Diner, a restaurant he’d noticed in town. It was in a tan brick building, had a long counter, about a dozen tables, and vinyl booths along the wide windows that looked out on the street. just the sort of place Tom Sawyer might have hung out in, and talked Huck into spray-painting with graffiti, if he’d lived in Hannibal today.

  Nudger and Marlou sat in a booth by a window. They had hamburgers and Pepsi-Colas. When they were finished eating, he sat back, slurped the remainder of his soda with the straw, then set the straw aside and began casually chomping on the cracked ice. Making quite a racket.

  “Shouldn’t do that,” Marlou said, wiping her fingers on her napkin. “You could, like, bust a tooth that way.”

  “Teeth are stronger than ice,” Nudger said.

  “Not as a person gets older.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Didn’t ask. Chewed on some more ice, though. It was one of his few relatively harmless habits and he didn’t intend breaking it. He drew from his pocket a roll of bills held tight by a looped rubber band. Five hundred dollars. He handed it across the table to Marlou. “Expense money,” he said.

  She stared at the money, then stared at him with her mouth open. “Mr. Nudger—”

  “It’s just Nudger, remember. And that’s part of the money your sister paid me. Take it. Use it as you need it.”

  “But you already paid for the motel room. Even one with a great big bed.”

  An old gray farmer-type wearing a cap that was lettered CATERPILLAR above the bill looked over at them and frowned. A dollop of ketchup dropped back onto his plate from the french fry he was holding between gnarled thumb and forefinger.

  “It’s okay,” Nudger assured her. “Bringing you here was my idea.” Was the old guy leaning toward them now, trying to eavesdrop?

  Nudger lowered his voice as Marlou accepted the money and dropped it in her purse. “I’ll call you tonight and leave a number where you can get hold of me.”

  “I got your office and home numbers.”

  “I won’t be either of those places.”

  “Huh? You going, like, into hiding too?”

  “I like to think of it as changing my base of operations.” He couldn’t tell her where he’d be, because he wasn’t sure himself. “Finished eating?” he asked.

  She said she, like, was.

  He paid the check and slid out of the booth.

  The old guy in the Caterpillar cap stared disapprovingly at Marlou as they went out, then glanced at Nudger. There was something like envy in his faded eyes.

  When Nudger got back to St. Louis he told Danny he was going to be away for a while.

  “Some sorta vacation, Nudge?” Danny asked, wiping down the stainless steel counter with his gray towel.

  “I don’t get enough business as it is,” Nudger said. “Vacations are what I try to avoid. Will you keep track of who goes up to my office door and when?”

  “You know I will. What friends are for. Want some coffee?”

  Nudger said, “Sure, thanks.” He watched as Danny worked the spigot on the complex steel urn behind the counter. The urn hissed, gurgled, and reluctantly gave up a trickle of coffee. From near the bottom, Nudger figured. Oh-oh.

  He carried the cup upstairs to his office and into the halfbath, then poured it into the washbasin slowly, so Danny wouldn’t hear the drain working and suspect. What friends were for.

  The usual sales pitches and crank calls were on the answering machine. Also some verbal acid from Eileen, but Nudger only listened to a few words before punching the Erase button.

  He hated guns, but he wished he owned one now. The Roger Bobinet effect. Nudger opened his locked bottom file drawer and peeked in the back at the belt holster lying useless on top of some file folders. He could buy a realistic toy gun, maybe fool Bobinet with that if it became necessary. The genuine spring-loaded holster would lend credibility. He might even get a water pistol, load it and squirt Bobinet and the skeleton. Then they’d all have a laugh and let bygones be bygones.

  Nope, probably not.

  Nudger decided to forget the toy gun idea. He shoved the drawer closed on its growling metal rollers.

  All that remained now was for him to pick up some clothes at his apartment. Then he could find some out-of-the-way place to stay, where he wouldn’t have to worry about following Vanita and other of nature’s creatures into death at the hands of the skeleton and Roger Bobinet.

  He was closing the office door, about to lock it, when the phone rang. Only the thought that he hadn’t yet given Marlou another number made him answer it.

  Nudger recognized the nasal, wheezing voice immediately. Not Marlou. The skeleton.

  “Nudger?”

  “You must be psychic,” Nudger said. “I was just standing here thinking about you.”

  “I bet. Tried to get you earlier.”

  “Shoulda left a message.”

  “I don’t ever do that. Don’t like my voice on tape. Where you been, Nudger?”

  “Looking for diamonds.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not yet, but let’s set up a meeting. We can talk things over.”

  The skeleton laughed. “No meetings, asshole. We’ll just chat by phone, or maybe turn up unexpectedly when it’s time to talk face-to-face. Keep you on your toes that way.”

  Nudger considered punching Record on the answering machine, but he thought the machine might make some sort of microchip high-tech sound that would tip off the skeleton. Make him mad. Nudger didn’t want that.

  “Anything we oughta know?” the skeleton asked. “Other than you ain’t located the diamonds.”

  “Nothing,” Nudger said.

  “You trying hard, Nudger? Giving it the old hundred and ten percent?”

  “Of course.”

  “Maybe you need more incentive.”

  “Is there more? You threatened my life.”

  “Yeah, you got a point.” Wheeze. Cough! “I’ll call again soon, Nudger. At your office, your apartment, or maybe at your lady friend’s place.”

  “You won’t find me at Marlou’s. Probably won’t find her, either. She phoned and told me she’d discovered a dead animal on her bed. And a funeral wreath. I don’t know why, but she took it as some kind of warning.”

  The skeleton wheezed and chuckled. “Didn’t mean the Marlou cunt, Nudger. Meant your lady friend. Assuming she’s a lady.” He hung up.

  Nudger sat squeezing the phone so hard his hand ached.

  Claudia! The skeleton had meant Claudia!

  He sat for a moment in apprehension and silence. Then he replaced the receiver. The office suddenly seemed unbearably hot and stifling, a few feet smaller all the way around.

  Nudger pushed himself up out of the swivel chair, left the office, and trudged
downstairs into more intense heat.

  He told Danny on second thought he wasn’t going anywhere after all.

  19

  Nudger left Danny’s Donuts and went back upstairs to his office. He stayed there only long enough to phone Claudia. He wanted to make sure that if she was home, she’d remain there until he arrived.

  “Nudger,” she said, “you sound upset.”

  “Just do me the favor of staying inside and locking your door. Don’t answer the phone or go to the door for anyone till I get there. Okay?”

  “I was planning on driving out to Kirkwood to have dinner with a couple of other teachers from the school. We were going to play Scrabble.”

  “Call and cancel,” Nudger said. “Please.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line before she spoke. “This is all a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Life gets like that sometimes. Not like Scrabble.” An English teacher; she’d be hell on wheels at Scrabble.

  She sighed.

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you might really be in danger:”

  “I know you wouldn’t. I’ll be here. I’ll do what you suggest.” Suggest! Another sigh. “You and your fucking oddball occupation.”

  “All I know,” Nudger said helplessly. “All I can do. You don’t like it. Neither do I. Neither does my stomach.”

  She said, “You like it.”

  “In a love-hate sort of way, though. I’ll stop on the way over and get carry-out for supper. Chicken McNuggets, huh?”

  She laughed, then hung up before he could find out what kind of sauce she wanted. Probably she was still miffed because he’d deprived her of the opportunity to kick ass at Scrabble. There was a side to Claudia that could be fiercely competitive.

  He depressed the phone’s cradle button, then let it flip back up so there was a dial tone and used a pencil to peck out Hammersmith’s number at the Third. Identified himself.

  Hammersmith put him on hold and kept him there over a minute. Nudger sat wondering where the diamonds could be. He had to figure this out. The jewels might not have even found their way to St. Louis. Maybe he should talk to somebody in New York. He might even have to go there. He’d been there once before, about ten years ago. Towering buildings, schools of yellow taxis swimming the narrow streets, everybody on the make for everything. He hadn’t seen one celebrity and didn’t much like New York.

  Finally there was a loud click! on the line.

  Hammersmith said, “You sound worried, Nudge.”

  Claudia had picked up on his mood right away, too. Christ, was it that obvious? “I’m worried about Claudia. I just got a call from the skeleton. You were right, he wouldn’t even talk about a meeting. And he only stayed on the phone a short time. He made sure I understood he knows about Claudia.”

  “Knows about her?”

  “That she’s my ‘lady friend’ as he put it. I thought at first he was talking about Marlou Dee, but he set me straight. If I don’t find those diamonds, Bobinet’ll go after Claudia the way he did Vanita Lane.”

  Hammersmith did nothing but breathe into the phone for a while. Then he said, “Shit! You tell her about it?”

  “Not yet. She’s locked in her apartment and I’m about to leave my office and drive over there. Can you give her some protection?”

  “Sure.” Hammersmith did some more hard breathing. Thinking? “Obvious protection means Bobinet and the thin guy would know you brought in the law.”

  “So it’ll have to be plainclothes work. And some of your best. She’s gotta be protected, Jack.” Nudger was surprised by the desperate edge in his voice.

  “Ease up, Nudge. She will be. I’ll put Ervine and Hall on it.”

  Nudger was somewhat reassured. He didn’t know who Hall was, but he knew Larry Ervine. A veteran cop who lived his job. Who treated it as more than a job. His nickname had been “Iron Guts” when he rode a patrol car. Ervine liked to pretend he was called that because of the hot Mexican food he was addicted to, not mentioning his citations for bravery. “Will Springer okay a surveillance?”

  “Oh, he would if he knew about it. Claudia might draw Bobinet and the skeleton, so Springer’d see her as bait. Use her any way he could. You know Springer.”

  Nudger knew. He also knew that Claudia was, in effect, going to be regarded as bait anyway. The difference was that with Hammersmith running the surveillance, the emphasis would be on protecting her even if it meant losing Bobinet and the skeleton. Springer would trade Claudia for either of those two and the resulting boost to his career. Not even glance back. Springer used people and then stepped over them.

  Hammersmith said, “You gonna stay with her, Nudge?”

  “I’ll spend this evening at her place. Tonight, too. Listen, Jack, can you get me the name of the NYPD investigating officer on the Rupert Winslow murder?”

  “Hot after those diamonds, eh, Nudge?”

  “Finding them’s the only way I see myself getting clear of this mess.”

  “And you think they might still be in New York?”

  “Well, it’s possible. They weren’t on the plane.”

  “Other, safer ways to transport stolen diamonds. Maybe Winslow used one of them. Such as somebody in a car. Or the U.S. mail. He was planning on flying back to St. Louis, so it doesn’t make sense he’d stash the diamonds in New York.”

  “No, but Winslow was unpredictable, and not rocket scientist smart. Can you set me up to talk with the New York investigating officer?”

  “Sure.” The slurping, wheezing sound of a cigar being lighted. Nudger wondered if the noxious green smoke could somehow make it through the phone line. “Claudia going to work tomorrow?”

  “I haven’t talked to her about it. Knowing how she is, she’ll probably give it a try.”

  “Let her, Nudge. We can protect her just as well out at Stowe School. Maybe better. And it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to break her routine right now. That’d tip Bobinet and the skeleton. So send her off to work in the morning; we’ll stay with her. Tell her not to worry; she won’t see us, but we’ll be there.”

  Nudger said, “She’ll think that’s melodramatic.”

  “Goddamn, Nudge, it is.”

  Less than an hour later Nudger stood holding two white McDonald’s carry-out bags, waiting for Claudia to come to her door. He’d gotten a twenty-piece order of Chicken McNuggets, french fries, two large diet sodas. Every kind of sauce. The odor wafting up from the bags was making him hungry.

  He heard light footsteps on the other side of the door. Claudia’s voice. “That the meter reader?”

  Damn her, why’d she have to joke at a time like this? For a moment he wished she’d seen Vanita Lane in the motel room. The dead canary. The mutilated animal on Marlou’s bed. For only a moment. He said, “It’s Nudger.” Thinking the McNuggets didn’t smell so good now.

  She was wearing her blue terry cloth robe when she opened the door, though it was only a little past seven o’clock. Glanced down at the McDonald’s bags with their golden arches and smiled. “You weren’t kidding.”

  “Not about anything,” Nudger said, kissing her forehead as he stepped inside. It was cool in the apartment. Felt great. “Anybody knocked on the door or called?”

  “Only you, white knight. I’m sure this concerns the business with the diamonds, but what specifically am I supposed to be afraid of?”

  Nudger told her while he stood over the kitchen table and laid out the drinks and Styrofoam containers from the bags. Spread out napkins and myriad little plastic tear-tab containers of sauce. Barbecue. Mustard. Sweet and sour.

  Claudia sat down. Ate only a few McNuggets, without bothering to dip them in sauce. She was taking this more seriously now, after hearing about Roger Bobinet and his gory warning to Marlou.

  “This man is sick,” she said. “A monster.”

  “In lamb’s clothing.”

  Nudger finished the last of the McNuggets, then got up and went to the refrigerator. Pul
led the tab on a can of Busch beer and sat back down. He belched softly, tasting the mustard sauce again.

  Claudia looked at his empty soda cup, french fries wrapper, and Styrofoam McNuggets container. Then the beer. She said, “Your stomach’s not going to like that.”

  “It’s already as upset as it gets,” Nudger told her. He took a pull on the can. “Fear does that to it.”

  Claudia said, “I’m going to work tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  She looked a little surprised. She’d expected him to urge her to stay home.

  “Hammersmith has people watching out for you,” he told her. “They can do that at Stowe High School as easily as here. And if somebody else is watching you, your going to work will look normal, as if I haven’t warned you and put you on guard.”

  She toyed with her half-full cup of soda, rotating it in the puddle of condensation it had left on the smooth table. “The police wouldn’t mind if this Bobinet monster tried to kill me, would they?”

  “Hammersmith’d mind.”

  “It’d bring Bobinet and his friend out of hiding, give the police a chance to arrest them.”

  “No denying that,” Nudger said. “But the object’s to see that you’re safe. Hammersmith’s sticking his neck out, doing this on his own so the priorities stay in the right order.”

  She smiled. So beautiful, even though her dark eyes were somber with apprehension. “Good old Jack.”

  “His people’ll be guarding you all the time. You won’t see them, but they’ll be there.”

  She didn’t say anything about melodrama.

  They cleaned up the supper clutter, then Nudger phoned Marlou in Hannibal. Charged the call to his office.

  Marlou answered on the third ring. He told her he was just checking to make sure she was all right.

  She was fine, she assured him. Hannibal was a quiet place, but she wasn’t bored. Apparently it didn’t take much to keep her happy; magazines and television. Not like her sister, who’d walked the wild path.

  After he’d hung up, Nudger and Claudia settled down in the living room and watched the Cardinals ball game with the Giants on TV. The game had a late starting time because it was being played on the West Coast. It soon developed into a pitchers’ duel. The announcers kept referring to it as a gem.