by John Lutz
The world had changed and was still changing, dragging Nudger along with it. Sometimes reluctantly.
As he recalled, the same thing had happened to Clark Gable.
After dropping off Claudia at Stowe School, Nudger drove to his office. He checked in with Danny, who was leaning behind the counter and studying a grease-spotted sports page from the morning paper. Nudger saw an upside-down photo of a sliding ballplayer.
Danny folded the paper and said, “Cards got a chance at the pennant if lightning strikes all the Mets.”
Nudger thought that was about right, but lightning had been known to strike the weak as well as the strong.
Danny told him there hadn’t been any upstairs callers. No one had entered the door next to the doughnut shop’s and climbed the steps to Nudger’s office door. Situation normal.
Nudger forced down a Dunker Delite for lunch and refused Danny’s offer of coffee. Had a cup of water with cracked ice instead. “My stomach’s pitching a fit,” he explained to Danny, who believed him. Generous and naive Danny.
Chewing on the small chunks of ice, Nudger climbed the stairs to his office and switched on the air conditioner. He slapped it before it could begin making its peculiar noise. What was wrong with the damned thing? How long would it continue to work?
He opened the window directly behind the desk for a few minutes to let the hot air out.
That seemed to let even hotter air in, so he promptly closed the window and sat down. He noticed the glowing numeral 1 on his answering machine and pressed the Play button.
The message was from Hammersmith, giving him the name of the New York City police detective who’d handled the Rupert Winslow suicide—as it was still officially called.
Nudger swiveled around in his chair and stared out the window at the pigeons perched on a ledge of the building across the street. just as well he didn’t own a gun; he’d be tempted to take a shot at one of the defecating rats of the air. He sometimes wondered why he hated pigeons so much. Attacked by a flock of them as an infant? Maybe. He swiveled back around and direct-dialed the New York number Hammersmith had left on the machine.
The detective’s name was Rico Stompano. Nudger thought it more suitable for a gangster than a cop. But then he’d known a cop named Al Capone, so what the heck.
Stompano didn’t disappoint. He sounded like a TV actor’s idea of a Brooklyn hoodlum.
After fencing with Nudger for a while he told him the Winslow case was still open, in light of facts trickling out of St. Louis, and from the FBI, who were still tangentially involved because of the airliner bombing. “You know how long it takes this kinda thing to wind down,” Stompano said, as if Nudger were always slogging through this sort of mine field. The Mike Hammer of the Midwest.
“Is there anything that suggests Winslow might have gotten the diamonds to St. Louis, or anywhere out of New York?” Nudger asked.
“Nothin’ even to suggest diamonds,” Stompano said. He sounded bored. Tolerating Nudger. New York, Nudger figured.
“You buying the idea of suicide?” Nudger asked. “I mean, personally buying it?”
“I ain’t even considering it,” Stompano said, “bein’ still a young man with lots to live for. But I guess you mean in regards to Rupert Winslow. Tell you, Nudger, I don’t buy this or buy that, I just do my fuckin’ job. Put the facts together, see what picture they make, stop off and have a beer and then go home. You know?”
Nudger said he knew. “Lots of money involved here; how come there’s no pressure on you people to solve this one?”
Stompano laughed. “You ever walk through the diamond district in Manhattan, Nudger? Fuckin’ zillions of dollars worth of stones winkin’ like whores’ eyes in the show windows. Not to mention how many more behind the counters, in the safes. Million bucks worth of diamonds don’t amount to much when you put it in perspective. I mean, it’s a shit-pot fulla money, but not when you’re talkin’ figures make the national deficit seem small. The merchants ain’t all that upset since insurance is reimbursing the loss. The insurance company now, outfit called Sloan Trust, they’re pissing bullets over the loss.”
“I met their representative,” Nudger said. “Bill Stockton.”
“Yeah, I know Stockton.” Stompano’s tone suggested he didn’t think much of the insurance investigator.
Nudger asked Stompano to let him know if any information on the diamonds did turn up.
“Goes both ways,” Stompano said. “You let me know, huh? Somethin’ interesting pops up on your end?”
Nudger said sure, that went without saying.
Stompano said, “Anything else I can do ya?”
“Nope.”
“Take care, pal.” Stompano hung up.
Nudger sat for a while and absently chewed what was left of the cracked ice in his cup, setting up a hell of a racket inside his skull. He tried to imagine being Rupert Winslow in a hotel room with a million dollars worth of stolen diamonds. Tried to imagine what he’d do with those diamonds if he chose to double-cross his partners in crime.
But he couldn’t be Rupert Winslow, even in his imagination.
Couldn’t let himself identify with someone who was dead.
Like asking for trouble.
22
At four o’clock Nudger drove to Claudia’s to make sure she’d arrived home from work. As he turned onto Wilmington he saw Larry Ervine sitting in a parked unmarked Plymouth down the block from her apartment. He nodded to Ervine as he drove past, then found a shaded parking space for the Granada almost in front of Claudia’s building.
As Nudger climbed out of the car, the low but glaring sun made his eyes ache. Heat rolled out from beneath the Granada, across his feet and ankles. He wondered how Ervine could put up with sitting in the unmarked police car, only now and then running the engine and air conditioner. Sometimes Nudger was glad he was no longer a cop.
As he walked toward the apartment building, he noticed there were fewer people than usual out tending lawns or cars. Faces appeared at windows, however, eyes curious, as if this morning had been only a preview and they didn’t want to miss the feature attraction. Thought it might be Nudger.
Claudia must have seen him, or maybe heard him clomping up the stairs and glanced outside and seen the Granada. She opened the door before he had a chance to knock.
He kissed her on the lips and she kissed him back hard. Then she backed away, a little breathless, and said, “See, I’m still in one piece.”
“And a beautiful one.” She’d changed into a plain white blouse, Levi’s like Marlou Dee wore only not so tight. Claudia could wriggle into hers standing up; he’d seen her do it.
She closed and locked the door behind him, and he watched her sway across the room and perch on the arm of the sofa. Such a walk. She was smiling at him, but it was an uneasy smile, weak around the corners.
He went into the kitchen to get a can of beer from the refrigerator, saw that there was none, and settled for a glass of tap water instead. He managed to wrest a couple of ice cubes from the refrigerator and dropped them into the glass.
Claudia was still sitting on the sofa arm when he returned to the living room, but her smile was gone.
He said, “I saw Larry Ervine parked down the block, watching the apartment.”
“Good. He seems a capable man. Something about him I trust.”
“He’s good at his work,” Nudger said. “You can be sure there’s someone watching the back of the building, too.”
“I imagine they’re more alert after ... what happened to Franks. So I’m well looked after, Nudger. That should put your mind at ease.”
He thought about the skeleton and Roger Bobinet. “Only somewhat.”
She stood up straight and slipped her hands in the pockets of her Levi’s, posed in her hip-shot kind of slouch he found so graceful. “Hammersmith phoned,” she said. “He told me they’re finished with my car downtown and I can pick it up. Want to drive me to get it? Follow me back?”
&nb
sp; “If your car’s the way it was this morning, you might not want to drive it.”
“Hammersmith had it cleaned for me. Said it’d be done around five.”
“You’re getting special service,” Nudger said. The police had impounded his car last year. Hadn’t cleaned it. Left it a mess, in fact, parked in front of an expired meter with a ticket tucked under the wiper. The law not falling evenly on all citizens.
Claudia said, “Hammersmith’s a gentleman.” She actually sounded serious. Nudger didn’t answer.
“Should we let Detective Ervine know where we’re going?” she asked.
“No. If we stop and talk to him it’d just serve to point him out to whoever else could be in the neighborhood and interested. Ervine’ll see us leave, and he’ll either follow or have a backup unit tailing us. Best thing you can do for him is forget he’s there.”
“Or he might end up like Franks ...” she said with a quaver in her voice, as if suddenly realizing the danger involved. Death and diamonds didn’t make for light-hearted games.
Nudger said, “It’s an occupational risk he understands. He’s also capable of dealing with it a lot better than a guy like Franks.”
But the thought of Ervine dying like Franks had sobered Claudia. They went downstairs and walked silently to Nudger’s car, through golden sunlight thick as water.
He drove down Wilmington in the direction away from where Ervine was sitting in the parked Plymouth, so she wouldn’t look over at him as they passed.
As Nudger made a left turn on Grand Avenue, Claudia said, “Franks had a wife and son. It said so on the TV news.”
Great. He switched lanes and passed a lumbering bus that had halitosis.
“The world can turn to shit in a hurry,” Claudia said.
She sounded morose. He didn’t like that tone in her voice at all.
After a while he said, “I’ve got somebody, too. I don’t want to lose her.”
The police garage had sent her car out somewhere to be cleaned. The little white Chevette even seemed to have been waxed. There was what looked like a white sheet over the bucket seat on the driver’s side. The attendant at the garage explained that the upholstery was still damp. The inside of the car smelled like disinfectant, and there was a little scented green cutout shaped like a pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror. Hammersmith’s influence.
Claudia lowered herself into the car and peered around the interior. Seemed pleased. She said to Nudger, “Meet you back at the apartment.” Yanked the door shut and started the engine. He heard the compressor kick in and whine beneath the hood as she switched on the air conditioner.
When he didn’t move she cranked down the window. “Something wrong, Nudger?”
“Sure you wanna drive that car? You can take the Granada.”
“I can’t afford to trade,” she said, “so I might as well get used to driving this one even though it might be haunted.”
Nudger grinned down at her. “You’re something, you know that?”
“A hungry something.” She wound the window back up, then immediately rolled it halfway down again. “Let’s get some supper while we’re out, okay?”
“Sure. I could eat.”
They stopped at Maggie O‘Brien’s on Market Street and had the corned beef special and beer. Cheesecake and coffee for dessert. There was piped-in Irish music. Something about a free Ireland and the Irish Republican Army. Another world with other problems and players. No concern of Nudger’s; he was having trouble orbiting smoothly in his own universe.
He wondered if Eileen and Mercato had hired anyone to replace Franks. It was possible. It gave Nudger perverse satisfaction knowing that, after what had happened to Franks, the price would be high. On the other hand, Mercato might be successful in dragging him back into court and he, Nudger, might eventually have to pay that price. The world sure wasn’t fair. Nudger wished he were more religious and could regard life as some kind of test that if passed would guarantee celestial reward. If the tests were graded on the curve.
When they got back to Claudia’s apartment he called Marlou at Aunt Polly’s Motel in Hannibal. He asked how was she doing. How were things in Mark Twain country, heart of America.
She seemed bit more restless, which was to be expected. “This is just a little old town,” she said. “Not much to see or do. But there’s, like, a really neat riverboat here. I sure’d love to take an excursion cruise on it. They serve food and drink and all.”
Nudger wondered what they served beyond food and drink that qualified as “and all,” but he didn’t ask. Marlou sounded as if she might be on vacation. “Stay close to your room,” he said. “Remember what we found on your bed here in St. Louis. The man who left it there killed Vanita and now he’s killed somebody else.”
It took her a moment to focus on what he’d said. “Gawd, no! Who’d he kill?”
“Man named Franks. A dectective who was watching me.”
“But you’re a detective.” She sounded confused. Well, he couldn’t blame her. “Wait a minute, wasn’t that the name of the man I had the run-in with at my apartment?”
He said, “Same Franks. What he was doing when he got killed had nothing to do with the diamonds or your sister’s murder, but the man who killed him didn’t know that.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” As only a fool can be. “But I hope it causes you to be careful up there.”
“Oh, I been careful. Only place I go is, like, out to get something to eat, or pick up a magazine to read, or to walk around some so as to stretch my legs. Listen, Mr. Nudger, you made any progress in finding them diamonds so this can all be over?”
“Some, I think. I’m working at it, Marlou.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Stay close to Aunt Polly,” Nudger told her, “and when I come get you we’ll take a cruise on that riverboat.”
“Will do, Mr. Nudger. When you gonna call again?”
“Tomorrow. There’s something I want you to write down. Got a pencil?”
She made him wait a minute, then came back on the line. “Ready an’ waitin’, pencil in hand.”
“Here’s another number where you can reach me.” He gave her Claudia’s phone number.
When he’d hung up, Claudia said, “Who’s Aunt Polly?”
Nudger told her.
She said, “So diamonds are missing and people are dying and the police are watching over me, and I suppose you’re going to spend the evening and night here.”
“Good supposing.”
“Nudger, I’m grateful for everything being done for me. I really am.”
“Especially the spending-the-night part?”
She grinned. “Yeah, especially that.”
While Claudia sat at the dining room table grading English exams, he settled down on the sofa and used the remote to switch on the TV. Ran through the channels until he found the Cards-Cubs game.
So a baseball diamond was the only kind he could find. It was better than nothing.
23
Nudger didn’t sleep well that night. He stood on the sidewalk the next morning with fuzz in his mouth and sand under his eyelids and watched Claudia drive down Wilmington on her way to work. Saw Ervine’s relief, a cop he didn’t know, follow in the same unmarked Plymouth Ervine had been sitting in last night; it had red paint scrapings on the left rear door.
The sun began beating on his head like a hot hammer, so Nudger trudged back upstairs to the apartment. Claudia had known he’d had a restless night and let him sleep this morning. Later than he’d planned, he’d thrown on his pants, undershirt, and shoes without socks, to walk her outside to her car.
Back in the apartment, he undressed again and went into the bathroom, twisted the porcelain faucet handles in the shower to full blast, then adjusted the water temperature to lukewarm. He stepped into the tub behind the stiff plastic shower curtain, a new one with a yellow daisy pattern.
Standing motionless, he let the blasting need
les of water crash against his face and body. Slowly he came all the way awake as the hot water ran out and the shower gradually became cool. He applied soap to his body and rinsed off quickly, knowing the cool water might suddenly become unbearably icy. He’d been tricked before by the eccentric plumbing in Claudia’s apartment.
After he toweled himself dry and got dressed, he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He stood staring at some eggs in a bowl on the middle shelf. They seemed more like unborn chickens this morning than eggs. What they were, actually, inside those shells. Yuk.
He’d learned to pay heed to the morning warnings of his delicate stomach. He settled for a tall glass of orange juice and a cup of black coffee before locking the apartment behind him and driving to his office.
When he arrived, Bill Stockton was waiting for him in the doughnut shop. A Dunker Delite with only one bite out of it lay on a white paper napkin before him. Apparently he learned fast. A survivor.
Leaving the wounded Dunker Delite behind, Stockton followed Nudger upstairs to the office.
When Nudger sat down behind the desk, Stockton remained standing. He was wearing pleated black slacks today and a snappy gray-and-white checked sport coat with silver buttons. Blue striped shirt and a blue tie with so much silk content it glittered like metal. Last time they’d met, Stockton had affected the Wall Street broker look; now he looked ready to sell junk cars instead of junk bonds. Nudger got the uneasy feeling Stockton had dressed down for this conversation, maybe to communicate with Nudger on Nudger’s low level.
Nudger saw little difference between an insurance investigator and a private detective. He thought, Fuck it. He leaned back in his squealing swivel chair and laced his fingers behind his head. Waited.
Stockton’s fleshy but curiously birdlike features were unreadable. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead and glanced at the air conditioner. Nudger made no move to switch the unit on.
Stockton said, “I read about Franks’s death in the paper. We’re not playing with Eagle Scouts, huh?”
“You surprised? After what they did to Vanita Lane?”