by John Lutz
“He remember the address on the package?”
“Says he doesn’t. I believe him. Guy’s got an IQ in the minus range. Also, he had no interest in where the packages were headed, only what was in them he might be able to steal and sell. Norville’s got himself a drug habit needs constant feeding.”
“And he was inches away from a million dollars in diamonds,” Nudger said.
Stompano laughed. “He just found out about that. He keeps mumbling he played everything wrong. I keep reminding him an obstruction of justice charge and mail tampering’s better’n Murder One.”
Nudger said, “How’d he describe the package?”
“About the size of a shoebox only longer—that was what attracted his attention, the odd size. Not very heavy, as he recalls, and didn’t rattle when he shook it. Wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with string or twine, and plastered with stamps. He thinks it was addressed with a black felt-tip pen. Printed right on the paper, no label. Says he doesn’t recall even one letter of the name or address.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Well, can’t expect a guy like Norville to come completely clean. He wouldn’t know himself when he looked in the mirror.”
“How much space does a million in diamonds take up?” Nudger asked.
“Hell, that’s no more’n a handful of rocks, Nudger. In this case, anyway, because of the high quality of the diamonds. But you’d ship it carefully. You don’t mail that kinda thing without plenty of packing around it, so it’ll stand up to any sorta beating the postal service gives it and not spill out on the floor.”
“Think the diamonds were in the package?” Nudger asked.
Stompano didn’t hesitate. “That’s my guess. Either that or souvenir Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts.”
“You notify the St. Louis police about this?”
Stompano chuckled. “Notified them first thing, Nudger. Whaddya think, you’re Double-Oh-Seven or some such shit, like we’re gonna clue you in on secret information?”
“Don’t get testy,” Nudger said.
“How us New Yorkers are. Wouldn’t tell you how to get to fucking Carnegie Hall, either. Other hand, I did try to get in touch with you and let you know about this development.”
“You got a point,” Nudger admitted. “I owe you.”
“Owe me to who?” Stompano asked.
Nudger said, “Can’t get ahead of you East Coasters.” But Stompano had hung up.
Nudger let the receiver clatter into its cradle. He leaned back in his chair, not even hearing it squeal. He was seeing again the brown twine looped around Danny’s neck. Thinking of how Norville Coates had described the package Winslow tried to mail before his death. He played again in his mind what Stompano had said about how much space the diamonds would take up. A handful of diamonds and padding. What kind of padding? Kleenexes? Wadded newspaper? A folded shirt? If the package broke open in the course of its journey through the machinery of the postal service, would the diamonds be safe from discovery packed that way?
Then another question wedged its way into Nudger’s mind. Would Winslow want the recipient of the package to realize it contained stolen diamonds?
Looked at in that light, what was stalking the dark regions of his subconscious became discernible. Seemed possible.
He stood up, switched off the air conditioner, and was about to walk from the office when he remembered the third message on his machine.
This one was from the skeleton, telling Nudger they needed to talk and commanding him to stay in his office and wait for another phone call. “Stay by that phone like a goddamn debutante waiting for an invitation to the ball,” said the skeleton’s reedy, recorded voice. Cough! Wheeze.
Nudger erased all his messages, reset the machine, and left the office.
He drove to Marlou Dee’s apartment.
It was exactly the way he’d left it. The way the skeleton and Roger Bobinet had left it after their search-and-destroy mission. Nudger stood just inside the door and listened to the humming silence, breathed the hot, stale air, strained to listen even more intently. From the apartment below, the prattle of a TV tuned too loud to an inane game show filtered up through the floor like mutterings from hell.
Nudger willed his heartbeat to slow. He popped an antacid tablet into his mouth and chewed it as he walked toward the bedroom. Whump! Whump! went his heart.
Raggedy Ann was still dangling from the light fixture, the thick brown twine tight around her pathetic cloth neck. As Nudger recalled, each Raggedy Ann had a red heart drawn or sewn on its chest beneath its dress. A saleswoman had informed him of this when he’d bought such a doll for the daughter of a woman he’d briefly dated last year when he and Claudia were on the outs.
Feeling like some kind of goulish pervert, he stepped close to the hanged doll and raised its cloth dress.
Open-heart surgery had been performed on Raggedy Ann. Not very well, as the heart hadn’t been replaced. Beneath the dress was a gaping hole in the chest, from which several gray wisps of stuffing bulged.
Nudger tried to untie the knot around the doll’s neck, but it was too tight. He looked around and noticed a pair of manicure scissors lying in the mess on the floor. Perfect for twine and toenails. With some difficulty, he cut the twine.
He examined Raggedy Ann more closely.
The chest cavity would easily accommodate a handful of diamonds.
Dr. Nudger probed around with a fingertip, conducting the postmortem.
If poor Raggedy Ann had contained diamonds, they’d all been removed during surgery. Like gallstones that glittered. It was unlikely the skeleton and Bobinet had performed the operation, or they wouldn’t still be running after the diamonds.
Nudger understood now why Danny had been choked with an identical length of coarse brown twine. Why the skeleton and Bobinet were looking for him. They must have found the doll with the hollowed-out chest. And probably the wrapping paper, with its New York postmark, and twine in Marlou’s trash.
They knew now that the diamonds had been mailed to St. Louis. Knew somebody had found them in the doll before they’d had a chance to get to them. They were mad about that—so much so that sadistic Bobinet had played out a lynching on innocent courier Raggedy Ann. Almost done the same with Danny. Now they were looking for Nudger to tell him the diamonds had been sent to Marlou’s address. To ask him where Marlou was.
Nudger stood for a moment in the center of the littered bedroom, absently holding Raggedy Ann close to him as if she were a real and abused child. Until all of a sudden he pictured himself, a grown man needing a shave and hugging a doll. There was an image to undermine machismo.
Holding the doll at his side in a more manly fashion, as if it were a chain saw, he hurried out into the heat. He got in the Granada and aimed it north toward Hannibal, not noticing the drab gray rental car that followed.
29
Nudger stood in the shade of the motel catwalk and knocked on the door to Marlou’s room, feeling the lowering evening sun hot on the backs of his knees. He listened to the shouting and laughing of kids splashing around in the swimming pool behind him. The scent of honeysuckle growing on a trellis alongside the building drifted to him on the warm breeze. Summertime.
He knocked again.
No answer. No sound from the other side of the door.
He turned around and watched a chubby teenage boy do a cannonball off the diving board. The splash exploded like a thunderclap, and glittering drops of water arced through the air and stained the pale concrete close to Nudger. The kid bobbed to the still-churning surface grinning and shaking water from his long hair. Nudger wondered what it would be like to be that young again and do something with such total abandon and joy.
He tried Marlou’s door and found it locked, so he walked over to the motel office.
The elderly woman he thought of as Aunt Polly was seated on a high stool behind the registration desk, reading a magazine about quilting. Nudger asked her if she knew where Miss Thatcher of Roo
m 335 was.
“A young lady walked past the window about an hour ago,” Aunt Polly said, lowering the magazine and peering at Nudger over her glasses. “Takes lotsa walks, that one. She some kinda exercise bug?”
“She gets bored easy.”
“Well, maybe she went over on Main Street, to that buncha antique and souvenir shops. Find out all you wanna know about Samuel Clemens over there. Him and Mark Twain’s one and the same.”
Nudger smiled and said, “I know all I want to about him for now, but I’ll try the shops.”
“Walk straight down the drive and turn right,” Aunt Polly said. “Then walk some more. Want me to tell her you was here if she comes back? Case you don’t find her?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nudger said. He opened the office door and stepped outside into the heat. Heard the crisp snap of a page turning as he shut the door. How much could be written about quilting?
Despite Aunt Polly’s advice, he decided to drive instead of walk. He got in the Granada and twisted the ignition key. Turned on the air conditioner. Raggedy Ann slumped beside him on the seat, grinning with inane happiness despite the ghastly fatal wound beneath her dress. He drove down the motel driveway and turned right toward the heart of Hannibal.
Main Street was sunny and thronging with tourists on the lookout for antiques or Mark Twain souvenirs. Nudger cruised the five blocks or so of the business district but saw no sign of Marlou. He strayed a little farther away and passed the leaning white frame house where Twain had lived. The hill where Huck and Tom supposedly had played. Well, at least the hill Twain had used as the model for the hill in his fiction. Maybe.
Still no sign of Marlou. Nudger supposed he’d have to park the car and start looking inside the shops and restaurants.
He drove down rustic Center Street and found a parking space near the river. As he climbed out of the car he could see the riverboat that so enthused Marlou. The Mark Twain (what else?) was a large stern-wheeler, its windowed white decks rising like layers of a wedding cake. There was something Victorian and elegant about riverboats; Nudger could see why Marlou was intrigued. Maybe he’d make good on his promise to take her on the boat, if there was a cruise at a convenient time. If he ever found her.
He walked about fifty feet to his right so he could see the sign near the boat’s gangplank. It said the next cruise left the dock at six-thirty, in a little over an hour. Maybe he and Marlou could be on it.
When he turned around, there she was. Standing by the Granada with her hands propped on her hips, staring at him.
He walked toward her. She was wearing tight, faded Levi’s and a black T-shirt with a picture of Mark Twain over her nubby breasts. On her head rested a souvenir straw hat with a wide brim and a bright yellow ribbon on it. She was carrying what looked like a new straw purse that matched the hat. As Nudger approached she gave him her wide, country smile. Might have been the genuine Becky Thatcher.
“Want a strand of grass for between your teeth?” he asked.
Her grin turned inquisitive. “Huh?”
“Nothing. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Been right here, more or less,” she said. “Walking along the river. I like it down here. Seen the car from up near the grain towers and figured it might be yours. Came on down and knew it was. Old home day or something?”
“Old home day?”
“I mean, I’m pretty positive I saw that insurance fella, Stockton, up on Main Street. Looked again, though, and he was gone.”
Nudger stared at her. “Bill Stockton, of Sloan Trust?”
“Yep. Same Bill Stockton that came around and questioned me right after Vanita died.”
“What was he doing when you saw him?”
“Looking in a window at some antique dishes. On the other side of the street from where I was, and down a ways. Didn’t seem the type that’d be interested in old china.”
“Not unless it was stolen and insured. Sure it was him?”
“Reasonably so. Hey!”
“Huh?”
She was staring inside the car. “Whatcha doin’ with my Raggedy Ann in there?”
“I found it hanged from your bedroom chandelier with a piece of twine.”
She swallowed hard, her Adam’s apple working above the neck of the black T-shirt. Twain’s nose was exactly over the jutting point of her right breast; gave him a certain dimension. “I mean, like, what’d you do, cut her down so you could bring her to me?”
“Sort of,” Nudger said. “Something about her I wanna show you.”
He opened the Granada’s passenger-side door, leaned in, and straightened up holding the doll.
Marlou was already reaching for it. Nudger handed it over. “Notice anything different about it?”
“Sure, where those mean bastards tied string around her neck.” Marlou’s fingers began to massage the cloth doll’s neck gently, as if to comfort it. Then her green eyes widened in puzzlement. Her fingers probed lower. She raised the doll’s dress. Seemed for a moment as if she might cry. “God, what’d they do that to her for?”
“You don’t know?”
She stared at him. Tears in her eyes. Acting? “‘Course I don’t know. Do you?”
“They went through your trash,” Nudger said. “Found the wrapping paper and twine from the package. Figured out, when they found the doll like that, what had been in the package. But they weren’t the ones who opened up the doll and removed the diamonds, or they wouldn’t still be looking for them.”
Marlou’s mouth was gaping. “Wait a minute. You saying the diamonds was inside Raggedy Ann?”
“That’s how Winslow hid and protected them when he mailed them from New York.”
“I thought he didn’t mail nothing.”
“That’s what everyone thought. The New York police found out later that he’d mailed a package. Had to have been the doll and the diamonds.”
She shook her head from side to side so her red hair bounced. “Couldn’t have been, Mr. Nudger.”
He was already convinced by her reaction that she hadn’t known the diamonds were in the doll. What kind of crap was she about to throw into the game now?
“Why not?” he asked.
“Heck, I had Raggedy Ann here since I was, like, nine years old.”
Nudger leaned back against the car. Crossed his arms and stared out at the great brown river sliding past. Water rolling like time.
“Hear what I said, Mr. Nudger?”
“Sure did,” Nudger said. “I’m thinking. Gotta do a lot of that in my business.”
The diamonds had to have been in the doll, or why would its poor cloth heart have been so methodically ripped out? Someone had felt the doll, encountered the hardness of the diamonds, and performed doll surgery.
But suppose the diamonds had been mailed to someone else in St. Louis. And the someone who’d received them had hidden them in the Raggedy Ann doll without Marlou knowing about it.
Probably the only one who’d had the opportunity to do that was Marlou’s sister, Vanita. Even though it put Marlou in a dangerous spot. Maybe the sisters hadn’t gotten along as well as either of them pretended. Maybe neither of them was quite what she presented to the world. Deviousness could run in families.
Nudger thought about that supposed sequence of events. It was possible. Even likely. What safer place for Vanita to hide the diamonds after Winslow had sent them to her? And the theory would explain why, even under torture, Vanita hadn’t told Roger Bobinet and the skeleton where the diamonds were hidden. She’d known their next victim would have been her baby sister. Blood thicker than water. Stronger than pain. Vanita finally being true and finding honor in the face of death.
Feeling slightly nauseated, Nudger used his palm to wipe sweat from his face.
Marlou said, “Got anything figured out yet, Mr. Nudger?”
A sole scraped a paving stone behind Nudger. Two long. shadows fell on either side of him. “Yeah, Mr. Nudger,” the wheezing voice of the skeleton said. “Do tell
us if you got any answers.”
“Figure this out fast,” Roger Bobinet said, flashing his cereal-box smile. “I got my hand on a gun in my pocket. Wouldn’t mind using it.”
“Though you’d prefer a knife,” Nudger said. His voice was high with fear. At least it hadn’t cracked, turning him into a panicky adolescent.
Bobinet shrugged. “We don’t get everything we prefer in this world, Nudger. Not right away. That’s what this is all about.” He grinned at Marlou. “Been looking forward to meeting you, sweetheart. I was a friend of your sister.”
Amazingly, Marlou seemed unafraid. All three men stared at her when she said, “These the goons killed Raggedy Ann?”
30
“These are also the goons that killed your sister,” Nudger reminded Marlou.
That fact seemed to have temporarily escaped her. She still appeared more enraged than afraid. Her green eyes narrowed and her freckles were almost lost in the red and mottled complexion of heightened blood pressure. She drew back a fist to strike at Bobinet, who grinned, caught the force of the blow with his palm, and jerked Marlou to the side so her momentum carried her past him and she almost fell.
“Little cunt’s got some guts,” the skeleton said. “But then so’d her sister.” He wheezed. Coughed. “Fuckin’ country air.”
“That’s what lung cancer’ll do for you,” Bobinet said, still watching Marlou. When he was sure she wasn’t going anywhere, he turned toward Nudger, squinting against the low angled rays of the setting sun. “You see, Nudger, my pal here used to be a three-pack-a-day smoker, and he ain’t got that much longer to enjoy his hard-earned riches. So we want the diamonds and we’ll do what needs doing to get them. He’s got nothing much left to lose, and I always lived as if I didn’t.”
The skeleton didn’t change expression. “I ain’t dead yet,” he said. “Keeping in mind the gun I’m holding in my pocket, let’s all of us walk over and get in that car.” He motioned with his head toward a rented subcompact, a gray Ford Escort.
Bobinet led the way. Nudger and Marlou followed, Marlou clutching her Raggedy Ann doll. The skeleton followed with the gun, breathing hard, huffing like a locomotive pushing a train.