by John Lutz
“Tell,” Nudger urged, recognizing the uncharacteristically thoughtful tone in Lacy’s voice.
“I do think I’ve seen the guy you just described. And lately. Can’t remember where, though.”
“He might have been driving a dark green Buick.”
“One car looks like another to me, Nudger.”
He considered telling her that in her business she should learn to discern one make of car from another, then he thought better of it. She was lying in bed in agony and wouldn’t appreciate a lecture.
“I could be wrong about seeing the guy, Nudger. I’ve got a bad memory for faces.”
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
“Couple of good legs,” she said with a sad catch in her voice.
“You’ll have those again before very long,” he assured her.
“That’s what the doctors tell me, only they don’t sound as certain as you.” She paused. “There is something I need, Nudger. For you to come by and see me.”
He was surprised. “You lonely?”
“Of course I am.”
“I’ll get over there soon,” he said, feeling a pang of sympathy for her. She sounded so morose and pitiable. His eyes began to sting as if he’d been peeling onions.
“Make sure you bring the thousand in cash,” she said. “I can’t get to my bank, and a check won’t buy me much in this hospital.”
He said he’d do that, then told her good-bye politely and hung up. Obviously Lacy’s capitalist spirit was unbroken.
Despite the fact that he hadn’t had much of substance to report to Lacy, Nudger was getting a feel for the kind of woman Betty Almer had been, and why she was missed.
She’d been a loving and happy daughter to her father Loren; a future understanding life partner and object of desire for Brad Millman; a cooperative and well-liked employee at Critendon Savings and Loan; and a competitive and physically fit client of Tabitha’s Gym. Who’d want to take the life of such a woman, other than fate?
The only other aspect of Betty’s life Nudger wanted to explore had existed inside the neon-illuminated building he was walking across the blacktop parking lot toward now. Club Swan. It was on Olive Street Road and had once been a hardware emporium, then a restaurant, and for the last five years a dance club. The builders had been thinking of storage space rather than acoustics, so the building was a huge Quonset hut with a domed roof and few windows, a series of hard surfaces supported by overhead steel beams. It magnified sound like a bull horn.
It was late in the evening and loud music was booming with a bass beat from the place. Nudger found himself walking jouncily to the rhythm. The entrance was outlined in flickering red and blue neon, as was the edge of the roof. He’d been told that most of the time the dancing in Club Swan was the usual sort of non-touch self-expression, but on designated nights and weekends, the Imperial Swing dancers took over the floor. This was a designated night.
Nudger paid a cover charge to a tall Black man wearing baggy pleated slacks and a flowered silk shirt. Then he made his way through the barrage of sound and press of people toward a bar with a green neon outline of a frenetically dancing couple suspended above it.
Miraculously, he found an empty stool and wedged himself between a fat man and a woman in a tight blue dress and sat down. He ordered a Pete’s Wicked Ale, then managed to swivel on his stool so he could look the place over more carefully.
What he saw mostly were people. No band; the music wasn’t live, but maybe its volume could overcome its synthetic origins. Though the light was dim, it wavered in intensity. From high above, pencil-thin blue laser beams pierced a smoky haze and danced over the revelers. The dance floor was large and crowded. Nudger had seen Sylvester Stallone seek then pursue countless movie bad guys through such places, maelstroms of sound and sight that addled the senses. He didn’t feel like Stallone, though. He felt like a mid-forties guy, Lucy Bain’s older man, out of place and time.
The dancers weren’t traveling around the floor at all, but were doing a kind of swing dance that involved the woman being tossed about or spun wildly. Wildly seemed to be the operative word. Nudger could understand why a former athlete like Betty Almer had liked this kind of dancing. It required speed and strength and a measure of endurance. The dancers’ ages ranged from teen to middle age. The older dancers were in obviously good physical condition for their ages. Better condition than Nudger, anyway.
As he leaned back against the bar and sipped his ale, wondering what it would feel like to dance with such skill and abandon, a man in jeans and a shirt and tie asked the woman on the next stool to dance. Nudger didn’t see how she’d be able to move much in such a tight dress, but she followed the man toward the dance floor as he pushed through the crowd. They found room on the edge of the polished wood floor, and Nudger was amazed to see the woman unzip her skirt up the side almost to her hip. She was wearing blue latex tights beneath it, and she held the man’s left hand with her right and began dancing wildly, grinning and doing a step that shifted her weight and jutted her left hip out with every other beat of the music. It was something to see.
That woman’s about my age, Nudger was thinking, when he noticed Brad Millman on the dance floor.
Millman was wearing the requisite baggy pleated slacks cut narrow at the cuffs, and had on a cream-colored sport jacket and a green shirt with a band collar. His dance partner was a young girl wearing black tights and an oversized red T-shirt with black and silver sequins scattered over it. They were both among the better dancers on the floor. They even did some sort of move where the girl dropped to the floor and Millman, still holding her hand, spun her around as she rotated on a hip then rose effortlessly into an underarm turn.
The music stopped. Millman and the girl exchanged a few words, then went their separate ways. The girl strode to a table occupied by half a dozen men and women. Her sequins glittered in the alternating light and exaggerated her movements even when she merely walked. Millman joined a man and another woman at a small table on the opposite side of the dance floor. He picked up a drink and downed half of it before setting it back on the table.
“Ever see that movie where Sylvester Stallone chases the villain through a club like this?” asked the voice of the man who’d occupied the stool the woman in the tight dress had vacated. “The one about the creepy blond guy who’s killing people all over New York?”
“I saw it,” Nudger said, not turning to look at the man. He was working and didn’t want to be drawn into inane conversation.
“I don’t see you as Sylvester Stallone,” the man said. “More like Sylvester Pussycat.”
Nudger swiveled then on his stool and saw the man with the bristly haircut and droopy brown mustache. His heart jumped with fear and his stomach twitched.
A friendly smile formed beneath the awning of a mustache. The man had a kind face despite hard blue eyes. “I know you but you don’t know me,” he said. He handed Nudger a business card. It said that he was Ollie Bostwick and that he was with First Security Insurance.
Nudger shook Bostwick’s hand, which was cool and dry and very strong. “I’m—”
“I told you, I know you,” Bostwick said. “I even know why you’re asking questions about Betty Almer. Up to a point, anyway.”
Nudger took a sip of ale as he studied Bostwick. Though he was average size he looked fit beneath his muted plaid dark sport coat and gray slacks. If he chose to let his hair grow out, it didn’t look as if he’d have any on the crown of his head. His pale eyes were intelligent as well as uncompromising. Like Hammersmith’s eyes, Nudger thought.
“What’s your interest?” Nudger asked.
“Right now, you. You’re investigating the possibility that Betty Almer was murdered. I’d like to know why.”
“Privileged information,” Nudger said.
“What’s this? You a priest or a lawyer?”
“Are you?”
“Nope. Only a claims investigator.”
And no one
to fear, Nudger reminded himself. He willed himself to breathe easier. His stomach relaxed. Still, he didn’t like to give away information without getting something in return. Like more information. “Does First Security think Betty was murdered?” he asked.
“We’re not to that point. I’m only conducting the sort of routine check that’s done whenever there’s a sizable settlement due.”
“You mean a life insurance payout?”
Bostwick smiled instead of answering Nudger’s question. “Quid pro quo. That’s Latin. It means something for something. You know any Latin?”
“I know that kind,” Nudger said. “Life is a series of trades.”
“I never thought of it that way, but by golly you’re right.”
“Betty’s father didn’t mention she had life insurance.”
“He your client?”
Nudger nodded.
“Her life was insured,” Bostwick said. “Her father might not know about it because he isn’t the beneficiary.”
“Who is the beneficiary?”
“Her fiance, Brad Millman,” Bostwick said. “The fella who was just out there on the dance floor doing the hokey-pokey with the girl that glittered.”
Here, Nudger thought, is a guy who knows less about dancing than I do. But he would know a lot about other matters. “Big settlement?”
Bostwick did a funny thing with his lips beneath the mustache and nodded. “A hundred thousand dollars. People have done you-know-what for less than that.”
Nudger looked over on the other side of the dance floor but couldn’t see Millman now. The table where he and the man and woman had been sitting was unoccupied, the glasses on it empty. “You saying your company suspects Millman of killing Betty Almer?”
“I’m saying we didn’t until I came to town and stumbled across folks who acted as if there was some reason for suspicion. First a woman named Lacy Tumulty. Now you.”
Nudger explained to Bostwick that Lacy had requested some help in investigating Betty Almer’s death, then had been hospitalized and asked Nudger to take over the case entirely while she recuperated.
“Is this Lacy Tumulty the sort who’d take on a case just for the money, knowing there was nothing to find?”
“Maybe,” Nudger said hesitantly.
“C’mon, Nudger, I thought we had a two-way exchange of information going here.”
“Maybe is an honest answer.”
“What about you? Would you accept a case under those circumstances?”
“No. I’m helping a friend in need.”
“One who’s hospitalized. What happened to Tumulty? She need some kind of operation?”
At least Bostwick didn’t know everything, wouldn’t be one of those annoying insurance claim snoopers always a step ahead of Nudger.
“Quid pro quo, Nudger,” Bostwick reminded him.
“She’s had two operations. One for each leg. Somebody beat her up and slashed both Achilles tendons.”
“Yeow! ” Bostwick said with a wince, suitably impressed in a way that gave Nudger perverse satisfaction.
“She was working on a divorce case, and it apparently got ugly.” Nudger massaging the truth.
Bostwick raised his glass of beer to his lips and sipped, then used the back of his knuckles to wipe foam from his mustache. “Doesn’t sound like a party to a divorce case did that to her,” he said. “It’d be the wife or husband who’d draw the hate and violence.”
“It was apparently some kind of professional goon who did it. He wasn’t mad at her at the time, just having fun.”
Bostwick looked out at the dancers, then at Nudger. Nudger thought they were the only two motionless people in Club Swan; maybe they’d be asked to leave. “If he cut her tendons,” Bostwick said, “he didn’t just want to discourage her. The object was to incapacitate her for a long time.”
“Like until an insurance settlement was paid?”
“Maybe. You ever hear of a man named Wayne Hart?”
Nudger searched his memory with no result. “No. Why?”
“His name came up a few times, is all,” Bostwick said. “Millman made a call to him from his cellular phone; it’s a matter of record. But when I mentioned Hart’s name to Millman, he acted as if he didn’t know him.”
“So who is Hart?”
“I have no idea. Maybe Millman doesn’t, either. He might have simply called Hart about a minor business matter then forgot his name. The call only stuck in my mind because it didn’t in Millman’s.”
“Cellular phone conversations can be eavesdropped on,” Nudger said.
“This one wasn’t. Certainly not by my company. It’s not allowed, you know, if you eavesdrop deliberately then try to use the information in litigation. I don’t know what the conversation was about, only that it occurred. Hart might simply be an employee of a plumbing supply outlet or an equipment lessor that does business with Millman’s company. Most likely he is somebody like that. But now and then fortune smiles on me, and I thought you might recognize the name and it might mean something.”
“Sorry, but I don’t and it doesn’t,” Nudger said. “What do you make of the grieving fiancé out there dancing with another woman?”
“Not much, tell you the truth,” Bostwick said. “I’ve been tailing him for a while. He doesn’t seem to have anything going on the side. He might be here drinking and dancing trying to fight his depression. That’s not unusual in a man after a wife or fiancée dies and the really dark period sets in.”
“Then you think he’ll leave here alone?”
“That’d be my bet. He came here once before and left alone. He knows those other people. He and Betty Almer were regulars here.” He raised a hand and twirled the long mustache so that one side of it twisted up slightly like a handlebar. “So far, Nudger, I haven’t found any reason not to recommend that my company pay the settlement. Which leads me to present you with a proposition.”
“I’m all ears, which is a problem in a place like this.”
“You let me know if you find a reason the settlement shouldn’t be paid, and I’ll let you know if I find one.”
Nudger agreed, and they shook hands on the arrangement.
The music paused for five seconds then began again, even louder than before. The lights dimmed, and the blue laser beams started darting around like fingers of fate. Even more people flooded onto the dance floor and began moving to the hard beat of a woman with a piercing voice screaming in rhythm with what sounded like a thousand drums and screeching guitars. Nudger liked most kinds of music and had once owned an impressive collection of classic blues. But this number tested even his eclectic taste. His empty beer mug began to dance on the bar.
“What the devil are they doing out there now?” Bostwick asked incredulously, staring at the dancers.
“I don’t know,” Nudger said, “but it’s not the hokey-pokey.”
Chapter Nine
Nudger hadn’t slept well. His mood, whenever he awoke in a sweat, was one of dread. His dreams were montages of swing dancers and sad music and darting shafts of light.
Was that in color? he asked himself, after the last and most violent dream.
He forgot the question when he was relieved to see light seeping in between the sharply angled slats of the venetian blind. Morning had arrived. Absolution. His guilt and dread dissipated. But a throbbing headache that was a residue of nightmare remained.
He climbed out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where he ran cold water over a washcloth, folded it, and pressed it to his forehead.
Helped some.
He swallowed two Tylenol capsules and trudged back into the bedroom.
Exhausted as he was, his headache and jangled nerves made further sleep impossible. And there seemed to be some sort of grit beneath his eyelids that made opening and closing them painful.
He showered, dressed, and drank two glasses of cold orange juice for breakfast.
This was better.
He felt remotely human.
/>
Then, as his headache subsided, he began to feel rather superior. Here he was, up almost with the sun, getting a jump on the day while lesser mortals snoozed on. What to do with all this energy and ambition?
He wanted to talk to Loren Almer to see if he knew about his late daughter’s life insurance policy with First Security, with Brad Millman as beneficiary. Maybe he could catch Almer before he left for work.
Superior creature of the dawn though he might be, Nudger couldn’t find Almer’s phone number anywhere, so he had to obtain it from information.
When he punched out the number, he got no response. Not a busy signal or a ringing, only silence. As if the phone had been disconnected.
He replaced the receiver and glanced at the digital clock on the microwave oven. Seven-oh-five. Morning rush hour traffic hadn’t started to back up yet, clogging the city’s arteries like cholesterol in a meat addict’s bloodstream. If he took the Inner Belt, he could probably drive to Almer’s house in less than half an hour.
He popped two more Tylenol capsules into his mouth, washed them down with more orange juice, then went outside into the bright morning.
Industrious Nudger.
Nudger the early worm.
He’d exited from the Inner Belt and was driving east on Olive Street Road, five miles an hour over the speed limit, when he heard the siren and saw the flashing red and blue lights of a police car in his rearview mirror. Nudger’s stomach did a flip and his foot found the brake pedal. The bitter taste of orange juice tainted the back of his throat as he slowed the Granada then pulled it to the side, watching in the mirror for the police car to park behind him.
Instead of stopping, the car flashed past him with a high-pitched scream of its siren that made his headache flare up again.
But he felt better despite his throbbing head. Even blessed. After all, he had been speeding, carried away by his mood and a static-marred Beatles song on the radio. The morning was warm enough for the car window to be cranked down, and the mysterious squealing from beneath the hood wasn’t evident. Nudger had felt so good he hadn’t noticed his speed.