by John Lutz
He listened to Claudia breathe for a while, until she said, “You’re obviously not as afraid as you were last night.”
“Obviously?”
“You’re standing firm this morning.”
“Oh. Well, I was in an excitable state last night.”
“Like this morning?”
“Only something like this morning.” He kissed the back of her neck.
She twisted her body around, smiling at him, then moved so she was facing him. Her hands twined around his neck and she pressed herself against him. She kissed him on the lips, then nibbled on his earlobe. Her breathing was not at all as it had been a few minutes before. It was faster now, more ragged. He could feel the pressure of her breasts moving softly against his chest with each breath.
“Wait a minute,” Nudger said.
“Okay,” she breathed. “They’re in the top dresser drawer.”
Nudger kissed the tip of her nose, then climbed out of bed.
Instead of going to the dresser, he left the bedroom. He tiptoed cautiously into the living room, then went over to make sure all the locks were fastened on the door. Then he padded barefoot into the kitchen and did the same with the door that led to the rear landing and stairwell. Everything seemed to be in order. He tested a few windows on the way back to the bedroom to make sure they were fastened.
When he reentered the bedroom, Claudia had her head propped up on her pillow and was staring at him. He ignored her and went to the top dresser drawer.
“Did you check under the bed?” she asked.
For only an instant, he considered it.
Then he got into the bed instead.
After breakfast, Claudia told him she was going to meet a teacher friend at the Art Museum to see an exhibit of Dorothea Lange depression-era photographs. Nudger tried briefly to talk her out of it, then knew it was hopeless. He told himself the goon who’d gotten after him last night wasn’t the sort likely to haunt museums, so if Claudia was going anywhere, the photo exhibition was a good choice. Still, walking her to her car and watching her drive away plunged Nudger into a depression of his own.
He was cheered somewhat when, walking to his own car, he noticed a police cruiser parked down the block on the other side of the street. Through the reflections on its windshield, Nudger could make out the forms of two uniforms in the front seat who were watching the apartment. He wished they’d followed Claudia, but he realized that wasn’t their assignment. Hammersmith had been as good as his word, but no one could provide anyone absolute protection for very long.
Nudger climbed into the Granada to drive to his office. He could talk to Danny before going upstairs, and be reasonably sure no one was lying in wait for him.
As he drove past the parked patrol car, he nodded to the uniform behind the steering wheel, who nodded back poker-faced. The uniform next to him, a young guy with a blond buzz cut, was actually eating a doughnut. Nudger didn’t think he should do that, right in plain view of the public. But right now, he’d be the last to complain.
After parking the Granada directly across Manchester from his office and Danny’s Donuts, Nudger sat and surveyed the street and sidewalk. He was reassured by the activity on Manchester, lots of traffic, and ordinary-sized, normal-looking people walking around. A couple of young women dressed in long, loose-fitting skirts leaned forward in unison, poised over the curb, waiting for a break in traffic, then fled like elegant gazelles across the street and entered the office building where Nudger went to the dentist when he absolutely had no other choice.
After a bus had fussed and fumed its way past, he got out of the car and crossed Manchester, noticing that the pavement was already heating up in the morning sun.
It didn’t look as if anyone other than Danny was in the doughnut shop. Danny’s breakfast trade, such as it was, would have left by now and be sitting over desks or standing at workstations, stomachs growling.
Before opening the shop’s door, Nudger peeked through the glass and saw that indeed Danny was alone, standing behind the counter and polishing the huge, many-valved coffee urn.
When he entered the shop, Danny heard him and turned around, and the smile on his basset-hound face rearranged itself into a creased frown. “You don’t look so good, Nudge. Have a bad night?”
“One of the worst,” Nudger said, and told Danny about the attack of the giant goon.
“Hey, that sounds like the guy I told you about, the one that came around looking for you. Pointy-headed, big galoot. Had kinda pointy teeth, too, now I think about it.”
“Have you seen him around this morning?” Nudger asked.
“Nope. And I sure would be able to recall him. You had breakfast, Nudge?”
“Yeah, thanks. At Claudia’s.” The cloyingly sweet smell of doughnuts was making Nudger’s stomach twitch. He glanced up at the grease-spotted ceiling. “Anybody come looking for me this morning?”
“Nobody,” Danny said. “I’d have heard if anyone went up those creaky old stairs.”
Nudger moved back toward the door. “Thanks, Danny.”
“Phone mighta rung a couple of times, though,” Danny said. “Your machine might have some messages.”
“If anybody does start upstairs,” Nudger said, “give me a phone call and let me know.”
“You can count on it, Nudge.”
Nudger knew that he could. He smiled at Danny and went out into the warm morning, then entered the slightly cooler stairwell and climbed the steps. The stairs sure did creak a lot, and loudly, something he’d always been glad of. His office had drawbacks, but it was difficult to sneak up on.
The messy, somewhat depressing lair of the office was waiting for him as always, the desk and file cabinets and battered Smith-Corona electric typewriter posed like objects in a still life, awaiting his presence and touch to grant them life and meaning. He switched on the window-unit air conditioner, waited a few seconds to make sure the metallic clanking of the fan would fade as usual, then sat down in his squealing swivel chair behind his desk.
There were three messages on his impossibly complicated answering machine. Nudger had mastered only a few of its myriad features. Staying within the narrow parameters of his understanding, he used the PLAY and ERASE buttons. PLAY was first, he was sure.
Beep: “Mr. Nudger, my name’s Lois Brown.” Long pause. “I ... well, not to sound melodramatic, but I’m sure I’m in danger. Several things make me think so. Close calls. Someone seems to have been in my house recently when I wasn’t home. I get late-night phone calls, and the party just hangs up when I say hello. Explainable events, maybe, but so many of them. And there’s another reason I think someone’s trying to kill me. It’s not something we could discuss on the phone. If you’d call me back we might set up an appointment so we could talk in private. I think you’d be interested in what I have to say.” She recited a phone number, which Nudger duly jotted down on his past-due electric bill, then she hung up.
Beep: “This is Henry Mercato, Mr. Nudger. Eileen has informed me that you’re several months behind on your alimony payments. According to Missouri law ...”
Nudger ceased to listen.
Beep: Pause. Buzz.
Whoever had called stayed on the line a few seconds, then hung up without leaving a message.
Nudger replaced the receiver and pressed the ERASE button.
When the machine was finished clicking and whirring, he picked up the receiver again and punched out the Lois Brown number.
The phone on the other end of the line rang ten times before Nudger hung up.
He was disappointed. He hadn’t been able to talk to Lois Brown, and there had been no message from Lacy Tumulty.
Carefully, he raised the plastic lid of the answering machine, where instructions that reminded him of a legal document were printed on a sheet of paper stuck to the lid with adhesive. With a blunt pencil, he copied the instructions for “remote message retrieval” on a blank envelope, then copied Lois Brown’s phone number on the flap and
stuck the envelope in his shirt pocket. Trying not to look at the instructions printed in Spanish and German, he closed the machine’s lid. All seemed well. The little green light signifying that the machine was ready to record was still glowing, and the absence of digital numerals indicated that his earlier messages had indeed been erased. Nudger felt smug about having tamed technology, even to such a small degree.
He stood up from his desk, decided to leave the air conditioner running on low, then left the office and trudged downstairs and made a tight loop on the sidewalk to enter the doughnut shop.
Danny was still alone, standing hunched over and leaning with both hands on the stainless steel counter. He looked up from the Riverfront Times he had spread out before him. The Riverfront Times was a small and lively giveaway newspaper with much influence. Every year it included a ballot for its readers to vote for the best of this or that in the St. Louis area. Last year, Danny’s chief rival, Munch-a-bunch Doughnuts, located farther west on Manchester, had won Best Doughnut Shop and proudly displayed the victor’s plaque just inside its door. Though Danny’s Donuts hadn’t been mentioned in the voting tabulations even as a runner-up, Danny had become convinced that he could win a similar plaque for this year. Nudger hadn’t the heart to try to dissuade him, and promised to vote for Danny’s Donuts, though in truth when he yearned for a good doughnut he sneaked away to Munch-a-bunch.
“It’s still too early for that annual Best of St. Louis ballot,” Danny said, somber eyes again downcast on the paper.
“It comes out toward the end of the year, I think,” Nudger said logically.
“I’m watchin’ for it, though,” Danny said. “I’m gonna vote for that Bill McClellan for best columnist.” McClellan had recently written a piece about how doughnuts were much-maligned by dietitions and actually worked better than melatonin as sleep inducers. Danny hadn’t realized the column was written tongue in cheek. Nudger figured there was no reason to set him straight; McClellan, who often stood up for the little guy like Nudger, deserved the plaque anyway.
“Any sign of our overgrown friend?” Nudger asked.
Still staring at the paper—an article about obtuseness in the state legislature—Danny shook his head no.
“I’m leaving for a while,” Nudger told him. “Maybe I’ll phone you later and find out what’s going on.”
“You’re really scared of this guy, aren’t you, Nudge?”
“He’d win the Riverfront Times plaque for Best Thug.”
“Sounds like he would at that. Where you going?”
“Art Museum. Only you don’t know that.”
Danny looked at him oddly for several seconds.
“In case anyone asks,” Nudger said.
Danny’s expression remained blank. Then he grinned and nodded. “Oh, yeah, I getcha. I don’t know where you are.”
When Nudger left, Danny was absorbed again in the article about obtuseness in the legislature. Danny voted in every election without fail.
It made Nudger wonder.
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Nudger climbed the concrete steps to the Art Museum’s main entrance, he had to admit that one reason he’d come here was to make sure Claudia wasn’t with Biff Archway. Archway, the soccer coach and sex education teacher at the all-female high school where Claudia taught English, was tenacious in his attempts to win Claudia. Handsome, muscular, accomplished, Archway was the sort of man women fell for like dominoes. Nudger hated Biff Archway.
Nudger left the marbled, sculpture-strewn main hall of the museum and began roaming its spacious rooms and corridors displaying paintings. He lingered in a gallery of impressionists’ works, staring with yearning at a colorful, dreamy world he wished existed, then walked quickly past a Picasso that more accurately reflected his world. Eventually he left the paintings and became lost among displays of furniture from various historical periods. In a roped-off, Art Deco model office of the thirties was a wooden desk that looked disturbingly like his own, and the typewriter was an easily recognizable ancestor of his Smith-Corona. Soon, he thought with some alarm, he would be a man of the past century. He swallowed.
Near an Edwardian bedroom with a fantastic fringed canopy bed, he became more determined to find Claudia. He asked a security guard directions to the Dorothea Lange photograph exhibit.
Five minutes later he was within sight of Claudia. He was relieved to see that she wasn’t with Archway, but with a woman he’d met last year, another teacher at Stowe High School, a middle-aged, kindly looking gray-haired woman whose name Nudger thought was Nancy.
Relieved, he stayed well away from the two women so neither would notice him. When they wandered from one room to the next, he remained in the previous room, but in a position where he could see them if they left by the far exit, which led them either to another display of Lange photographs or was the end of the exhibit.
Lange’s stark black-and-white depression-era photos fascinated Nudger. Some of them were in fact galvanizing. So engrossed did he become in a shot of a farmer driving a tractor in an endless field of parallel plowed furrows, that Claudia and Nancy somehow moved on without him noticing.
In a mild panic, he quickly but cautiously left the exhibit and made his way from one set of exhibitions to the next. He was furious with himself. This was basic detective work, tailing two unsuspecting people indoors in a public place, and he had muffed it.
At last, in the vast main hall of the museum, he saw Nancy’s coiffed gray hair. Claudia was next to her. They were moving with several other people toward the exit.
He followed and saw them get into Claudia’s car where it was parked in front of the museum, near Art Hill. Nudger hurried around to the tree-shaded parking lot behind the museum and climbed into the Granada, but by the time he wound his way back to the front of the building, Claudia’s little blue Chevy was nowhere in sight.
Again he was lucky. Driving glumly along winding roads in an attempt to find his way out of Forest Park, where the Art Museum was located, he happened to see Claudia’s car ahead of him as it rounded a corner.
He fell in behind it, with three cars between the Chevy and his own, and followed Claudia as she drove from the park and exited on Hampton. He stayed well back of her as she traveled along Hampton to Oakland and turned left, then made a left on Kingshighway and a right turn on Forest Park Boulevard. She turned left on Euclid and was soon in the Central West End, St. Louis’s small version of Greenwich Village.
Nudger watched as Claudia parked on Euclid, then she and Nancy entered Duff’s, a mainstay restaurant in the area. He loved the food there and for a moment pondered following them inside. Duff’s was large and comfortably dim, and seemed to have almost as many rooms as the Art Museum, so maybe he could remain unnoticed.
Then he decided against it. This was stupid and ineffectual, tailing Claudia. He couldn’t do it constantly, any more than could the police. And he wasn’t carrying a gun. Hadn’t owned one since his police department days. So his options were limited even in the unlikely event the giant goon would confront Claudia and Nancy in broad daylight in a public place.
He told himself he wouldn’t be leaving Claudia in any imminent danger. After all, she was with someone.
Who wasn’t Biff Archway.
But wouldn’t she be safer with Archway, the martial arts expert and prime physical specimen who was more macho than a truck commercial?
Yes and no.
Fighting off guilt for being selfish about Claudia, Nudger decided to trust in her safety with Nancy and return to his office.
On the drive there, hunger overcame him and he stopped at the Parkmoor Restaurant on Clayton and Big Bend. There they served something called the Premium Frank, which was one of his favorites. That and a vanilla milk shake would make a fast and delicious lunch.
Before ordering, he used the public phones near the cashier to check for messages on his answering machine via its remote retrieval system. He got the crumpled envelope he’d written on in his office,
carefully followed the instructions he’d copied, and was amazed when they worked and there was a series of high-pitched beeps. Then an electronic scream signaled that he had no messages.
His ear still pulsating from the noise, Nudger hung up. He almost smiled with satisfaction. He knew for sure there hadn’t been any important phone calls in his absence. He’d managed to cajole the answering machine into obeying his remote commands. A small victory in his battle with technology, but a win nonetheless. And in looking after Claudia, he hadn’t totally lost touch with his office and missed another call from Lois Brown, who was in danger. Or thought she was. And even if she was, which woman might be in the most danger—Lois Brown or Claudia?
He enjoyed his Premium Frank with cheese and bacon and relish and without guilt.
When he entered his office an hour later, he saw the glowing digital numerals on the machine. Two messages. Nudger wondered if one was from Lois Brown.
He sat behind his desk in the cool breeze from the still-laboring air conditioner and punched the PLAY button.
Beep: Buzz. Click.
Message number one was a hang up.
Beep: “This is Lacy, Nudger. I’m okay. I’m antsy. I’ll see ya.”
Nudge pressed the ERASE button and sat back in his eeeking swivel chair. He watched the cool rush of air from the plastic grill behind him ruffle the hair on his forearm. It made the burn on the back of hand feel better. “Antsy,” he said to himself. He didn’t like to think of Lacy as antsy, which he knew from experience was her way of saying she had cabin fever. She’d been afraid the last time he’d talked to her, but she wasn’t the type to stay afraid for long. She had the reckless gene. Nudger didn’t. He had the worry gene, though. Maybe two of them.
There was a loud knock on the office door, and his heart leapt.