Oops! (Alo Nudger Book 10)

by John Lutz

  Then he realized the giant thug with the bowie knife would hardly knock, and Danny surely would have seen or heard him enter the building and phoned upstairs.

  Unless ...

  Nudger slid open a top desk drawer and laid his hand inside it. He could bluff by pretending he had a gun.

  He called for whoever was out there to enter.

  The door opened a few inches, then all the way.

  Danny stepped into the office and looked somberly at Nudger.

  Nudger removed his hand and pushed the drawer shut.

  “Scruffy little woman came into the shop ’bout an hour ago,” Danny said. “No biggern’ a minute. She told me to give you this.”

  He handed Nudger a folded yellow Post-it.

  Avoiding handling the adhesive strip at the top, he unfolded the square sheet of paper and read: “Hostelo Grandioso motel, Ext. 299.”

  “I couldn’t help seeing it when she folded it and gave it to me,” Danny said. “It’s in some kinda foreign language, ain’t it?”

  “It would like to think so,” Nudger said.

  “She didn’t leave no name, Nudge.”

  “I know her, Danny. Her name’s Lacy. We’re in the same business. More or less.”

  Danny’s brow unwrinkled for a second. “No kidding? Heck, she’s too little a mutt to be working a job like that. She know marital arts or something?”

  “That’s martial arts, Danny. And she knows some or thinks she does. She’s tougher than she looks, but not nearly as tough as she thinks.”

  “She got in and outa the shop in a hurry, like she didn’t want to be seen there. Didn’t even go upstairs to see if you were in your office.”

  “She knew better. And she knows I trust you.” Nudger doubted if Danny had unfolded the Post-it to read carefully what Lacy had written. “Thanks, Danny. I’ll get in touch with her.”

  “Try and talk her into doing something less dangerous for a living, why doncha?”

  “I’ve tried. She thrives on danger. She infects other people with it. The goon who tried to work me over last night beat her up and cut her with a knife last year.”

  Danny appeared shocked. “Why, that bastard! That’s like picking on a kid!”

  “He wasn’t interested in her lunch money,” Nudger said, somewhat surprised by Danny’s protective instinct. “And Lacy’s no kid.”

  “She reminds me of a kid I knew once. You tell her she can rely on me if she needs any help.”

  Nudger nodded. He didn’t tell Danny he might as well be offering protection to a wolverine. Small and cute could be deceptive.

  When Danny had left, Nudger dragged the phone book from a bottom desk drawer and looked up the Hostelo Grandioso. Its address was on Spanish Moss Drive, which he thought was a street that ran off Natural Bridge up north near the airport. He pulled the phone-answering machine closer to him, then lifted the receiver and pecked out the Hostelo Grandioso’s number.

  A man’s voice answered with the name of the motel, and Nudger asked for extension 299.

  The phone rang five times before Lacy picked it up and said hello in a tentative voice.

  “Nudger,” Nudger said.

  “Say something else.”

  “Something else,” Nudger said.

  “Okay. I had to be sure it’s really you, Nudger. The stupid humor proves it.”

  “Are you still antsy?”

  “Yeah. I’m going crazy sitting around here. The only time I’ve been out was to deliver the note to that guy in the doughnut shop. I didn’t want to phone again. Your line might be tapped. And I remembered you telling me about the doughnut shop guy.”

  He doubted that she was right about his phone being tapped.

  “That was Danny,” Nudger said. “You can trust him. You even awoke some kind of protective paternal instinct in him.”

  “Yeah, I can do that when I try. Any news on the pointy-headed goon?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to look at some photographs today at Maplewood Police Headquarters.”

  “I looked at mug shots after my heels were cut, and I couldn’t make an identification.”

  “Well, if I can’t make an ID in Maplewood, I’ll drive down to the Third District and see Jack Hammersmith, look at some more photographs. The goon must have some kind of history with the law.”

  “Hammersmith that fat guy? A lieutenant?”

  “The same. You can trust him just like you can Danny, only he won’t feel so paternal.” Nudger glanced out the window at the pigeons on the ledge across the street. “Don’t tell him you have a gun, though. He’ll ask about license and registration, training, those kinds of trivialities.”

  “Guys like that are a pain. Sticklers about the law.”

  “He is a cop,” Nudger reminded her.

  “You call me from time to time, you hear, Nudger. It might be the smart thing for me to stay cooped up like this, but just the thought of it is driving me bonkers. I’ve gotta know what’s going on out there in the world.”

  “Watch CNN.”

  “Hah! This place has a television set that still gets Milton Berle.”

  “I’ll keep you informed. Didn’t I phone and warn you last night?”

  “Yeah. Now inform me what you’re going to do next. After you hang up.”

  “I’m going to phone a woman named Lois Brown. She left a message on my answering machine saying she was in danger, and that I’d be interested in knowing why. Does her name strike a chord with you?”

  “Never heard of her. But after you get in touch with her, call me here and let me know what she had to say.”

  Nudger promised that he would, then hung up.

  It bothered him, to have Lacy ticking away like a bomb in a motel room. She was right; she wasn’t made for that kind of seclusion. A full day and night in the Hostelo Grandioso hadn’t even passed and she was already going mad. Somewhere along the line there would be an explosion.

  He called Lois Brown’s number again and got no answer. Then he decided to drive down the street to the Maplewood Police Department and see if he could try to make an identification on the violent goon.

  A cop named Kamerer who wore too much deodorant or cologne ushered Nudger into a small bright room, where he looked at countless photographs, then at some video stills. No one unlucky enough even to resemble his assailant appeared before him.

  It was four o’clock by the time Nudger left Maplewood police headquarters and returned to his office. He had a headache. His shoulder was sore again. The burn on the back of his hand itched. His eyes were so tired that opaque dots were swimming before them like exotic fish.

  He tried Lois Brown’s phone number again, and again got no answer.

  Then he called Claudia and got no answer.

  Story of his life: no answer.

  His swivel chair eeeked at him as he leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. Events seemed to be whirling all around him, but just beyond his knowledge or understanding. He stared at the four badly painted walls of his office and understood precisely how Lacy Tumulty must feel, trapped in her tiny motel room, her internal fuse burning like the one in Mission Impossible.

  It was worrisome.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Still in a worried state, Nudger chomped a few antacid tablets, drove too fast to Claudia’s and rang her doorbell, then knocked on her door.

  She hadn’t returned home yet from her outing with Nancy. Or else she’d touched down and then gone elsewhere.

  Or...

  He let himself in with his key.

  “Claudia?” She might be in the shower and hadn’t heard his knock. Or asleep.

  “Claudia?”

  No answer.

  It was warm and there was no sound of any of the window air conditioners running, only the low hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the soft cooing of pigeons perched on an outside sill. Down in the street, two men were talking loudly, each laughing at whatever the other was saying, but their voices were too fa
int for Nudger to understand.

  He walked through the apartment and found it empty. Breakfast dishes were still stacked in the sink.

  So Claudia hadn’t been home. Nudger breathed easier knowing she hadn’t been here and was, for the moment, safe.

  He used the bathroom to relieve his bladder. During the past few years apprehension made him have to do that more often. Getting older. Prostate problems on the way. Male pattern baldness. Thickening waistline with potbelly. The entire panoply of male degeneration. He didn’t want to think about any of that now.

  Back in the living room, he thought about sitting around and waiting for Claudia, but he didn’t want to lose his sanity. Instead, he went to the phone and called Hammersmith’s number at the Third District.

  Hammersmith wasn’t there, but he’d left word that Nudger might be in to look at mug shots, and that respect should be shown. That was exactly how Merriweather, the old desk sergeant who’d been stationed in the Fourth with Hammersmith and Nudger years ago, said it. “Captain Springer isn’t to know,” he bluntly added.

  Nudger thought that went without saying but appreciated Merriweather saying it anyway. Springer was an ambitious and not exactly scrupulous political climber in the department. He was also Nudger’s sworn enemy, and, to an extent, Hammersmith’s, for no apparent reason other than that Hammersmith remained Nudger’s friend. To Springer every ex-cop was like his ex-wife—not to be trusted after the split. Guilt by disassociation.

  Hours spent at the Third reaped no reward. Incredibly, Nudger’s giant attacker seemed to have no police record. When Nudger was about to leave, a police sketch artist named Chalmers sat down across from him and offered to draw a composite from Nudger’s description.

  “Is this your idea?” Nudger asked.

  Chalmers, an earnest, blond young man with no chin, shook his head. “The lieutenant said you’d probably be by and might need the help.”

  Thoughtful Hammersmith again.

  Nudger gave Chalmers a precise feature-by-feature description of the pointy-headed goon while the sketch went through a series of transformations. “Like so? Like so?” Chalmers would ask as he sketched. “More this” or “less that,” Nudger would answer, increasingly fascinated as the sketch developed. “More, more, less, less ...”

  “That him?” Chalmers finally asked, when Nudger had run out of instructions.

  “More or less.”

  Chalmers showed Nudger the sketch of Lacy’s assailant he’d made last year from her description. Now Nudger understood why Hammersmith had wanted Chalmers to work with him.

  Nudger looked from sketch to sketch. Neither subject was attractive, but they were unquestionably similar. Lacy’s goon was definitely the uglier.

  “I’ll try to sketch something in between,” Chalmers told Nudger.

  When Nudger returned to Claudia’s apartment, the first thing he noticed even before using his key to enter was the pungent scent of garlic-laden spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. When he opened the door he found that the window unit in the dining room was humming and the apartment was cool. Claudia was home.

  There she was in the kitchen, standing at the stove and stirring with a wooden spoon. The dishes in the sink had been transferred to the dishwasher. She was barefoot and had changed to faded Levi’s and a baggy white T-shirt with a St. Louis Cardinals birds-on-bat logo on its chest. Nudger remembered buying the shirt for her a few years ago at the ballpark after a Cardinals victory over the Cubs. The shirt had faded. So had the Cardinals.

  She glanced over at him and smiled. “I’m still alive.”

  “I was worried,” Nudger said.

  “I know. There was indication you were here. I figured you’d be back, so I started supper. Spaghetti okay?”

  “Better than okay.” He thought she was a champion spaghetti maker. And apparently she had some talent as a detective. “Indication I was here?” he asked. He didn’t recall having moved anything, or leaving anything behind, when he was in the apartment earlier.

  “The toilet seat was up.”

  “Oh.”

  She stirred, smiling faintly as if the gentle motion soothed her. Maybe it wasn’t politically correct, but Nudger loved seeing a beautiful woman happily busy in a kitchen.

  “There was a police car parked down the street when I drove past,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Nudger set the table, then found half a bottle of the wine he’d brought with him last time they’d had spaghetti. He hooked a finger through the jug’s loop handle, removed the wine from the refrigerator, then unscrewed the cap to let it breathe.

  “I think I’ll just drink water,” Claudia said.

  He put some ice in a glass and ran tap water over it, then got down another water tumbler for his wine.

  Nudger tossed the salad while she dumped hot spaghetti into a colander to drain before placing it in a bowl.

  They ate slowly, enjoying the food while they told each other about their day. Nudger was going to suggest driving to Ted Drewes frozen custard stand for dessert, but when they were finished eating he felt too full even to talk about leaving the apartment in a quest for more food. He had to mentally prod himself even to rise from his chair and help Claudia clear the table.

  Maybe, since she hadn’t had any of the wine, he’d drunk too much. Or maybe the wine was particularly potent. It was a pugnacious vintage with an agreeable price, a brand unfamiliar to him, from a country he’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce. But it was red so he was sure it went with spaghetti. Whatever the reason, sated by pasta, bread, and wine, Nudger sat with Claudia on the sofa and soon fell asleep.

  He dreamed about being back in Dewey school in the fourth or fifth grade, sitting sleepily at his desk and worrying because he hadn’t done his homework and might be called on by the teacher to recite some fact he didn’t know. If it was the fourth grade, and his teacher was that nice Miss Hogan, he’d be okay. She got exasperated with Nudger often, but she obviously saw in him something she liked. On the other hand, Miss—

  The bell sounded loudly, signaling the end of the school day. There had been no reason to worry.

  The dismissal bell rang again.

  He opened his eyes and found himself alone on the sofa.

  Claudia had answered the phone.

  “For you,” she said to Nudger. “A woman.”

  She brought the phone to him on its long cord. He still had to scoot to the end of the sofa to take it from her.

  “Fell asleep,” he told her, trying to clear his mind of lingering guilt over not doing his homework.

  She stood watching, not moving far away, possibly because it was a woman who’d called.

  Nudger said hello.

  “That you, Nudger?” Lacy’s voice. He hadn’t given her Claudia’s number, but she could have found it in the directory.

  “I think so.”

  “Your voice is funny. You been sleeping? Or did I interrupt you and Claudia in flagrante delicto, doing the wild thing?”

  “The former,” he said, glancing at Claudia.

  “In flagrante delicto?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Either way, you apparently weren’t watching the news. You should have been.”

  Nudger looked at his watch: ten thirty-two. “Why?”

  “On Channel Four, they mentioned toward the end of the broadcast that a woman named Lois Brown had been killed, electrocuted by her clothes dryer.”

  Now he was awake as if electrically charged himself. “You’re sure?”

  “I called, didn’t I?”

  “What else did they say about it?”

  “Only that tomorrow night they were going to start a series about deadly appliances in the home.”

  “It could have been another Lois Brown,” Nudger said, doubting it even as he spoke.

  “Could have been,” Lacy agreed without conviction.

  Nudger sat silently digesting the news for a minute.

  “Still there, Nudger
?”

  “Yes. And you’d better stay where you are. And make sure you’re locked in.”

  “I’ve got a gun now, Nudger. You should have one, too. I can arrange it for you.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, it’s your ... It’s up to you.”

  “Make sure you’re locked in,” he repeated. Ineffectual advice, he knew, imagining the pointy-headed goon casually smashing through a flimsy motel door, or possibly chopping through it with the axe-sized knife he carried.

  “I want to talk to you some more about this tomorrow, Nudger.”

  He agreed that they’d talk, then hung up.

  “Something wrong?” Claudia asked, setting the phone back on its table then sitting down beside Nudger on the sofa.

  He told her what was wrong.

  “Maybe it was another Lois Brown,” she said. “It’s a common enough name.”

  She sounded more hopeful than Lacy had, but still unconvincing. Nudger raised his eyebrows at her. She raised an eyebrow back.

  “Let’s sleep on it,” she suggested. She reached out an elegant hand and stroked his cheek. “We’ll think about Lois Brown tomorrow.”

  The late Lois Brown, he thought. He wondered if he should buy a gun, then reminded himself there was good reason not to have a gun in the apartment. He had met Claudia after she’d attempted suicide. And not that long ago, she had again demonstrated suicidal impulses. Bringing a gun into their lives might be like inviting the serpent into the garden.

  “We’ll sleep,” he said, with what he intended as a reassuring smile but knew was a sad mask. “Maybe tomorrow she’ll be alive again.”

  After checking the locks on all the doors and windows, he finished the wine and they went to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Nudger awoke a little after eight o’clock the next morning. He was pleased to notice that the burn on the back of his hand was no longer sensitive, and the dull ache in his shoulder had subsided. But when he started to sit up, his head seemed to explode.

  The wine from the unknown country.

  He dropped his head back down onto his pillow hard enough to make the bed jiggle, which caused Claudia to moan softly and roll over to face away from him. Which wound the sheet around her lithe body so that Nudger was uncovered, nude and cold. The thermostat on the old window-unit air conditioner malfunctioned most of the time and didn’t know the day hadn’t yet heated up. St. Louis weather! Possibly tomorrow it would snow. Possibly today. This was a city of meteorological whimsy. If you didn’t like the weather here, Nudger thought, go to San Diego.