The right to sing the blues an-3

by John Lutz

  "I don't know."

  "What do you know?"

  "That she's gone. I was at Fat Jack's when you called him. He couldn't hide what the conversation was about."

  "Willy Hollister's gone, too."

  "Is he?" Nudger decided to play ignorant on that one, for Fat Jack's sake.

  Collins grinned-no, grimaced toothily. When he did that he reminded Nudger of a young, sickly Richard Wid- mark. "His clothes are gone from his apartment. He didn't give his landlord any notice. He didn't leave a note or forwarding address. Just packed and left." He took a very delicate sip of his drink; nibbled at it, really. "Just what do you make of it, Mr. Nudger?"

  "Are Ineida's clothes gone?"

  Collins nodded slightly in vague admiration. "A sensible question. The answer to it is what disturbs me a great deal. Her clothes are there. All of her personal effects are there. Everything but Ineida. This is no joke that she's playing along with." A kind of slow anger seemed to be building in Collins, a modulated rage that sizzled with dangerous energy. Nudger understood why people feared him. "She's been kidnapped; I received a ransom note."

  "Demanding how much?"

  "Nothing specific yet. I'm supposed to be contacted again to let me know how much getting Ineida back will cost me, and where to deliver the money." He took another dainty sip of his drink; the level of the liquid didn't seem to have dropped at all when he lowered his glass. "Off this room there is a wine cellar, Mr. Nudger. I'm proud of it for the vintages it contains, but it also serves another purpose. It's windowless, and completely soundproof. A person could scream like a Civil Defense siren in there and not be heard even here, where we are." The large brown eyes didn't blink, didn't waver. "Why did Fat Jack hire you, Mr. Nudger? And don't deny he's your client."

  "Why deny what you already know is true?" Nudger said, reasonably and in the interest of self-preservation. "He hired me to find out about Willy Hollister. He was worried about Hollister's relationship with Ineida, worried about what you might do if something happened to her because of her connection with the club. He knew he was supposed to be looking out for her, but there really was no way he could do that. The next best thing he could do was to find out where trouble might come from and try to head it off."

  "And what did you find out about Hollister and my daughter?"

  "Ineida is a nice kid who can't sing. And she's in love and not thinking straight."

  "And Hollister?"

  Nudger drew a deep breath and told Collins about Willy Hollister and Jacqui James and the other vanished women in various cities where Hollister had played blues as they had never been played before. The lines in Collins gaunt face deepened and his eyes darkened as he listened intently. This he did not like.

  When Nudger was finished talking, Collins walked to a black steel file cabinet near the bar. He unlocked and slid open the top drawer all the way; it made a soft rolling sound on its tracks. Then he drew something out of it with his back to Nudger. He left the drawer open as he walked back over to stand in front of Nudger.

  "Where did you get these?" he asked, holding out the stack of Ineida's love letters for Nudger to see.

  Nudger thought about Collins' wine cellar, but not the wine. His eyes flicked to a heavy plank door that probably led to it. He still felt cooperative. "I took them from Willy Hollister's apartment," he said.

  "You shouldn't be snooping around other people's apartments," Collins told him.

  "Or hotel rooms."

  Collins appeared puzzled for a moment, then smiled his Richard Widmark death's-head grin. "You got it wrong, Nudger, we didn't get these out of your room. Someone gave them to us."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. They were mailed."

  Nudger decided not to press. He didn't want Collins to press back harder, rock-against-Nudger-against-hard-place.

  "How long have you had these?" Collins asked, hefting the stack of letters in his right hand as if he might decide to toss them away in disgust, out of sight, out of the equation of his life and his daughter's life. But he hadn't the power to do that, and it infuriated him.

  "A few days."

  "Did you show them to Fat Jack?"

  "No." Nudger didn't mention that he'd told Fat Jack about Ineida and Hollister's impending elopement. He hoped Collins wouldn't ask about that. It would be client-protection time, and Nudger didn't know if he was up to it.

  But Collins let the blame fall on the nearest target.

  "Maybe Ineida wouldn't be gone if you had let me know about these letters. Or if you hadn't been hanging around asking questions, opening cans of worms." His upper lip curled nastily, slurring his words. He looked as if he'd encountered a foul odor.

  "Listen," Nudger began to implore.

  "You listen, you bastard! Somebody snatched my daughter. That means two things: First, I do everything and anything to get her back. Second, I do everything possible and then some to see that whoever took her lives long enough to regret it but not much longer."

  "Call the police," Nudger said.

  "Oh?" Collins began to pace back and forth. The yellow cat watched him without blinking, moving its head slowly left to right to left. "Is that an order, Nudger?"

  "Advice. Despite what you read or see on TV, the best thing to do when someone is kidnapped is to get the police in on it. Then the FBI. They know their business."

  "I don't want the law to know about this."

  "Livingston knows."

  Collins didn't answer. He didn't seem to think of Livingston as the law.

  "I like your daughter," Nudger said. "I want to see her home safe, too."

  "Good. That works out fine. It gives you double incentive."

  "Incentive to do what?" But Nudger knew what Collins had in mind.

  "You're a detective," Collins said. "You find out things. You're going to find out where Ineida is. You're going to get her back home, safe."

  "That might not be something I can accomplish, no matter how hard I try."

  "You'll wish it were. Because if, after a length of time I decide upon, Ineida isn't back here with you, you'll be back here by yourself. That will leave you with two stops to make: the wine cellar, and the bayou." He glanced somberly at Frick and Frack. "You'll look forward to the bayou, Nudger."

  "You might be asking the impossible," Nudger said.

  Black laser light glinted Collins' eyes. "Nothing's impossible where my daughter's concerned." The ice in his glass made a tiny clinking sound; his hand was trembling.

  He abruptly held the glass in front of him cupped in both hands, and turned away.

  Frick stood aside and Frack made a motion with his big arm, signaling Nudger to leave with them.

  Nudger was ready. The chair hissed at him like a malevolent serpent as he stood up. Frick and Frack waited while he moved through the doorway ahead of them. He glanced back before their oversized forms blocked his view.

  Collins was standing on the other side of the room, still half turned away from them, holding and stroking the yellow cat. Both of them wore expressions suggesting they were dreaming of mice.

  XXVII

  Wise men purport to see a universality in all experience, a kind of connective tissue that exists throughout the universe so that no occurrence is independent of any other; there is, so they say, a reason for everything, and if one scrutinizes carefully enough, it is the same reason. These are wise men. Nudger was the kind of guy who was always trying mentally to recreate the day so he could figure out where he'd misplaced his car key, only to walk where he needed to go and then later find the key still in the ignition, where he'd forgotten it the night before. He often reflected that he wasn't cut out for his profession. But then how many people other than jockeys and bearded ladies were suited to their jobs?

  And here he was, searching for the single connective reason in this universe of grits and graft that he'd stumbled into so willingly in order to pay next month's rent. To be able to find out what he didn't know, he needed to find out why h
e didn't know it. And the easiest way to do that was to get someone to tell him.

  He had phoned Sandra Reckoner at several places, and finally located her where he should have looked to begin with, at her home number. She was just like ignition keys.

  She agreed to meet him for lunch at The Instrumental, in the same block as her husband's flagship antique shop, the lounge where they had talked about sex and ill-kept secrets.

  Though the place was crowded, she'd been able to get the table they'd sat at before. The same husky waitress was gliding like a Roller Derby queen among the tables; the same musical instruments were suspended from the ceiling and mounted on the walls. The thing that was different was that there was a piano player now, and a young blond girl sitting on the piano with a drink and cigarette balanced in the same hand, singing Helen Morgan style. She wasn't bad, Nudger decided, but she needed her own act. That could be said of so many people.

  Sandra looked cool and faintly amused. Her makeup and the dim light took ten years off her elongated face, robbing it of character rather than improving her looks. She had on slacks and a brilliantly striped, loose-fitting silky blouse with black half-dollar-size buttons; only a tall woman could wear that outfit.

  "Did you decide you owe me lunch?" she asked Nudger, as he sat down across the table from her. The glass before her was empty except for half-melted ice. She'd been there awhile waiting for him.

  "I owe you more than that," he told her. "Or maybe we're more even than I'd thought." The girl on the piano moaned softly about lost love.

  Sandra didn't ask him what he meant by that; she was a great believer in letting time do its work. Nudger would get around to what he wanted to say, and she'd still be there to listen.

  The waitress suddenly hovered over their table, pencil poised. She was wearing perfume that smelled overpower- ingly of lilacs. Avon screaming.

  "Can I getcha anything?" she asked.

  "Anything? Probably not," Nudger told her. "Just food or drink."

  Her bored-waitress expression didn't change. Wrong wavelength, wrong planet. More evidence that the universe was made up of random, disparate parts.

  "I'm not hungry," Sandra said. "I'll just have another Scotch and water." She looked at Nudger. "Go ahead and order some lunch; I won't think you're impolite."

  "What's good here?" Nudger asked the waitress.

  "Roast-beef sandwiches."

  "What else do you serve?"

  She shook her head. "Just roast-beef sandwiches."

  "Good," Nudger said. A painless and easy choice was refreshing. "I'll have one with ketchup, salt and pepper, no onions."

  "They only come one way," the waitress said.

  No choice at all was necessary. "Great!" He wasn't being sarcastic; he was obviously really pleased about the sandwiches' lack of variety.

  She looked at him oddly and made a darting squiggle of some sort in her order pad. She made similar marks to represent the drink orders, then moved away busily to deliver her message so that someone who read waitressese could interpret and cook and pour.

  "The roast-beef sandwiches here are delicious," Sandra assured him. "Now that your mind's at ease about that, what else is worrying you?"

  "Do I look worried?"

  She nodded her long head. "And puzzled. About what?"

  "Why were you waiting for me in my hotel room night before last?" he asked her.

  She smiled. "I like you and I like lust."

  "I don't doubt the last part," Nudger told her.

  She seemed more amused than offended. "There's nothing wrong with lust; it's so much purer and less complicated than love. But why do you doubt the first part of what I said? I do like you."

  "But you must know that David Collins doesn't share your affection for me. So why did you give him the letters?"

  "David Collins? Letters?"

  "Collins is the guy who sent you to search my room and my mind."

  "And the letters?"

  "The stack of blue envelopes you took from my room and gave him."

  As he watched her face, Nudger's stomach began to bother him, a vague stirring of pain and regret. He was wrong about this woman, his stomach was telling him. A presage of guilt twisted its claws into him. It had to be her, and yet it wasn't. He knew it in that instant. He was hurting someone who cared for him, who had trusted him more than he'd trusted her. Yet he had no choice; he had to find out about this for sure, and then probe deeper.

  "Is this the big-shot David Collins who gets his name in the papers now and then for charity and chicanery?"

  Nudger nodded.

  "Never met the man. These his letters that are missing from your room?"

  "Not his letters, but they were written by someone he knows."

  "And you think I went to you so I could pick your brain and rummage through your room, that I used sex as an excuse to get in and stay awhile." She seemed, more than anything else, disappointed in him. "You believe I stole from you."

  "I don't know that for sure. That's why I wanted to talk with you." Too late for moderation; he had lost her.

  She stood up from her chair, looking down frowning and slowly shaking her head at him, as if he were vintage wine that had suddenly gone to vinegar. He had let her down in a way not so dissimilar.

  "In the grand scheme of things," she told him calmly, "we didn't have much between us, Nudger, but what we did have, you've broken."

  "I didn't have any choice. I had to know."

  "And do you know?"

  He did know; he was certain. It hadn't made sense from the beginning. "You didn't take the letters," he told her. "Sit back down, Sandra. Please."

  She gave him a distant, pitying smile, turned, and walked with her long-legged stride through the crowd of drinkers and diners toward the exit. A one-chance woman walking from his life. Afternoon brilliance and traffic noise erupted around her briefly, as if she had magically summoned it all simply by touching the doorknob; then she disappeared into the brightness and sound even before the door swung closed.

  Nudger felt suddenly as if the chain-smoking, chain- drinking, moaning girl on the piano were singing just for him. He sat morosely, thinking that the conversation hadn't turned out at all as he'd planned. In fact, a number of incidents had gone wrong for him lately. It was dispiriting; he felt dejected and small. Maybe he'd commit suicide by leaping from his chair onto the floor.

  He tried to shake that feeling. It was counter-productive, and he had work to do.

  Besides, maybe his string of bad luck was ended. Luck was like that-streaky. And it had balance, a way of equalizing. So probably, despite how he felt about what had happened with Sandra, he'd bottomed out and fortune was now on the upswing. It had to be that way; from now on, things large and small would break his way. He was, in fact, convinced of it. He could feel his new run of luck throbbing in his veins.

  A shadow fell across the table. Sandra's? He jerked his head around to look up and behind him, caught the oppressive scent of lilac.

  The big waitress was standing over him, looking blankly down at him.

  She said, "We're out of roast beef."

  XXVIII

  Nudger didn't know the woman crossing the Majestueux lobby's deep carpet with a springy, indomitable sort of walk. Preoccupied with his problems, he didn't pay much attention to her until she got nearer. She was in her mid-forties, still attractive in the fragile way of blond women with porcelain complexions. Age had touched her lightly but often, a faint but harsh line here, a lack of luster in the well-coiffed hair there. She seemed brittle yet gentle and knowing, tempered by life's fire. Her springy walk was compact and graceful, like a gymnast's. She was on the short side, petite, and when she locked gazes with Nudger her pace toward him quickened. She had to be-

  "I'm Marilyn Eeker, Mr. Nudger," she said. "The desk clerk pointed you out to me. I've been trying to get in touch with you."

  "I know," Nudger said. "We seem to be a second behind or ahead of each other. Why have you been lo
oking for me, Miss Eeker?"

  "Mrs.," she corrected. "It's about Ineida. I know you've been… looking into her life."

  Nudger waited, wondering.

  Marilyn Eeker smiled nervously and glanced around. "Can we go somewhere and sit down, Mr. Nudger?"

  "Sure." Nudger motioned toward the hotel restaurant. She went inside with him, and the Creole Queen who was the hostess led them to a corner booth by the window. They sat looking out at the wavering heat rising like sultry dreams from the damp street.

  Marilyn Eeker said nothing until the waitress had brought the iced tea she'd ordered, the glass of milk for Nudger. She added two exactly level spoons of sugar to her tea, then a squeeze of lemon, dropping the rind into the glass. Nudger noticed that the cuff of her blouse was frayed. When she had finished carefully and thoroughly stirring the concoction, she said, "Ineida's missing, Mr. Nudger. What do you know about it?"

  "What I don't know," Nudger said gently, "is who you are, and why you think she's missing."

  Marilyn Eeker was surprised; her translucent blue eyes widened. They were beautiful eyes, only just beginning to fade. Then she smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry-I'm not thinking straight these days. I'm Ineida's mother."

  Nudger's hand reaching for his glass paused. "David Collins' wife?"

  "I used to be. We divorced fifteen years ago. David managed to pull strings, keep custody of Ineida. I live alone now, and use my maiden name. David and I never see each other. But my daughter and I remained close; we became good friends. She confides in me, Mr. Nudger. She told me she thought you were working for her father, then she became unsure of that. Who are you? Who are you working for?"

  Nudger looked across the table into the deep and relentless agony that was tearing at the fiber of this gentle woman. Her daughter was missing, and she'd been left out of the game entirely. He figured he owed her answers. "I'm a private investigator, hired to look into Ineida's relationship with Willy Hollister. I can't tell you the identity of my client, but it isn't David Collins."