by John Lutz
Padding around the room on the thick carpet, he noticed that the wallpaper, which was beige with subdued stripes of gold and pale green, had been applied so that all the stripes matched up, all the way around the room. He had vivid memories of paper-hanging from his married days, and he shook his head at the effort involved.
So it seemed all the more jarring when he noticed that one of Karen’s window treatments was crooked.
He walked over to the right front window and pushed the draperies aside. There were gouges in the plaster: The brackets that held up the curtain rod had been pulled out of the wall, and clumsily replaced. The poor repair job had not been done by Karen, he was certain of that. He wondered who had pulled down the drapes.
On the opposite wall was what appeared to be a large wooden wardrobe. An entertainment center, Nudger figured. He opened its doors and found a TV, with a complicated-looking VCR and stereo. A row of cassettes with handwritten labels was on the shelf above the VCR. Most of them were of hit movies of a few years ago. Nudger saw The Firm, the remake of Cape Fear, and Single White Female. Hmm ... Lawyers and psychotic killers. Then Nudger considered that almost all contemporary movies featured at least one lawyer or psychotic killer. Sometimes they were the same character. There were other movies, classics dating back into the thirties, many of them adventure films, Dupont’s taste in movies meant little if anything. Next to the video cassettes was a stack of Consumer Information magazines. Figured. On a bottom shelf were stacks of many of the other magazines that informed people on how to squeeze a dime till Roosevelt bled, never mentioning that the magazines were available at libraries so money could be saved by not subscribing.
Keeping in mind that the police had searched the house, and Dupont had had time to rearrange things afterward, Nudger began a methodical examination of each room’s contents, trying to leave everything as he’d found it.
The other rooms were as tastefully and comfortably furnished as the living room. Nudger found no other signs of destruction like the torn-down and replaced draperies in the living room. Nor did he find what he was really looking for: any clue that would connect Roger Dupont and Vella Kling.
Disappointed, but telling himself he’d had to conduct such a search, Nudger let himself out and locked the door behind him.
He’d just straightened up after returning the key and artificial rock to where he’d found them next to the geranium, when a voice said, “You made a small error, Mr. Nudger, when you parked your car around the corner. It happens to be visible from one of my upper floor windows.”
He turned and faced Alicia Van Moke. Her gray hair was pulled back today, making her strong face all the more striking. Her blue eyes seemed larger, more penetrating. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a fine white pattern that looked like delicate vines.
“There are no small errors,” Nudger said, recovering his composure nicely.
Alicia Van Moke smiled. “Napoleon Lajoie, Hall of Famer ballplayer, after a one to nothing loss.”
“How did you know that?” Nudger asked.
“I’m a baseball fan. Most poets are. It’s a very poetic game, you know.”
“I do know,” Nudger said.
“So, how do you view the Cardinals’ chances this year?”
“They’ll stay competitive,” Nudger said. “The owners have changed the play-off system and seen to it that all but a few teams will be competitive most of the season. There’s more money in it for them that way.”
“The bastards!” Alicia Van Moke said with passion.
“Yes,” Nudger said, a bit taken aback by her sudden fire, but agreeing with her. There were a few reasonable owners, but for the most part baseball team owners were corporate giants who saw their teams as integral parts of their business that needed to show wins only on the bottom line, or owners who simply wanted to gain power and wealth—even if it meant the destruction of the game.
“I hate artificial grass and the goddamned designated hitter,” Alicia Van Moke said. She turned her head for a moment, and Nudger thought she might actually spit with contempt, but she didn’t. “What were you looking for in the house?” she asked.
Nudger knew it would be pointless to lie to this woman. She’d known about Napoleon Lajoie. “I was trying to find proof of a connection between Roger Dupont and a woman named Vella Kling.”
“A romantic connection?” she asked. There might have been something in her eyes . . . what he’d seen for an instant when she’d contemplated the traitorous greed of the baseball owners.
“I was told it was a romantic relationship,” he said, still watching her.
Her eyes were calm now. Her sensuous lips not so compressed. Or was he imagining things, looking for more evidence of Dupont’s extramarital affairs?
“I never slept with Roger Dupont,” she said calmly.
What was she, psychic? “Why tell me?” Nudger asked.
“If I were in your place, I’d be wondering. I’d ask.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” he said. “If you had slept with him, you might not tell me the truth anyway.”
“Might not,” she admitted.
He grinned. “My conversations with you always seem to lead nowhere.”
“That’s true of most conversations, when you stop to think about it, which most people don’t do. Most people don’t stop to think about very much at all. You’re different, though, because of your occupation. Or are you in your occupation because you’re different?”
“I don’t know.” Nudger had never stopped to think about it.
“Do you think I’m the sort of woman who casually sleeps with men then discards them, Mr. Nudger?”
“I doubt if you do anything casually, though it seems that you do everything that way.”
She smiled broadly at him and nodded her head in admiration, making him feel like her star pupil who’d just scored an A on his oral exam. He wished she’d reach out and ruffle his hair.
Then she glanced at her house. “I have to go inside now, Mr. Nudger. Something might be overheating in my oven.”
He thought she might invite him in for supper, but she didn’t. He told her good-bye and watched her walk to her front door. He loved the way her dress flowed when she stepped out with her long legs.
He stared for a few seconds at her closed front door after she’d gone inside.
If he wasn’t going to have dinner at Alicia Van Moke’s house, he knew where he might as well eat.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Shag’s was doing a brisk business. Conscientious little Dorothy was handling drive-through orders, wearing the black box strapped to her waist with wires leading up to the bulky headphones with the jiggling antenna. “You want diet or regular?” Nudger heard her shout into the slender wand microphone that arced around from the headset to within inches of her lips.
Heidran was taking and serving up food orders at the counter. Her expression was calm but her U boat—commander eyes were as gray and threatening as the North Atlantic on the Murmansk run.
She saw Nudger and nodded curtly to him, then continued waiting on a tired-looking woman with two preschool kids hanging on her. The woman and both kids had the same oval features and thin red hair. Nudger fell into line behind a big man wearing paint-spattered white overalls and wondered if Heidran had counted on Ray being there all day, and that was the reason she and Dorothy were barely keeping up with customers’ demands. If Heidran didn’t shed herself of Ray, it wouldn’t be the last time he’d let her down. Nudger knew it the way he knew that darkness followed light, another sad inevitability.
The woman with the kids trudged wearily to a far table, balancing her brown tray full of burgers, fries, and drinks and pleading for her charges to quiet down. The big guy ordered four hamburgers and a shake. When it was Nudger’s turn, he asked Heidran for a Three-eighths Pounder, fries, and a glass of water.
“If you’re on a diet,” she said, “we’ve got diet drinks.”
“It’s not so much fo
r my weight as for my nervous stomach,” Nudger explained. His stomach overheard mention of it and twitched. “Plain water helps sometimes.”
Heidran nodded and got his order. She put crushed ice in his cup without asking.
As Nudger paid her, she said, “Ray was supposed to be in for work this morning.”
“I know,” Nudger said. “I understand his back’s acting up again.”
“I understand who’s acting,” Heidran said. There was muted thunder in her voice and in her look.
“He warned you he had a chronically sore back,” Nudger pointed out.
Heidran frowned, then smiled unconvincingly, and looked beyond Nudger’s right shoulder.
Three bearded guys in work clothes had entered Shag’s and fallen in behind Nudger to be waited on.
“We can talk later,” Heidran said.
Nudger got out of the way and carried his order on his brown tray to a booth as far away as possible from the weary woman with the two kids.
He ate slowly, then got a refill on his ice water and sat for another twenty minutes, staring out the window and listening to the customers coming and going. Watching cars thread their way along the drive-through lane and then turn onto Manchester with their carryout orders. Dorothy’s queries and the static-filled replies from the drive-through customers were like background music.
Finally, at about six forty-five, business slowed to nothing other than sporadic drive-throughs, and Heidran walked out from behind the counter, crossed the brown floor, and stood over Nudger with her arms crossed. He could see an impressive bulge of bicep straining her brown uniform sleeves.
“Why do you care so much about what happens to Ray?” she asked.
“I told you, I’m acting on behalf of Ray’s concerned cousin.”
“He should keep his nose in his doughnuts.”
“Probably. But in one way, he’s like you. For some reason, he believes in Ray. Of course, it could be because they’re related. Family’s not blind, like love, but it can be nearsighted.”
“You apparently can’t see very well yourself. Not well enough to see that there is something good and even ambitious in Ray. I will admit that at times it’s almost invisible, and one of those times is now. I’m mad enough at Ray to fire him when he reports here for work tomorrow.”
“You think he’ll be back?” Nudger asked.
“I hope so. And we both know I won’t fire him. I only said I was mad enough to do that; didn’t say I was going to. What I’ll do is give him another chance. After getting to know Ray, I perceived that’s his problem in life, nobody ever gave him a second chance.”
Nudger knew better. Ray’s problem was Ray. Nudger also knew it would be hopeless to tell that to Heidran. If Danny couldn’t see how truly worthless Ray was, how could love-lamed Heidran possibly see it?
“What if Ray’s back really is hurt?” Nudger asked, remembering his promise to Danny. “If you force him to come in here and make him choose between work or losing his livelihood, you might cause permanent injury—either physical or mental. We wouldn’t want to break his spirit.”
“This could be his livelihood,” Heidran said, waving a big arm to encompass all of Shag’s, “rather than his unemployment checks. It’s his spirit I want to revitalize.”
“It won’t happen,” Nudger said. “The truth is, he didn’t come here to work today because his spirit is beyond revitalization, either by the love of a good woman or by antioxidants. I warned you he was useless. Why don’t you simply give up on him? If you’re at all fond of him, make it appear as if you never hired him. Why run the risk of messing up his unemployment benefits?”
Heidran uncrossed her arms. She would have looked slightly less foreboding if she hadn’t clenched her rather large hands into fists. “Regardless of what you say, Ray is worth fighting for. I wouldn’t be doing him a favor by helping him claim fraudulent unemployment benefits and reinforcing his dependence on a pattern of public support.”
“Some people were born for public support. They’re of a breed, and Ray is one of them. He might be among the most highly evolved.”
Heidran stared disdainfully at Nudger, as if he were . . . well, Ray. “I don’t know who you think you are, to pass that kind of judgment on a person.”
“Not a person,” Nudger said. “Ray. Look at him under a microscope, and you’ll see little suckers all over him, like on an octopus.”
He could see her chest heaving. He really thought for a moment he’d gone too far and she might strike him. But dammit, he’d promised to do what he could for Ray, to give her a true picture so this woman would stop badgering him. Why should she care if Ray was a welfare leech? But Nudger knew her motive. So much harm was routinely done under the banner of love.
“If he reports for work here tomorrow,” Heidran said in a curiously tender voice, “he has another chance. You tell him that for me, Mr. Nudger.”
“I’ll tell him, but he’ll interpret it as a threat.”
“Maybe it is. You might also tell him I don’t believe his back is really injured. I’ve known a lot of slackers, and most of them have had bad backs, or said they did. You’d think there was an epidemic.”
Nudger finished his ice water and stood up. “You’re a good woman, Heidran. You don’t deserve Ray.”
Her cold gaze drilled into Nudger. “If Ray chooses to continue his aimless, parasitic drift, I will have failed.”
“It won’t be you who’ll fail,” Nudger said, “it will be Ray.”
“Not if I can help it.”
She couldn’t, but Nudger had no way of convincing her of that.
He went out into the lingering heat and climbed into the Granada. Since he drove past the St. James apartments on his way home, he thought he might as well stop by and see Ray in person instead of phoning.
No one answered when Nudger rang Ray’s doorbell. Nudger had heard a snatch of a Cubs game broadcast on WGNU cable. The TV’s volume had fallen silent after the ring of the doorbell.
Nudger knocked hard on the door. “It’s Nudger, Ray!”
No answer.
“I’ve got great news for you!” Nudger lied.
There was a faint sound from inside the apartment, then the door opened.
Ray was wearing pajamas and still had some sort of bulky wrapping around his waist, ostensibly for his back. His pajama tops, which had gray and black vertical stripes like a football referee’s uniform, bulged and made him appear misshapen. Nudger remembered that his own torso was wrapped; he didn’t like having even that in common with Ray.
“I was afraid you might be Heidran,” Ray said.
“I’ll bet.”
“What’s this great news, Nudge?”
“There is none.”
“What? Then why’d you—”
“You wouldn’t have answered my knock if I hadn’t lied to you, Ray.”
Ray put on his hurt expression. “That’s not true, Nudge. I was on my way to answer it.”
“Like the check is in the mail.”
“Huh? Listen, the real reason I didn’t want to come to the door right away—”
“Never mind. I talked to Heidran a little while ago at Shag’s. She said she doesn’t believe you have a sore back. You have one more chance, she said. She expects you to report for work tomorrow.”
Ray widened his eyes in indignation and disbelief. The whites showed all around the pupils. “There’s no way I can even get out of bed tomorrow morning with this back. It’s been like this before, so I know how much pain I’m gonna be in after laying in bed all those hours. It’s always worse the morning after it gets hurt.”
“I think she’ll fire you if you don’t show up,” Nudger said.
Ray made a show of pacing nervously, trying to keep himself between Nudger and the Cubs game on the silent TV visible inside the apartment.
“They winning?” Nudger asked.
Ray stopped pacing. “Who?” Then he feigned sudden comprehension. “Oh, the Cubs, you mean. I don�
��t even know the score. Damned television’s been on for hours because I didn’t wanna go through the pain of getting up and turning it off.”
“Don’t you have a remote?”
“Sure. I keep it on top of the television.” He absently inserted his hand inside his pajama tops and scratched beneath whatever was wound around his midsection. “Nudge, you sure Heidran won’t change her mind and just pretend I never even worked at that hellish place?”
“I’m sure, Ray. She wants to do you a favor and break your cycle of welfare dependence.”
“Ohhhhh!” Ray hugged himself as if he were cold.
If it weren’t for the fact that Ray was Danny’s cousin, and Nudger had promised to try to intercede on Ray’s behalf, Nudger would have run fast away from Ray and never thought about him again. Nudger knew he could still do that, and for a second or two considered it. He could almost see himself bolting toward his car, leaving Ray’s puzzled, self-pitying face to become part of the past.
But Danny deserved better, even if Ray didn’t.
Instead of deserting the situation, Nudger momentarily turned his back on Ray and got one of his business cards from his wallet. He always instinctively turned his back on Ray when he opened his wallet. Facing Ray again, he unclipped his ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled on the back of the card.
“What are you doing, Nudge?” Ray asked.
Nudger handed him the card. “If you can somehow show her you really do have an injured back, Heidran might give you some more rope before you hang yourself.”
Ray squinted at the card. “Dr. Fall? . . .”
“Dr. Fell,” Nudger corrected. “That’s his address. Don’t bother to look up his number and call for an appointment; he doesn’t make them. See him early tomorrow before you go in to Shag’s. Maybe he’ll give you a note confirming your back is sore.”
Ray brightened and stood up straight. “Hey, that’s a good idea, Nudge. Heidran shouldn’t fire me if a doctor says I’m ailing. And if she fires me anyway, I might even be able to bring suit. I mean, Shag’s will be depriving me of my livelihood.”
“Maybe you can at least collect sick pay,” Nudger said.