Time Exposure (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  “I gathered that.”

  “I mean, sure she’s having her problems, but if you start seeing somebody else. . . . Thing is, at least one of you has gotta work at keeping the relationship going.”

  Nudger was getting his fill of this, and of the Dunker Delite. “Who the hell are you, Dear Abby? Claudia’s going out with that Biff Archway jerk. What am I supposed to do, go to a drugstore and buy hormone depressants till she gets her act straightened out? Take a cold shower every hour?”

  Danny flinched at this flare-up of invective. “Hey, only trying to help, Nudge.”

  Nudger resolutely took the last bite of the Dunker Delite and swiveled down off his stool. Damn! He always felt like a bloodstained monster after kicking Danny’s delicate psyche. “I know, Danny. Sorry.”

  “S’okay, Nudge.”

  Was it?

  His stomach churning, Nudger carried his cup of coffee out of the shop and upstairs to his office, so as not to further injure Danny.

  The beautiful morning Danny had mentioned was warm, so Nudger switched on the air conditioner before going into the half-bath and pouring the remainder of the coffee down the washbasin drain. He stood and watched the brown liquid swirl, then ran cold water for a few seconds so the basin wouldn’t be stained. Then he got a fresh roll of antacid tablets out of the medicine cabinet and broke the foil.

  As he thumbed off two of the tablets and popped them into his mouth, he heard a faint noise from the office. An odd kind of double-slap—first a sharp blow, then a more solid one.

  Chomping the antacid tablets, he walked back into the office, thinking maybe something had shifted weight and slipped off the desk. A magazine or thick pamphlet might have made that kind of noise, if it had landed not quite flat on the floor.

  It was already much cooler in the office. And everything looked the same as when he’d stepped into the half-bath.

  Then he noticed the hole and the spiderweb crack in the window, a few inches above the air conditioner, and his stomach lurched. He swallowed the partly chewed tablets, scratching his throat and bringing tears to his eyes.

  But his vision wasn’t so clouded that when he turned he didn’t see the white sprinkling of plaster dust on the floor.

  And directly above it a small round hole high on the wall opposite the window.

  A bullet hole.

  8

  The uniform gazed at the hole up near the ceiling and said, “Guy was some piss-poor shot, or else he’s got a vision problem, sees things upside down.”

  Hammersmith glared at him, his blue eyes flat and cold. He said, “Just see Ballistics gets the bullet.”

  The uniform nodded and hustled out of Nudger’s office, carrying an opaque plastic bag containing the lump of lead that had been dug from the wall. Holding the bag with thumb and forefinger, well away from his body, as if it were something nasty. He looked like a dog walker reluctantly obeying a pooper-scooper law. Nudger wondered what the landlord would think of the hole in the wall. Considered hanging a picture over it, but knew it might look funny up there just a foot from the ceiling.

  Hammersmith fired up one of his abominable cigars, fouled the office with putrid green smoke, and sat on the edge of Nudger’s desk.

  He said, “You draw a line between the bullet hole in the wall, the one in the window, and follow that angle, Nudge, and it leads to the window of a stairwell landing of the building across the street. On a level about fifteen feet below your window. Leads also to some conclusions.”

  Nudger glanced at the bullet hole in the window, then carefully moved out of line with it. This business of bullets zipping through the office scared him. He didn’t like being at either end of a gun, but if he had his druthers he’d be the shooter rather than the shootee. “You’re going to tell me whoever fired the shot wasn’t really trying to hit me,” he said.

  “Well, it adds up that way. At the angle of fire, the only thing he could’ve hit would have been up near the ceiling. Probably couldn’t even see you from where he was. You said you were in the other room washing your hands, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. And now the law is washing its hands of this.” Hammersmith emitted a heavy fog of green smoke. Here was a man capable of closing airports. “Dammit, Nudge, you know better.”

  Nudger jammed his fists in his pants pockets and nodded. “Guess I do. Sorry.”

  “Also,” Hammersmith went on, “that’s an office building across the street. Guy couldn’t have stood there waiting to get a clear shot at you, not with people maybe popping out of offices, coming and going. Too risky. He must have gone to the landing, made sure nobody was around, fired off a round through your window, then got the hell out of there. All within less than a minute.”

  “You find an ejected casing on the landing?”

  “No. Nothing. And nobody in the building remembers seeing or hearing anything unusual around the time of the shot. Must have used a silencer. Those are bulky and a bitch to conceal, which adds to the impression the gunman didn’t plan on waiting for a target, just wanted to send a high-velocity message into your office, get you to thinking. Worrying.”

  Nudger knew Hammersmith was probably right. He had in fact reasoned most of this out himself after calling the law. The Maplewood police had taken a look at the spent bullet and determined that the lump of lead would reveal nothing about the gun that had fired it. They had questioned Nudger, taken extensive notes, told him they’d assign extra patrols to the area, and then left to file their report. All very professional and ineffective, but there wasn’t much else they could do. So somebody takes a shot at a window; these things happen, and there’s seldom a reason or solution. Every once in a while somebody runs amok. How the world works. Change that, you’ll have to call a psychiatrist, not a cop.

  But Hammersmith had said he might as well run the bullet by Ballistics in the city, misuse the taxpayers’ money, though he suspected all the lab could tell him was what the Maplewood police already knew: the bullet was larger than a .22 and was soft lead that had flattened slightly when it penetrated the window, then became even more misshapen when it entered the wall and, as luck would have it, became embedded in a hard wooden stud. He’d come across the city line between Saint Louis and Maplewood of his own accord, after Nudger had called him, and really shouldn’t have had the uniform drive him. For a cop, Hammersmith could sometimes bend the law with an easy conscience. Nudger liked that about him.

  “Question is, who’d be likely to shoot into your office?” Hammersmith asked. “That’s a serious enough offense even if the bullet doesn’t hit anyone. And there’s always the chance of a ricochet. Or maybe a seven-foot basketball player being here to hire you and getting his skull creased.”

  “I’ve got enemies, Jack, but nobody I’d figure would do this.”

  “Owe anybody money you haven’t paid?”

  Silly question. “The electric company comes to mind.”

  “They got easier ways of turning out your lights.”

  Nudger took his hands out of his pockets. “I owe Eileen.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Nudge. Eileen wouldn’t hire somebody to take a shot at you. Kill the goose that lays golden alimony eggs. Some motive. Besides, she’s not that sort of person and you’re damn well aware of it.”

  “Well, you know her better than I do; I was only married to her.”

  Hammersmith flicked ashes onto the floor and then sighted carefully along his cigar at Nudger, as if taking aim with carcinogens. “You still on that Hiller thing?”

  “Unless he’s been found.”

  “Nope, he’s still missing. Along with his secretary and all that money.” Thoughtful blue gaze. Cloud of smoke. “Knowing as I do the average volume of business that parades through these plush offices, might I assume that’s the only case you’re working on right now?”

  “Assume it,” Nudger said. “So far, though, I haven’t stirred up anybody who might. . .” Nudger glanced again at the bullet hole in the window. “You thinking A
rnie Kyle?”

  “Are you, Nudge?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure how or even if he’s mixed up in the Hiller disappearance.”

  “You asked about him when you were in my office down at the Third. Why?”

  “He paid my client a visit. Asked for an envelope Hiller’s secretary had left for safekeeping.”

  “Wait a minute—the missing secretary?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Christ! You don’t call that mixed up in it?”

  “There’s not necessarily a connection. I don’t know what was in the envelope.”

  “Who does?”

  “Whoever took it. It’s missing.”

  “What about your client?”

  “Never looked inside.”

  “You sure, Nudge?”

  “Very. For what it’s worth.”

  “Worth a lot to me,” Hammersmith said. “But I’m afraid we’re gonna have to talk to your client.”

  “I thought the police had it figured out that Hiller and his secretary ran off with city money and are living it up somewhere. Windsurfing and drinking pina coladas at taxpayer expense.”

  “Most likely it is that way. But now a shot’s been fired at somebody looking into the matter, and you mentioned this envelope left by the secretary. You mentioned Arnie Kyle.”

  “Mentioned him yesterday.”

  “But not in the context of the envelope and the secretary.” Nudger knew the law, knew Hammersmith had no choice but to ask him about the case. Knew he’d have to give up his client’s name. Adelaide hadn’t instructed him not to; but if knowledge was power, why give it away?

  Unless there was no alternative. He told Hammersmith who’d hired him. “We’re talking about sisters here; that’s why Kyle and the envelope might not be connected to the theft of the money and the disappearance of Hiller and Mary Lacy.”

  “So what do you think links Mary Lacy to Kyle?” Nudger looked out the window, beyond the bullet hole, at the building across the street, where the gunman had set up and fired into the office. “Who knows? Maybe gambling. Or something political. Maybe something Mary Lacy didn’t even know about.”

  Hammersmith said, “We talked with Adelaide Lacy.” “Right. You told her you had the case solved, her wallflower sister was away someplace tossing stolen money around and sleeping with her boss who she hated.”

  Hammersmith stood up, inhaled and exhaled heavily on the cigar. More green smoke. Getting to Nudger’s stomach. The office would reek for days of a mixture of cooked nicotine and greasy doughnuts. Nudger would smell the same way. People would shy away from him. Stray dogs would sniff him, cough.

  “Don’t be cruel, Nudge,” Hammersmith said. “You know how we have to approach these things.”

  “You still believe it?”

  “Believe what?”

  “About Hiller and his secretary.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  That was pretty much where Nudger stood.

  About most things in life.

  9

  The county library was practically deserted this time of day. Too early for Baudelaire, not to mention Jackie Collins.

  Nudger and Adelaide stepped into a room near the checkout desk. There were about a dozen microfilm viewers lining the walls, and there were file cabinets containing microfilmed copies of St. Louis newspapers dating back to the nineteenth century. The Post-Dispatch, the defunct Globe-Democrat and St. Louis Star-Times. Nobody was probing the printed past at the moment, so they could talk in private in the hushed little room that smelled of dust and history.

  Adelaide had her blond hair pinned back and was wearing a skirt too short to belong on a librarian. But then her legs didn’t belong on a librarian, either. Nudger cautioned himself about thinking in stereotypes. Shouldn’t do that. It was a disservice to librarians, accountants, teachers, and the like. After all, his high school biology teacher had had legs like Adelaide’s. Made it difficult to concentrate on dissecting frogs.

  He said, “The police are going to talk to you. I had to tell them you hired me to look for Mary.”

  She seemed to make no big deal of that. “They’ve already talked to me, but they didn’t say much that meant anything. I want them to talk to me again. If you’ve got them believing Mary might not have run away with Hiller, that’s fine with me. That’s part of the object of all this.”

  “I would say they’re beginning to doubt,” Nudger said. “Because of this morning.” He told her about the unseen gunman in the building across Manchester, the bullet that had entered his office.

  She seemed alarmed, yet strangely calm. “Are you sure it’s connected with this case?” she asked.

  He didn’t want to tell her that at the moment this was his only case. “Yeah, I’m sure. None of my other cases involves Arnie Kyle.”

  She became thoughtful at the mention of Kyle’s name. Nudger noticed that she had a short yellow pencil tucked behind one pale ear, almost lost in her swirl of yellow hair. “He’d really do something like that? Fire a shot at you?”

  “No, but he has people on retainer who’d do things like that. And worse. Partly for money, partly because they enjoy that kind of action. Some of the folks working for Arnie Kyle cast real doubt on the theory of evolution.”

  She said, “You’re afraid?”

  “Ah, you picked that up.”

  “Seems odd to see a private detective afraid. You people are supposed to be hard-nosed and fearless. Like Mike Hammer.” She lifted a hand in a vague gesture toward the mystery section out in the main library, where chaos became order and justice reigned.

  “This is real life, Adelaide, and I’d like to make it last as long as possible.”

  “Want me to hire someone else?”

  “I didn’t say I was showing the white feather. I am saying this is a time for extra caution.”

  She nodded, considering, then said, “I agree. Did you go to Mary’s apartment?”

  “Yesterday. Mind if I keep your key to the place? Just in case?”

  “Keep it. I don’t have a use for it anymore. Find out anything there?”

  “Nothing specific, but I came away with more of a sense of who your sister is.” Nudger had almost said was. “It’s the lair of an orderly—and if you don’t mind my saying so—dull spinster.”

  “Well, I told you why Mary didn’t have many male friends. I mean, after what was done to her. The rape was brutal, mentally debilitating, and it destroyed her respect for men, destroyed her self-respect. She felt dirty for a long time. Guilty, if you can imagine. As if she’d done something wrong. I know it shouldn’t work that way, but it does. It’s an emotional reaction. You’d have to be a woman to understand. For quite a while she was reclusive. I mean almost totally. Hardly ever raised her shades. She’s lived by herself for the last ten years. Six years ago she got her job with the city, and three years ago she got the apartment in Richmond Heights. It’s an improvement over the cheap rented room she lived in downtown. She’s had to re-create herself, Nudger; do you understand that?”

  “I think so.”

  “There’s nothing in my sister that could possibly include her running away with Virgil Hiller.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Nudger admitted. He became aware of something. Sniffed the air. “You smell terrific. What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

  “It’s called Hot Shoulders. Why?”

  Should be called Small World. “That’s a Nora Dove perfume, isn’t it?”

  Her blue eyes flared in surprise. “I’ll be damned. The detective knows his scents.”

  “Isn’t that line of cosmetics only sold door to door? Something like Avon?”

  “That’s right. It’s not carried in the stores.”

  “Who’d you buy it from?”

  “No one. It was a gift from an admirer.” She smiled a mysterious librarian’s smile, as if only she had the key to the reference room of life. “I’m not nearly as shy as Mary.”

  A bespectac
led man in a baggy brown sweater stuck his head into the room, then shuffled into the doorway. He was carrying a thick looseleaf notebook and a folded Wall Street journal.

  He smiled nervously and said, “I need the financial pages from October, nineteen twenty-nine.”

  Adelaide said, “This is the place.”

  He came all the way into the room and stood in front of the file cabinets, studying labels. The sweater had leather elbow patches. “Maybe if I read about the twenty-nine crash, I can figure out where the stock market’s going next,” he said. But he sounded doubtful, almost woeful.

  The librarian in Adelaide sprang to life and she offered to be of service.

  Nudger said good-bye and left the two of them bent over the file cabinet drawers, Adelaide helping the guy in the brown sweater try to do what Nudger was attempting: make sense of the present and divine the future by exploring the past. Somehow come out ahead when the smoke cleared. People had been working on that one since before Nostradamus and not doing well at all.

  At least Nudger could exercise some control over his future; he was going to have lunch.

  To add the spice of uncertainty to the afternoon, he decided to drive by Claudia’s and see if she wanted to join him. The fall semester was just getting under way at Stowe High School, and she’d mentioned that this was the date for late registration and she had the day off. She was probably lounging around her apartment, maybe getting a few things done at home before settling down to the grind of a new school year. Domestic duties. Unsuspectingly sorting the wash or vacuuming. Soonto-be-jealous Claudia.

  Ah, she was home! Her tiny white Chevette sedan was parked in front of her apartment building on Wilmington. As Nudger got out of his car and crossed the street, a few of Claudia’s neighbors stopped what they were doing to stare at him. What they were doing was raking nasty leaves off their manicured little lawns, or planting zoysia grass. Early fall was a good time to plant the sturdy grass; it was placed on lawns in plugs, rather like hair transplants, so that when spring came it could begin its insidious takeover of less hardy growth. Innocent Bermuda grass didn’t stand a chance. Not even crabgrass. Nor was any other grass preferred in this part of town. People here were serious about their lawns. Even devout. In the pantheon of deities, zoysia was the god of South St. Louis.