by John Lutz
Inside the building, away from prying eyes, Nudger climbed the steps to Claudia’s second-floor apartment and knocked on the door.
She opened it almost immediately—a medium-height, slender woman with dark hair and whimsical brown eyes. A woman who grew more attractive with each minute spent with her, each angle she presented. Hers was a face that belonged in a Renaissance painting: oval, somber, with a too-long but otherwise perfect nose. There was a plainness yet at the same time an odd nobility about Claudia that carried with it a low-voltage but sizzling sex appeal.
She said, “It’s you.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Don’t be contentious, Nudger. Come on in.” She stepped back with a dancer’s grace, her blue skirt swirling elegantly around slender ankles, her high heels leaving tiny indentations in the carpet. The outfit was a favorite of Nudger’s and one she’d worn on dates with him. He realized she was dressed to go out. Oh-oh!
He went inside and she closed the door behind him lightly, as if she wanted to open it again soon to let him out and was making sure it wouldn’t be stuck shut. The old Wilmington apartment was large and high-ceilinged, the sort of place common to the neighborhood. It had an old-fashioned crystal chandelier, fancy woodwork coated with layers of enamel, windows with wooden frames and venetian blinds, a brick fireplace that was no longer functional. Used and comfortable, a connection with the past. Nudger felt at home here.
Usually.
Claudia didn’t try to brush him off with lies. Give her that much. She said, “I was expecting someone else.”
“Biff Archway?”
“Well, yes.”
“I was gonna ask you to lunch. Thought I’d splurge, take you downtown and buy you a steak.”
She smiled. “Lying bastard.”
“About the steak maybe.”
He put his fists on his hips and walked over to the window overlooking the street, peering through the blind’s wooden slats and half-expecting to see Biff Archway parking down there, getting out of his sports car, and jogging healthily toward the building. Cheeks rosy, teeth flashing white, barrel chest stuck out, powerful arms pumping like pistons. Nudger really disliked that guy.
“What are you looking for?” Claudia asked. He could tell by her voice that she knew what. She didn’t like it when Nudger and Archway got together. The last time, it had resulted in Nudger being flipped about and flying through the air like a man gone berserk on a trampoline. Archway was an expert in martial arts, as he was in most things.
Nudger said, “Mostly I see zoysia grass.”
“There’s plenty of that around here. Too bad the stuff’s not good to eat.”
“Maybe it is. Tried it?”
“No.”
“They say dandelions are delicious when they’re cooked right.”
“They say.”
He decided to lay it on her. “I saw another woman last night.”
“I’m not surprised; we make up more than half the population.”
“I mean, I was out with another woman.”
“Were you really?” She seemed only mildly interested. Hah! Wait till she heard.
“Name’s Bonnie. A bright and beautiful young widow.”
“That covers everything but rich. You didn’t mention rich.”
“Rich? I dunno. She’s employed. A cosmetics executive.”
“Where’d you and Bonnie go?”
Ah, her curiosity was up. “Dinner. Then her place.”
“Which is where?”
Another question. Nudger liked the way this was going. He turned away from the window to look at Claudia, who had an eyebrow arched in what Nudger hoped was disapproval. Christ, he loved her! “She’s got a house out in the county.”
“Meet her through a case you’re on?”
“Yeah. The Virgil Hiller disappearance.”
“That the big-shot politician who stole from the city and ran away with his secretary?”
“I don’t think that’s exactly the way it happened,” Nudger said. “Neither does Bonnie.” Even as he spoke, he decided he’d better take it easy mentioning Bonnie over and over. He was messing with something potent here. A woman scorned could be a hellcat.
Claudia showed no reaction at the mention of Bonnie’s name. She said, “Nudger, I’m glad you’ve found you can enjoy the company of other women. I feel good about you and this Bonnie person. Now maybe you can understand how I feel, realize this arrangement of ours doesn’t mean I’m not still fond of you.”
Huh? What kind of crap was this? He said, “You really think what you just told me makes sense?”
She glared a dark warning at him. “Nudger, don’t start this conversation. Not now.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. We’ve had it before, though, and it leads nowhere except to an argument.”
“What about tomorrow?” Very calmly: “Lunch tomorrow?”
“I have a doctor’s appointment.”
“You’re sick?”
She seemed almost to smile at the concern in his voice. “It’s a routine Pap smear; nothing to worry about.”
“Dammit, Claudia—”
A car door slammed outside.
Nudger turned back to the window and saw Biff jogging across the street, away from his parked Mustang convertible, cheeks rosy, white teeth flashing, barrel chest stuck out, powerful arms pumping like pistons. A few of the leaf rakers halted work for a moment to wave at him. So much personal magnetism paper clips flew at him. Popular guy wherever he went. Especially with the women.
“That Biff?” Claudia asked.
“Sure. Don’t you hear the trumpets?”
She shook her head at the hopelessness of trying to reason with him. “Help yourself to a beer, Nudger, then let yourself out.”
She backed quickly to the door, and before he could say anything she was outside in the hall and the door was shut. He heard the clatter of her heels on the stairs. Heard the vestibule door open and close with a sound that reminded him of airlocks in science fiction movies.
He peered through the venetian blind slats again and saw Archway stop on the sidewalk and raise his arms as if to embrace her. She pecked him on the cheek, ducking in and out between his arms like a nifty bantamweight before he could touch her, and stalked toward his car. He shrugged and followed. Patient. Certain. Shoulders a little hunched, elbows slightly winged; a virile, confident walk.
As Claudia got into the car, she glanced almost angrily up at the window. Nudger thought of waving to her, but she’d lowered herself into the low-slung vehicle before he had a chance.
Archway wedged in behind the steering wheel. The red Mustang snarled what sounded to Nudger like a definite insult, then its tires dug in and it shot away from the curb and accelerated down the street. Changed tone and laid a few feet of rubber as Archway hit second gear in a speed shift. Probably he’d raced in a few Grand Prixs. An old guy washing his Pontiac tipped his baseball cap as the red bullet zipped past, doubtless wishing he were still young and hot-blooded. Then he bent again to the task of scrubbing his whitewalls until they looked virginal.
Nudger stood at the window for a long time, feeling the afternoon heat radiate from the glass, listening to the faint and desperate drone of a fly trapped behind the blinds.
Finally he trudged into the kitchen and got a can of Busch beer from the refrigerator. Put together a bologna sandwich. Got lucky and found some pickles.
Lunch, not as he’d planned it.
10
The hell with Biff Archway, and double-the-hell with Claudia. That was how Nudger felt at the moment, anyway.
He got a paper towel and wiped the crumbs off Claudia’s kitchen table. Felt a few of them crunch underfoot as he walked over and threw away the wadded towel and his empty beer can. The can bounced with despondent, hollow thunks at the bottom of the empty wastebasket. Just the way Nudger’s heart no doubt sounded. His hands smelled like bologna. He washed them, and they smelled like bologna a
nd soap.
It gave him perverse pleasure to use Claudia’s phone to call Bonnie Beal for another dinner date.
Bonnie’s machine answered. He remembered she’d said she was doing temporary office work and wouldn’t be home until five. And the kids were either at school or at a baby sitter. The oldest, Tad, would be only a high school junior or senior. At the machine’s piercing tone, Nudger identified himself and left his office phone number. Then he hung up and called Hammersmith at the Third.
The desk sergeant, Ellis, asked who was calling, though Nudger knew he recognized his voice. Procedure ran thick in cops’ blood. Satisfied, Ellis then turned Nudger over to the crackling and clicking of the switchboard system. Lost among the microchips. Several minutes passed before Hammersmith came to the phone.
“Got the Hiller thing solved yet?” he asked.
“No, but I’ve got this feeling I’m further along than the police.”
“Too many feelings, that’s always been your problem, Nudge.”
“Facts will follow.”
“Maybe. I assume you didn’t call to chat about the economy. So what can I do for you?”
“Anything on the bullet they dug out of my wall?”
“Yeah, it’s what the Maplewood police thought. Lump of lead that tells us nothing. Maybe if it hadn’t slammed into that hard wooden stud and flattened out it’d mean something. What we know for sure is that it’s a bullet from a gun that was pointed toward your office window. That oughta be enough to inspire reason and caution in you, Nudge.”
“Maybe you should question Arnie Kyle about it.”
“There’s an idea on par with arms for hostages. Kyle you don’t question unless you got something stronger than suspicion. He’s got layers of attorneys around him you have to peel back one by one. Incidentally, we talked to Adelaide Lacy a little while ago. Nice of you to warn her we were on our way.”
“I didn’t think you were gonna try to sneak up on her. Remember, she’s the one the police wouldn’t listen to in the beginning. You learn anything new from her?”
“For Chrissakes, Nudge, she’s your client. You oughtta know everything we learned from her—which is basically nothing.” He paused. Nudger heard the puffing and slurping of a cigar being lighted. Wheeze! Cough! “We share on this one,” Hammersmith said, his words distorted by the cigar in his mouth. “What friendsh are for.”
Nudger said, “That mean you’ll call me right away if anything new turns up?”
“Coursh.” Pause. “You gonna be home tonight, or at Claudia’s?” He’d taken the cigar out of his mouth.
“Neither.”
“Working late at your offish?” Back in.
“No.”
“Shtake-out, like on telewishion?”
“No.”
“Okay, be fuckin’ myshterioush!” Hammersmith said, and hung up.
He had a fetish about hanging up first on phone conversations. Made him feel one up on the world. He knew Nudger would call later and leave him a number.
Bonnie had turned on the cute and invited Nudger for dinner with the family at her house. She must have figured why not? He knew the worst and would either stick or bolt. Maybe this way he’d find out she could cook, and that would count for something. If she could.
The subdivision ranch house on Pleasant Lane looked the same. Same tree growing through the white circle of stones in the center of the front yard, same grease-stained driveway, same air of . . . well, sameness.
Janet, the fifteen-year-old, answered Nudger’s knock on the front door. She was wearing acid-washed jeans, scuffed brown sandals, and an untucked white T-shirt lettered MOUNTAINS OF LOVE across her undeveloped breasts. She looked him up and down.
“You got dressed up,” she said.
Nudger was wearing wrinkled slacks and his threadbare brown corduroy sportcoat. “No tie,” he pointed out.
She stared at him like a miniature hostile Bonnie, as if considering whether to admit him. Once inside, he might steal the silverware and rape the women.
“I’m only here for supper,” he told her, “not to plunder.” He flashed his winningest, most reassuring smile at her, pretending for an instant that he was Biff Archway. just for an instant.
“I know,” she said, warming up a few degrees to the Archway method. “Listen, Tad told me what he like said to you. He shouldn’t have done that. Tad’s a geek.”
“He’s worried about his mother,” Nudger said. “I understand that.”
Janet shook her head. “No, he’s a geek.”
“A geek’s a guy who bites the heads off chickens in carnival freak shows.”
“That ain’t what a geek is at school.”
“Maybe they behave at school,” Nudger said.
“Did I hear the doorbell?” Bonnie appeared a few feet behind Janet. She was wearing a crisp pink dress and actually had a white apron tied around her waist. The word “frilly” leaped into Nudger’s mind. On her left cheek was an unmistakable smudge of flour. The apron emphasized her tiny waist and generous breasts. Nudger felt as if he were making time with June Cleaver behind Ward’s back. There was a kind of erotic domesticity about it all that he liked. He wondered if it was calculated.
“He didn’t ring the doorbell,” Janet said, “just knocked.”
“Either way, invite him in. Where’s your manners?”
“Manners are for phonies.”
Nudger thought he could grow to like Janet. He wasn’t so sure about Tad.
Janet solemnly stepped aside so Nudger could enter.
The living room had been picked up. Even the furniture was squarely aligned against the walls. Not a sign of dust, and there were vacuum sweeper tracks on the blue carpet, as if the floor had been colored in with pale chalk laid flat and moved in a series of wide arcs. From the kitchen wafted the scent, even the taste, of bread baking.
Bonnie wiped her hands nervously on the apron, smiled cute as you please, and said, “Hope you like spaghetti.”
“One of my favorites,” Nudger said.
As if in doubt, Janet said, “Really?” Candid and suspicious Janet.
He nodded. “Cut my heart out if I’m lying.”
“Then you better lick your plate clean,” said a Clint Eastwood voice that broke into a momentary yodel. Tad.
Bonnie’s grin stretched wider, desperate. As if to make sure Nudger knew Tad had cracked a lame joke. He’s only a boy, the grin said. You understand. Don’t you?
Nudger thought, What the hell am I doing here?
Tad had on grimy Levi’s, a thick black belt with an oversized silver buckle in the form a race car, and a black shirt with the arms cut off. A rose with a dagger through it was tattooed on his scrawny left bicep, above the scrawled blue-lettered words BORN TO BE BAD. The left side of his nose was smeared with grease.
Bonnie squinted at the grease and said, “Wash that face before dinner, Tad.”
He glared at her. “I been workin’ on the Plymouth.”
“Now work on your face.”
He shrugged and moved away angrily in a swagger that didn’t belong with his skinny body. Made him look like a Slinky bounding down an incline.
“Told you,” Janet said. “Geek.”
“I made some martinis,” Bonnie said. “I noticed you had one last night before dinner at the restaurant.”
“Sounds great,” said Nudger, who usually drank bourbon or beer and had forced down a martini last night only to impress her. Janet was staring dubiously at him. Little bitch had some kind of truth radar.
He crossed the living room and sat down on the plaid sofa. It was firm and uncomfortable and he’d bet it was the kind that unfolded to make a hard and torturous bed. He’d seen them at J. C. Penney’s and just being near them had made his back ache.
Bonnie brought him his martini, complete with two olives impaled on a tiny red plastic sword.
It was a good martini if you had a taste for gin, which Nudger didn’t. Bonnie excused herself and bustled back to the
kitchen, while Janet continued to stare. Somewhere in the house an infant began to cry.
“That Belinda?” Nudger asked.
Janet shrugged. “Yeah. She’s like always crying. That’s babies for you.”
“Guess so.”
There was a loud grating noise and four-year-old James scooted into the room on a heavy-duty plastic truck with wide rubber wheels. It had some kind of ratchety mechanism to represent the roar of an engine. James had on jeans and a red shirt that was crookedly buttoned. He was barefoot. His straw-colored hair was unbelievably mussed. When he saw Nudger he grinned and said something like “Vroooooooroarr!” Short legs pumping crazily, he steered the plastic truck in ever-tightening circles until it toppled onto its side. James lay on his back as if horribly injured and began to kick the carpet, then roll, all the time grinning and keeping his eyes trained on Nudger. Wasn’t often somebody new to show off to ventured into the house.
Tad slunk back from washing his face. The grease stain was a gray film now. Carlotta, the adopted Mexican ten-year-old, stood near him, gazing at Nudger with sad brown eyes, like the children he’d seen begging in south-of-the-border newsreels. The kind that inspired instant guilt. Belinda was still wailing. Even louder. Calling ships at sea.
Nudger took a long pull on the martini. It actually tasted pretty good.
Bonnie called from the kitchen, “Janet, help set the table. Tad, you get the chairs.”
Tad said, “Shit!”
“I do nuffin’!” James yelled.
Janet moaned and trudged toward the dining room, kicking at James but missing as she passed. Tad groaned and followed her. Ask these kids to do something, they were in real pain.
Ten minutes later everyone was seated around an oval mahogany table in the dining room. A chandelier with a couple of hundred tiny bulbs glistened overhead. To Nudger’s left, a bay window looked out on the yard next door, where a mangy golden retriever was shoving its plastic water dish across the cement. The sound the dish made was something like James’s foot-propelled truck.