Time Exposure (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  As he parked by the mill, Nudger gave it a shuddering glance. Then he locked the Granada and crossed the street.

  It was a six-family building, with a sharply peaked roof, tar paper siding designed to look like bricks, and windowpanes that were either cracked or replaced with water-stained cardboard. The entrance was flanked by small, recently planted evergreens; maybe the building’s owner had stolen some of the city trees across Manchester. The tree on the left was brown and dead. Its green partner was polelike and pathetic, and would be lucky to make it through the merciless St. Louis winter that was haunting September like a specter.

  Nudger pushed into the tiny, tiled vestibule. Smelled stale vomit and urine. Saw nothing original about the graffiti. Who scrawled this stuff? Had anyone actually seen a human hand at work on it? What kind of person spelled “women” w-i-m-i-n? He noticed there were no names in the slots above any of the mailboxes, and the lock on every box had been punched out. He trudged up the wooden steps and began knocking on doors.

  No one answered his knocks.

  The third door he rapped on swung open, and he saw that the apartment was littered and hadn’t been occupied for quite a while. He tried the other two doors. They, too, were unlocked and squeaked open to reveal vacant units.

  Afraid Skip Monohan had changed addresses, as folks of his ilk did often, Nudger made his way to the second floor. A mouse scurried around a crumpled paper bag on the landing and disappeared into the shadows of the baseboard. Nudger probed the bag tentatively with his foot. Empty. The higher he climbed, the more the building smelled like a public toilet.

  Two of the second-floor doors were unlocked and led to empty and abused apartments. One had the blackened remains of a small campfire in the center of the ruined hardwood floor. Probably not built by Boy Scouts.

  Ah. The door to the third unit was locked.

  Nudger knocked.

  Got no answer. Skip knew who he was. Skip knew everyone. Knew about them, too.

  Nudger shouted, “Skip, Nudger here. I leave without you talking to me, there’s a uniform in your near future.”

  Silence. Long minutes.

  “Next stop’s police headquarters, Skip. The chief’s waiting to hear from me.”

  Nothing but echoes through the empty building. Bouncing off all that enameled wood and cracked plaster. Mimicking the mean and desperate lives that had been played out there.

  Nudger gave up and was turning to walk away when the door opened.

  “I knew who it was,” Skip said. “Seen you drive up. Heard you kicking around downstairs.” He tried out his broken-toothed smile, young guy on the way to early death. There was an amiable Irish face beneath the decay. Clean him up, trim his hair and beard, take a few hard years off him, and he’d be the nice-looking type you’d like to see date your daughter—if only his eyes didn’t now and then look like Charles Manson’s. “Been in the B and L lately?”

  “Lunch last week,” Nudger said. The B and L was a small and inexpensive diner at Manchester and Sutton, near Nudger’s office, where he’d seen Skip a few times hunched over a bowl of chili.

  Skip looked as if he could use a meal now. He was thinner than Nudger had ever seen him, wearing paint-smeared pleated pants he’d probably filched from a dumpster. No shoes, and nothing to keep him warm up top except for tattoos. They were the crude, one-tone blue tattoos of the sort done by inmates in the state penitentiary: snakes, daggers, bound buxom women. Tattoos paid for with cigarettes, the currency of the incarcerated. The word TRIUMPH was tattooed on Skip’s wasted right forearm. That was a laugh.

  Skip said, “So whatcha want, Nudger?”

  “Maybe you could invite me in.” Nudger pointed to the paint-spotted pants. “Unless you’re busy sprucing up the place.”

  Skip grinned again. “I have decorators come in and do that kinda thing.” He stepped back to let Nudger edge past him.

  Nudger caught a whiff of Skip’s foul breath, then found himself standing in the middle of an amazingly littered room. There were empty beer cans, wine bottles, crumpled fast-food bags from White Castle, a faded pink bra (Nudger wondered where that had come from; what kind of wimin would spend time here?), stacks of yellowed newspapers, piles of wallpaper that had peeled off the stained plaster walls. One corner had been cleared to allow room for a battered kerosene heater and a rumpled mound of blankets. Taken by surprise by a pang of pity, Nudger said, “Times rough, Skip?”

  “You fuckin’ know it, man!”

  Skip shut the door and walked over to stand near the heater, which wasn’t burning. He moved with a slow limp, as if his knees ached and would feel that way for the rest of his life.

  “All I want’s some information,” Nudger said.

  Skip snorted. “Good! ‘Cause that’s about all I got to give.”

  Nudger kicked aside a huge dead cockroach and walked farther into the apartment. The bare floor and walls amplified the sounds of his steps. “Ever make any deliveries to a woman over on Hoover? Mary Lacy?”

  Skip wiped the back of his thumb across his runny nose, then wiped the thumb over his chest, as if he were wearing a shirt. “Tell you straight out, I could use some bread, Nudger.”

  Nudger knew he didn’t mean enriched white. He reached for his wallet again, for what made the wheels of the world go round. He said, “Ten do it?”

  “C’mon, Nudger. This is a normal business expense for you, ain’t it?”

  Thinking he’d have a difficult time asking Adelaide Lacy to cover bribes, Nudger said, “This is more personal. Ten’ll have to do.”

  “Won’t, though.”

  The wallet slid smoothly back into Nudger’s hip pocket. “Your choice.”

  Before Nudger could so much as move, big bluffer Skip said, “Ten’ll buy a couple of what I need at that.”

  Nudger handed him the ten-dollar bill. “The money’s not counterfeit, so it oughta buy straight information.”

  “Nothing there not to be straight,” Skip said, tucking the wadded bill into the pocket of his pleated paint pants. “I was told the lady’s name and address so I could make a regular drop to her.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Don’t ask me that, Nudger.” It was a plea. Skip didn’t want to be put in a vise, where he’d spent so much of his life. Naming the people he worked for could be fatal, and in ways not pleasant.

  “All right, but do you know how they got her name? I mean, how’d somebody like that make the contact?”

  “Whaddya mean, ‘somebody like that’? You’d be surprised by some of my regular customers.”

  “Guess so,” Nudger said. “Dumb question, but it stands.”

  “Well, I never talked to her much.”

  “But you talked to her some. Must have listened some.”

  Skip shuffled his bare feet on the wood floor. Nudged the dead kerosene heater with an unwashed big toe. “All I can tell you is she met somebody at a drugs and alcohol rehab center. Looked him up later and said she was accepting his offer to supply what she wanted, when she wanted it. The arrangement was made. Nothing really unusual, you know? I took her the goods. Simple as that.”

  “You having anything to do with Arnie Kyle these days?”

  “Damn! That ain’t a fair question, Nudger.” Real fear here. But then anyone like Skip might show alarm at the mention of Kyle’s name.

  “Guess it isn’t. I didn’t ask it. What rehabilitation center was Mary Lacy in?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  Nudger said, “What sort of stuff you take her?”

  “Minor league shit. Something to put her down, something to get her up. Mini-whites to keep her going. A little Mexican brown now and then, but other’n that it was all pills. No hard stuff, no needle goods. This was just a lady needed a little help getting through her days and nights.”

  “How often did you deliver?”

  “Enough to keep her in the pills. Like I said, that must have been her main thing, just the pills. Probably ‘cause she wen
t off the booze at the rehab center. That happens, you know?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “That’s all I know about her. I mean, she was just a customer. I ain’t had a call to deliver to her for over two weeks.”

  “You don’t know she’s disappeared?”

  Skip’s eyes widened, then flared up with that Charles Manson look, a combination of self-pity and rage. Frustrated by a world that gave no quarter and played tricks. He backed a step toward the window, as if he’d like to whirl and soar through it and escape everything bedeviling him. Maybe someday he’d do exactly that. “Christ, no! How could I know that? Hey, you ain’t dragging me into a police case, are you, Nudger?”

  “Not likely.”

  Skip shuddered, then wrapped his arms around himself as if a cold wind had roared through the apartment. He needed the ten dollars all right; Nudger was what junkie luck had provided.

  “Tell you this,” Skip said, “she was a nice lady. Real shy and polite.”

  “You talk about her like she’s dead.”

  “Whoa! Hey! No way, Nudger! I don’t know nothing about her other than she was a nice sorta person. Had some job or other with the city, didn’t she?”

  Skip was an expert at playing ignorant. Or maybe he really was ignorant about the disappearance of Mary Lacy and Hiller. This wasn’t the kind of guy who kept on top of the news. Still, Nudger didn’t want to appear naive. Seem to believe everything a pin cushion doper told him.

  “She was the mayor,” he said. He headed for the door.

  “For all I know, Nudger, that’s the fuckin’ truth. I mean it, man.”

  “Use the ten to buy kerosene for that heater; it might get cold tonight.”

  “Sure. What’d you think I wanted it for?”

  Some put-on, Skip.

  Nudger’s footsteps echoed through the lonely building as he went downstairs.

  A large man wearing a well-cut black suit was standing behind the Granada with a foot propped on the rear bumper, like a cop about to write a parking ticket.

  Only this was no cop. When he saw Nudger approach, he straightened up and grinned. Broad shoulders, waist about the size of a fashion model’s. Despite his muscular bulk, a curiously sunken chest. He had a pale complexion, wavy black hair, eyebrows so black they seemed painted on, eyes even blacker than the brows. Button eyes. Shark’s eyes. Eyes beyond cruel and into cold detachment. He looked like an embalmed weight lifter in a tailored suit.

  “You’re Nudger,” he said. Not a question. “The three of us should take a walk.” He motioned with his long head toward the gray, deserted mill. “Maybe you’ll learn some things about the steel industry.”

  Nudger had stopped about ten feet from the car. “Three of us?”

  “You, me, and Mr. Browning.” The expensive suitcoat was held aside briefly to reveal the checkered grip of a large-caliber automatic in a black holster.

  Who was this guy? Probably not one of Tad’s friends, here to warn Nudger not to feel up Bonnie in the back of the car.

  With feline grace, the big man moved around to walk directly alongside Nudger. Though they were side by side, he somehow managed to lead the way toward an opening in a chain-link fence. Then beyond some rusting railroad tracks and across a debris-littered field, toward a grimy gray building the size of an airplane hangar. A gloomy scene, not at all the stuff of Currier and Ives prints.

  The man with the gun said, “You had me thinking you were a hell of a high-diver.” His voice was vibrant yet controlled. A deep voice, but with an underlying shrill rasp that cut into the consciousness. Like the singing of a saw as it whines through hard wood. And it carried the same taunting, sadistic quality Nudger had heard while cowering on the dark balcony of Paul Dobbs’s apartment. “Two-story swan dive. Figured maybe I was dealing with somebody oughta be training for the Olympics. Maybe you should check on that, see if they have a plantthrowing event.”

  Nudger wished he were training for the Olympics now. Anywhere but here.

  Beyond the deserted steel mill, traffic on Interstate 44 swished past, rolling to and from downtown, too far away to help. Part of another world. A safe world.

  The gray building loomed before them. It seemed to absorb the sunlight and transform it into something ominous.

  The big man said, “This is where they used to melt down the scrap metal.” He smiled like a pleased cadaver. “Turn up the heat to about a zillion degrees, sizzle hard steel down to nothing. Everything in this world’s got its melting point. Interesting, huh?”

  Nudger agreed it was interesting.

  Tried not to think about it.

  Kept walking.

  16

  In the cool shadow of the gray building, the big man gripped Nudger’s elbow in a painful signal to stop. He moved around so he stood facing Nudger, then put on his icy cadaver grin. Said, “What were you doing at Dobbs’s place last night? I mean, besides magic tricks on the balcony.”

  Nudger’s nervous stomach crawled up into his throat, grew fuzz, and made it difficult to answer. “Looking around.”

  “That’s what you’re doing right now. What you’re usually doing when you’re not sleeping. I’m looking for a more specific answer.” The automatic slid out of its black holster. Alligator. The holster was alligator skin. The barrel swung around to point at Nudger. The big man held the gun casually and with a frightening familiarity, as if he shot people every other day and thought about as much of it as putting out the trash.

  Nudger decided sure, he could be more specific. “I was trying to find something that might give me an idea about why Dobbs disappeared and where he went.”

  “Disappeared? Dobbs is a free-lance photographer. You know how it is with those guys, live out of a suitcase. Maybe he upped and flew off to some exotic country to take snapshots for Time or Life.”

  “I’ve heard that theory. And it could be the truth.”

  The man in the neat black suit stepped nearer, his finger curled around the gun’s blue steel trigger. “I think you should subscribe to that theory. Regard it as gospel truth.”

  Nudger’s heart slammed against his ribs almost hard enough to break them. “I suppose I could do that.”

  “Sure you could, because it makes sense. Don’t you think?”

  “Perfect sense.”

  An airliner rumbled high overhead; Nudger wished he were on it, even now, after deregulation.

  “You’re a private cop,” the man said, “working for that Adelaide Lacy cunt.”

  Nudger didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. He nodded acknowledgment.

  “She’s the best-looking of the two sisters, that’s for sure. Got that something about her says she’d give you a high old time in the sack. Wouldn’t you say that Virgil Hiller guy ran away with the wrong sister?”

  “I’d say so,” Nudger agreed. The man with the gun did have a point.

  The gruesome grin. The gun barrel dug into Nudger’s stomach. “Then say it.”

  “Wrong sister.”

  The gun barrel gouged deeper, causing Nudger’s breath to leave him in a whoosh. “Say Virgil Hiller ran away with his secretary.”

  “That’s it, all right.” Nudger gasped. “Ran away with his secretary.”

  “And the money. Christ, let’s not forget the money!”

  “The money,” Nudger repeated dutifully.

  The barrel of the gun came away, up, up, pressed painfully into the bridge of Nudger’s nose, directly between his eyes. His knees were suddenly nonexistent, and his legs began to quiver. He was sure he was going to melt faster than the scrap metal that had been processed here. Fall to the ground and dissolve all in one squiggly motion.

  “Don’t forget any of what you said,” the big man told him. “Hiller and his secretary ran away with the money and are probably fucking their brains out under the palm trees somewhere. A really simple matter, stop to think about it. Kinda thing happens all the time, only it doesn’t make the news. You think?”

  �
��I guess so,” Nudger said. “Yeah, I think so, in fact.”

  “Then you can find better ways to spend your time, wouldn’t you say?”

  Nudger started to nod, then realized he might jiggle the gun and set it off. “Better ways,” he agreed.

  Holding the gun steady, the big man reached down with his free hand, gripped Nudger’s testicles with a chilling kind of skill, and squeezed.

  Agony drilled through the marrow of every bone in Nudger’s body. He heard his shrill gasp and sank to the ground, curled tightly in the fetal position. Nausea and pain paralyzed him. He wished only that he could lose consciousness and escape what was happening. What he’d become. And he was terrified of what might happen next.

  The man with the gun leaned down, smiled at him, and pressed the barrel to Nudger’s temple. Nudger began to shake. He watched in horrible fascination as the manicured finger tightened on the trigger. The nail was so neat, probably painted with clear lacquer.

  The trigger moved.

  The gun clicked on an empty firing chamber.

  As Nudger dropped into cold blackness, he heard the man’s soft but high-pitched sadistic giggle, and he plunged all the way through time to when he was twelve years old and heard that same laugh from a school yard buddy who was one-by-one snapping the legs of a newborn puppy. Even before he remembered what had happened, Nudger realized he’d vomited. He could smell it, and his cheek was resting in the mess. He was reminded of the stench in Skip Monohan’s apartment building. God, this was horrible! Sickening! What it must be like for down-and-out alkies almost every day. Nudger decided that next time a wino approached him on the street for a handout, he’d give generously.

  When he tried to move, the pain in his groin jolted through him like high voltage, and he knew where he was and how he’d gotten there.

  Using his arms, his body still curled tightly against the pain, he pushed himself away from the vomit. The effort exhausted him and he passed out again, but he didn’t think it was for long.