by John Lutz
Nudger shook off his hypnosis, crossed the room, and sat down on the long radiator, which was warm and dug into his buttocks. He wouldn’t sit there very long.
Claudia stared into the mirror as she diligently worked the hairbrush. “I thought you were coming by here last night. Waited quite a while for you.”
“I tried to make it, but something got in the way.”
Her dark eyes found his in the mirror. “Well, we didn’t exactly have a firm date.” Shhhwiish! went the brush.
“I did drive past here last night,” he said, “but it was too late to come in.”
No change of expression on her lean features. “You have a key,” she reminded him.
Nudger couldn’t decide if she was putting on an act. He imagined the scene if he’d let himself into the apartment and tiptoed into the dark bedroom, blundered into the bed before realizing he was the three that made a crowd rather than company. Just the thought made him almost uncomfortable enough to cringe.
He said, “Archway have a key?”
She glared at him from the mirror, out of that flat world on the other side of the glass, not breaking rhythm with the brush. Shhhwiish! “No, only you.” A flicker of something in her eyes, around her lips. “And me, of course.”
“Good. Apartment keys shouldn’t be given out like pecks on the cheek.”
“That’s something I knew.”
Okay. Nudger was feeling better. The red Mustang convertible must not have been Archway’s. A neighbor’s. Somebody who’d already left for work. Archway and Claudia were due out at Stowe High School at the same time weekday mornings ; it figured that if he’d slept with Claudia he’d still be here. Nudger shrugged off his contentious mood. Acting the jealous idiot again. No reason to be angry with life and with Claudia. Not over last night, anyway.
“Last night,” Claudia said, putting down the brush, “where’d you go instead of coming here?” She turned her head slowly and carefully from side to side, as if balancing something on it, to check in the mirror how her hair looked.
“Work,” he said. “That disappearance thing, Virgil Hiller and his secretary.”
She said, “Hm,” and adroitly wound her hair in a bun in back, pinned it neatly so that only one errant wisp escaped. He decided not to tell her about the stray wisp. Nobody loved perfection. Not really. “Look okay?” she asked.
“Great.”
“Stakeout or something?”
“Huh?”
“Last night.”
“Er, yeah. Something like that.”
“Still seeing that Bonnie?”
“Off and on.”
“Kind of a vague term.”
“I guess it is. Or maybe it’s just the English teacher in you that thinks so.” What was happening here? He hadn’t come to Claudia’s to be interrogated. Hadn’t she heard of the traditional double standard?
She stood up and turned to face him, a light of concern in her dark eyes. “Nudger, you getting along okay?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, with this Bonnie woman?”
An image of Coral Court jumped into his mind. Glazed tile. Rounded corners. Curves. Flesh. Art deco love nest. “Uh, yeah. Well as might be expected.”
Claudia grinned, walked over, and kissed him on top of the head. The radiator suddenly got hotter.
She said, “I don’t suppose I can stop loving you, Nudger. You’re in my blood’ like tiny white corpuscles.”
She walked from the bedroom into the kitchen. He followed, weighted down with guilt. He shouldn’t have come here. Bad, jealousy-inspired idea.
“How’d it go at the doctor’s?” he asked. “The Pap smear?”
“I don’t know yet. They’ll call.”
“That the usual thing?”
“All routine. Hang around after I leave,” she invited. “Make yourself some breakfast. Eggs and plenty of orange juice in the refrigerator.”
“Thanks, but I’ll grab something to eat at Danny’s.”
“Is there something to eat at Danny’s?”
He contemplated a Dunker Delite. “Maybe I’ll have an egg here, some toast.”
Claudia moved to the table and picked up a clear glass mug half full of mud-colored coffee. Took a sip, made a face, and then carried the cup, along with an egg-smeared plate and knife and fork, over to the sink. She dumped the rest of the coffee down the drain, then ran some water over the dishes and flatware and left them in the sink to be dealt with when she got home. A neat housekeeper, but in streaks.
“Gotta run or I’ll be late,” she said.
She tried to get away with only pecking Nudger’s cheek, but he grabbed her upper arms and kissed her full on the mouth. Gave her a good one. She returned the kiss, but only perfunctorily, her lips pressed tightly together. No way to kiss back or lick a stamp. Obviously a woman in a hurry.
“Dammit! No time for this, Nudger.”
“You taste like toothpaste.”
“Complaining?”
“No.”
She clacked over the floor in her high heels, into the dining room. Nudger drifted along behind her. “Where’d I put that briefcase?” she mumbled to herself.
“There,” he said, pointing to her vinyl attaché case propped on a chair in the living room.
“Ah, thanks.” She strode over and scooped up the case. “Tenth grade English exams,” she said, as if explaining the importance of the contents. Her tone of voice suggested the case actually contained something other than school papers. Perhaps nuclear war plans. Maybe pornographic photographs. Or was Nudger searching for secretiveness in her? Getting paranoid about her and Archway.
He said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Okay. But no time for a long conversation.”
“Agreed. Even though I’m lonely.”
She hesitated at the door. Speared him with those dark eyes. “Are you lonely?”
“For you.”
“I’m usually here. You know that.”
Maybe with Biff Archway. “Yeah, I know.” At least he was sure that she’d spent last night alone.
She led the way downstairs and outside. Hadn’t locked her apartment door. Nudger would be back up there in a minute, scrounging around for breakfast. He’d surprise her, he decided, and wash the dishes. Assuage some of his guilt about last night.
Claudia reminded him to lock up when he left the apartment, then lowered herself behind the steering wheel of her tin-can-sized white Chevette and shut the door.
Nudger said, “I love you. Love me?” She couldn’t hear him but she read his lips through the windshield and smiled and shook her head hopelessly.
He turned and walked back toward the apartment, listening to the Chevette’s starter grind.
The little car’s engine was stubborn about turning over. The battery faded fast and the grinding sound turned into a low grating noise, then a woeful mechanical moan.
Nudger stopped walking. Claudia was out of the car, standing with her arms crossed, her feet planted as wide as her skirt would permit. She was staring at the car with an angry, puzzled expression, in the way she might stare at a loyal dog who had inexplicably snapped at her.
When he’d made his way back to her she said, “I guess I’m not destined to get to work on time this morning.”
“Why buck destiny? You could come back upstairs, spend the morning with me.”
“No, Nudger. But you can help me get my car started.”
“Will there be a reward?”
“In heaven.”
“That’s right up there,” he said, pointing to her bedroom window.
“Sometimes,” she told him, “you disarm with charm. But not this morning.” She moved into the street and raised the Chevette’s hood. “It’s done this before. It’ll start, only I ran the battery too low.”
“I’ve got jumper cables in the trunk of my car,” Nudger said. “Nobody’s parked in front of you; I’ll drive around and we’ll get it started.”
He jogged
across the street and climbed into the Granada.
Wilmington was too narrow for him to make a U-turn, so he drove to the corner, turned around, and pulled to the wrong side of the street. He parked almost nose to nose with the Chevette, leaving just enough room between the two cars for him to stand and hook up the jumper cables.
He got out of the car and walked around to open the trunk. Saw that several of the neighbors were watching from their stoops and windows.
Claudia stood alongside her car, waiting. Looking worried about a classroom full of teenage girls with no teacher. How would the school know they were unattended? When one of them broke down and notified the office? When the decible level soared high enough to alert the rest of the school?
It occurred to Nudger that the trunk key was on the ring with his ignition key, which was still in the switch on the steering column. He retrieved the keys, then returned to the trunk and worked the lock. Lifted the lid.
This was odd.
There was a rolled-up rug in the trunk. Looked like a cheap imitation oriental. A big one. One he’d never seen before.
He found a corner of the coarse material and tugged it loose from where it was pinned against the rubber trunk mat, yanked up on it.
Something white and angular became visible. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, so he braced his knees against the bumper and leaned forward for a closer look.
Said, “Ah, Christ!” and jumped back in horror as he realized he was staring at an elbow.
22
Hammersmith said, “A dead body in your car, Nudge. That’s not a moving violation but it’s serious.”
They were standing on the edge of a lawn across the street from where Skip Monohan’s corpse was being removed from the Granada’s trunk. Rigor mortis had made it difficult to unroll Monohan from the oriental rug. Now the attendants were working his arms back and forth, loosening them just enough so they could get them down and zip the rubberized body bag around him and transport him to the morgue. They were having a tough time. Monohan was defying authority even in death.
There were half a dozen police cars angled into the curb, and the street was blocked off at the corner. Claudia hadn’t made it to work on time. She was up in her apartment, probably still being questioned. Most of her neighbors were out on the sidewalk, staring silently at the police working the scene. This was the sort of spectacle they’d longed to witness, but now, seeing it, they were sobered.
Finally Monohan was snugly zipped into the bag, strapped to a gumey, and wheeled into the back of an ambulance. An attendant slammed the double doors and jogged forward to the vehicle’s passenger side and climbed in.
The ambulance drove away slowly, no siren or lights, while every eye followed it avidly until it turned the corner. Death on a quiet street.
Now that the body was removed, the crowd’s interest seemed to have waned. But only a little. They were nothing if not nosy, Claudia’s South St. Louis neighbors. The way it was in this part of town. Very traditional and judgmental. The kind of area where you could organize a quiet lynch mob.
“Now are you planning on picking up Palp?” Nudger asked.
Hammersmith hitched a thumb in his belt, near his holstered Police Special, and nodded. “Yeah, we’ll talk to him. Talk to you, too. Case it’s escaped your thoughts, it was your car Monohan was found in.”
Nudger was getting tired of trying to jar the law out of delusion when it came to anything even indirectly connected with Virgil Hiller. Hammersmith should know better than this. “And it was me who told you Monohan might have been killed,” Nudger reminded him. “Me who eventually found the body, phoned the law, cooperated fully.”
“Sorry, Nudge, but—”
“Don’t tell me it’s just routine.”
“But it is. And you know it.”
Nudger tried to convince himself Hammersmith was right, but he was still rattled from opening his trunk and finding Skip Monohan instead of jumper cables. All morning he’d been driving around with company and not known it. His stomach was twitching and he felt nauseated. He broke into a new roll of antacid tablets. Chewed and swallowed two of them and hoped they’d help. He didn’t have the nervous system for getting involved in murder. He should be selling software or appliances, where nothing got slashed but the prices.
He remembered then: no blood in the trunk. “How’d Monohan go?” he asked.
“Strangulation. Thin wire around his neck. Yanked so tight it’s almost completely embedded in his flesh. Very little bleeding, though. The rug soaked up most of it.”
Nudger thought, You don’t bleed much once your heart stops pumping. He touched his stomach with his fingertips and chomped another antacid tablet.
“Why are they staring at me?” Hammersmith asked, looking at the knot of neighbors across the street.
“You’re standing on the zoysia.”
“Oh.” Hammersmith moved a few steps onto the sidewalk, and the crowd visibly relaxed. He lived out in Webster Groves, a near suburb that was a sort of unruly forest with streets and houses. He was partial to crabgrass and wildflowers and didn’t fully understand why South St. Louisans had this compulsion to constrict and discipline nature.
Glancing up at Claudia’s apartment, Nudger thought he caught a glimpse of her at a window. Or maybe he’d mistaken a blue uniform for a green dress. The curtain settled back into place; illusion behind glass. Whoever was at the window had turned away and disappeared.
Hammersmith methodically fired up a cigar, his smooth, fleshy cheeks puffing in and out as he made bellowslike noises and got the ember glowing bright red. “The way I read it,” he said, “Palp saw you leave Monohan’s place, then intercepted you and had his little chat with you at Scullin Steel. Left you there unconscious, went back and killed Monohan, and then loaded the rolled-up rug—with Monohan inside—into the trunk of your car.”
“Sounds likely,” Nudger said.
Hammersmith emitted a greenish thundercloud, then removed the cigar from his mouth and gazed at it as if he were talking to it instead of Nudger. “‘Cept for a few things. Such as, how’d he get your car keys?”
Nudger had thought about that while waiting for the law to arrive. “Took them outta my pocket when I was unconscious at Scullin, then put them back after he’d killed Monohan and loaded him into my car’s trunk.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He wanted me to be surprised when I found the body. The idea was to scare me. Underscore the warning he gave me at Scullin.”
“Could be. Or his idea of a joke, maybe. There’s no accounting for some people’s sense of humor. ‘Specially hit men, though they’re usually slapstick fans. Go for Gallagher, the Three Stooges, acts like that.” He deftly peeled a flake of tobacco from his lower lip, rolled it to nothing between thumb and forefinger. “And the rug?”
Nudger shrugged, trying to imagine Jack Palp hawing over the Three Stooges. It was conceivable. “He probably had the rug in the trunk of his car. Maybe a guy like that carries an oriental rug just for the purpose of transporting murder victims.”
“Oh, it all falls into place,” Hammersmith said, “if you’re telling the truth.”
“You know I am.”
“Sure I do. But what about Captain Springer?”
Leo Springer was a cop who went by the book, as long as he could revise it to his advantage. He and Nudger got along something like the Roadrunner and coyotes. “Think the little weasel-faced bastard’ll see me as a suspect?”
“Yes and no,” Hammersmith said. “Mostly no. But he might try to change that. You’re not one of Springer’s all-time favorites on the planet.”
“Any of Monohan’s neighbors see Palp coming or going with the rolled-up rug?” Nudger asked.
“There aren’t many neighbors, but they were questioned at the time of the Scullin search. They saw nothing, which isn’t surprising. The neighborly thing to do on Monohan’s street is to keep your head down and your mouth shut.”
“Even i
f your neighbor’s been murdered?”
“Especially then. We do our best with what we got, Nudge, but right now witness protection in this city isn’t for shit, and potential witnesses know it.”
Hammersmith had that right. It seemed that every week the Post-Dispatch ran a story about an indicted criminal going free because a witness had died or disappeared. Even if the accused were indicted, he often had friends in whose interest it was to create examples and teach object lessons to other, potential witnesses. The violent message had been driven home: if you couldn’t be blind and deaf, be mute. Possibly Monohan’s neighbors had chosen the wisest course.
Yellow lights flashed as a tow truck rounded the corner. A uniform moved a red and white police barricade so the truck could roar through a tight maneuver and then back up the street, chain and hooks clanking against its stubby iron boom.
Nudger said, “Oh, no!”
“‘Fraid so,” Hammersmith said. “We’re gonna have to impound your car, Nudge. Shouldn’t be for long. I’ll try to put a rush on things and get it back to you by tomorrow morning, maybe even tonight.”
Nudger watched the dusty white truck edge to the front of the Granada. The driver, a wiry little guy in greasy brown coveralls, jumped down from the cab and worked the winch. When he was satisfied he’d played out enough slack, he got down on his hands and knees to hook the tow chain to the car’s undercarriage.
“How am I supposed to get around?” Nudger asked.
“Maybe Claudia will lend you her car.”
“Maybe the department could give me a loaner to drive.”
“We’re not an insurance company, Nudge.”
Nudger watched as the whining electric winch raised the front of the Granada. A couple of clumps of dirt fell from under the fenders.
The driver climbed back into the truck, got the yellow roof-bar lights flashing, and pulled away from the curb. The barriers at the end of the block were dragged to the side again, and the low rear end of the Granada disappeared around the corner.