by John Lutz
Nudger turned around. Kyle’s right hand was still casually inserted in his suit coat pocket, finger on the Destroy Nudger button.
Nudger said, “Why didn’t you bring him’up here on a thick leash?”
“‘Cause we’re gonna have a little talk it’d be better Jack didn’t hear. That way, if the law questions him, he can honestly say he knows nothing about our conversation.”
“Preserving his deniability but keeping him in the game.”
“Exactly. just like they do in Washington.”
“The American way, I suppose.”
“Nothing for you to be scared about, though,” Kyle said, “long as I got your full cooperation.”
Nudger sat down behind his desk. The swivel chair squealed and Kyle looked nervous. Nudger hoped his finger didn’t twitch on the button. Once set in motion, a joyful killer like Palp might be hard to stop. Might object to suffering a kind of coitus interruptus. “What sort of cooperation?” Nudger asked. But he could guess.
“Listen,” Kyle said, “it’s a shame about old Skip Monohan, don’t you think?” Kyle wasn’t ready to get to the point. Wanted to lay some groundwork.
“He wasn’t so old,” Nudger said. “Never had much chance to make senior citizen.”
“Sure he had a chance,” Kyle said, moving closer. “Same chance you got. It’s a great country—everybody’s got a chance. He could have kept his lips together, minded his own business.”
“I’m minding my business,” Nudger told him. “Says what it is on the door. Investigator. I investigate. I got a client. Besides, how do you know Monohan told me anything?”
“How do I know he didn’t?”
There was the problem. Nudger’s as well as Kyle’s. Made Nudger’s stomach bounce around.
“Better if you stop your investigating,” Kyle said. “It’d be inconvenient for you, anyways, from Hawaii.”
Nudger said, “This is Missouri. No ocean. No islands. Corn and soybeans. Been years since I saw a palm tree.”
Kyle used his free hand to draw a thick yellow envelope from an inside pocket. He held it up so Nudger could get a good look at it. “Plane ticket for tomorrow afternoon, Nudger. To San Francisco and then Honolulu. It’s great in the islands this time of year. Oh, and there’s also fifty thousand in small bills for you to have yourself a good time with something left over. Lay around, sip pineapple drinks, ball a hula dancer. That’s what I mean by cooperating with me. Not so tough, eh?”
Nudger looked away from the envelope with effort. Fifty thousand. Gulp! He said, “How come you want me to stop searching for Mary Lacy?”
“Easy. ‘Cause she’s with Virgil Hiller.”
“And you don’t want him found.”
“Ah, but I do. Only I want my people to find him.”
Nudger didn’t ask why; the question filled the room.
Kyle said, “It wasn’t only city money Hiller ran away with.”
“And when you do find him?”
“If you cooperate, you got my promise: The Lacy cunt’ll be set loose from whatever happens. This isn’t about her; she’s just a bit of excess trim that doesn’t interest me in the slightest.”
Nudger sat wondering what were the odds. Of Kyle telling the truth. Of his promise being good. Of Nudger’s stomach surviving the guilt if he accepted Kyle’s offer. Of the rest of him surviving if he refused it.
“Don’t decide now,” Kyle said, slipping the envelope back into his pocket, patting the pocket. “Give yourself a while to think things through.”
“What if I tell you it’ll be business as usual?”
Kyle shrugged inside the elegant suit. “Guess you and Jack’ll have another conversation. He feels as strongly about this as I do. As strongly about everything. Jack and I are of the same mind. It’s his job.”
“How’s Hiller owe you money?” Nudger asked.
“Gambling debts.”
Logical.
Kyle said, “He fancies himself a high roller, but the only way he ever rolled was downhill and over the edge. He was in the hole plenty. What he usually did was dip into city funds to set his tab right. This time instead of dipping and paying, he dipped and ran.”
“Any idea why?”,
Kyle shook his head. “Love, maybe. Fucks up people’s thinking sometimes.”
“What I hear about Mary Lacy,” Nudger said, “Hiller would have had to kidnap her.”
“You mean about her being a lizzy? Don’t believe everything you hear, Nudger. ‘Less it’s from me. Mary Lacy went both ways.”
“Way I understand it, she didn’t even go one way.”
“We don’t know everything about her private life. All that intimate stuff. Looks like Hiller did, though. Knew enough, anyway. Pretty simple. Maybe he got her pregnant and she’s got some inhibition about abortion. Had no choice but to run with him if she wanted to stay an honest woman. Maybe they’re even married by now. All kinds of possibilities, Nudger. But best for you if you don’t explore any of them.”
Absconding with your boss and stolen money didn’t sound to Nudger like staying an honest woman, but this was no time to argue fine points.
Kyle wrinkled his nose. “What the hell’s that smell?”
“Doughnuts. From downstairs.”
“Shit! How do you stand it?”
“You get used to some smells, don’t even know they’re around. Even though other people still know.” He gave Kyle a tight grin; what the hell, Palp was down in the car. “Some days this office stinks worse than from doughnuts.”
“You being a wise-ass, Nudger?”
“Not my nature.”
“I wonder.”
Still with his hand in his pocket, Kyle backed smoothly to the door. He moved backward with great confidence, as if he had rear vision.
“I suppose Palp has an alibi for when Monohan was killed,” Nudger said.
“Ask the law; they already had him downtown and worked on him, checked out his story. It didn’t take long. Jack’s attorney saw he was treated right and the matter handled quick as possible. Everything goes smooth when there’s cooperation on both sides. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you.”
Nudger said, “Was Monohan murdered so you could scare me into backing off the Hiller case?”
“Hey, how should I know?”
“You know.”
“I know you’re in a game that’s too big and fast for a guy like you. Mile over your head.” He glanced around the shabby office. “Loser, that’s you. Two-digit IQ and bank balance to match.”
“It isn’t that. I don’t feel compelled to put up a front.”
“Or to pay for one. Listen, there should be a sign on the wall behind your desk, Nudger. Know what it oughtta say?”
“OUT TO LUNCH?”
“Uh-uh. DEEP WATER.”
Kyle sort of slid out the door. Removed the hand from his pocket, then took the steps fast. Nudger heard the street door open and close.
He strode to the window and watched Kyle cross the street. Dapper guy with a jaunty walk. World by the short hairs, but right now a little worried. Possibly plenty worried. He glanced up at the office window as he got into the long black Lincoln with Palp. As the car eased away from the curb, it revealed a sweeping dark reflection of the street.
The Lincoln oozed down the block and slowed as it passed Tad sitting in his junk Plymouth, then picked up speed and merged with traffic pulling out of the K-mart parking garage.
Nudger went downstairs and walked along Manchester toward the Plymouth. There were puddles on the sidewalk. He sloshed through one and got his left sock wet. Great!
Tad was alone in the car. He leaned forward to reach the ignition, and the engine turned over and rumbled, but he didn’t drive away.
Nudger walked up to the Plymouth’s passenger side. The window was cranked open. He leaned down, hands on knees, and peered in at Tad, who was coiled awkwardly behind the steering wheel in the manner of scrawny teenage boys. He was wearing dirty Levi�
��s and a green insulated vest over a white T-shirt. Nudger wasn’t surprised to see a large grease smudge on his neck. He said, “Tad, I want you to stop following me.”
Tad stared straight ahead and spoke in a tough-guy monotone. “This is a free country and a public street, ain’t it?” Bogart lived. And he was civic minded, just like Arnie Kyle.
“You’re likely to get hurt.”
Now Tad glared at Nudger. Young Basil Rathbone again. “By you?”
“No. By somebody it’d be better you never met. It has to do with my work.”
“Yeah, big-shit private detective. Like on TV. You think I’m scared? Well, here’s a flash—I ain’t.”
“You don’t have to be scared to get hurt. I want you to stop tailing me.”
“Sure. And I want you to stop fuckin’ my mom.”
Nudger stared at him. Tad was barely constraining himself; the muscles in his pimpled, grease-marked face were jumping.
“Gonna tell me you ain’t fuckin’ her?” he challenged.
Nudger didn’t know how to deal with the question. With teenagers. This one in particular. He slapped the top of the car in frustration.
“You dent that and you’re dead!” Tad screamed.
“Christ! Take it easy. No harm done.” Nudger forced himself to be rational. “Listen, I’m not going to hurt your mother. She wouldn’t be with me if she didn’t want it that way. You don’t mind if she has a life, do you?”
“I do if you’re in it.”
“She should drive around and sell cosmetics, do temporary office work, and be mom, is that it?”
“Fuck you, Nudger!”
Here was a lad beyond reason. Maybe he’d settle down, make sense when he hit thirty. If he made it that long. Didn’t wind up like Skip Monohan.
“You’re two-timing her anyway,” Tad said.
“You really are sticking to me, you persistent little punk. Listen, I see people on business. Some of them are female.”
“I ain’t dumb, Nudger.”
“Oh, aren’t you? That was a dumb stunt last night, you and your friends raising hell outside my apartment.”
“Never know when I’m gonna turn up,” Tad said. “Gonna follow you whenever I want. Be on you like flies on shit.”
“You’re in over your head,” Nudger said, and abruptly realized he sounded like Arnie Kyle. “Messing with something dangerous. You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you.”
Tad wasn’t listening. His long, skinny arm snaked to the dashboard and he punched a button that turned on the radio. Heavy metal rock music blasted through the car. Not good rock. The electronic din Nudger hated. The lead singer screamed, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and drums and a synthesizer took over. Enough to cause an earache.
“Jesus, Tad, you’re so big on mother figures, why don’t you ease up and listen to Madonna?”
Tad didn’t hear him.
Nudger gave up. Walked back to the office. The music drifted after him and he found himself moving to the beat.
Didn’t like that.
When he went back upstairs and looked out the window, the Plymouth was gone.
25
Nudger tried to get in touch with Hammersmith by phone at the Third District and was told the lieutenant had gone out to lunch. Desk Sergeant Ellis either didn’t know or wouldn’t say where, but Nudger had a pretty good idea.
Half an hour later he was pushing open the heavy wood door of Ricardo’s restaurant on Locust Street. It was where Hammersmith usually ate lunch—the restaurant mainly responsible for changing the lean and handsome patrol-car officer of yesteryear into today’s corpulent, desk-driving bureaucrat. The menu was Italian, the food was good, and the way the place was sectioned off by thick oak partitions provided privacy for confidential conversation. Plenty of deals between cops and informants, and attorneys and clients, had been cut at Ricardo’s.
Nudger’s appetite kicked in as he sniffed the pungent, garlicky scent that hung heavy in the air. He spotted the familiar gray top of Hammersmith’s head above one of the oak partitions and began working his way there through the maze of round tables and angled, polished wood. Bumped his head on one of those damned hanging potted ferns. The thick carpet and drapes absorbed sound. Not only was the talk of diners muted, but even the clink of silverware and dishes was barely discernible.
It was almost two o’clock and most of the lunch crowd at Ricardo’s had left. About a third of the red-clothed tables still had diners seated around them. Nudger exchanged glances with a cop he knew—a sergeant on the vice squad—who was talking with a bearded guy in a wooly gray sweater. The cop quickly looked away from Nudger and gave no sign of recognition. Nudger responded in kind. Or rather, didn’t respond. Police protocol at Ricardo’s.
Hammersmith was alone at his table, finishing off a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs. There were crumbs from garlic toast all over the tablecloth. His red napkin was tucked in his collar and covered the front of his shirt to act as a bib. There was a dusting of crumbs clinging to the napkin. Some dark spots of spaghetti sauce. Nudger had seen enough of spaghetti for a while.
Hammersmith looked up as Nudger approached. He slowly lowered his fork, and took a sip of red wine. Smacked his lips in appreciation even though it was probably cheap house wine. What did he know? He was more Cookie Monster than gourmet.
Nudger sat down.
Hammersmith lifted the lower half of the tucked-in napkin and dabbed at his lips. “Fun morning, wouldn’t you say, Nudge?”
“Disney World.”
A heavyset waitress with hair darker than Claudia’s angled over and smiled at Nudger. Said, “Sir?” as if he’d summoned her.
He asked for a glass of milk. She stuck the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and wrote that down carefully on her order pad, as if it contained twelve syllables, then smoothly avoided a cluster of departing customers and headed for the kitchen.
“Oughta try the spaghetti,” Hammersmith advised. “The special today.”
Look what it’s done for you, Nudger thought, recalling the dashing Hammersmith of a decade ago. He said, “My stomach’d tie it in knots instead of digesting it.”
“Still riled up about this morning, eh? Listen, Nudge, you know that was just Springer getting his jollies. Little jackoff’s got some Hitler in his blood.”
“Springer I can endure now and then.”
“What, then?”
“It’s not every day I find a dead pusher in my car,” Nudger said.
“But it is every day somebody finds a dead pusher somewhere.”
“The job’s making you callous.”
“You’d be better off if it had made you that way.”
“The problem’s not only this morning,” Nudger said. He held his silence while the raven-haired waitress returned with a single glass of milk resting in the middle of a round tray. Placed the glass on a napkin in front of Nudger and then departed gracefully with the empty tray held level in exactly the same manner, as if she were still balancing something on it. We’re all slaves to habit, Nudger mused.
He leaned forward in his chair and told Hammersmith about his confrontation with Arnie Kyle.
When Nudger was finished talking and settled back, Hammersmith took another sip of wine and sat silently. His pale blue eyes seemed to be focused on his empty plate.
After a while he said, “Tried to scare the bejesus outta you by making a gift of Monohan’s remains, then offered to buy you off the case. The old one-two sales pitch, eh? Works with vacuum cleaners and aluminum siding.”
“Did scare the bejesus outta me,” Nudger corrected.
“Hm. So how ‘bout it? You thinking over Kyle’s offer? You going to Hawaii? Spend your money on suntan lotion and grass-skirted beauties?”
“It’s not my money, it’s Kyle’s. I haven’t got it yet and I don’t want it.”
“You know the alternative to tropical paradise.”
“Yeah. Jack Palp.”
�
�Bad-ass Jack.”
“Not exactly a Boy Scout,” Nudger agreed.
“Matter of fact, Nudge, he was a Boy Scout. One of those advanced, explorer scouts. Probably even helped old ladies do this or that. Palp’s not your usual hard-core juvenile delinquent who graduated to big-time crime. He had an exemplary upper-middle-class boyhood and adolescence until he went from super scout to Special Forces and traveled to Vietnam. They say that’s where he learned to enjoy killing while he was winning all his medals. What a difference time and place make, eh? Weren’t for Nam, Palp mighta been a zillionaire high-powered executive or a killer lawyer.”
“Eileen’s lawyer.”
“Maybe at that.”
“Palp’s why I wanted to talk with you,” Nudger said. “Kyle said you brought him in for questioning on the Monohan killing.”
“Sure did. He was cooperative, him and his attorney. And why not? Palp was on the other side of the state in Kansas City until late this morning. Got the airline tickets to confirm it. Got people in K.C. to substantiate his presence there. You shoulda seen his performance; it was stellar. He played the harried but understanding citizen, eager to help the law if only he hadn’t been born innocent of a virgin the hour before.”
“Where he really was yesterday was in St. Louis, laying a scare on me and then murdering Monohan.”
“Yeah, but you know how it is. A pro like Palp doesn’t make that kinda move without setting it up. Somebody else probably flew to Kansas City under his name. He had the alibi worked out with his buddies.”
“All solid citizens themselves, I’ll bet.”
“Solid and scared.”.
“So Palp walked?”
“Yep. Told you ahead of time that’d happen. But it was interesting to hear his story. Inventive yet simple, and impossible to disprove.”
“What now?” Nudger asked.
Hammersmith surprised him. “This now, Nudge. I’m gonna stick my neck out a little farther, do some serious police work. But that’s not for anyone but you and I to know.”
Nudger grinned. “Then you admit this mess runs deep?”
“I think of it more in terms of running high. Which is why I had to ignore it, and why I can’t any longer. I’m gonna have to buck the pressure from above.” He ran a finger along the rim of his water goblet, made the glass sing. “Here’s how it is: We got a political hack in the city runs off with taxpayer money and his secretary. No big deal. Then we got all this restriction from on high. Still no big deal—city politics. Also we got a prime bad man like Kyle somehow involved, even if indirectly. Not too surprising there, either, seeing as certain political types and guys like Kyle run as a pack. But you lump it all together and it starts to smell very much out of the ordinary.”