by John Lutz
“You knew all that almost from the beginning,” Nudger said. “What changed your mind about spending time and effort on this?”
“Now we got murder. That makes it serious.”
“It was serious before. It was murder before. Something else changed your outlook.” Curious Nudger. Persistent. Way to get into trouble.
Hammersmith’s thin pink lips arced down in a sour expression. “We bring in a guy like Palp, Nudge, and the pressure from up top doesn’t let up. Just the opposite. We gotta see every one of his rights are protected and every box is checked. Gotta give Palp more legal advice than his lawyer’s giving him. Treat the bastard like he’s August A. Busch instead of some Murders-R-Us menace. Didn’t set right with me.”
“Guess not.”
“Leads me to believe Kyle’s telling it straight when he warns you about being out of your depth. Something big’s happened. Maybe still is happening.”
Nudger’s stomach suddenly felt queasy. He downed half his milk. Hammersmith’s instincts were usually on target. Nudger had been carrying a similar opinion almost since the time he’d seen Dobbs’s photograph of Virgil Hiller motionless at his desk in the Arcade Building. But to hear Hammersmith say it brought home the potential danger even more than had Kyle’s visit to the office.
Hammersmith unwrapped one of his cigars and dipped an end deftly into what was left of his wine to improve the tobacco’s taste. Placed the soggy part of the cigar in his mouth and set the dry end ablaze with his silver lighter’s blowtorch flame. But if the tobacco tasted better, it smelled the same. Horrible. Stomach-assaulting.
Nudger placed a couple of dollar bills on the table and pushed back his chair and stood up, as Hammersmith had probably planned.
“Leaving without finishing your milk, Nudge?”
“Yeah. Looks like it’s turning green.”
Hammersmith smiled. Inhaled. Exhaled. Diners in the no-smoking section glared. There was no protection from nuclear drift.
“Keep in close touch,” Hammersmith said, “and I’ll stay in touch with you. You and me against the world, Sancho. No windmill too big.”
“Windmills don’t strangle people with thin wire,” Nudger said, thinking he’d been compared with Don Quixote too many times for comfort.
“Never been to Holland; wouldn’t know.”
“Jack Palp’s no windmill,” Nudger said, aggravated with Hammersmith for cracking jokes. Hell with him, if he felt that way.
As he was leaving he heard Hammersmith say, “Aloha, Nudge.”
Holland. Hawaii. In an Italian restaurant.
Hopping all over the world.
Maybe that was why Nudger felt as if he had jet lag.
26
As Nudger drove west on Chouteau, he thought about what he’d told Tad about not wanting to harm Bonnie. True, maybe, but was he nonetheless being unfair to her and to himself? Nudger knew, really, that her attraction to him was based more on their mutual hard circumstances than on love. Not that there wasn’t something like love between them. If Bonnie had at first seen Nudger as a potential meal ticket, she knew now that his ticket was punched.
Nudger switched on the wipers to clear the windshield of the sudden and gentle September rain. To the west, over St. Charles, the sky was a slanted bar of blue beyond low gray clouds. The shower wouldn’t last long. Staring mesmerized beyond the metronome strokes of the wiper blades, he admitted that the Nudger-Bonnie affair was limping along on a crosscurrent of sympathy and little else. Well, good sex, too. That counted for something. A lot, actually.
And of course there’d been his desire to make Claudia jealous. That hadn’t worked at all; she was still seeing Biff Archway more often than she saw Nudger, he was sure. He was also sure that the honorable thing to do was to break off his affair with Bonnie. To be fair to her and to himself. And to her wild brood.
It was, he decided, his manly duty.
He stopped by his office and checked with Danny to see if anything was going on. Danny said nope, there sure wasn’t, except for an old gray Plymouth that had driven by slow several times while the skinny kid driver glanced up at Nudger’s office window.
“Driver looked about seventeen,” Danny said, wiping his hands on the grayish towel tucked in his belt. “Wish I was that young again.”
“He’s eighteen,” Nudger said.
Danny said, “Gee, time starting to fly for him.”
While Nudger was thinking about that one, Danny offered him a Dunker Delite. “Left over from yesterday,” he said. “Already been microwaved, so go ahead and have a couple; I’ll just have to pitch ‘em in the trash otherwise.”
Nudger disguised his grimace as a smile and politely declined.
He dodged raindrops, went upstairs, and slumped in his squealing swivel chair behind his desk. The light playing through the rain that was streaming down the window shimmered and did tricks on the opposite wall. Prismlike, it cast wavering colors. Blue, yellow. Red—disturbingly like blood—up near the bullet hole.
Nudger looked away from the wall, then used the eraser tip of a pencil to peck out Bonnie’s number on the phone.
She answered on the second ring, sounding out of breath. She’d just gotten home after a hard day of delivering Nora Dove. But she was dying to see him, she said, and invited him to come right over.
He went. Time to be quick and decisive. To act out of necessity. To be cruel to be kind. Wasn’t that the rationale behind the guillotine? Behind most cruelty?
Bonnie was wearing a white terrycloth robe when she came to the door. She rose on her open-toe slippers and kissed Nudger on the mouth before he knew what was going on, tugged him inside by the sleeve of his brown corduroy sport coat.
He said, “Possessive vixen.” Wisecracking even when he had something soul-wrenching to do. Especially then. Papering over pain.
“I just took a shower,” she said. “Back in a minute.”
She left him sitting on the sofa and disappeared down the hall.
The living room was a mess. A toy tank was parked on the coffee table, colored plastic blocks were scattered over the floor, and a chair was leaning with its back against the wall as if someone invisible were sitting in it with his feet propped up. The place was clean, though. Smelled of a combination of Pinesol and perfume that made Nudger’s stomach growl to him that it was wise to have skipped lunch.
There was a piercing scream from behind the sofa. He actually felt his buttocks rise from the cushions.
In full battle gear—camouflage, backpack, and carbine—James charged around the end of the couch and came at Nudger.
James had obtained a bayonet. Nasty pointed thing that extended twelve inches beyond the barrel of the realistic plastic carbine he was expertly wielding.
Startled, Nudger said, “Uh!” and watched in horror as the bayonet arced toward his stomach. He didn’t have time to move. Felt the point make contact.
Saw the bayonet disappear as James screamed again and lunged.
Realized with a rush of relief that the bayonet blade had bent. Was rubber. Said, “Holy Christ, James!”
“Dead!” James proclaimed with satisfaction. He danced backward, grinning. There were dark streaks beneath his eyes, commando fashion. It was easy to imagine him creeping through the jungle, seeking action. Search-and-destroy was his meat.
“James, calm down!” Bonnie yelled.
A moment later she appeared in the doorway, still wearing the white robe but with her hair carefully engineered and her makeup on. She caught sight of the dark streaks on James’s cheeks and said, “Dammit, James, I told you to stay away from my mascara!” She shook her head and muttered, “God, I don’t know!”
James brandished the bayonet, screamed again, and charged past her into the kitchen, barely brushing the robe and causing it to swing and reveal a shapely pale ankle. In the back of the house, Belinda began to wail.
Bonnie was adjusting her robe, seemed not to hear the airraid siren sound.
Nudger sai
d, “Maybe she’s hungry.”
Bonnie smiled serenely, as if her world were in perfect order. “No, she’s supposed to be taking a short nap. The babysitter’s coming any minute to drive Belinda and James to her place. The other kids are in school.”
Nudger sensed the trap easing shut. He started to say that he had something to tell Bonnie. Actually had his lips parted to speak. But just then a horn blasted three times in the driveway.
Bonnie shouted, “Get your stuff, James!”
Then she flounced to the front door and opened it. Signaled with a raised forefinger—one minute—to whoever was waiting in the driveway. She turned to Nudger and explained, “There are other kids in the car, so she can’t come in.”
“She watch the kids often?”
“Nyla? Yeah, she’s my regular. My safety valve. Expensive, but she’s worth it for the peace of mind. I don’t worry when she’s in charge.”
Bonnie bustled to the back of the house and James reappeared in the living room. He sneered at Nudger and made a few menacing swipes in the air with the bayonet. Tomorrow’s Rambo staying in the mood. Nudger wished he could give him a real bayonet, sic him on Jack Palp.
“Gonna be a soldier when you grow up?” he asked.
James said, “Die!” and plunged the bayonet into the leaves of an artificial potted plant.
Nudger thought, Kids. Someday they’d take over the world. James might by then be in a position of influence and authority. Scary.
Bonnie returned carrying Belinda, who was quiet now. She walked directly out the open front door and in passing used her free hand to shove the back of James’s helmeted head in a signal to follow.
James narrowed his eyes like a silent film star at Nudger, took a quick shot at him with the carbine, then crouched and ran outside. He was swinging the barrel of the gun so its field of fire would cover any hidden enemy. Vicious. Aggressive. Shrewd. What would James actually be when he grew up? A divorce lawyer?
Nudger admonished himself for being too rough on lawyers. There were some good ones. Like Benedict and Schill, who occasionally gave him work.
He heard female voices, hurried instructions about a bottle. Children’s voices, arguing. Car doors slamming. Last-minute instructions through a rolled-down window. The engine of the car in the driveway got louder and then faded as the babysitter backed into the street.
Bonnie came back in and said, “Whew!” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, even though she wasn’t perspiring. Nudger got the impression it was an unconscious gesture she often made when dealing with her kids. She looked fresh-skinned and beautiful standing in the light from the living room window. Tiny yet voluptuous. Nora Dove cosmetics couldn’t account for it all.
In the absence of James and Belinda, the house throbbed with silence.
Nudger averted his eyes from the gap in the white terrycloth across Bonnie’s centerfold breasts. None of that. Not this trip. He mustered his courage and said, “I’ve got something important to tell you.” There. Done. And he was glad. Knew it was time to take charge of his life.
She let the white robe drop and was wearing nothing but the open-toed slippers. “Can it wait till later?”
He decided it could.
Half an hour later, he said that the something important he had to tell her was that Tad had been skipping school and following him. She whispered she’d have a talk with Tad, though she doubted it would do any good. Kissed Nudger. Slid a warm thigh over his bare stomach.
He knew his life was in charge of him.
When he returned to his office at 4:30 there was a message on his answering machine from Claudia. She needed to see him as soon as possible. Sounded upset.
He splashed a few handfuls of cold water over his face. Combed his hair. Then he put on the spare fresh shirt he kept in the office and got out of there, thinking, busy day.
It wasn’t until he was halfway down the stairs that the fear cut through him.
27
Claudia and Jack Palp. Jack Palp and Claudia. That was all Nudger could think of as he drove toward Claudia’s. He’d brought danger and pain to her before through his half-ass occupation. Some of the people he had to deal with, and who were looking for an edge with him, naturally saw her as one of his weaknesses. Get to Claudia, get to Nudger. The primitive, direct logic of a vicious animal. Cruel but effective. Not surprising that Kyle would think that way; he was a denizen of the jungle. One of the serpents that sent jackals like Palp.
But when Nudger used his key and barged into Claudia’s apartment, he found her seated alone on the sofa.
She was wearing stone-washed jeans and a white cotton blouse. Her right fist was clenching blue denim, wrinkling the jeans. The redness around her dark eyes told him she’d been crying, but she seemed to have control of herself now. On the outside, anyway. The fingers of her clenched fist remained rigid and bloodless. She had long fingernails; they must be digging like claws into her palms.
Nudger glanced around. The apartment was neat, quiet. Felt empty except for him and Claudia.
Claudia bowed her head, maybe because she wanted to hide the puffiness around her eyes. Didn’t want him to know she’d been crying. That she was still tightly strung.
He sat down next to her. His weight made the sofa creak and sag, and her body shifted closer to him. He touched her shoulder lightly and picked up a faint trembling in his fingertips. Had Palp done something after all? Been here and gone?
Nudger said, “What’s wrong, Claudia?”
She sniffled. Touched but didn’t wipe the tip of her long, straight nose. This wasn’t like her, to be crushed this way. Scared. Even the old, suicidal Claudia was more a victim of despair than of fear.
“My Pap smear.”
That one was unexpected. At first Nudger didn’t understand what she meant. Then the weight of her words fell on him, and his insides turned to ice. The air in the apartment became hard to breathe.
He said, “The other day at the doctor’s?”
She nodded. “My test came back a three. It’s my third positive test, each one the same.”
“A three?” Nudger said. He was confused.
“The results are on a sliding scale of one to five. One being normal, five being most serious.”
“So what’s a three mean?”
“Normally it’d mean they’d do a regular biopsy to test for cancer. But they tried that, and whatever’s wrong is too far up in the cervical canal.”
So what did that mean? Nudger wasn’t a doctor. Knew nothing about a cervical canal. Where was it, in Panama? He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants legs.
“The doctor told me I needed a conization right away,” Claudia said. “In the hospital.”
Nudger said, “Wait up here . . . What the hell’s a conization? And how serious is all of this?”
“A conization is when the surgeon removes a cone-shaped portion of the cervix for diagnosis. The idea’s to find out how serious it is.”
“It being . . . ?”
“Cervical cancer.”
Nudger felt the air go out of him. Cancer. Maybe the most terrifying word in the English language. He said, “Oh, Jesus!”
She loosened her grip on her jeans and touched the back of his hand, comforting him now. “Hey, remember, they don’t know for sure. That’s the idea of the conization, to find out.”
“You said as soon as possible.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “I go in for surgery day after tomorrow at Deaconess hospital.”
“How soon after the operation will they know?”
“Sometime that day.”
“Do you . . . feel okay?”
“Yeah. Depressed, is all.”
“My God, no wonder. What can I do?”
“Hold my hand. Stay all night. Drive me to the hospital. Care.”
He kissed her forehead. Her flesh was cool. “You know I care.” She’d asked him, not Archway, to stay with her. Not Archway. “Archway know about this?”
Nudger had to ask. “What did he say when you told him?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She almost began crying again. Tremors in the lower lip. Not for long. Strong Claudia. Class. “He didn’t come to see me. He apologized for it and explained that a lot of his family died of cancer. Since then, he’s had a deep-seated and irrational fear of the disease. He doesn’t even like to talk about it, much less be around it.” She raised her head and looked hurt and resigned. “You’re right, his reaction does matter. He offered me no comfort, unless you count sympathy by phone.”
Nudger said, “I don’t.”
Obviously, neither did Claudia.
Nudger had never hated Archway more. He, Nudger, would stick by Claudia. Would hold her close. Would draw the cancer through his fingertips to himself if it were possible. Die so that she might live. He meant it. He was surprised by the fact that he meant it.
Claudia sighed and leaned back. A looseness came over her lean body, as if for the first time in hours she was relaxing. “The best thing now is to forget about all this as much as possible until it’s time to go into the hospital. Carry on normally.”
“How long will you be in?” This wasn’t forgetting and carrying on, but Nudger had to know.
“Overnight. The procedure’s pretty simple, really. Sometimes it’s even possible to go home the same day.”
He noticed he was breathing all right again. His world had changed and he was adapting. But he didn’t feel the same as when he’d walked into the apartment. Not nearly the same.