by John Lutz
“Two of the women were rumored to have left town on their own, and their sudden disappearances weren't reported to Missing Persons. The first woman, in Cleveland, and the third one, in St. Louis, abruptly dropped out of sight, were reported, and are still in the Missing Persons files.”
“Whoo, boy!” Fat Jack said. He began to sweat. He pulled his white flag-sized handkerchief from an inside pocket of his neat jacket and mopped his brow, just like Satchmo but without the grin and magic trumpet.
“Sorry,” Nudger said. “I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Hey, you're doing your job, is all,” Fat Jack assured him in a wheezy, quavering voice. “But that's bad information to lay on me, Nudger. Bad, bad, bad. I take it you think Hollister had a lot to do with the disappearances of these women.”
Nudger shrugged. He knew better than to snatch at the obvious. “Maybe the women themselves, and not Hollister, had everything to do with why they're gone. We can't discount the fact that they were all the sort who traveled light and often.” Nudger gave Fat Jack the women's names. The only one he recognized was Jacqui James, but he'd only met her a few times and didn't know she'd disappeared.
Fat Jack bowed his head and looked melancholy, almost ready to sob.
“Maybe the women actually left town of their own accord,” Nudger said. “Maybe for some reason they felt they had to get away from Hollister.”
“I wish Ineida would want to get away from the bastard,” Fat Jack muttered. Then he realized what he'd said. “But Jeez, not like that. Her old man'd boil me down for axle grease if she just disappeared from here. But then she's not cut from the same bolt as those other girls; she's not what she's trying to be and is strictly local.”
“The one thing she and those other women have in common is Willy Hollister.”
“Ain't no getting away from that,” Fat Jack said. He leaned back. Nudger heard the desk chair creak in weary protest. Nudger, who had been hired to solve a problem, had so far only brought to light the seriousness of that problem. Fat Jack was still between a rock and a hard place, and the rock had become larger, the hard place harder. The big man didn't have to ask “What now?” It was written in capital letters on his face.
“We could tell Ineida about Hollister's missing women,” Nudger said. When in doubt, say something.
“She wouldn't listen, Nudger. Wouldn't believe anything bad about Hollister if she did listen. Love leads people into trouble that way.”
Nudger figured Fat Jack was right. He should know about such things; that was what the blues were about.
“You could fire Willy Hollister,” Nudger said.
Fat Jack shook his head. “Ineida would follow him, and maybe get mad at me and sic her dad on the club.”
“And Hollister is still packing customers into the club every night.”
“That, too,” Fat Jack admitted. Even the loosest businessman could see the profit in Willy Hollister's genius. “For now,” he said, “I guess we'll let things slide while you continue to watch Hollister and Ineida.” He dabbed at his forehead again with the wadded handkerchief. “It'd be my big finale for sure if anything happened to that girl. Her dad would see to that.”
“Hollister doesn't know who I am,” Nudger said, “but he knows who I'm not and he's worried. My presence might keep him aboveboard for a while.”
“Any amount of time looks pretty valuable to me right now,” Fat Jack said.
“Meanwhile,” Nudger told him, “I'll keep probing for more information. Maybe I'll come up with something that will cause Ineida to have a change of heart about Hollister.”
“Fine, as long as a change of scenery isn't involved. I can't afford to have her wind up like those other women, Nudger.”
Or like Billy Weep, Nudger thought, as he stood up from his chair. “I'll phone you if I have any more good news,” he said.
Fat Jack mumbled something unintelligible and nodded, lost in his vast interior gloom. Things weren't turning out at all the way he'd hoped, and in the past several prosperous years he'd become unused to disappointment. He didn't look up as Nudger walked from the stifling office.
Nudger had his own apprehensions. He had the feeling he'd delved far enough into this matter to have stirred up waters that wouldn't calm easily. What Hammersmith had told him about David Collins' underworld status had caused Nudger's stomach to issue an uncommonly strong warning. His stomach was seldom wrong; it was growling now, something that sounded like “Get ooout!”
He knew that his future, like Fat Jack's, depended almost exclusively on Ineida Collins' well-being. He sure hoped that girl didn't do anything foolish.
If Fat Jack wound up playing his clarinet for nickles on some skid-row street corner, Nudger would probably be the one passing the hat.
That's if they were both lucky.
ELEVEN
When Nudger got back to his hotel, he was surprised to open the door to his room and see a man sitting in a chair by the window. It was the big blue armchair that belonged near the door. The man had dragged it over to where he could sit comfortably and have a view.
As Nudger entered, the man turned as if resenting the interruption, as if it were his room and Nudger the interloper. He stood up and smoothed his light-tan suit coat. He was a smallish man with a triangular face and very bushy red hair that grew in a sharp widow's peak. His eyes were dark and intense. He resembled a fox more than anyone Nudger had ever seen. With a quick and graceful motion he reached a paw into a pocket for a wallet-size leather folder. He flipped the folder open to reveal a badge. Not an ordinary patrolman's badge, but an officer's fancy three-color one.
“Captain Livingston, I presume,” Nudger said. He shut the door and came the rest of the way into the room.
The redheaded man nodded and replaced the badge in his pocket. “I'm Raoul Livingston,” he confirmed. “I think we should talk, Nudger.” He shoved the armchair around to face the room instead of the window and sat back down comfortably, as familiar as old shoes.
Nudger pulled out the small wooden desk chair and also sat, facing Livingston. “Are you here on official business, Captain Livingston?”
Livingston smiled. He had tiny sharp teeth behind thin lips that folded back peculiarly when he grinned. “You know how it is, Nudger, a cop is always a cop.”
“Sure. And that's the way it is when we go private. A confidential investigator is always that, no matter where he is or who he's talking to.”
“Which is kinda why I'm here,” Livingston said, tapping a light tattoo on the chair arm with his forefinger. “It might be better if you were someplace else, someplace other than New Orleans.”
Nudger was incredulous. His nervous stomach believed what he'd just heard, but his brain didn't. “You're actually telling me to get out of town?”
Livingston gave a snippy kind of laugh, but there was no glint of amusement in his sharp eyes. “I'm not authorized to tell anyone to get out of town, Nudger. I'm not the sheriff and this isn't Dodge City.”
“I'm glad you realize that,” Nudger told him, “because I can't leave yet. I've got business here.”
“I know about your business.”
“Did David Collins send you?”
Livingston had a good face for police work; there was only the slightest change of expression in his eyes while his features remained set. “We can let that question go by,” he said, “and I'll take my turn. Why did Fat Jack McGee hire you?”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“He'd rather I kept his reasons confidential,” Nudger said. “I'm required to honor the wishes of my client. It's a professional obligation.”
“You don't have a Louisiana PI license,” Livingston pointed out.
Nudger smiled. “I know. Nothing to be revoked.”
Livingston gave him a nasty little smirk, a man faintly annoyed but a long way from losing his temper. “There are consequences a lot more serious than having your investigator's license pulled,
Nudger. Mr. Collins would prefer that you stay away from Ineida Mann.”
“You mean Ineida Collins.”
“I mean what I say.”
“David Collins already had someone deliver that brief but succinct message to me.”
“It's not a message from anyone but me this time,” Livingston said. “I'm telling you this because I'm concerned about your safety while you're within my jurisdiction. It's part of my job.”
Nudger kept a straight face, stood up, and walked to the door and opened it. He said, “I appreciate your concern, Captain. Right now, I've got things to do.”
Livingston smiled with his mean little mouth. He didn't seem rattled by Nudger's impolite invitation to leave; he'd said what needed saying. He got up out of the armchair and adjusted his suit, smoothing the wrinkles from his pants and pulling the jacket straight with little jerks of the lapels. Nudger noticed that the suit hung on him just so and had to be tailored and expensive. No cop's salary wardrobe for Livingston.
As he walked past Nudger, Livingston paused and said, “It'd behoove you to learn to discern friend from enemy, Nudger.”
“You don't often hear the word ‘behoove’ anymore,” Nudger told him.
“ ‘Discern,’ either,” Livingston said. He went out and trod lightly down the hall toward the elevators, not looking back.
Nudger shut and locked the door. Then he went over to the bed, removed his shoes, and stretched out on his back on the mattress. He lay with his right hand behind his head, his left resting lightly on his stomach, which was not too steady. He sucked on an antacid tablet and studied the faint water stains on the ceiling in the corner directly above him. They were old but still damp, covered with a thin green film of mold. Looking at them reminded Nudger of the bayou.
It'd behoove you to learn to discern friend from enemy, Nudger.
He had to admit that Livingston had left him with solid parting advice.
And an added measure of worry.
TWELVE
The next morning Nudger drove the same cramped red subcompact, the matchbox the rental agency seemed to hold in reserve just for him, over to Magazine Street. It wasn't the best part of town, hadn't been for years. He found a parking place halfway down a block of tile-roofed, two-story buildings, each with intricately turned iron railings and long, second-floor balconies that looked too rickety to support much weight. There were a lot of potted plants on the balconies, and some outdoor furniture. Small magnolia trees grew from large, round concrete planters placed every fifty feet or so at the curb. Recent renovation and fresh paint tried hard, but couldn't quite mask the fact that not long ago this had been a run-down neighborhood. That, and the liberal sprinkling of antique shops and small restaurants lining each side of the street, indicated that gentrification was underway here, the process by which a seedy neighborhood suddenly acquires character rather than undesirability, becomes trendy, and, eventually, outrageously expensive.
Nudger guessed that right now this block of Magazine Street was peopled by the mix of old, poorer residents afraid of change, and the new, young professional types, marking the area as trendy but not yet prohibitively overpriced. The longtime residents might still outnumber the newcomers. The rest of the Indians had to be run out before the homesteaders would move here in large numbers.
He unfolded from the subcompact, stood on the sidewalk, and stretched the kinks from his spine. He hated little cars. Well, maybe not his comfortably well-worn Volkswagen Beetle back in St. Louis, which at least had head room. He had bumped his head twice crossing railroad tracks in this little torture device on wheels.
From the sagging balcony above, a gray, tiger-striped cat observed him with calm disdain. Nudger clucked his tongue at the cat, which caused the animal to blink twice slowly. Nudger wished he had the cat's composure and handle on life.
He decided to leave his sport jacket in the car, and walked down the sidewalk while rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. It was more muggy than hot this morning, but he figured that by noon the heat would catch up with the humidity and turn the city into the sauna of the South.
He stopped beneath a tall yellow sign that proclaimed the shop beneath it to be GOLDEN OLDENS. Nudger had gathered from the New Orleans phone directory that this shop was the flagship of the four Golden Oldens antique shops, and the logical place to find Max Reckoner. As with Judman, he'd decided against phoning for an appointment; it was seldom enlightening to interview people who'd had a chance to prepare for the conversation.
Nudger pushed open a grained oak door that boasted a leaded glass window and entered the shop.
He was in a large, pleasantly cool room with a glossy bare wood floor. An air conditioner was humming steadily somewhere nearby, and from the high, white ceiling hung four fans with wide, slowly rotating wicker blades, surely moving too lazily to stir the air. The antiques in the place ran heavily to burled walnut, inlaid marble, cut glass, and gleaming Victorian furniture that looked as if just yesterday it had sprung from the gnarled hands of loving craftsmen. Not the kind of antique shop you'd duck into on impulse with ten dollars to shore up your beer-can collection.
Nudger stood enjoying the scent of lemon oil and old wood, while a huge porcelain Chinese dragon with its tongue lolling out leered at him.
A small man with dainty, effeminate features and immaculately styled short blond hair walked around a ten-foot-tall secretary-desk and smiled at Nudger. Apparently the door touched off some sort of signal when a customer entered the shop.
“Yes, sir?” the clerk said. He was wearing a well-cut beige suit with a vest, and incredibly fancy yellow moccasins with white rawhide tassels. There were moccasins and then there were moccasins. If these were made by real Indians, they were rich Indians. This is an expensive place, said his clothes and his bearing.
“Is Max Reckoner in?” Nudger asked, absently resting a hand on the glistening green head of the Chinese dragon. The clerk's large blue eyes flicked reproachfully to the offending hand and Nudger removed it and stuffed it into his pocket as if to punish it.
“I believe he's in his office,” the clerk said. His delicate face was stiff and appeared oddly waxy. He wasn't a man who smiled more than a few times a year. “Who shall I say wants him? And what's your business with Mr. Reckoner?”
“My name is Nudger. I'm a private detective. So naturally I'd like to talk to Mr. Reckoner about a private matter.”
“Naturally,” the clerk said equably, too quick on his tasseled moccasins to be thrown. “Please wait here.” He pivoted like a dancer on his left toe and sashayed down a row of looming, curvaceous furniture, then rounded a corner and was gone. Right back into the nineteenth century. Nudger heard a door open and close down the corridor of time. Or maybe it was the door to Reckoner's office, right here in this century.
He stood quietly waiting, studying a collection of Civil War swords mounted on a wall. The South would never rise again if it had to rearm at these prices. The seconds passed, maybe four score and seven. He got tired of swords and watched the rich and poor and blacks and whites and tourists and young urban pioneers walk back and forth on the street beyond the hanging plants in the Golden Oldens' narrow, yellow-tinted shop windows. There sure were a lot of plants in this neighborhood.
“This way, Mr. Nudger,” the clerk said behind him.
Nudger jumped, his attention yanked back inside the shop.
He followed the young clerk down the aisle he'd seen him go down previously, flanked by dark old desks, bookcases, wardrobes, and fancy breakfronts. Everything in the shop other than Nudger and the clerk seemed to have claw feet, and Nudger couldn't be sure about the clerk.
The clerk opened a red-laquered door and ushered Nudger into a spacious, red-carpeted office dominated by a massive Queen Anne desk. Three of the walls were paneled in rich dark walnut; on a fourth wall were a bank of black file cabinets and a table supporting an IBM personal computer. Max Reasoner sat behind the desk, almost dwarfed by it, though he was a rangy
six-footer. His beard looked as if it had just been trimmed, and it matched perfectly the gray of his elegant sport jacket. The curve-stemmed pipe lay propped in an antique glass-and-iron ashtray on the desk. Reckoner stood up smoothly, a middle-aged guy in good shape, maybe a jogger, and extended his hand toward Nudger.
As they shook hands, Reckoner said off to the side, “Thank you, Norman,” and the clerk left the office on little cat feet and closed the door behind him.
“I believe I saw you at Fat Jack's,” Reckoner said amiably. He motioned for Nudger to sit down in one of the deep, leather-upholstered chairs before the desk.
Nudger sat, watching Reckoner lower himself easily into his big desk chair. It was modern, yet somehow looked as if it belonged behind the antique desk. “I guess we're both jazz fans,” Nudger said.
Reckoner picked up the curve-stemmed pipe, toyed with it, then placed it back in the ashtray. There was self-assurance even in that gesture. He was quite the sophisticate, but he wore it well; it seemed as natural to him as if he'd been born and raised in a big manor house in antebellum Louisiana. His accent, strangely enough, sounded more British than Southern.
“To the point, Mr. Nudger. I understand you've been asking questions about Ineida Mann.”
To the point it would be. “True,” Nudger said.
“Why?”
“Do you mean why isn't it any of your concern?”
Reckoner smiled. It was a nice smile, his handsome face seamed with deep laugh lines. A man like this could enhance his reputation as a nice guy even as he was pulling a knife from your back. All in the smile. “It is my concern,” he said. “I'm interested in Ineida's career. She's a very sweet, very talented young woman.”
He seemed to mean it about the talent, so Nudger decided to leave it alone.
Reckoner leaned slightly forward over the wide expanse of old desk. “You told Norman you're a private detective. I assume someone hired you in regard to Ineida. Would it be contrary to your professional code to reveal the name of your employer?”