by John Lutz
“It would without my client's permission,” Nudger said.
“Is Ineida in some sort of trouble? She isn't getting rich singing at Fat Jack's; I'm prepared to help her out financially if that has anything to do with her problem.”
“She doesn't need financial assistance,” Nudger assured Reckoner. “Actually I came here to ask you just what your relationship with her is, and what you think of her relationship with Willy Hollister.”
Reckoner shrugged inside the elegant gray jacket. In the way of quality tailoring, it seemed to shrug with him, as if adopting the mood of whoever wore it were part of the bargain. “I just described my relationship with Ineida; she's a fine young person I'd like to help. I have the means to assist her in her singing career, so why shouldn't I do just that?”
“No reason not to,” Nudger said. “If that's as far as your interest in her goes.”
Reckoner leaned back and smiled, this time sagely and tolerantly. It made Nudger want to punch him. “Are you moralizing, Mr. Nudger?”
“Not at all. Only speculating. A pretty young girl, an older married man …”
“You're miles out of line, Nudger.”
“I apologize if I've offended you. My work mostly takes me out of line. Sometimes I go weeks without even seeing the line.”
“What would prompt you to suspect some sort of romantic involvement between Ineida and me?”
“At the risk of offending you again,” Nudger said, “you must be aware that you have something of a reputation as a philanderer.”
Reckoner stiffened, managed to look as indignant as a gray-bearded schnauzer whose food dish had suddenly been snatched away. “Ineida's virtually a child, Nudger. I don't molest children.”
“She's a beautiful young woman,” Nudger said. “I'll admit that she's naive in some areas, but a twenty-two-year-old girl is no longer a child in the view of a lot of people. Sometimes the wrong kind of people.”
“I'm not one of the wrong kind,” Reckoner said coldly. He stood up, letting his knuckles rest lightly on the desktop. It seemed the conversation was over.
Nudger also stood and buttoned his sport jacket. “You haven't told me what you think about Ineida seeing Willy Hollister.”
“I see no evidence that Hollister is one of the wrong kind of people, either. Ineida's relationship with him is none of my business. Or yours.”
Nudger idly picked up a cream-colored glass vase from a corner of the desk.
“Don't drop that,” Reckoner said calmly but testily. “It's worth more than you might imagine.”
“Looks ordinary enough,” Nudger said.
“It's Bristol glass. It looks like ordinary milk glass, but hold it up to the light and you'll see a reddish glow in it.”
Nudger held the vase up and tilted it toward the window; the milky glass did take on a transparency and glow a fiery red.
“Only the light shining through it will reveal the fire,” Reckoner said.
“Very often,” Nudger said, “that's true of people, too.”
Reckoner shook his head almost sadly. “I was afraid you'd make that strained analogy.”
He sat back down and busied himself with a stack of irregular-sized papers that looked like shipping invoices. His manner suggested that Nudger's presence was no longer important enough to acknowledge; enough time had been wasted on things trivial.
Nudger turned and saw that Norman was standing on the red carpet, holding the door open for him. Not a sound had been made; it was as if he'd been there in the office all the time and just now decided to become visible. He could sure move quietly on those tasseled moccasins. Some spooky guy.
Without speaking, he ushered Nudger through the shop to the street door and back out into the sunlight, noise, exhaust fumes, and heat of the twentieth century.
The sidewalk was heavily peopled by shoppers now; commerce was picking up along the block of small shops and restaurants. As Nudger stepped aside to avoid a determined-looking obese mother lugging a sour-faced infant, he saw that a woman was leaning against his parked car with her arms folded. She was lounging comfortably in a patient, waiting sort of way; if she'd been in uniform, Nudger would have assumed she was a cop waiting to greet him with an official smile, a lecture, and a parking ticket.
He didn't break stride. When he got closer he recognized her. Sandra Reckoner. Max's wife.
Her smile was warmer than a cop's official grimace as she straightened her long body and turned slightly to face him. She was built tall and rangy, like her husband, and was wearing dark slacks with tight cuffs and a crazily printed colorful blouse that had enough material under the arms to make her appear to have folded wings; if she ran fast enough into the wind, she might be able to fly.
She said, “I'm Sandra Reckoner, Mr. Nudger. We have things to talk about.”
He shook hands with her lightly, sensing the strength in her long, lean fingers. She was wearing pink nail polish, a bulky antique ring, and a dull-gold bracelet that twined around her wrist like an affectionate snake.
“You've been talking with my husband,” she told him. She had coarse, shoulder-length black hair flecked with gray, framing a narrow, big-boned face that should have been horsey-looking but wasn't. Her eyes, greenish-blue and amused, looked out with a candid directness, almost a sensuous dare, above her high cheekbones. This was an attractive woman living at ease with her forty-odd years, and her almost luminous health lent her a sexual vitality that hummed.
Nudger nodded, a bit awkwardly, still gauging the pull of her magnetism, testing the air for trouble. Certain women affected him that way initially. “I just left the antique shop,” he confirmed.
“Now it's our turn to chat,” Sandra Reckoner said. “I know a place where we can do that.”
That sounded interesting to Nudger. He leaned to open the car door for her.
“We can walk,” she told him.
He swallowed, nodded again, and followed her. Gee, those long legs moved lazily and smoothly beneath the silky material of her slacks. Rhythm, rhythm. He found it difficult to look away from them.
She paused for a moment at the corner, waiting for traffic to stop for a red light, then forged on ahead.
He almost got run over trying to keep up with her as they crossed the street.
THIRTEEN
Sandra Reckoner's long legs were still striding in Nudger's imagination as he sat across from her in a booth near the back of The Instrumental, a lounge they'd entered at the end of the block. It was in a rehabbed and converted two-story frame row house. She acted as though she was familiar with the place, a narrow, dim room decorated with musical instruments mounted on the walls and suspended by thin wires from the ceiling. A carpeted spiral staircase led up to another room where there were more tables. Nudger could see the shoes and pants legs of diners near where the stairway wound into the second floor.
A husky blond barmaid without a waist, wearing a floor-length print skirt and a melancholy expression, came out from behind the long bar and took their orders. Nudger asked for Seven-Up over ice; Sandra Reckoner nodded to the barmaid as if she knew her and asked for Scotch on the rocks. The barmaid went back behind the bar and did something that caused soft sax music to drift out from speakers hidden around the place; considerate of her, since the morning was young and they were the only downstairs customers.
“Kind of early for me to be drinking high-proof stuff,” Nudger said, when their drinks were placed before them on cork coasters featuring superimposed photos of well-known jazz musicians. He sipped his Seven-Up and set the glass down smack on the grinning face of poor Pete Fountain.
“The hour makes no difference to me,” Sandra said. “People pay too much attention to clocks. I drink when I need a drink, which is often.” Nudger doubted that she was telling him she was an alcoholic. She showed no signs of the disease; she glowed with that disturbingly good health that upsets male libidos. “Oh, I get drunk now and then,” she said suddenly. “I enjoy it. Getting a little goose
d once in a while makes my life more acceptable to me.”
“What in your life do you find hard to accept?” Nudger asked, knowing the answer.
“What you were talking to my husband about: Ineida Mann. And so many others like her.” She took a pull of Scotch. “Hell, they all look alike. Ever noticed how young girls nowadays seem sort of mass-produced?”
“I have. I thought that might be because I'm getting older. Is that why we're here? So you can ask me about Ineida and Max?”
Sandra sipped her drink daintily now, aimed her amused eyes at him over the glass rim. “Mostly, that's why we're here. My husband's infidelities are nothing new to me. I think he's a victim of male menopause. Like a number of middle-aged men, he likes younger women.”
“He shouldn't,” Nudger said candidly.
She picked up the sincerity in his voice and smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Nudger; that lifts me up more than this drink.” She cocked her head to the side and stared at him, as if suddenly her undivided attention had been captured. “What's your first name?”
“Aloysius. But everyone just calls me Nudger.”
“Lucky you.” She leaned away and draped a long arm over the back of the booth; there was something sweeping and elegant in the gesture. Something grand. “Well?”
“I think the answer is no.”
Sandra laughed deep in her throat, throwing back her head and exposing large, perfectly aligned teeth that were slightly stained. She had a way of glancing out of the corner of her eye when she did that, reminding Nudger of a spirited thoroughbred filly tossing back its head. He again reflected that she shouldn't have been as attractive as she was; her appeal puzzled and intrigued him.
“Your husband, as far as I know, has never slept with Ineida Mann.”
“How far do you know, Nudger?”
“Almost to the horizon. Are you well acquainted with Ineida?”
“No, not really. She's just another young face and body of the type Max seems to gather around him. Sometimes they respond to his advances and sometimes they don't. Let's face it, Nudger, a wife has a right to be suspicious when her husband is spending time with a woman named Ineida Mann. I know you've been asking questions about the girl; I figured you could tell me something about her.”
“She isn't what she seems,” Nudger said. “And I don't think she's at all interested in Max. She's involved with someone else.”
“Who? That piano player, Hollister? What does that prove? She might take on more than one man in one night, for all I know. What kind of background does she have? How the hell did she come up with that schmucky stage name? Who the fuck is she?”
“She comes from a nice family”—Nudger almost choked on his Seven-Up—“and she's more naive than she, and most of the people who see her perform, would like to believe. She's a blues singer; she wants to give the impression that she knows something about the hard knocks and pain she's describing in her lyrics.”
“Are you telling me she's using all that heat just to try to sell a song?”
Nudger nodded.
“Her act's a good one, then,” Sandra said. “She doesn't exactly come across the footlights as Polly Pure.” She drained her Scotch, signaled with a crook of a long finger to the husky barmaid, who had her back turned to watch soundless TV but caught the signal in the backbar mirror. “You want another Seven-Up, Nudger? I'm buying.”
“No, thanks. Too much carbonation this time of day will set off my stomach.”
“What's the matter with your stomach?”
“Nerves.”
“Then you're in the wrong business, aren't you?”
“You betcha.” He watched as Sandra's drink was replaced by a fresh one. “Have I put your mind at ease?”
“Somewhat,” she said. “But then, my mind is usually more or less at ease.”
“It doesn't seem as if your situation warrants that enviable state of tranquillity,” Nudger told her.
“Why not? Because the marital scales are out of balance? But they're not; I see to that. My response to Max's philandering is to enjoy my own infidelities, Nudger. I believe in vengeance through orgasm.”
Nudger breathed in some carbonation bubbles through his nose, coughed, and lowered his glass. “That's a, er, fascinating philosophy.”
She was smiling broadly now, toying, in control of the game. “Are you deeply involved with anyone, Nudger?”
“Very much so.” He stared at the languid curve of her long arm, the play of bright flesh along her throat as she tilted back her head to sip her Scotch. “Well, fairly involved.”
“Max doesn't know about my affairs. And he's not observant enough to suspect, much less find out; these days his thought processes occur well below the belt line. I like it that way; I do things for my satisfaction, not his dissatisfaction. That's the difference between my affairs and his. Nobody gets hurt my way. Everything's agreed on beforehand; no strings attached to either party. Freedom's an exhilarating experience.”
“If there is such a thing.”
“Oh, there is, Nudger.” She worked on her drink some more, then suddenly set the glass down as if she'd lost interest in it. “So? Does my way of coping with my husband's infidelities interest you?”
“Do you mean interest me in a personal way?”
“Of course.”
Nudger thought hard about Claudia. It was difficult to bring her features into sharp focus in his mind.
“There isn't necessarily anything wrong or cheap about lust, Nudger.”
“Hm, that's something to think about.”
Smiling, she stood up, picking up the bar check to pay on her way out. “Then think about it.”
Nudger watched her settle with the blond barmaid and walk out without looking back at him. He knew she was aware that he was staring; he could tell that by the measured cadence of her long-legged stride.
He sipped his Seven-Up. It tasted flat, now that Sandra Reckoner had gone. Instead of finishing his drink, he sat silently in the cool lounge, rotating his glass on its damp coaster. Thinking.
Thinking.
FOURTEEN
Though plenty of interested parties had warned Nudger to stay away from Ineida Collins, everyone had neglected to tell him to give wide berth to Willy Hollister. After Nudger left his unsettling verbal joust with Sandra Reckoner, it was Hollister who claimed his interest.
Hollister lived on Rue St. Francois, within a few blocks of Ineida. Their apartments were similar. Hollister's was the end unit of a low, tan brick-and-stucco building that sat almost flush with the sidewalk. What yard there was had to be in the rear. Through the glossy-green low branches of a huge magnolia tree, Nudger saw some of the raw cedar fencing, weathered almost black, that sectioned off the back premises into private courtyards.
Hollister might be home, sleeping after his late-night gig at Fat Jack's. Nudger rapped on the wooden door three times, then casually leaned toward it and listened, trying to blank out the street sounds from his mind.
He heard no sound from inside. He straightened and turned his head slightly, looking around; no one on the street seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. After a few seconds' wait, he idly gave the doorknob a twist.
It rotated all the way, giving a sharp click. The door opened about six inches on its own, because of weight and balance. Sort of an invitation. Nudger pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped quietly inside.
The apartment no doubt came furnished; it had that hodgepodge, multi-user look about it. The furniture was old but not too worn; some of it probably had antique value. Nudger thought the building's owner and Max Reckoner ought to get together and strike a deal. There was a milky-white vase on a shelf, not so unlike the vase Nudger had admired in Reckoner's office.
The floor in Hollister's apartment was dull hardwood where it showed around the borders of a faded blue carpet. Muted sunlight caught the faint fuzziness of dust on the wood surface and on the fancy corner molding; Hollister wasn't the best of housekeepers. F
rom where Nudger stood he could see into the bedroom. The bed was unmade but empty.
The living room was dim. The wooden shutters on its windows were closed, allowing slanted light to filter in through narrow slits. Most of the illumination in the room came from the bedroom and a short hall that led to a bathroom, then to a small kitchen and sliding glass doors that opened to the courtyard.
Wondering if he was actually alone, Nudger glanced around nervously, called, “Mr. Hollister? Gallup Poll!”
No answer. Only buzzing silence. Fine.
Nudger walked around the living room for a few minutes, examining the contents of drawers, picking up some sealed mail that turned out to be an insurance pitch and a utility bill. He was still haunted by the worrisome knowledge that Hollister wasn't the type to go away and leave his apartment unlocked. Especially not after his run-in with Sam Judman.
As he entered the bedroom, he heard a noise from outside the curtained window, which was open about four inches for ventilation. It was a dull thunking sound he thought he recognized. He went to the window, parted the breeze-swayed gauzy white curtains, and bent low to peer outside.
The window looked out on the courtyard. What Nudger saw confirmed his guess about the sound. It was made by a shovel knifing into soft earth. Willy Hollister was in the garden, digging. Nudger crouched low so he could see better, brushing a gossamer, caressing curtain away like a web from his face.
Hollister was planting rosebushes. They were young plants, but they already had red and white buds on them. Hollister had started on the left with the red roses and was alternating colors. He was planting half a dozen bushes and was working on the fifth plant, which lay with its roots wrapped in burlap beside the waiting, freshly dug hole.
Hollister was on both knees on the ground, using his hands to scoop some dirt back into the hole. He was carefully shaping a small dome over which to spread the soon-to-be-exposed roots before adding more loose earth. He knew how to plant rosebushes, all right, and he was doing his best to ensure that these would live.