The Right to Sing the Blues (Alo Nudger Book 3)

by John Lutz

  Fat Jack grimaced with fear. It wouldn't let up; it was gnawing like rats on his insides. Nudger watched, fascinated. It was something to see, a huge man like Fat Jack being eaten alive inside-out. “Collins told me that if any part of Ineida turned up in the mail, a part of me would be cut off. He told me what part; it ain't gonna be what's missing from Ineida.”

  “It appears he scared you,” Nudger observed.

  Fat Jack raised his writhing eyebrows and looked dumbfounded. “Scared me? Hey, he terrified the livin' shit out of me, Nudger. Collins is a man who don't bluff; he means to do real harm to the friendly fat man. I mean, hey, I take him at his word.”

  Nudger walked around the office for a few seconds, almost preoccupied, like a boxer finding the area of the ring where he felt most comfortable. Near the desk corner, about five feet from Fat Jack, he stopped and stood facing the big man. For the first time he noticed that Fat Jack had too much of his lemon-scented cologne on today; it did nothing to hide the fear, only made the unmistakable sharp odor of desperation more acrid.

  “When I was looking into Hollister's past,” Nudger said, “I happened to discover something that seemed ordinary enough then, but now has gotten kind of interesting.” He paused and watched the perspiration pour down Fat Jack's wide forehead.

  “So I'm interested,” Fat Jack said irritably. He reached behind him and slapped at the window air conditioner, as if to coax more cold air from it. There was no change in its gurgling hum.

  “There's something about being a fat man,” Nudger said, “a man as large as you. After a while he takes his size for granted, doesn't even think about it, accepts it as a normal fact of life. But other people don't. A really fat man is more memorable than he realizes, especially if he's called Fat Jack.”

  Fat Jack drew his head back into fleshy folds and shot a tortured, wary look at Nudger. “Hey, what are you talking toward, old sleuth?”

  “You had a series of failed clubs in the cities where Willy Hollister played his music, and you were there at the times when Hollister's women disappeared.”

  “That ain't unusual, Nudger. Jazz is a tight little world.” Fat Jack sat down slowly in his squeaking, protesting, undersized chair, swiveled slightly to the left, and glanced briefly upward as if seeking some written message on the ceiling. He found none. He swiveled back to face Nudger, making himself sit still.

  “I said people remember you,” Nudger told him. “And they remember you knowing Willy Hollister. But you told me you saw him for the first time when he came here to play in your club. And when I went to see Ineida for the first time, she knew my name. She bought the idea that I was a magazine writer; it fell right into place and it took her a while to get uncooperative. Then she assumed I was working for her father—as you knew she would.”

  Fat Jack stood halfway up, then decided he hadn't the energy for the total effort and sat back down in his groaning chair. “You missed a beat, Nudger. Are you saying I'm in on this kidnapping with Hollister? Hey, if that's true, why would I have hired you?”

  “You needed someone like me to substantiate Hollister's involvement with Ineida, to find out about Hollister's missing women. It would help you to set him up.”

  “Hey, set him up for what?”

  “You knew Hollister better than you pretended. You knew that he murdered those three women to add some insane, tragic dimension to his music—the sound that made him great. You knew what he had planned for Ineida.”

  “He didn't even know who she really was!” Fat Jack sputtered. Not a bad actor; so sincere.

  “But you knew from the time you hired her that she was David Collins' daughter. You schemed from the beginning to use Hollister as the goat in your kidnapping plan.”

  Fat Jack wrinkled his forehead, raised pained eyes to Nudger. He looked genuinely hurt by this absurd accusation, disappointed by Nudger's inability to puzzle things out. “Christ, old sleuth! Where are you getting these wild ideas about the old fat man? Hollister is a killer—you said so yourself. I wouldn't want to get involved in any kind of a scam with him.”

  “He didn't know about the real scam,” Nudger explained. “When you'd used me to make it clear that Hollister was the natural suspect, you kidnapped Ineida yourself and demanded the ransom, figuring Hollister's past and his disappearance would divert the law's attention away from you.”

  Fat Jack's wide face was a study in agitation, but it was relatively calm compared to what must have been going on inside his head. During the last few days he'd realized he'd bitten off too much to chew. His body was squirming uncontrollably, and the agony in his eyes was difficult to look into. He didn't want to ask the question, but he had to and he knew it. He had to hear the answer.

  “If all this is true,” he moaned, “where is Willy Hollister?”

  “I did a little digging in his garden,” Nudger said. “He's under his roses, where he thought Ineida was going to wind up, but where you had space for him reserved all along.”

  Time stopped, then took a couple of extra slow ticks, the way it does when something irrevocable happens. Fat Jack's head dropped. His suit suddenly seemed two sizes too large, as if a year of Weight Watchers had caught up with him all at once. As his body trembled, tears joined the sheen of perspiration glistening on his quivering cheeks. “How could you have figured it out?” he asked.

  “When I found out the letters were missing, I suspected Collins' alter egos Frick and Frack, but that didn't make sense in light of further developments. Then I suspected Sandra Reckoner, but she didn't take the letters. Nobody else I knew of could have been in my hotel room. Nobody even knew the letters were there. Nobody but you. You stole them and had them delivered to David Collins to further implicate Hollister by making it appear that he and Ineida left New Orleans together. Then there's the fact that Ineida's three months pregnant.”

  “Huh? Pregnant?”

  “If Hollister had taken her, he'd know about the pregnancy and would have used it for leverage. But it was never mentioned in the kidnapper's ransom demands.”

  “Ineida's got one in the oven? You sure?”

  “One in the oven,” Nudger confirmed. He'd never liked that expression. “Her mother told me. Collins' former wife. Marilyn Eeker.”

  Fat Jack said nothing for a long time. Then he said, in a very low voice, “Okay, I guess all that leaves me in deep shit.”

  “The deepest.”

  He raised his head slowly. His question was a plea for mercy: “What now, old sleuth?”

  Nudger stepped forward and leaned down over the desk so he could look Fat Jack in the eye. “Where is Ineida?” he asked.

  “She's still alive” was Fat Jack's only answer. Crushed as he was, he was still too wily to reveal his hole card. It was as if his fat were a kind of rubber, lending inexhaustible resilience to body and mind. Nudger couldn't help it; he found himself admiring such stamina in the face of relentless pressure.

  “It's negotiation time,” Nudger told him, “and we don't have very long to reach an agreement. I not only did a little digging in Hollister's garden, I did some refilling. It's a busy place, that garden. While we're sitting here talking, the police are digging in the dirt I replaced.”

  “You called the police?”

  “I did. But right now, they expect to find Ineida. When they find Hollister, Livingston will begin to fit all the pieces together the way I did and get the same puzzle picture of you. It might take him a while, since he has less than I did to work with, but he'll do it.”

  Fat Jack nodded sadly, seeing the truth in that prognosis. Livingston was, if nothing else, a smart cop. “So what's your proposition?” Fat Jack asked.

  “We both have a stake in Ineida getting back to home base safely,” Nudger said. “You release her, and I keep quiet until tomorrow morning. That'll give you the advantage of a head start on the law. The police don't know who phoned them about the body in Hollister's garden, so I can stall them for at least that long without arousing suspicion.”
<
br />   Fat Jack didn't deliberate for more than a few seconds. He saw the only way out of the maze and intended taking it.

  He nodded again, then stood up, supporting his ponderous weight with both hands on the desk. “What about money?” he whined. “Hey, I can't run far without money.” He added with supreme logic, “That's what all this was about.”

  “I've got nothing to lend you,” Nudger said. “Not even the fee I'm not going to get from you.”

  “All right,” Fat Jack sighed. He was pure resignation now, whipped like a tub of butter. Despite himself, Nudger kept feeling some semblance of pity for him. Something so buoyant and enormous, both physically and in talent and accomplishment, was an awesome and pathetic spectacle crashed.

  “I'm going to phone David Collins in one hour,” Nudger told him. “If Ineida isn't there, I'll put down the receiver, pick it up again, and dial the number of the New Orleans Police Department.”

  “She'll be there,” Fat Jack said. “Hey, I promise.” He buttoned his suit coat, gathered momentum, and headed toward the door. He had some moves left; that was all he needed, some.

  He was within a step of the office door when it opened.

  Fat Jack reversed direction, as if he'd run to the end of his string and rebounded, taking two steps backward without turning.

  Marty Sievers walked into the office. He nodded blandly to Fat Jack and Nudger, looking as if he had no idea that anything unusual was going on here. Nudger knew better. The cards were all up now; bluff time was over. Sievers must have been outside the door for a long time, eavesdropping.

  “No one's leaving here for a while,” Sievers said. He said it softly, but it was an unmistakable order to be unfailingly obeyed. A threat. It was effective, even though he wasn't carrying a weapon. He didn't need a weapon. He knew it. Fat Jack and Nudger knew it. That was enough.

  “I guess I don't have anyplace to go right now,” Nudger said.

  Sievers smiled a handsome, glittering smile. Leading-man charm. Dazzling. Nudger had never seen him smile like that. It was unnerving.

  “You might have someplace to go you never thought of,” Sievers said, still in that same soft voice. “And in a hurry.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  “You turn back from our objective too easily,” Sievers said to Fat Jack. “It's still obtainable.” His tone was clipped, as if he were talking about a military operation.

  Fat Jack wasn't swayed by Sievers' concise confidence. “Christ, Marty, this thing is blown. I mean, hey, let's face it and get out while we can. I mean—”

  “Shut up,” Sievers interrupted. “Stay shut up.” Patton meets blues man, Nudger thought. New commander. Battlefield commission. “I was outside the door. I heard everything you and Nudger said. This operation isn't scratched; we simply have to tighten the time frame.”

  “Tighten what … how?” Fat Jack said, sounding vague and confused. Obviously not Green Beret material.

  Sievers was looking directly at Fat Jack, but at an unnatural angle that kept Nudger fixed firmly in his peripheral vision. Nudger had never seen anyone do that before. It made the flesh on the back of his neck creep. “We get in touch with Collins as soon as possible,” Sievers said. “We collect what money we can within the next hour, before Collins learns about Hollister's body being found and figures there's murder in the game and maybe his daughter's dead. He'll be more likely to balk at paying then and call in the law.”

  “Why is the money so important now?” Nudger asked. “Alive is better than rich, when you're staring at a homicide charge and the death penalty.”

  Sievers swiveled his head slightly to look at Nudger, keeping Fat Jack in sight to the side in that peculiar way of his. It was easier with Fat Jack because of his bulk, but the odd intensity stayed in Sievers' eyes. It was sheer concentration and calculation; his juices were flowing as they probably hadn't since Vietnam.

  “The money's important because of who we owe it to,” he said. “Fat Jack and I borrowed a lot of money to cover unwise investments made with the club's profits. We not only dipped into David Collins' till, we took out loans from people who administer their own death penalty to debtors who can't pay. And without that ransom money, Fat Jack and I can't pay.”

  “I ain't worried about that now!” Fat Jack said. “We can run from those guys easier than from the law. You get a murder rap on you, and kidnapping Collins' daughter to boot, and you got no place to hide, Marty. No place. Hey, don't you understand?”

  “I understand that we're going to finish what we started,” Sievers said. “We're ramrodding this through.”

  “Collins won't even know you're involved,” Fat Jack said. “But what about me? He'll come straight for me. And we hang around here and get nailed by the law while we're trying to collect a ransom and everybody in Louisiana will want to witness our executions just for the entertainment value. You're underestimating Collins' influence.”

  “I don't care what happens to you,” Sievers said flatly. “The operation is what's important.”

  “Certain soldiers are expendable,” Nudger said. “Every good military man knows that. And this one's back in Vietnam; he'll take his objective even if it kills all his men.”

  “Some of us have the guts to do what needs doing,” Sievers said, glancing over with contempt at Fat Jack. “This tub of shit was expendable from the beginning. I knew it would be that way; I know men. I had to do everything because he was too frightened. He was always making excuses, hiding behind his obesity. There's no sand in him, no will to do what's dangerous or unpleasant.”

  “Then you're the one who killed Hollister?”

  Sievers grinned. “Sure. We led him to believe he was going to murder Ineida, then share the ransom money with us. He liked the idea of profiting two ways. Music and money. Not that he had a choice.”

  “Hollister's throat was crushed,” Nudger said. “Like Billy Weep's in St. Louis. Did you use a karate chop on them?”

  “Exactly.” Sievers seemed pleased with Nudger's correct guess, as if he'd encountered an unexpectedly apt pupil. “I followed you to Weep's apartment and neutralized him after you left,” he said. “We didn't want him to mention that Fat Jack was a close friend of Jacqui James. Fat Jack witnessed Hollister's murder of the James woman years ago in St. Louis; that's how we controlled Hollister, got him to agree to murder his next lover for money as well as art. Fat Jack could have fed him to the law anytime it suited.”

  Fat Jack's eyes were bulging; he was terrified. “You're saying too much, Marty!”

  “It doesn't matter,” Sievers snapped, and Fat Jack seemed to shrink into his bulk and was quiet.

  “Why didn't you let Hollister kill Ineida?” Nudger asked.

  “Oh, we intended to give her back to Daddy. It was the only way to keep Collins from spending the rest of his life using his resources to hunt us down and kill us.”

  “Then she really is still alive.”

  Sievers nodded.

  “Where is she?”

  “That hardly matters to you,” Sievers said.

  Nudger didn't like the way he said it. Sievers looked hard at Fat Jack, warning him, fixing him in position standing up behind his desk, the way an infielder glances at a runner on third base and freezes him there before throwing the ball to first for the sure out.

  Nudger was the sure out.

  His stomach jumped around in violent warning; fear ran like molten copper along the edges of his tongue and the back of his throat. Sievers, with a solemn, businesslike expression that was scarier than a scowl, was slowly advancing toward him. Time for some of that danger and unpleasantness. A good commander wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Or bloody. Best to neutralize the Nudger problem as quickly as possible, get it out of the way and carry on.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Nudger said. “Let's talk about this. Figure something out …”

  “We don't have a minute,” Sievers told him. “You saw to that. As it turns out, you committed a tactical error.” He slid obliquel
y to his right, just enough to place himself between Nudger and the door.

  Nudger considered yelling for help. But he could barely hear the music from the club downstairs. The office was almost soundproof. No one would hear him. No one would come if he called.

  Sievers angled his body slightly sideways, suddenly was airborne and twirling, his right foot slashing out in what karate aficionados call a crescent kick. Nudger leaped backward and felt a brush of air as Sievers' tassled brown loafer arced past his face.

  But the backward movement to avoid the kick left Nudger near a corner, with almost no room to maneuver. Sievers stepped closer again, setting himself for more explosive mayhem. He felt about killing with his hands—or feet—the way Hollister had felt about making music.

  Nudger knew there was a single, low-percentage chance of staying alive. Not taking that chance would be reprehensible. Would be giving up. Forever.

  He gulped down his terror and charged.

  Sievers was caught off guard by this sudden attack from a supposedly subdued opponent. That was why he just grazed the side of Nudger's head as he danced nimbly from the path of the charge and chopped hard with the heel of his hand. Not a clean hit. But no problem for the old trooper. He actually laughed at this unexpected sport.

  Nudger's right ear was numb and buzzing. His desperate surprise attack had gained him nothing. His back was literally against the wall now. In a very few seconds he would join Billy Weep.

  Sievers was moving closer, crowding him, daring him to charge again, wanting him to charge, yearning to taste fully the violence he'd only sampled; his fighter's blood was up. The bland man's compact body was coiled inside his conservative brown suit, building energy to trade for Nudger's death. His eyes hardened; he cupped his hands in peculiar half-fists and crouched low to spring. He became very still. He was ready.

  Nudger didn't hear the shot.

  He doubted if Sievers heard it.

  Presto, change-o! There was a round bluish hole just left of center on Sievers' forehead. It might have been a magician's illusion or the special-effects magic of movieland. Only it wasn't; it was real life. Real death. His body didn't move, but the energy seemed to flow out of it; the intensity drained from his eyes. He was his old bland self. Amiable average Marty. The guy you'd want your sister to bring home to dinner.