The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "You could stake out her trailer."

  "Do you think Holly Ann and Len might be lovers?"

  "No.

  Hammersmith shook his head. "Then they'll probably never see each other again. Watching her trailer would be a waste of manpower."

  Nudger knew Hammersmith was right. He stood up to go. "What are you going to do now?" Hammersmith asked.

  "I'll talk to the witnesses again. I'll read the court transcript again. And I'd like to talk with Curtis Colt."

  "They don't allow visitors on Death Row, Nudge, only temporary boarders."

  "This case is an exception," Nudger said. "Will you try to arrange it?"

  Hammersmith chewed thoughtfully on his cigar. Since he'd been the officer in charge of the murder investigation, he'd been the one who'd nailed Curtis Colt. That carried an obligation.

  "I'll phone you soon," he said, "let you know."

  Nudger thanked Hammersmith and walked down the hall into the clear, breathable air of the booking area.

  That day he managed to talk again to all four eyewitnesses. Two of them got mad at Nudger for badgering them. They all stuck to their stories. Nudger reported this to Holly Ann at the Right-Steer Steakhouse, where she worked as a waitress. Several customers that afternoon got tears with their baked potatoes.

  Hammersmith phoned Nudger that evening.

  "I managed to get permission for you to talk to Colt," he said, "but don't get excited. Colt won't talk to you. He won't talk to anyone, not even a clergyman. He'll change his mind about the clergyman, but not about you."

  "Did you tell him I was working for Holly Ann?"

  "I had that information conveyed to him. He wasn't impressed. He's one of the stoic ones on Death Row."

  Nudger's stomach kicked up, growled something that sounded like a hopeless obscenity. If even Curtis Colt wouldn't cooperate, how could he be helped? Absently, Nudger peeled back the aluminum foil on a roll of antacid tablets and slipped two chalky white disks into his mouth.

  Hammersmith knew his nervous stomach and must have heard him chomping away. "Take it easy, Nudge. This isn't your fault."

  "Then why do I feel like it is?"

  "Because you feel too much of everything. That's why you had to quit the department."

  "We've got another day before the execution," Nudger said. "I'm going to go through it all again. I'm going to talk to each of those witnesses even if they try to run when they see me coming. Maybe somebody will say something that will let in some light."

  "There's no light out there, Nudge. You're wasting your time. Give up on this one and move on."

  "Not yet," Nudger said "There's something elusive here that I can't quite grab."

  "And never will," Hammersmith said. "Forget it, Nudge. Live your life and let Curtis Colt lose his."

  Hammersmith was right. Nothing Nudger did helped Curtis Colt in the slightest. At eight o'clock Saturday morning, while Nudger was preparing breakfast in his apartment, Colt was put to death in the electric chair. He'd offered no last words before two thousand volts had turned him from something into nothing.

  Nudger heard the news of Colt's death on his kitchen radio. He went ahead and ate his eggs, but he skipped the toast.

  That afternoon he consoled a numbed and frequently sobbing Holly Ann and apologized for being powerless to stop her true love's execution. She was polite, trying to be brave. She preferred to suffer alone. Her boss at the Right-Steer gave her the rest of the day off, and Nudger drove her home.

  Nudger slept a total of four hours during the next two nights. On Monday, he felt compelled to attend Curtis Colt's funeral. There were about a dozen people clustered around the grave, including the state-appointed clergyman and pallbearers. Nudger stood off to one side during the brief service. Holly Ann, looking like a child playing dress-up in black, stood well off to the other side. They didn't exchange words, only glances.

  As the coffin was lowered into the earth, Nudger watched Holly Ann walk to where a taxi was waiting by a weathered stone angel. The cab wound its way slowly along the snaking narrow cemetery road to tall iron gates and the busy street. Holly Ann never looked back.

  That night Nudger realized what was bothering him, and for the first time since Curtis Colt's death, he slept well.

  In the morning he began watching Holly Ann's trailer.

  At seven-thirty she emerged, dressed in her yellow waitress uniform, and got into another taxi. Nudger followed in his battered Volkswagen Beetle as the cab drove her the four miles to her job at the Right-Steer Steakhouse. She didn't look around as she paid the driver and walked inside through the molded plastic Old West saloon swinging doors.

  At six that evening another cab drove her home, making a brief stop at a grocery store.

  It went that way for the rest of the week, trailer to work to trailer. Holly Ann had no visitors other than the plain brown paper bag she took home every night.

  The temperature got up to around ninety-five and the humidity rose right along with it. It was one of St. Louis's legendary summer heat waves. Sitting melting in the Volkswagen, Nudger wondered if what he was doing was really worthwhile. Curtis Colt was, after all, dead, and had never been his client. Still, there were responsibilities that went beyond the job. Or perhaps they were actually the essence of the job.

  The next Monday, after Holly Ann had left for work, Nudger used his Visa card to slip the flimsy lock on her trailer door, and let himself in.

  It took him over an hour to find what he was searching for. It had been well hidden, in a cardboard box inside the access panel to the bathroom plumbing. After looking at the box's contents—almost seven hundred dollars in loot from Curtis Colt's brief life of crime, and another object Nudger wasn't surprised to see—Nudger resealed the box and replaced the access panel.

  He continued to watch and follow Holly Ann, more confident now.

  Two weeks after the funeral, when she left work one evening she didn't go home.

  Instead her taxi turned the opposite way and drove east on Watson Road. Nudger followed the cab along a series of side streets in South St. Louis, then part way down a dead-end alley to a large garage, above the door of which was lettered "Clifford's Auto Body."

  Nudger backed out quickly onto the street then parked the Volkswagen near the mouth of the alley. A few minutes later the cab drove by without a passenger. Within ten minutes, Holly Ann drove past in a shiny red Ford. Its license plate number began with an "L."

  When Nudger reached Placid Cove Trailer Park, he saw the Ford nosed in next to Holly Ann's trailer.

  On the way to the trailer door, he paused and etched the Ford's hood with a key. Even in the lowering evening light he could see that beneath the new red paint the car's color was dark green.

  Holly Ann answered the door right away when he knocked. She tried a smile when she saw it was him, but she couldn't quite manage her facial muscles, as if they'd become rigid and uncoordinated. She appeared ten years older. The little-girl look had deserted her; now she was an emaciated, grief-eroded woman, a country Barbie doll whose features some evil child had lined with dark crayon. The shaded crescents beneath her eyes completely took away their innocence. She was holding a glass that had once been a jelly jar. In it were two fingers of a clear liquid. Behind her on the table was a crumpled brown paper bag and a half-empty bottle of gin.

  "I figured it out," Nudger told her.

  Now she did smile, but it was fleeting, a sickly bluish shadow crossing her taut features. "You're like a dog with a rag, Mr. Nudger. You surely don't know when to let go." She stepped back and he followed her into the trailer. It was warm in there; something was wrong with the air conditioner. "Hot as hell, ain't it," Holly Ann commented. Nudger thought that was apropos.

  He sat down at the tiny Formica table, just as he and Len had sat facing each other two weeks ago. She offered him a drink. He declined. She downed the contents of the jelly jar glass and poured herself another, clumsily striking the neck of the bottle on the
glass. It made a sharp, flinty sound, as if sparks might fly.

  "Now, what's this you've got figured out, Mr. Nudger?" She didn't want to, but she had to hear it. Had to share it.

  "It's almost four miles to the Right-Steer Steakhouse," Nudger told her. "The waitresses there make little more than minimum wage, so cab fare to and from work has to eat a big hole in your salary. But then you seem to go everywhere by cab."

  "My car's been in the shop."

  "I figured it might be, after I found the money and the wig."

  She bowed her head slightly and took a sip of gin. "Wig?"

  "In the cardboard box inside the bathroom wall."

  "You been snooping, Mr. Nudger." There was more resignation than outrage in her voice.

  "You're sort of skinny, but not a short girl," Nudger went on. "With a dark curly wig and a fake mustache, sitting in a car, you'd resemble Curtis Colt enough to fool a dozen eyewitnesses who just caught a glimpse of you. It was a smart precaution for the two of you to take."

  Holly Ann looked astounded. "Are you saying I was driving the getaway car at the liquor store holdup?"

  "Maybe. Then maybe you hired someone to play Len and convince me he was Colt's accomplice and that they were far away from the murder scene when the trigger was pulled. After I found the wig, I talked to some of your neighbors, who told me that until recently you'd driven a green Ford sedan." Holly Ann ran her tongue along the edges of her protruding teeth.

  "So Curtis and Len used my car for their holdups."

  "I doubt if Len ever met Curtis. He's somebody you paid in stolen money or drugs to sit there where you're sitting now and lie to me."

  "If I was driving that getaway car, Mr. Nudger, and knew Curtis was guilty, why would I have hired a private investigator to try to find a hole in the eyewitnesses' stories?"

  "That's what bothered me at first," Nudger said, "until I realized you weren't interested in clearing Curtis. What you were really worried about was Curtis Colt talking in prison. You didn't want those witnesses' stories changed, you wanted them verified. And you wanted the police to learn about not-his-right-name Len."

  Holly Ann raised her head to look directly at him with eyes that begged and dreaded. She asked simply, "Why would I want that?"

  "Because you were Curtis Colt's accomplice in all of his robberies. And when you hit the liquor store, he stayed in the car to drive. You fired the shot that killed the old woman. He was the one who fired the wild shot from the speeding car. Colt kept quiet about it because he loved you. He never talked, not to the police, not to his lawyer, not even to a priest. Now that he's dead you can trust him forever, but I have a feeling you could have anyway. He loved you more than you loved him, and you'll have to live knowing he didn't deserve to die."

  She looked down into her glass as if for answers and didn't say anything for a long time. Nudger felt a bead of perspiration trickle crazily down the back of his neck. Then she said, "I didn't want to shoot that old man, but he didn't leave me no choice. Then the old woman came at me." She looked up at Nudger and smiled ever so slightly. It was a smile Nudger hadn't seen on her before, one he didn't like. "God help me, Mr. Nudger, I can't quit thinking about shooting that old woman."

  "You murdered her," Nudger said, "and you murdered Curtis Colt by keeping silent and letting him die for you."

  "You can't prove nothing," Holly Ann said, still with her ancient-eyed, eerie smile that had nothing to do with amusement.

  "You're right," Nudger told her, "I can't. But I don't think legally proving it is necessary, Holly Ann. You said it: thoughts are actually tiny electrical impulses in the brain. Curtis Colt rode the lightning all at once. With you, it will take years, but the destination is the same. I think you'll come to agree that his way was easier."

  She sat very still. She didn't answer. Wasn't going to.

  Nudger stood up and wiped his damp forehead with the back of his hand. He felt sticky, dirty, confined by the low ceiling and near walls of the tiny, stifling trailer. He had to get out of there to escape the sensation of being trapped.

  He didn't say goodbye to Holly Ann when he walked out. She didn't say goodbye to him. The last sound Nudger heard as he left the trailer was the clink of the bottle on the glass.

  What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

  "You are Nudger?"

  "I am Nudger."

  The bulky woman who had leaned over Nudger and confirmed his identity had a halo of dark frizzy hair, a round face, round cheeks, round rimless spectacles, and a small round pursed mouth. She reminded Nudger of one of those dolls made with dried whole apples, whose faces eerily resemble those of aged humans. But the apple dolls usually are benign; the face looming over Nudger came equipped with tiny dark eyes that danced with malice.

  Behind the round-faced woman had stood two silent male companions. She and the two men hadn't spoken when they'd entered Nudger's office without having sounded the buzzer and in workmanlike fashion had begun beating him up.

  "Who? What? Why?" a frightened Nudger had asked, wrapping his arms around his head and trying to think of who other than his former wife would want to do this to him. He couldn't divine an answer. "I don't need this!" he'd implored. "Stop it, please!"

  And they had stopped. Extent of damage: sore ribs, cut forehead, but no damaged pride. Nudger was still alive; that was the object of his game.

  But there was more to it. He'd felt his shirtsleeve being unbuttoned, shoved roughly up his forearm. And the abrupt bite of a dull hypodermic needle as it was inserted just below his elbow. Sodium Pentothal, he deduced, before floating away on a private, agreeable cloud. His mouth seemed to become completely disassociated from his brain. He was vaguely aware that he was answering questions posed by the round-faced woman, that he was rambling uncontrollably. Yet he couldn't remember the questions or his answers a few seconds after they were uttered. Then an emptiness, a breathtaking slippage of light and time.

  Nudger opened his eyes and wondered where he'd been dropped. It didn't seem proper that he should be slowly revolving. Then the sensation of motion ceased, and with relief he realized he was lying on his back on his office floor. He felt remarkably heavy and comfortable.

  Moving only his eyes, he gazed around and took in the open desk drawers and file cabinets, the papers and yellow file folders strewn about the floor. He remembered the hulking round-faced woman and her greedy pig's eyes and her two silent masculine helpers. He tried to recall the round-faced woman's questions but he couldn't.

  Nudger struggled to a sitting position and a headache fell on him like a slab from the ceiling. When he'd become somewhat accustomed to the idea of enduring throbbing pain for the rest of his life, he stood, dizzily staggered to his desk, and sat down. The squeal of his swivel chair penetrated his brain like a hot stiletto.

  What was it all about? What could he know that the round-faced woman wanted to know? All he was working on now was a divorce case, like dozens of other divorce cases he'd handled as a private investigator. The husband was sleeping with his secretary, the wife had a compensatory affair going with her hairdresser, the husband had hired Nudger to get the goods on the wife. That would be easy; she was flaunting the affair. All of these people were suburbanites who wouldn't know a round-faced woman who shot up people with Sodium Pentothal; they were mostly concerned about who was going to come away with the TV and the blender.

  Nudger made his way over to where the coffeepot sat on the floor by the plug in the corner. He tried to pour a cupful but found that the round-faced woman and friends had emptied the pot and spread the grounds around on the floor. Maybe it was diamonds they were looking for.

  Sloshing through a shallow sea of papers and file folders, Nudger got his tan overcoat from its brass hook, wriggled into it, put on his crushproof hat, and went out, not locking the door behind him. He took the steep steps down the narrow stairwell to the door to the street, feeling the temperature drop as he descended. He shoved open the outer door and braced himself as the
winter air stiffened the hairs in his nostrils. The sudden rush of cold made his headache go away.

  He almost smiled as he stepped out onto the treacherous pavement and walked quickly but gingerly in a neat loop through the door of Danny's Donuts, directly above which his office was located.

  Nobody was in the place but Danny. That was the usual state of the business. Nudger breathed in deeply the sudden warmth and cloying sweetness of the doughnuts and unbuttoned his coat. He sat on a stool at the end of the stainless steel counter. Without being asked, Danny set a large plasticcoated paper cup of steaming black coffee before him. Danny was Danny Evers, a fortyish guy like Nudger, and, some might say, a loser like Nudger. Even Danny might say that, aware as he was that he made doughnuts like sash weights.

  But what he said was, "You cut yourself shaving?" as he pointed at the cut on Nudger's forehead.

  Nudger had forgotten about the injury. He raised tentative fingers, felt ridges of blood coagulated by the cold. "I had a visit from some friends," he said.

  "Some friends!" Danny said, changing the emphasis. He put some iced cake doughnuts and a couple of glazed into a grease-spotted carryout box. He was a sad-featured man who seemed to do everything with apprehensive intensity, a concerned basset hound.

  "Actually I never met them before this morning," Nudger said, sipping the coffee and burning his tongue. "So naturally we were curious about each other, but they asked all the questions."

  "Yeah? What kinda questions?"

  "That's the odd thing," Nudger said. "I can't remember."

  Danny laughed, then cocked his head of thick graying hair and squinted again at the cut on Nudger's forehead. "You serious about not remembering?"

  "It's not the knock on the head," Nudger assured him. "They shot me up with a drug that made me a regular mindless talking machine. It's called truth serum. It works even better than cheap scotch."