by John Lutz
"Maybe you oughta see a doctor, Nudge."
"Find me one that doesn't charge twenty dollars a stitch."
"I mean about the memory."
"That kind of a doctor charges twenty dollars a question."
Both men were silent while a blonde secretary from the office building across the street came in, paid for the carryout order, and left. Nudger smiled at her but she ignored him. It took a while for the doughnut shop to warm up again.
"I could drive you," Danny offered. "Emil is coming in to take over here in about fifteen minutes." Emil was Danny's hired help, a sometime college student working odd jobs. He made better doughnuts than his boss.
"I've got my car here," Nudger said.
"But maybe you shouldn't drive."
"I won't drive anywhere for a while," Nudger said. "What I'll do is go back upstairs and straighten up my office. If you'll give me another cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut, and put them on my tab."
"Straighten up why?" Danny asked, reaching into the display case.
"It's always a mess after friends drop by unexpectedly," Nudger told him.
"Some friends, those boys and girls," Danny reiterated, dropping the doughnut into a small white bag. It hit bottom with a solid smack.
As he trudged back up the unheated stairwell to his office, Nudger tried again, with each painful step, to surmise some reason for his interrogation. He could think of none. Business had been slow ever since summer, and he had been a good boy. Danny's horrendous coffee had started his stomach roiling. He'd take a few antacid tablets before drinking a second cup.
He stopped at his office door and stood holding the sack. It was a morning for surprises. In the chair by the desk sat a slender man wearing a camel hair topcoat with a fur collar. On his lap were expensive brown suede gloves. On his gloves rested pale, still, well-manicured hands. The man's bony face was as calm as his hands were.
"There's no need to introduce myself, Mr. Nudger," he said in a smoothly modulated voice. "On your desk is a sealed envelope. In the envelope is five thousand dollars. You've proved yourself a clever man, so you can't be bought cheap." A thin smile did nothing for him. "But, like all men, you can be bought. I know your present financial status, so five thousand should suffice."
The man stood up, unfolding in sections until he was at least four inches taller than Nudger's six feet. But he was thin, very thin, not a big man. He gazed down his narrow nose at Nudger with the remote interest of a scientist observing familiar bacteria.
"The problem is," Nudger told him, "I don't know who you are or what you're buying."
"I'll make myself clear, Mr. Nudger: stay away from Chaser Heights, or next time you'll be paid a visit of an altogether more unpleasant nature."
He turned and left the office with wolflike loping strides.
Nudger stood stupefied, listening to the man's descending footfalls on the wooden stairs to the street. He heard the street door open and close. The papers on the floor stirred.
Nudger went to the office door and shoved it closed. He walked to his desk, and sure enough there was an envelope, sealed. He opened it and counted out five thousand dollars in bills of various denominations. Earning this money would be a cinch, since he'd never been near any place or anyone named Chaser Heights. Then he reconsidered.
There was little doubt of a connection between the round-faced woman and the tall man. What bothered Nudger was that if these unsettling characters thought he'd been around Chaser Heights at least once when he hadn't, what was going to keep them from thinking he'd been there again? And acting forcefully on their misconception?
Now the five thousand didn't look so good to Nudger. This occupation of his had gotten him into trouble again. He put the money back into its envelope and tucked in the flap. He opened a desk drawer and got out a fresh roll of antacid tablets. He wished he knew how to paint a house.
After his stomach had calmed down, Nudger set about putting his office back together. Small as the place was, the task took the rest of the morning. Most of the time was spent matching the footprinted papers on the floor with the correct file folders. When he was finished he looked around with satisfaction, straightened the shade on his desk lamp, then went out for some lunch.
At a place he knew on Grand Avenue, Nudger drank a glass of milk, picked at the Gardener's Delight lettuce omelet special, and studied the phone directory he'd borrowed from the proprietor. Within a few minutes he found what he was looking for: Chaser Heights Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center, with an Addington Road address way out in the county.
Nudger knew what he had to do, even if it cost him five thousand dollars.
He finished his milk but pushed his omelet away, jotted down the Chaser Heights address on a paper napkin, and put it into his pocket.
Outside, he slammed his Volkswagen's door on the tail of his topcoat, as he invariably did, reopened the door and tried again, and twisted the key in the ignition switch. When the tiny motor was clattering rhythmically, he pulled the dented VW out into traffic.
It had been a large and palatial country home in better days, with sentry-box cupolas, tall colonial pillars, and ivy-covered brick. Now it was called Chaser Heights, which Nudger gathered was a sort of clinic where alcoholics went to tilt the odds in their battle with booze. It was isolated, set well back from the narrow road on a gentle rise, and mostly surrounded by woods that in their present leafless state conveyed a depressing reminder of mortality.
Nudger parked halfway up the long gravel drive to study the house. He realized that the longer he sat there in the cozy warm car, the more difficult it would be to do what he intended. He put the VW in gear and listened to the tires crunch on the gravel as he drove the rest of the way to the house.
He entered a huge foyer with a gleaming tiled floor that smelled of pine disinfectant. There were brown vinyl easy chairs scattered about, and behind a high, horseshoe-shaped desk stood a tall elderly woman wearing a stiff white uniform. The starch seemed to have affected her face.
"May I help you?" she asked without real enthusiasm, as if she risked ripping her lips by parting them to speak.
"I'd like to see whoever's in charge," Nudger told her, removing his hat. He leaned with his elbow on the desk as if it were a bar and he was about to order a drink.
"Do you have an appointment with Dr. Wedgewick?" the woman asked.
"No, but I believe he'll want to see me. Tell Dr. Wedgewell that a Mr. Nudger is here and needs to talk with him."
"Dr. Wedgewick," his mannequin corrected him. She was so lifelike you expected her eyes to move. She picked up a beige telephone and conveyed Nudger's message, then without change of expression directed him down a hall and to the last door on his left.
He entered an anteroom and was told by an efficient-looking young brunette on her way out that he should go right in, Dr. Wedgewick was expecting him.
And Nudger was expecting Dr. Wedgewick to be exactly who he turned out to be: the tall, camel-coated unfriendly man who had delivered the five thousand dollars. He was wearing a dark blue suit and maroon tie and was seated behind a slate-topped desk a bit smaller than a Ping-Pong table. There wasn't so much as a paper clip to break its smooth gray surface. Behind him was a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked bare-limbed trees and brown grass sloping away toward the distant road. Probably in the summer it was an impressive view. He didn't get up.
"I am surprised to see you here," he said flatly.
"You'll be more surprised by why I came," Nudger told him.
Dr. Wedgewick arched an inquisitive eyebrow impossibly high. Obviously he'd practiced the expression, had it down pat, and knew there was no need for words to accompany it.
"I'm here to return this," Nudger said, and tossed the envelope with the five thousand dollars onto the desk. It looked as lonely as a center fielder there. "Its return should prove to you that you've made a mistake. I can't be who you think; I can't sell you whatever it is you want to buy, because I don't have it and don't know what it is
."
"That is nonsense, Mr. Nudger. You've been followed from here several times by Dr. Olander, observed going to your office by the back entrance, observed emerging at times and coming here, snooping around here. Where you hid the pertinent information regarding your client, and how you managed to fool Dr. Olander when she administered her drugs, I can't say, nor do I care."
"I didn't fool her," Nudger said. "I have no client and I didn't know the answers to her questions. But I understand somewhat more of what's going on. Dr. Olander and her two silent helpers couldn't make any progress with me their way, so you came around and tried to buy me."
"We live in a mercantile society."
"The thing is, there was no reason for Dr. Olander to hassle me, and there was nothing I could tell her. I wish there were some way to get you to believe that."
"Oh, I'll bet you do."
"And I wish you'd tell me why a doctor would want to follow me to begin with, me without medical insurance."
Dr. Wedgewick smiled with large, stained, but even teeth. "Dr. Olander is not a medical doctor. You might say hers is an honorary title. She is chief of security here at Chaser Heights."
"Then I needn't expect a bill." He felt in his pocket for his tablets.
"What you should expect, Mr. Nudger, is to suffer the consequences of being stubborn."
Nudger saw Dr. Wedgewick's gaze shift to something over his left shoulder. He turned and saw the round, malicious features of Dr. Olander. She had taken a few silent steps into the office. Now she stood very still, staring through her gleaming spectacles at the bulge of the hand concealed in Nudger's coat.
He realized that she thought he had a gun.
"What's this wimp doing here?" Dr. Olander asked. "I thought he'd been taken care of."
Nudger, still with his hand inside his coat, perspiring fingers wrapped tightly around his roll of antacid tablets, backed to the door, keeping as far as possible from her. His stomach was fluttering a few feet beyond him, beckoning him on.
Dr. Wedgewick said, "He brought back the five thousand dollars." He looked somewhat curiously at Nudger. "Someone must be paying you a great deal of money," he said. His slow, discolored smile wasn't a nice thing to see. "You'll find that it isn't enough to make it worth your while, Mr. Nudger. You can't put a price on your health."
But Nudger was out into the hall and half running to the lobby. There were a few patients in the vinyl armchairs now. One of them, a ruddy old man wearing a pale blue robe and pajamas, glanced up from where he sat reading People and smiled at Nudger. The waxwork behind the counter didn't.
Nudger shoved open the outside door and broke into a run. He piled into his car fast, started the engine, and heard the tires fling gravel against the insides of the fenders as he drove toward the twin stone pillars that marked the exit to the road and safety.
All the way down Addington Road to the alternative highway he kept checking his rearview mirror, expecting to be followed by troops from Chaser Heights. But as he turned onto the cloverleaf he realized they didn't have to follow; they knew where to find him.
When he got back to the office he parked in front, out on the busy street, instead of in his slot behind the building. As he climbed out of the car he noticed that the tail of his topcoat was crushed and grease-stained where he'd shut the door on it again. The coattail had flapped in the wind like a flag all the way back from Chaser Heights. For once Nudger didn't care. He went up to his office, locked the door behind him, and sat for a while chomping antacid tablets.
When his stomach had untied itself, he picked up the phone and dialed the number of the Third Precinct and asked for Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith.
Hammersmith had been Nudger's partner a decade ago in a two-man patrol car, before Nudger's jittery nerves had forced him to retire from the police force. Now Hammersmith had rank and authority, and he always had time for Nudger, but not much time.
"What sort of quicksand have you got yourself into this time, Nudge?" Hammersmith asked.
"The sort that might be bottomless. What do you know about a place called Chaser Heights, out on Addington Road?"
"That clinic where drunks dry out?"
Nudger said that was the one.
"It's a second-rate operation, maybe even a front, but it's out of my jurisdiction, Nudge. I got plenty to worry about here in the city limits."
"What about the director out there? Guy named Dr. Wedgewick?"
"He's new in the area. From the East Coast, I been told." Nudger heard the rhythmic wheezing of Hammersmith laboriously firing up one of his foul-smelling cigars and was glad this conversation was by phone. "Anything else, Nudge?" The words were slightly distorted by the cigar.
"How about Wedgewick's assistant and chief of security, a two-hundred-pound chunk of feminine wiles named Dr. Olander?"
"Hah! That would be Millicent Olaphant, and she's no doctor, she's a part-time bone crusher for some of the local loan sharks."
"Isn't that kind of unusual work for a woman?"
"Yes, I would say it is unusual," Hammersmith said dryly, "and I meet all sorts of people in my job. You be careful of that crew, Nudge. The law out there is the Mayfair County sheriff, Dale Caster."
"What kind of help could I expect from Caster if I did get in the soup?"
"He'd drop crackers on you. Let's just say it would be difficult for a place like Chaser Heights to stay in business if they didn't grease the proper palms."
"And they grease palms liberally," Nudger said. He expected Hammersmith to ask him to elaborate, but the very busy lieutenant repeated his suggestion that Nudger be careful and then hung up.
Nudger sat for a long time, leaning back in the swivel chair, gazing at the ceiling's network of cracks that looked like a rough map of Illinois including major highways. He thought. Not about Illinois.
He thought until the telephone rang, then he picked up the receiver and identified himself.
"This is Danny, downstairs, Nudge," came the answering voice. "Your ex, Eileen, was by here about an hour ago looking for you. She was frowning. You behind with your alimony payments?"
"No further than with the rent," Nudger said. "Thanks for the warning, Danny."
"No trouble, Nudge. She bought half a dozen cream horns."
"Then she's doing better than I am."
When Nudger had replaced the receiver in its cradle he sat staring at it instead of Illinois, and he remembered something Danny had said this morning. "Some friends, those boys and girls," he had said. But Nudger hadn't mentioned Dr. Olander-Olaphant's gender.
Nudger put on his coat and tromped downstairs, gaining more understanding as he descended. He went outside, but instead of taking a few steps to the right and entering Danny's Donuts, he cut through the gangway and entered the building through the rear door, then opened another unlocked door and was in the aromatic back room of the doughnut shop. On a coat tree he saw Danny's topcoat, similar to the rumpled tan coat he, Nudger, was wearing and Danny's sold-by-the-thousands brown crushproof hat that was identical with Nudger's. Nudger and Danny were about the same height, and seen from a distance and wearing bulky coats they were of a similar build. Things were making sense at last.
Nudger walked into the greater warmth of the doughnut shop proper, nodded to the surprised Danny, and sat on a stool on the customers' side of the counter. He and Danny were alone in the shops. Emil got off work at two, after the almost nonexistent lunch trade.
"I shoulda said something to you earlier, Nudge," Danny said, no longer looking surprised, nervously wiping the already gleaming counter. "I seen them people from Chaser Heights go up to your place this morning, but I couldn't figure out why until you came down here and told me you'd been roughed up."
"You've been sniffing around there, haven't you?" Nudger said.
Danny nodded. He poured a large cup of his terrible coffee and placed it in front of Nudger like an odious peace offering.
"You were spotted at Chaser Heights," Nudger went on, "and
they followed you to find out who you were. You're close to my size, you were wearing a coat and hat like mine, and you came and went the back way. They checked to see who occupied the building and naturally figured it was the private investigator on the second floor. Whoever did the following probably staked out the front of the building and verified the identification when I left my office."
"It was a mistake, Nudge, honest! I didn't mean for you to come to any harm. Absolutely. I wouldn't want that."
Nudger sipped at the coffee, wondering why, if what Danny had said was true, he would serve him a cup of this. "I believe you, Danny," he said, "but what were you doing reconnoitering at Chaser Heights?"
Danny wiped at his forehead with the towel he'd been using on the counter. "My uncle's in there," he said.
"Is he there for the cure?"
Danny looked disgusted. "He's an alcoholic, all right, Nudge. That's how he got conned into admitting himself into Chaser Heights. But what they really specialize in at that place is getting the patients drugged up and having them sign over damn near everything they own in payment for treatment, or as a 'donation' that actually goes into somebody's pocket."
Nudger tried another sip of his formidable coffee. It was easier to get down now that it was cooler. "Does your uncle have much to donate?"
"Plenty. Now don't think small of me, Nudge, but it's no secret he plans to leave most of it to me, his only living relative. And he's not a well man; on top of his alcoholism he's got a weak heart."
"And Chaser Heights is about to get your inheritance before you do. Have you tried talking to your uncle?"
"Sure. They always tell me he's in special care, under detoxification quarantine—whatever that is. So I went back there a few times in secret and hung around thinking I might get a glimpse of old Benj and get to talk to him, at least see what they're doing to him. But they've got him doped up in a locked room with wire mesh on the windows. Some quarantine. I'm worried about him."
"And his money."
"I don't deny it. But that ain't the only consideration."
Danny rinsed his towel, wrung it out, and started wiping the counter again. Nudger sat slowly sipping his coffee. Growl, went his stomach.