The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  It aggravated Nudger that he'd wasted his time there. Before leaving, he tore out the last few pages of the paperback mystery novel DeMent had just begun reading. That way it would be more like real life.

  But DeMent hadn't planned on returning to his room after breakfast. When Nudger stepped from the elevator into the lobby, he caught a glimpse of the detective shrugging into his suit coat as he pushed through the glass double doors to the parking lot.

  DeMent turned his car in the opposite direction from that of the Caruthers estate. He drove for a few blocks, then veered onto an exit ramp and got on the highway leading east, away from the coast. He drove fast. Nudger had to push his whiny little rental car hard to keep DeMent's gray sedan in sight.

  Ahead of Nudger a small, propeller-driven plane crossed above the highway low and at a downward angle. It disappeared beyond a slight rise. When Nudger looked back at the road, he saw DeMent's sedan turning off the highway onto a road that a sign proclaimed led to the Del Moray airport.

  A jet airliner wouldn't have dared to set down at this airport. Nudger parked well away from DeMent on a gravel lot and looked out at a single asphalt runway. To his left was a small brick office and terminal building, on top of which a red wind sock listlessly pointed northeast in the humid hot air. Several light planes were parked toward the far end of the runway. Beyond them squatted three corrugated metal hangars. The plane Nudger had seen land taxied off the runway, gave a hard left rudder, and rolled toward the hangars. Its propeller stopped spinning, and two men emerged from the shadowed hangar entrance to help the pilot roll the plane toward the gaping doors. A red and yellow twin-engined plane took to the air with a roar and went into a climbing turn toward the ocean. DeMent got out of his car and walked over to stand near the terminal building in a waiting attitude.

  A single-engine, high-winged silver plane with a red stripe along its fuselage circled the field, dropped lower, and made a smooth landing. On its tail was painted a red circle containing the letter "E" traversed by a lightning streak—El-Tron Electronics' logo. The plane taxied to the hangar entrance and was also pushed inside. A short while later a yellow golf cart emerged from the hangar. There were two men on the cart. One of them was wearing a blue business suit and was the pilot of the silver plane; the other was the driver. DeMent tossed away the cigar he'd been smoking and stepped forward to meet the cart. He and the man in the business suit went into the terminal building while the cart's driver swung the vehicle around and headed back toward the hangars. The man in the blue suit carried a small suitcase, walked with a limp, and had Oriental features.

  When they emerged from the building, DeMent was dutifully carrying the suitcase. The two men walked to DeMent's car and got in, and Nudger followed them back to the Del Moray Hotel.

  Nudger waited outside for fifteen minutes and then walked in and asked the desk clerk if Mr. Yasuhiro Oh had checked in yet. The clerk told him that Mr. Oh had gone up to Room 358 just a minute ago.

  For the benefit of the clerk, Nudger crossed the lobby and pretended to talk for a while on one of the house phones. Then he left and returned to his own meager digs at the Blynken and Nod. He really did use his room phone. He placed a long distance call to Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith, who turned out to be sitting unsuspectingly in the Third Precinct office over a thousand miles north of Del Moray. Hammersmith had been Nudger's partner in a patrol car twenty years ago, during Nudger's brief police career. The bond between the two men had never been broken.

  Nudger identified himself and told Hammersmith he was in Florida. "It's plenty hot here," he said.

  "The call isn't collect," Hammersmith told him. "We can chat about the weather as long as you want."

  "Why I called," Nudger said forgetting about the weather, "is to ask you to get some information from the Gainesville, Georgia, police department. I need to learn about a man there named Yasuhiro Oh."

  "'O' what? Is that a middle initial?"

  "He's Japanese. Oh is his last name, like the home run hitter."

  Silence. Apparently Hammersmith didn't follow Japanese baseball enough to know about the Oriental equivalent of Babe Ruth.

  "There was a famous Japanese baseball player of the same name," Nudger said.

  "That's right."

  "Huh?"

  "He owns a business in Gainesville, El-Tron Electronics."

  "This is going to be a lot of trouble, Nudge. Is it important?"

  "I wouldn't ask unless it meant the very survival of our world as we know it." Nudger heard the lip-smacking wheezing sound of Hammersmith firing up one of his horrendous cigars.

  "Okay, Nudge." The voice was slightly distorted by the cigar. "When do you need this info?"

  "As soon as it reaches your hot little hand." Nudger gave Hammersmith the phone number of the Blynken and Nod and told him he appreciated the favor.

  "You shoulda waited till winter to go to Florida, Nudge," Hammersmith said. "Now last January me and the wife drove down there and—"

  "This isn't a collect call," Nudger reminded him. As he hung up he heard Hammersmith chuckling around the cigar.

  The rest of that day and most of the next, Nudger followed Oh, who was driving around in a luxury rental car while DeMent was at his post keeping the Caruthers estate under close watch. Oh had supper in an expensive seafood restaurant while Nudger, outside in his parked car, wolfed down a chili dog. When Oh left the restaurant, he drove to the Del Moray waterfront, where he boarded a large sleek cabin cruiser docked there. He stayed on board for about an hour, talking to a shadowy figure that appeared now and then behind the drawn curtains of the lighted cabin. As the boat bobbed gently at dockside, Nudger made out the name Dandy Dan lettered across its stern.

  Even the breeze off the sea did little to cool the humid evening air, and by the time Oh left the cabin cruiser, Nudger was soaked in perspiration and his hands were slippery on the steering wheel. He suspected that he'd done serious harm to the car's engine while trying to keep up with DeMent earlier that morning; heat was rolling up around his feet and something was softly hissing beneath the sloping little hood.

  Fortunately he wouldn't have to drive the car harder to keep pace with Oh's larger, more powerful vehicle. Instead of getting into his car, Oh buttoned his suit coat and began walking along the narrow street bordering the glittering dark water. Nudger gratefully climbed out of the subcompact, relieved to find that all his limbs could still extend to their fullest, and followed Oh's erect but limping figure.

  On Nudger's left, various souvenir shops and related tourist attractions were open along the street. On his right, an array of docked vessels bobbed in unison with the soft lapping of waves. Nudger heard the occasional muffled thump of a hull bumping a padded dock buffer. Music and sometimes laughter wafted from some of the pleasure boats showing lights. Except for the pressing heat, it was a nice night and a nice place for a walk.

  Oh stopped walking, dabbed at his perspiring forehead with a white handkerchief, and disappeared through a doorway.

  Nudger moved nearer, crossed the street to get a better view, and saw that Oh had entered the offices of the Pegasus Steamship Line. Standing in the shadows near a docked sailboat with a mast tall enough to merge with the dark sky, Nudger idly chewed on an antacid tablet and waited.

  He didn't move when, twenty minutes later, Oh emerged from the Pegasus office and limped back the way he had come. When Oh had passed, Nudger followed him back to where the cars were parked near Dandy Dan.

  It was easy to figure out where Oh was driving after they left the dock. As soon as Nudger realized they were taking the route back to the hotel, he dropped back in the struggling subcompact and relaxed, turning the air conditioner on high and ignoring the engine's clattering protests.

  Oh treated himself to a drink in the Del Moray Hotel's lounge—presumably a nightcap—then went upstairs to his room. Nudger waited almost an hour on a stool near the end of the bar, from which he could see the elevators, to make sure he was bedded dow
n for the night. Oh was an elderly man with a bad leg, but there was an aura of energy about him that suggested he was tireless.

  When Nudger returned to the Blynken and Nod, he checked at the desk to see if Hammersmith had phoned. Hammersmith hadn't. Candy Caruthers had, and left a number where she could be reached.

  They met at a lounge overlooking the Gulf. It was ten miles outside of town. Apparently Candy had gotten into the spirit of subversiveness and didn't deem it wise for them to be seen together in her yacht-club-set haunts. They sat near a wide window affording a panoramic view of darkness broken only by a lonely, distant buoy light. And over whiskey sours, and a yellowish glowing candle in a mottled glass holder, they talked.

  "Daddy's taken a trip," Candy said. "The Sea Dreamer is gone."

  "When did he leave?"

  She shrugged and sipped her drink. The candle glow transformed her plain, attractive features into the serene kind of beauty seen in paintings by old masters. "I noticed that the yacht was missing from its moorings late this afternoon," she said. "I don't know how long it had been gone, and Daddy never tells anyone where he's going. Every few months he simply boards the Sea Dreamer and disappears for several days."

  "Maybe he's fishing."

  "Daddy doesn't fish. What have you learned about Yasuhiro Oh?"

  "Not much, but I utilized some of my far-reaching contacts and expect to know a great deal more about him shortly. Also, he's here in Del Moray."

  "Is he—?"

  "He's not on the Sea Dreamer; I saw him go up to his hotel room at around ten o'clock." Nudger sampled his drink and gazed out at the vast blackness of the Gulf. It was disconcerting to imagine how far that black void extended. "Do you know anyone who owns a big cabin cruiser called the Dandy Dan?"

  Candy screwed up her mouth and searched her memory. For a moment she looked twelve years old. "I don't think so."

  "Yasuhiro Oh does. He spent some time on board this evening. Then he visited the offices of the Pegasus ship line."

  "Pegasus does commercial shipping," Candy said, "all sorts of cargo to and from South America."

  "What do you mean by 'all sorts'?"

  "Copper, construction materials, bananas, whatever that kind of ship carries."

  "It seems there are no detectives hired by your father or stepmother watching the principals in the divorce," Nudger said. "Maybe I'm cynical, but that strikes me as unusual."

  "Not when you realize that Mom and Daddy aren't bitter enemies. They simply want to live apart and unmarried. I told you it was the media that was concocting all those bizarre stories. And of course the divorce lawyers furnish plenty of innuendo."

  "Was your father's war record also concocted by the media?"

  Candy appeared insulted. She sat back and wore an injured expression, her features in shadowed sharp relief outside the circle of candlelight. "Of course not. He was the second-in-command of a destroyer, the U.S.S. Latty, when it was attacked by kamikazes—Japanese suicide planes whose mission it was to dive into U.S. warships—in the South Pacific in 1945. The captain and several crew members were killed, and Daddy took command. He fought off the attackers and brought the ship home. He was decorated for what he did. He became a big hero." She sat forward and stared challengingly at Nudger. "A genuine hero."

  "Relax, please," Nudger told her. "You're the only one I can talk to who knows the truth about these things." He saw that their glasses were empty. He looked again at Candy in the soft light and for a moment regretted that he had a rule about fraternizing with his clients, and that she regarded him as a middle-aged creature of relative poverty who no doubt wore plain white underwear from J. C. Penney. The woman had insight. It was time for them to leave and go their separate ways. "I'll phone you when I receive more information about Oh," he said, magnanimously reaching for his wallet.

  Candy bent low to pick up her purse from beside her chair. "I'll get the check," she said. "Since you're on an expense account, I'd wind up paying for the drinks anyway."

  Insight indeed.

  Nudger was in bed at the Blynken and Nod when Hammersmith phoned. With the cool receiver pressed to his ear, he rested his head on his perspiration-soaked, flattened pillow and listened as Hammersmith identified himself in a voice tinged with sadism.

  "It's two in the morning," Nudger said groggily.

  "I'd have phoned Greenwich if I wanted to check the time," Hammersmith told him. "You said you wanted information on Yasuhiro Oh as soon as possible."

  Nudger snapped fully awake at the mention of Oh's name. He sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. "So what did you find out?"

  "Oh is of Japanese descent, attended Northwestern University in the early fifties, founded El-Tron twenty years ago, and has been a successful businessman ever since. He was married but his wife died. El-Tron makes electronic components for a variety of products. Recently they lost a big government contract for missile parts, but the company is still financially solid if not prospering."

  "Oh sounds like an upstanding citizen," Nudger said with undeniable disappointment.

  "He has a police record, but it's been clear for the last ten years. If you go back that far, you'll find that El-Tron was found guilty of fraud involving some kind of tariff violation. Two years before that, Oh himself was dragged into court and forced to pay fines on two parking violations." There was a pause, punctuated by bellows wheezing. One of Hammersmith's abominable cigars being lighted. "Is this useful information, Nudge?"

  "No. It sounds like a record of a Chamber of Commerce president."

  Hammersmith chuckled. "Oh's military record is more interesting but probably just as useless. He was a kamikaze pilot in the Japanese air force."

  Nudger spent several seconds digesting that pithy morsel of information. "He must not have been a very successful kamikaze pilot, since he's alive and walking around Florida."

  "It seems he was captured," Hammersmith explained. "In 1945, as he was trying to crash his plane into a U.S. ship in the South Pacific, he was hit and went down in the water. He lost a leg in the crash, but he survived and was pulled from the ocean by the ship's crew."

  Despite the heat of the hotel room, a cold sensation snaked its way up the nape of Nudger's neck. "What was the name of the ship?"

  "The Latty," Hammersmith said. "It was a destroyer."

  "I know," Nudger muttered.

  "How could you know that?"

  "It was Cap Caruthers' ship."

  "Caruthers . . . you mean the husband in that messy Florida divorce circus?"

  "The same. You've helped a lot, Jack. In fact, you might have explained everything."

  "Nothing's been explained to me, Nudge. But I'll try to make something else clear to you. The Caruthers divorce is not only messy, it's dangerous for a small-time, out-of-state investigator. Big money is operating there, and now and then big money needs someone like you to throw to someone like me, either dead or alive. Big money means big problems."

  "And a big fee," Nudger pointed out.

  "Hah! The fee is the bait, Nudge. Betcha there's a hook in it."

  Nudger declined the bet. "Thanks for the information," he said.

  "Sure," Hammersmith said. "Banzai, Nudge."

  "What?"

  "That's what the kamikaze pilots yelled just before they disappeared into the clouds on their way to their deaths."

  "Then maybe that's what you should yell before you light your cigars," Nudger suggested.

  Hammersmith hung up.

  Nudger replaced the receiver, switched on the lamp, and lay awake trying to fit his fragmentary thoughts into some meaningful pattern, trying to gain some insight into the mind and role of Yasuhiro Oh. For a kamikaze pilot there must have been the blackest shame in not only failing in one's mission but in also being captured alive by the enemy that was to have been destroyed. More importantly, the kamikaze incident provided a connective thread between Cap Caruthers and Oh. What that thread meant was something Nudger had yet to discover.

 
It was morning, and Nudger was showering, when it occurred to him that it might be a mistake to assume that the Caruthers divorce, Cap Caruthers alleged drug running, and Oh's interest in Cap Caruthers' movements might all somehow be connected. It could be that none had much if any bearing on the others; possibly Oh hadn't any idea what had become of Cap Caruthers until the divorce publicity, and that in itself had drawn him to Florida.

  Then, as he stood beneath the beating needles of the shower watching water swirling at his feet, a disturbing, chilling possibility crept from a corner of Nudger's mind into his consciousness. His flesh began to tingle, and not from the pounding of the water.

  He got out of the shower still partially lathered with soap, toweled dry, dressed quickly, and drove to the Del Moray Hotel. When he knocked on the door to Oh's room and got no answer, Nudger used his Visa card to slip the lock and enter. He was getting plenty of practice on the Del Moray Hotel locks.

  In contrast to DeMent's room, everything in Oh's room was neatly arranged. Though the bed was unmade, the covers were turned back symmetrically. Oh's clothes were hung in the closet. Underwear, socks, and shirts were folded in a dresser drawer. In the bathroom, shaving gear and cosmetics were neatly aligned with military precision on the shelf above the washbasin. But the cap wasn't on the toothpaste tube. The bottles of aftershave lotion and cologne also stood uncapped.

  Nudger went to the phone and dialed DeMent's room number. When DeMent answered, Nudger said, "I'm a private investigator like yourself, Mr. DeMent. I've been watching you watch Cap Caruthers. We need to talk. I'm sitting on the bed of your employer's room."

  Nudger had to admire DeMent. The paunchy little detective wasn't thrown for more than a few seconds. He said, "Sure. I'll be there as soon as I can," and hung up.

  A few minutes later, looking sleepy and disheveled, DeMent knocked twice on the door and then pushed into Oh's room.

  Nudger introduced himself and the two men shook hands with appropriate wariness.