The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "What's bothering you, Danny?" Nudger asked, partly to make conversation, partly to divert Danny's attention from the fact that he hadn't been able to get down more than half of the Dunker Delite Danny had bestowed upon him for breakfast.

  Danny sighed, then removed the grayish towel he kept tucked in his belt and flicked some crumbs off the stainless steel counter. "Friend of mine died," he said.

  Nudger grunted and nodded, surreptitiously folding his napkin to conceal the half-carcass of the doughnut before him when Danny glanced away. "Natural death or accidental?"

  "He died in a fall," Danny said, "off a wagon."

  "Old friend?"

  Danny tucked the towel back beneath his belt and nodded. "We went back over twenty years. Then we wound up in AA together."

  "That kind of wagon," Nudger said. He knew that Danny had been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for the past seven years, and in that time hadn't touched alcohol. The organization had convinced Danny, finally and forever, that he would always be an alcoholic and the best he could do was to be one who never drank alcohol. If Danny had a religion, it was AA. And the organization had done more for him than religion had done for most people.

  "Artie Akron hadn't touched a drop of liquor for five years, Nudge," Danny said, leaning on the counter with both elbows. "Then they find him last night down on North Broadway with his head bashed in and his wallet missing. They say he had a point twenty-eight alcohol content in what was left of his blood."

  "It happens that way sometimes," Nudger said. "Some punk probably rolled him for his money and hit him too hard." He wondered, was Danny only mourning his old friend, or was he also considering that the same kind of fate might someday be his own? It was a tough life for those who'd inherited the wrong genes and a thirst for alcohol. "You'll make it okay, Danny," Nudger said.

  Danny glanced over at him and smiled sadly; he knew what Nudger had been thinking and appreciated the concern. "You want another doughnut, Nudge?"

  "Er, no, thanks, I'm full, I'd better get upstairs and do some work." Nudger's office was on the second floor of the old brick building, directly above the doughnut shop.

  Danny picked up Nudger's cup and ran some more gritty dark coffee into it from the big steel urn. "One for the road, Nudge."

  Nudger thanked him, carefully picked up his wadded napkin as if it were empty, and tossed it into the plastic-lined trash can by the window counter on his way out. The napkin-wrapped doughnut struck the can's bottom like a piece of stone sculpture.

  The morning was already heating up; a typical St. Louis July day. It would also be typical of St. Louis weather if it were sixty degrees and hailing by nightfall. The only thing that changed rapidly in this city was the weather.

  Nudger quickly entered a door next to Danny's Donuts and climbed a narrow wooden stairway to his office. He picked up the morning mail from where it lay on the landing, then unlocked the office door and pushed inside.

  Warm, stifling, stale. The small office still seemed to contain heat from yesterday's record-breaking temperature, as well as the sweet, cloying scent from the doughnut shop below. It was the kind of scent that permeated everything: furniture, drapes, clothes, even flesh. Wherever Nudger went, he gave off the faint scent of a Dunker Delite. It didn't drive women wild.

  He switched on the window air conditioner, then sat down in his squealing swivel chair and did nothing until the cool breeze from the humming, gurgling window unit had made the office air more breathable. Finally, he picked up the stack of mail from where he'd tossed it on the desk and leafed through it.

  The usual: a mail order catalog from International Investigators Supply Company, featuring an inflatable boat that would fit into a shirt pocket when deflated; a letter from his former wife Eileen, no doubt threatening stark horror unless alimony money showed up via return mail; an enticement to join a home-video club specializing in X-rated movies full of snickering adolescent sex, for adults only; an envelope from the electric company that looked disturbingly like a bill. Nudger tossed the entire mess into the wastebasket.

  Then he glanced at his watch, made sure his phone-answering machine was on Record, and left the office. He had to follow a cigarette delivery truck on its route, to discover if the driver had anything to do with why certain figures didn't coincide.

  A week later, when the cigarette pilfering case had ended (the supervisor—the man who had hired Nudger—turned out to be the thief; there was some debate over paying Nudger's fee), Nudger was sitting at his desk wondering what next when there was a knock on the door.

  Client! Nudger thought hopefully. He leaned forward, his swivel chair squealing at the same time he called for the visitor to enter.

  The door opened and Danny walked in.

  "You don't seem glad to see me, Nudge," Danny said.

  "It's not that," Nudger said. "I was expecting someone else."

  "I think I need to talk to somebody, Nudge. You know how it is, I got no family, nobody."

  "Sit down," Nudger said. "Talk."

  Danny sat in the chair by the window, aging ten years in the harsh morning light. "Another friend of mine died last night," he said. "Found on the north side in a rough neighborhood, shot in the back of the head. Robbery again."

  "Who was this one?" Nudger asked.

  "Mack Perry, another member of my AA chapter, another old shipmate."

  "Shipmate?"

  "Yeah. Perry, Akron, and I served on the USS Kelso during the Vietnam War. This was in the mid-sixties, before the war heated up, when the Navy got young guys to join by promising them they'd go through training and service together. We were in a St. Louis unit. Lots of guys on the Kelso were from St. Louis, until after it was hit and recommissioned later as a minesweeper."

  "Hit?"

  "By a North Vietnamese torpedo boat. The ship didn't sink, but we limped back to port with two dead, including the captain, and fifteen wounded. They dug metal out of us and pinned medals on us and took the Kelso out of service for repairs."

  "I didn't know you were a war hero, Danny."

  "Wrong place, wrong time," Danny said simply. "And me and a few others were just drunk enough to be brave."

  Nudger could see he didn't want to talk about the violent years, so he concentrated on violent yesterday. "You said Perry was another old shipmate, Danny. Was the other fellow who was killed, Artie Akron, on the Kelso, too?"

  Danny nodded, "Yeah. That's when the three of us really started drinking hard, in Honolulu after the Kelso got hit and we were in the last stages of our recuperation. Of course, lots of other guys were drinking hard then, too, and didn't go on to let it ruin their lives."

  Nudger sat staring out the window beyond Danny, at the pigeons strutting along a stained ledge of the building across the street. He really didn't like pigeons—messy birds. "Are any other old shipmates in your AA chapter?" he asked.

  "Nope," Danny said. "But there's a lot more of them around town, I told you we were mostly recruited together here and formed a kind of unit throughout training and part of our service."

  "Kind of odd," Nudger said, "two old Kelso crewmen being murdered within a week of each other."

  Danny's furrowed forehead lowered in a frown. "You figure it could be part of a pattern, Nudge?"

  "Can you think of any reason there might be a pattern?"

  Danny sat silently for a moment, then shook his head. "No, there was nothing between Akron and Perry except that they served on the Kelso and were alcoholics."

  "You know anybody else fits that description, Danny?"

  "No, not really." Danny's somber brown eyes suddenly widened. Fear gleamed in them briefly like a signal light: a call for help. "Jeez, Nudge, you don't think somebody might try snuffing me, do you?"

  "I wish I could tell you, Danny. I guess I'd better try to find out more about what's going on."

  Danny looked embarrassed. "I can't pay you for this right away, Nudge, but I will eventually. And you've got free doughnuts forever."
/>   Nudger tried to mask the distress on his face, but he was sure Danny caught it. The man was sensitive about his doughnuts. Nudger would have to make amends.

  "And coffee?" he said, bargaining hard.

  Danny smiled. "Coffee, too, Nudge."

  It was laborious but sure, the process of getting a list of the Kelso's crew members in 1965. Naval Records even supplied a list of the crew's hometown addresses. Thorough was the military. We should all learn.

  Fifteen of the Kelso's crew had been from St. Louis. Nudger sat down with his crew list and the phone directory and matched five names besides Danny's, Akron's, and Perry's. He began phoning, setting up appointments. When told that the subject of their conversation would be the Kelso, the four crew members he was able to contact eagerly agreed to talk with Nudger.

  The first Kelso crewman Nudger met with was Edward Waite, who took time out from his job as some sort of technician at a chemical plant to sit in a corner of the employees' lounge with Nudger over coffee. The place was empty except for them; a long, narrow room with plastic chairs, Formica tables, and a bank of vending machines displaying questionable food.

  Waite was a large, muscular man with a florid face, powerful and immaculately manicured hands, and a clown like fringe of reddish unruly hair around his ears, grown long as if to compensate for his bald pate. He squinted at Nudger with his small blue eyes, as if he needed glasses, and said, "Sure, I was below deck when the Kelso took the torpedo. The concussion rolled me out of my bunk. I heard valves exploding, steam hissing, shipmates yelling. None of us near the bow were in any real danger, though; the torpedo hit amidship. But I can tell you I wanted to see the sky worse than anything when I managed to stand up. I could smell the sea and hear water rushing and figured we might be going down."

  "You lost two crewmen," Nudger said.

  Waite nodded, gazing down at the Styrofoam coffee cup that was barely visible steaming in his huge hand. "Yeah, a signalman name of Hopper, and Captain Stevenson. They were on the bridge when the Kelso got hit; damage was heavy there. Artie Akron tried to pull the captain out of the flames, but he was already dead. That's how Akron got wounded, going onto the burning part of the bridge after the captain. Won himself a Navy Cross, and now he got himself drunk and killed in a bad part of town. Hard to figure."

  "It is that," Nudger agreed. "Did Akron do much drinking on board the Kelso?"

  Waite thought about that, looking beyond Nudger at the sandwich machine. "No more than any of us, as far as I can remember."

  "Who did Akron pal around with who might know more about him?"

  "Nobody in particular on the Kelso, but when we were laid up in Honolulu he did a lot of bumming around with Mack Perry. A lot of serious drinking, come to think of it. I guess they both got too far into the bottle there. Maybe that's what led to their alcohol problem. Odd, though, them both getting rolled and killed within a week of each other."

  "How come Akron and Perry all of a sudden became buddies on shore, but hadn't been on board ship?" Nudger asked.

  Waite shrugged. "Hell, who knows? Maybe they were bunked next to each other in the hospital there. Perry was on the bridge, too, when the Kelso and that torpedo met. He picked up some shrapnel and got burned some. It makes sense that he and Artie Akron were in the hospital burn unit together."

  "Makes sense," Nudger agreed. "Did anyone else from St. Louis get wounded in the torpedo attack?"

  "Jack Mays, Danny Evers, Milt Wile, maybe a few others. None of them got badly hurt, though, just enough to earn some medals and some hospital leave. I got injured myself, in the stampede to get up on deck after the ship got hit. All hell erupts when a little ship like a destroyer takes a hit, Nudger. For a few minutes there's terror and panic. It's nothing like in the movies."

  "Not much is," Nudger said. He checked his list. Milt Wile had died in an auto accident four years ago. Running his forefinger down the list, Nudger said, "Jack Mays is one of the ten crewmen who moved away from St. Louis."

  "Yeah. I saw him at our five- and ten-year reunions, but he wasn't at the fifteen-year get-together." Waite sipped his coffee. "He's in prison somewhere, I heard, mixed up in narcotics trafficking."

  "Do you know the whereabouts of the other crew members who moved from the city?"

  "Most of them. I talked to them at the last reunion, five years ago. We decided not to have a twenty-year reunion, though. You know how it is, other interests, lives gone in different directions. Only eight of us showed up at the fifteen-year reunion."

  Waite told Nudger about the other crew members. Two more of them had died within the past five years. Now Artie Akron and Mack Perry were dead. Nudger could see that Waite was depressed just talking about it. Time did that to people who went to reunions. Another Kelso crewman, Ralph Angenero, had done seven years for extortion before being released from the state prison in Jefferson City two years ago. Other than Mays and Angenero, the crewmen had, as far as Waite knew, stayed on the sunny side of the law.

  Nudger spent the rest of that day and part of the next talking to the Kelso crew members still in the city. They all more or less substantiated what Waite had said. The series of interviews hadn't given Nudger anything to work with; no new insights, no new direction. He was still at sea.

  From time to time in that situation, Police Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith had tossed Nudger a life preserver. Though it would be difficult to discern from their conversation, the two men had a deep respect and affection for each other that went back over ten years to when they shared a two-man patrol car. Nudger had saved Hammersmith's life; Hammersmith never forgot or considered the scales even. His sense of obligation hadn't flagged even after Nudger's nervous stomach had caused him to quit the force and go private.

  Nudger sat now in one of the torturous straight-backed oak chairs in front of Hammersmith's desk at the Third District. He watched with trepidation as Hammersmith's smooth, pudgy hand fondled the greenish cigar in his shirt pocket then absently withdrew. Close. Smoke from Hammersmith's cigars had the capacity to kill insects and small animals. Even secondhand, it was more than mildly toxic to humans.

  "Who are these people?" Hammersmith asked, studying the list of names that Nudger had handed him. "Is this the infield of the Minnesota Twins?"

  "They're former crewmen of a destroyer in the Vietnam War," Nudger said. "As were Artie Akron and Mack Perry. All presently St. Louisans."

  "Those last two names strike a chord. Murder victims, right? A couple of alkies who got themselves rolled and killed."

  "Making any progress on those cases?" Nudger asked, with an edge of sarcasm.

  Hammersmith's pale blue eyes glared at Nudger from his smooth, flesh-padded features. He sure had put on weight during the past ten years. "You know there actually are no cases, Nudge. It's not unusual to find alkies rolled and dead in this city or any big city. It's virtually impossible to find a suspect. Maybe some bum or small-timer we pick up on another charge will confess to one of the killings, but probably not. The risk of dying comes with the territory for alcoholics. It's an American tradition."

  "These two men were members of the same Alcoholics Anonymous chapter," Nudger said. "They hadn't consumed any alcohol for months, maybe years, before they were found dead."

  "Maybe. Anyway, that's when an alkie really goes on a big bender, Nudge, coming off a long dry spell." He shook the paper in his hand. "What do you want me to do with this list?"

  "Check with Records and see if you have anything on the names."

  "That's what I thought you wanted," Hammersmith said. "Unauthorized use of police files." He drew the cigar from his pocket, methodically unwrapped and lit it. Greenish smoke billowed. Nudger's remaining time in the office was very limited. Hammersmith intended it to be that way. He was a busy man; crime fighting was a demanding profession.

  After Hammersmith had phoned Records and given them his request, he leaned his corpulent self back in his padded desk chair and puffed on the cigar with a rhythmic wheezing sound, f
ouling the room with a greenish haze. Nudger was going to earn this information.

  "You're going to kill yourself with those poisonous things," Nudger said, to fill the silence in the hazy office.

  "You'll probably get to me first," Hammersmith said. "You and your pestiness."

  Nudger was sure there was no such word as pestiness, but he thought it best not to correct Hammersmith's diction. Anyway, the message was clear. He sat quietly until a young clerk who knew better than to mention the smoke in the office came in and laid some computer printout paper on Hammersmith's desk.

  "Not very interesting," Hammersmith said around his cigar, even before the pale clerk had gone. He removed the cigar and placed it in an ashtray, carefully propping it at an angle so it wouldn't go out. "Nobody here has anything on this sheet more serious than a traffic violation. Well, here's a five-year-old assault charge against one Edward Waite. Disturbance at a tavern. Other than that, not a black hat in the bunch. Your two deceased drunks, however, had a string of alcohol-related offenses until about six years ago. They've been clean since then. I checked last week, Nudge. Your police department does care when a corpus delicti is noticed at the curb."

  "Reassuring," Nudger said, standing up from the uncomfortable chair. The smoke was thicker nearer the ceiling; he stifled a cough. "Thanks for your help, Jack." He moved toward the door and fresh air.

  Hammersmith's voice stopped him. "Keep me tapped in on this one, Nudge. If there's a chance to collar whoever killed either of those alkies, I want to know."

  "You'll be the first I'll tell," Nudger promised. Hammersmith smiled and exhaled a greenish thundercloud. "You feel okay? You look a little sickly."

  "Oh, that's probably because my lungs are collapsing," Nudger said, opening the door and pointing his nose toward the sweet, breathable air of the booking area.