The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  He knew he wasn't crying for the dead at the clinic or for Father Tooley, but for everyone left behind in the wilderness.

  The Right to Sing the Blues

  "There's this that you need to know about jazz," Fat Jack McGee told Nudger with a smile. "You don't need to know a thing about it to enjoy it, and that's all you need to know." He tossed back his huge head, jowls quivering, and drained the final sip of brandy from his crystal snifter. "It's feel." He used a white napkin to dab at his lips with a very fat man's peculiar delicacy. "Jazz is pure feel."

  "Does Willy Hollister have the feel?" Nudger asked. He pushed his plate away, feeling full to the point of being bloated. The only portion of the gourmet lunch Fat Jack had bought him that remained untouched was the grits.

  "Willy Hollister," Fat Jack said, with something like reverence, "plays ultra-fine piano."

  A white-vested waiter appeared like a native from around a potted palm, carrying chicory coffee on a silver tray, and placed cups before Nudger and Fat Jack. "Then what's your problem with Hollister?" Nudger asked, sipping the thick rich brew. He rated it delicious. "Didn't you hire him to play his best piano at your club?"

  "Hey, there's no problem with his music," Fat Jack said. "But first, Nudger, I gotta know if you can hang around New Orleans till you can clear up this matter." Fat Jack's tiny pinkish eyes glittered with mean humor. "For a fat fee, of course."

  Nudger knew the fee would be adequate. Fat Jack had a bank account as obese as his body, and he had, in fact, paid Nudger a sizable sum just to travel to New Orleans and sit in the Magnolia Blossom restaurant over lunch and listen while Fat Jack talked. The question Nudger now voiced was: "Why me?"

  "Because I know a lady from your fair city." Fat Jack mentioned a name. "She says you're tops at your job; she don't say that about many. And because of your collection," Fat Jack added. An ebony dribble of coffee dangled in liquid suspension from his triple chin, glittering as he talked. "I hear you collect old jazz records."

  "I used to," Nudger said a bit wistfully. "I had Willie the Lion. Duke Ellington and Mary Ann Williams from their Kansas City days."

  "How come had?" Fat Jack asked.

  "I sold the collection," Nudger said. "To pay the rent one dark month." He gazed beyond green palm fronds, out the window and through filigreed black wrought iron, at the tourists half a block away on Bourbon Street, at the odd combination of French and Spanish architecture and black America and white suits and broiling half-tropical sun that was New Orleans, where jazz lived as in no other place. "Damned rent," he muttered.

  "Amen." Fat Jack was kidding not even himself. He hadn't worried about paying the rent in years. The drop of coffee released its grip on his chin, plummeted, and stained his white shirtfront. "So will you stay around town a while?"

  Nudger nodded. His social and business calendars weren't exactly booked solid.

  "Hey, it's not Hollister himself who worries me," Fat Jack said, "it's Ineida Collins. She's singing at the club now, and if she keeps practicing, someday she'll be mediocre. I'm not digging at her, Nudger; that's an honest assessment."

  "Then why did you hire her?"

  "Because of David Collins. He owns a lot of the French Quarter. He owns a piece of the highly successful restaurant where we now sit. In every parish in New Orleans, he has more clout than a ton of charge cards. And he's as skinny and ornery as I am fat and nice."

  Nudger took another sip of coffee.

  "And he asked you to hire Ineida Collins?"

  "You're onto it. Ineida is his daughter. She wants to make it as a singer. And she will, if Dad has to buy her a recording studio, at double the fair price. Since David Collins also owns the building my club is in, I thought I'd acquiesce when his daughter auditioned for a job. And Ineida isn't really so bad that she embarrasses anyone but herself. I call it diplomacy."

  "I thought you were calling it trouble," Nudger said. "I thought that was why you hired me."

  Fat Jack nodded, ample jowls spilling over his white collar. "So it became," he said. "Hollister, you see, is a handsome young dude, and within the first week Ineida was at the club, he put some moves on her. They became fast friends. They've now progressed beyond mere friendship."

  "You figure he's attracted to Dad's money?"

  "Nothing like that," Fat Jack said. "When I hired Ineida, David Collins insisted I keep her identity a secret. It was part of the deal. So she sings under the stage name Ineida Mann, which most likely is a gem from her dad's advertising department."

  "I still don't see your problem," Nudger said.

  "Hollister doesn't set right with me, and I don't know exactly why. I do know that if he messes up Ineida in some way, David Collins will see to it that I'm playing jazz on the ButteBoise-Anchorage circuit."

  "Nice cities," Nudger remarked, "but not jazz towns. I see your problem."

  "So find out about Willy Hollister for me," Fat Jack implored. "Check him out, declare him pass or fail, but put my mind at ease either way. That's all I want, an easeful mind."

  "Even we tough private eye guys want that," Nudger said.

  Fat Jack removed his napkin from his lap and raised a languid, plump hand. A waiter who had been born just to respond to that signal scampered over with the check. Fat Jack accepted a tiny ballpoint pen and signed with a ponderous yet elegant flourish. Nudger watched him help himself to a mint. It was like watching the grace and dexterity of an elephant picking up a peanut. Huge as Fat Jack was, he moved as if he weighed no more than ten or twelve pounds.

  "I gotta get back, Nudger. Do some paperwork, count some money." He stood up, surprisingly tall in his tan slacks and white linen sport coat. Nudger thought it was a neat coat; he decided he might buy one and wear it winter and summer. "Drop around the club about eight o'clock tonight," Fat Jack said. "I'll fill you in on whatever else you need to know, and I'll show you Willy Hollister and Ineida. Maybe you'll get to hear her sing."

  "While she's singing," Nudger said, "maybe we can discuss my fee."

  Fat Jack grinned, his vast jowls defying gravity grandly. "Hey, you and me're gonna get along fine." He winked and moved away among the tables, tacking toward the door, dwarfing the other diners.

  The waiter refilled Nudger's coffee cup. He sat sipping chicory brew and watching Fat Jack McGee walk down the sunny sidewalk toward Bourbon Street. He sure had a jaunty, bouncy kind of walk for a fat man.

  Nudger wasn't as anxious about the fee as Fat Jack thought, though the subject was of more than passing interest. Actually, he had readily taken the case because years ago, at a club in St. Louis, he'd heard Fat Jack McGee play clarinet in the manner that had made him something of a jazz legend, and he'd never forgotten. Real jazz fans are hooked forever.

  He needed to hear that clarinet again.

  Fat Jack's club was on Dexter, half a block off Bourbon Street. Nudger paused at the entrance and looked up at its red and green neon sign. There was a red neon Fat Jack himself, a portly, herky-jerky, illuminated figure that jumped about with the same seeming lightness and jauntiness as the real Fat Jack.

  Trumpet music from inside the club was wafting out almost palpably into the hot humid night. People were coming and going, among them a few obvious tourists, making the Bourbon Street rounds. But Nudger got the impression that most of Fat Jack's customers were folks who took their jazz seriously, and were there for music, not atmosphere.

  The trumpet stairstepped up to an admirable high C and wild applause. Nudger went inside and looked around. Dim, smoky, lots of people at lots of tables, men in suits and in jeans and T-shirts, women in long dresses and in casual slacks. The small stage was empty now; the band was between sets. Customers were milling around, stacking up at the bar along one wall. Waitresses in "Fat Jack's" T-shirts were bustling about with trays of drinks. Near the left of the stage was a polished, dark, upright piano that gleamed like a new car even in the dimness. Fat Jack's was everything a jazz club should be, Nudger decided.

  Feeling at home,
he made his way to the bar and after a five-minute wait, ordered a mug of draft beer. The mug was frosted, the beer ice-flecked.

  The lights brightened and dimmed three times, apparently a signal the regulars at Fat Jack's understood, for they began a general movement back toward their tables. Then the lights dimmed considerably, and the stage, with its gleaming piano, was suddenly the only illuminated area in the place. A tall, graceful man in his early thirties walked onstage to the kind of scattered but enthusiastic applause that suggests respect and a common bond between performer and audience. The man smiled faintly at the applause and sat down at the piano. He had pained, haughty features, and blond hair that curled above the collar of his black Fat Jack's shirt. The muscles in his bare arms were corded; his hands appeared elegant yet very strong. He was Willy Hollister, the main gig, the one the paying customers had come to hear. The place got quiet, and he began to play.

  The song was a variation of "Good Woman Gone Bad," an old number originally written for tenor sax. Hollister played it his way, and two bars into it Nudger knew he was better than good and nothing but bad luck could keep him from being great. He was backed by brass and a snare drum, but he didn't need it; he didn't need a thing in this world but that piano and you could tell it just by looking at the rapt expression on his aristocratic face.

  "Didn't I tell you it was all there?" Fat Jack said softly beside Nudger. "Whatever else there is about him, the man can play piano."

  Nudger nodded silently. Jazz basically is black music, but the fair, blond Hollister played it with all the soul and pain of its genesis. He finished up the number to riotous applause that quieted only when he swung into another, a blues piece. He sang that one while his hands worked the piano. His voice was as black as his music; in his tone, his inflection, there seemed to dwell centuries of suffering.

  "I'm impressed," Nudger said, when the applause for the blues number had died down.

  "You and everyone else." Fat Jack was sipping absinthe from a gold-rimmed glass. "Hollister won't be playing here much longer before moving up the show business ladder—not for what I'm paying him, and I'm paying him plenty."

  "How did you happen to hire him?"

  "He came recommended by a club owner in Chicago. Seems he started out in Cleveland playing small rooms, then moved up to better things in Kansas City, then Rush Street in Chicago. All I had to do was hear him play for five minutes to know I wanted to hire him. It's like catching a Ray Charles or a Garner on the way up."

  "So what specifically is there about Hollister that bothers you?" Nudger asked. "Why shouldn't he be seeing Ineida Collins?"

  Fat Jack scrunched up his padded features, seeking the word that might convey the thought. "His music is . . . uneven."

  "That's hardly a crime," Nudger said, "especially if he can play so well when he's right."

  "He ain't as right as I've heard him," Fat Jack said. "Believe me, Hollister can be even better than he was tonight. But it's not really his music that concerns me. Hollister acts strange at times, secretive. Sam Judman, the drummer, went by his apartment last week, found the door unlocked, and let himself in to wait for Hollister to get home. When Hollister discovered him there, he beat him up—with his fists. Can you imagine a piano player like Hollister using his hands for that?" Fat Jack looked as if he'd discovered a hair in his drink.

  "So he's obsessively secretive. What else?" What am I doing, Nudger asked himself, trying to talk myself out of a job?

  But Fat Jack went on. "Hollister has seemed troubled, jumpy and unpredictable, for the last month. He's got problems, and like I told you, if he's seeing Ineida Collins, I got problems. I figure it'd be wise to learn some more about Mr. Hollister."

  "The better to know his intentions, as they used to say."

  "And in some quarters still say."

  The lights did their dimming routine again, the crowd quieted, and Willy Hollister was back at the piano. But this time the center of attention was the tall, dark-haired girl leaning with one hand on the piano, her other hand delicately holding a microphone. Inside her plain navy blue dress was a trim figure. She had nice ankles, a nice smile. Nice was a word that might have been coined for her. A stage name like Ineida Mann didn't fit her at all. She was prom queen and Girl Scouts and PTA and looked as if she'd blush at an off-color joke. But it crossed Nudger's mind that maybe it was simply a role; maybe she was playing for contrast.

  Fat Jack knew what Nudger was thinking. "She's as straight and naive as she looks," he said. "But she'd like to be something else, to learn all about life and love in a few easy lessons."

  Someone in the backup band had announced Ineida Mann, and she began to sing, the plaintive lyrics of an old blues standard. She had control but no range. Nudger found himself listening to the backup music, which included a smooth clarinet solo. The band liked Ineida and went all out to envelop her in good sound, but the audience at Fat Jack's was too smart for that. Ineida finished to light applause, bowed prettily, and made her exit. Competent but nothing special, and looking as if she'd just wandered in from suburbia. But this was what she wanted and her rich father was getting it for her. Parental love could be as blind as the other kind.

  "So how are you going to get started on this thing?" Fat Jack asked. "You want me to introduce you to Hollister and Ineida?"

  "Usually I begin a case by discussing my fee and signing a contract," Nudger said.

  Fat Jack waved an immaculately manicured, ring-adorned hand. "Don't worry about the fee," he said. "Hey, let's make it whatever you usually charge plus twenty percent plus expenses. Trust me on that."

  That sounded fine to Nudger, all except the trusting part. He reached into his inside coat pocket, withdrew his roll of antacid tablets, thumbed back the aluminum foil, and popped one of the white disks into his mouth, all in one practiced, smooth motion.

  "What's that stuff for?" Fat Jack asked.

  "Nervous stomach," Nudger explained.

  "You oughta try this," Fat Jack said, nodding toward his absinthe. "Eventually it eliminates the stomach altogether."

  Nudger winced. "I want to talk with Ineida," he said, "but it would be best if we had our conversation away from the club."

  Fat Jack pursed his lips and nodded. "I can give you her address. She doesn't live at home with her father; she's in a little apartment over on Beulah Street. It's all part of the making-it-on-her-own illusion. Anything else?"

  "Maybe. Do you still play the clarinet?"

  Fat Jack cocked his head and looked curiously at Nudger, one tiny eye squinting through the tobacco smoke that hazed the air around the bar. "Now and again, but only on special occasions."

  "Why don't we make the price of this job my usual fee plus only ten percent plus you do a set with the clarinet this Saturday night?"

  Fat Jack beamed, then threw back his head and let out a roaring laugh that turned heads and seemed to shake the bottles on the back bar. "Agreed! You're a find, Nudger! First you trust me to pay you without a contract, then you lower your fee and ask for a clarinet solo instead of money. There's no place you can spend a clarinet solo! Hey, I like you, but you're not much of a businessman."

  Nudger smiled and sipped his beer. Fat Jack hadn't bothered to find out the amount of Nudger's usual fee, so all this talk about percentages meant nothing. If detectives weren't good businessmen, neither were jazz musicians. He handed Fat Jack a pen and a club matchbook. "How about that address?"

  Beulah Street was narrow and crooked, lined with low houses of French-Spanish architecture, an array of arches, pastel stucco, and ornamental wrought iron. The houses had long ago been divided into apartments, each with a separate entrance. Behind each apartment was a small courtyard.

  Nudger found Ineida Collins' address. It belonged to a pale yellow structure with a weathered tile roof and a riot of multicolored bougainvillea blooming wild halfway up one cracked and often-patched stucco wall.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Ten o'clock. If Ineida wasn't awake by now, he
decided, she should be. He stepped up onto the small red brick front porch and worked the lion's head knocker on a plank door supported by huge black iron hinges.

  Ineida came to the door without delay. She didn't appear at all sleepy after her late-night stint at Fat Jack's. Her dark hair was tied back in a French braid. She was wearing slacks and a peach-colored silky blouse. Even the harsh sunlight was kind to her; she looked young, as inexperienced and naive as Fat Jack said she was.

  Nudger told her he was a writer doing a piece on Fat Jack's club. "I heard you sing last night," he said. "It really was something to see. I thought it might be a good idea if we talked."

  It was impossible for her to turn down what in her mind was a celebrity interview. She lit up bright enough to pale the sunlight and invited Nudger inside.

  Her apartment was tastefully but inexpensively furnished. There was an imitation Oriental rug on the hardwood floor, lots of rattan furniture, a Casablanca overhead fan rotating its wide flat blades slowly and casting soothing, flickering shadows. Through sheer beige curtains the apartment's courtyard was visible, well tended and colorful.

  "Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Nudger?" Ineida asked.

  Nudger told her thanks, watched the switch of her trim hips as she walked into the small kitchen. From where he sat he could see a Mr. Coffee brewer on the sink, its glass pot half full. Ineida poured, returned with two mugs of coffee.

  "How old are you, Ineida?" he asked.

  "Twenty-three."

  "Then you haven't been singing for all that many years."

  She sat down, placed her steaming coffee mug on a coaster. "About five, actually. I sang in school productions, then studied for a while in New York. I've been singing at Fat Jack's for about two months. I love it."

  "The crowd there seems to like you," Nudger lied. He watched her smile and figured the lie was a worthy one. He pretended to take notes while he asked her a string of writer-like questions, pumping up her ego. It was an ego that would inflate only so far. Nudger decided that he liked Ineida Collins and hoped she would hurry up and realize she wasn't Ineida Mann.