The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  After brushing sugar from his hands, he got the phone directory out of the desk's bottom drawer and turned to the back section where businesses were listed.

  There it was, "A. Nubber, Private Investigations," right above Nudger's listing. A. Nubber had to be who Gate had mistaken Nudger for. Had to be.

  Nudger copied Nubber's address, poured the rest of the coffee down the drain in the office's tiny washroom, then descended the creaking stairs to the street door. He pushed outside into the morning glare and heat, knocked on the donut shop's grease-coated window, and signaled to owner and manager Danny Evers that he was leaving for a while. Danny waved and nodded, then mopped his face with the gray towel he kept tucked in his belt. It was hot in the donut shop, with all that determined baking going on; each Dunker Delite was forged with great effort and sacrifice. It was a shame about the way they tasted.

  A. Nubber's office was classier than Nudger's. It was in the Central West End, on the ground floor of a large Victorian house that had been converted to an office building. Nubber had his own private entrance, a colonial-blue door that bore his name on an antique brass plaque.

  As Nudger reached for the doorknob the door swung open and a beautiful blonde woman emerged. She was wearing a lightweight blue business suit, but had the jacket slung over her shoulder. Her silky sleeveless blouse revealed shapely tanned arms. She nodded to Nudger and smiled. His stomach and his knees felt it in a big way. Probably she was an A. Nubber client. People like this never came to see Nudger in his office above the donut shop. Where was justice?

  Nubber had a classy waiting room. A classy receptionist, who took Nudger's name, spoke into an intercom, then ushered him into a large, high-ceilinged office with a mammoth antique desk beneath a slowly revolving paddle fan. This would impress clients, Nudger thought, and Nubber wouldn't smell like a Dunker Delite and scare them away by seeming low-class and high in cholesterol.

  Nubber himself was seated behind the desk, wearing a black-and-white-checkered sport jacket and a yellow tie. He was a smiling, bland-faced man, but with glittering dark eyes that gave him the look of the tiger. He seemed the sort who should be hawking used cars or life insurance rather than working as a private detective. The tennis court-size desk made Nubber took smaller. When he stood up, Nudger saw that he was about his size—just under six feet tall—though a bit on the pudgy side. Well, Nudger was getting a little paunchy himself.

  Nubber shook hands with Nudger and said, "What can I do for you, Mr. Nudger?"

  "Fill me in on a few things," Nudger said. "I'm not a prospective client; you and I are in the same business, have similar names. I'm A. Nudger. You're"—he looked at the name plaque on the desk—"Abner Nubber."

  "What's your 'A' stand for?" Nubber asked.

  "Doesn't matter," Nudger said. "Thing is, you're listed above me in the phone directory, and it appears somebody got us mixed up."

  "Mixed up?" The cheerful but feral dark eyes became wary but no less predatory. "Maybe you're mixed up, I'm sure I'm not."

  "Mistook me for you." Nudger explained to Nubber what had happened last night at the Merrimont Hotel. While he talked, Nubber sat swiveling this way and that in his padded desk chair, listening carefully and tapping a cheekbone with a gold pen.

  "I read in the morning paper about that poor guy," he said, when Nudger was finished. "Gates, or Bates was his name. Went right through the net, hit the pavement—splat!" Nubber slapped the desk with his palm. Nudger winced. The stained, bunched blanket on the sidewalk in front of the Merrimont flashed on the screen of his mind. His stomach grumbled.

  "Ernest Gate was his name," he said.

  "Ah, yeah."

  "So what's the connection?" Nudger asked.

  "Connection? Why, there is none. I never heard of this guy Ernest Bate."

  "Gate."

  "Whatever."

  Nudger was surprised. This had all seemed so logical. "You positive about that?"

  "Sure am," Nubber said. He began to tap on the desk with the pen, holding it as if it were a drumstick and beating out a soft but insistent rhythm. "Never crossed paths with the unfortunate gentleman." His mouth was always smiling even if his eyes were fierce.

  "Might you have known him under another name?"

  "Nope. His photograph was in the paper. Guy looked like everybody's accountant, but I never met him."

  There seemed nothing more to say. Nudger thanked Nubber, who stood up again behind the huge desk, becoming Nudger-size once more, and smilingly walked Nudger to the door.

  "Sorry I couldn't help you, pal," Nubber said. "But we both know how it is. Coincidence is what keeps us working and what makes our jobs so hard."

  Nudger hadn't thought of that and wasn't sure if it was true, but he nodded agreement, thanked Nubber again, and went out into the anteroom. A young and attractive couple was seated on the Early American sofa, waiting to see Nubber. The man looked away from Nudger. The woman was engrossed in a glossy fashion magazine. Nubber's redheaded receptionist smiled dazzlingly at Nudger and said, "Something sure smells good."

  "Like a donut?"

  Her smile widened. "That's it exactly. Wonder what it is."

  Nudger told her he had no idea, then went out into the shade of the Victorian front porch. He left it grudgingly and walked across the street to where the Granada sat with its broken air conditioner. Sweat was already zigzagging down his ribs. This was going to be another day on the griddle.

  He drove back to his office, checked with Danny, and was told no one had been by. There were no messages on his answering machine. Business as usual. He got the rickety window air conditioner gurgling and humming away, and sat behind his desk, sipping a glass of water and feeling the cool push of air from the plastic grille caress his bare arm.

  When the glass was empty and he was reasonably cool, he called Hammersmith at the Third District station.

  "Ah," Hammersmith said, "I was gonna call you, Nudge." Nudger doubted it but said nothing.

  "You remember that jumper last night, Ernest Gate?"

  "I remember him," Nudger said.

  "Well, that address out in Chesterfield is three years old. His last address, was the state penitentiary in Jefferson City, where he did a stretch for embezzlement. He was released two days ago."

  "What about the Visa card you found on him? The issuing bank got an address on Gate?"

  "No, he was sent that card in prison, just before his release."

  "You said his wallet was new and the address was written on its identification form. Why would he write an address three years old?"

  "Only address he could think of, I guess. The guy didn't live in the Jeff City pen anymore. Or at the Merrimont Hotel. He was only there about an hour before somebody spotted him on the ledge."

  "What about his family? Where do they live?"

  "No known next of kin," Hammersmith said. "Gate was alone in the world."

  And left it mad as hell at me, Nudger thought. He couldn't get that off his mind.

  "He had a wife before he went into prison," Hammersmith said. "She divorced him just before he began his stretch, never visited him until about six months ago, and she apparently said something that got him in a crazy rage. The guards had to restrain him. Other than that, no visitors except for his lawyer in three years."

  "Who was his lawyer?"

  Hammersmith was quiet while he apparently studied the file on Ernest Gate. "Guy named Buddy Witherton. I know him; he's still practicing criminal law. Hasn't gotten it right yet."

  Nudger said, "How can you not go to prison with a lawyer named Buddy?"

  "Well," Hammersmith said, "Gate did go. Just like most of Witherton's clients. And I better go, myself—back to work."

  "I'm gonna call this Witherton—"

  But there was a click on the line and Hammersmith was gone, returned to the front in the War on Drugs.

  After depressing the cradle button for a dial tone, Nudger phoned Buddy Witherton. He wasn't in his office, but his secreta
ry took Nudger's number. Everybody had a secretary but Nudger.

  Half an hour later, Witherton returned Nudger's call from his car phone. Sure, he remembered Ernest Gate. He was sorry to read about Gate's death last night. He'd done what he could in court, but frankly Gate had been guilty as Charles Manson. He'd embezzled twenty-thousand dollars from the catering firm he worked for and used it to finance an illicit romance, but his wife found out about the other woman and everything else, and revealed the embezzlement out of spite during the divorce proceedings. Witherton had represented Gate in the divorce, too. Gate had apparently been the kind of guy who stayed with a winner. Did Witherton remember the wife's name? "Let's see," he said, "Edna or Irma, it was. She lived out in Chesterfield."

  Nudger phoned Hammersmith and got the Chesterfield address that was in Ernest Gate's wallet.

  The name on the mailbox was Edna Vickers. Nudger figured Gate's wife had gone back to using her maiden name; stigma of prison and all that, and not wanting to be reminded of Ernest while he was rotting away in his cell. Her conscience must be eating her alive. Hell hath no fury, but after the fury died, maybe hell was all that remains for some scorned women.

  The woman who came to the door was in her mid-forties, at least five feet ten inches tall even without her high heels, and wearing a red halter and blue shorts that displayed a fine figure, most of it legs. She was attractive in a gaunt sort of way, with a smooth complexion and large dark eyes. The eyes took a moment to focus on Nudger, and he realized something wasn't quite right about them.

  He identified himself and said he'd like to talk to her about her former husband.

  "Late former husband," she corrected, slurring the words and filling the air with Eau de Gin fumes. It was early to be so smashed, but then ex-hubby had died only the night before—this morning, really—and possibly had been extinguished before what was left of the flame of love. "He was a son of a bitch," she said, and Nudger forgot that flame-of-love idea.

  "Kind of warm out here on the porch," he said, and she seemed to get flustered about forgetting her manners. She stepped back and invited him in.

  The inside of the house was cool, dim, and furnished modern, with lots of angled smoked glass and stainless steel. The leather sling-sofa looked like a torture rack, and the matching chairs looked like futuristic birthing stools. Nudger couldn't imagine being comfortable there.

  "Wanna siddown?" Edna Vickers slurred at him.

  Well, maybe he should, if he wanted to gain her boozy confidence. He lowered himself into one of the chairs. The leather squeaked like a new pair of boots. Edna Vickers perched her trim little rear on the sofa and crossed her long, long legs. The house was so cool there were goose bumps on her thighs, even where her shorts had worked up to reveal the curve of her buttock. She didn't seem to notice. Nudger did.

  "Is Vickers your maiden leg—er, name?" he asked.

  "Yep. I ain't gonna call myself Gate, that's for sure. I really hate—or I guess hated—that son of a bitch. Late son of a bitch." She seemed openly pleased by Ernest's new prefix.

  "He asked to talk to me before he jumped," Nudger said. "Do you have any idea why?"

  "Nope. Ain't talked to the bastard in almost three years. Since right after I caught him going out on me, and he got caught embezzling money to support his other woman."

  "I guess that's what caused the divorce, the other woman."

  "You betcha. No man plays me for that kinda fool. I nailed him good. Hired a detective and caught him in the act. In flagrante delicto, it's called. I learned that from the legal proceedings, which didn't take long, because I had his hide nailed to the wall in court, what with photographs and everything. You shoulda seen what him and that woman were doing. He never showed that kinda imagination with me."

  "Did Ernest write to you from prison?"

  "Nope. I told you, we had no contact and I didn't want any. If he eventually realized the mistake he made dumping me, that's tough cheese, the way I figure."

  "But prison records indicate you saw him about six months ago, and after your visit he was in an agitated state."

  Her gin-blurred eyes suddenly became cunning. "Well, some mistake musta been made, there at the prison. Maybe it was that other woman who visited him. It's been years since I seen Ernest, and the fact he's passed on is no sorrow to me." She stood up, looking very tall and a bit wobbly on her high heels. Nudger wondered if she always wandered around the house in shorts and high heels, or if she'd peeked out the door and seen him and thought she might impress him. He could have that effect on some women.

  Taking her rise from the sofa as his signal that the conversation was over, he stood up also, gave her the old sweet smile, though he had to look up at her to do it.

  "Whoa, I almost fell down," she mumbled. "Trying to break in these new shoes. Anyways, I said all that needs saying about the late Ernest R. Gate. I don't even wanna think about that scuzzball ever again, and I don't hafta."

  "No, you don't," Nudger agreed. From where he stood he could see into the kitchen. An empty gin bottle and a glass sat on a counter near the sink, next to a Mr. Coffee. "Maybe you oughta make yourself some strong coffee, Mrs. Vickers," he suggested.

  She looked perplexed. "Why? I ain't gonna drive."

  She had him there. He thanked her for taking time to talk with him, then moved toward the door.

  "And it's Miss Vickers," she said. "Far as I'm concerned, I never been married to any of the species of man, and I never even met the late and unlamented Ernest R. Gate. That's how I got my memory arranged, and that's how it's gonna stay."

  "One thing," Nudger said, his hand on the doorknob. "You mentioned you hired a detective to get evidence against Ernest. Remember his name?"

  "I just said it: Ernest R. Gate. The 'R' stands—stood—for Robert."

  "I meant the detective's name."

  "I'm not sure."

  "Was it Abner Nubber?"

  "Mighta been." She slumped back down on the creaky leather sofa, looking pale and ill. Her mouth went slack and she swallowed laboriously, her Adam's apple working beneath the smooth flesh of her long neck. "Yeah, Abner Nubber."

  "Better think again about that coffee," Nudger told her, then went out into the July suburban heat.

  Something was bothering Miss Edna Vickers. Maybe she still loved Ernest Gate more than she cared to admit to herself. Or maybe something else was causing her to drink and not drive.

  Maybe it had something to do with Albert Nubber lying about not knowing her former husband.

  Late former husband.

  Since Nubber had lied, Nudger figured the next logical step in the investigation would be to watch and follow him. He parked the sweltering Granada in the shade half a block down from Nubber's office. He wasn't too worried about Nubber spotting him; detectives were geared to tail people, but not necessarily to spot a tail.

  Nubber stayed in his office most of the day, leaving only for lunch at a restaurant a few blocks away. Only a few people came and went in the big Victorian house. Nudger couldn't be sure if they were there to see Nubber or visit the other tenants. The three women who'd come and gone were remarkably attractive, or maybe Nudger just thought so because he hadn't seen his lady love, Claudia Bettencourt, for almost a week. She'd been following her psychiatrist's advice for her self-actualization and seeing Biff Archway, the volleyball coach and sex-education teacher at the girls' high school where she taught English. Nudger didn't like to think about the two of them together, so maybe it was natural he'd see something special and immediate about these other women.

  At five o'clock the classy redheaded receptionist left. Ten minutes later, Abner Nubber, who must have had a parking space in back, roared around the corner in a red Corvette convertible. Nudger only got a glimpse of him, but he seemed to be smiling.

  The Corvette had no luck with traffic signals, which allowed Nudger to keep the Granada close and watch Nubber pull into the underground parking garage of a modern condominium on Skinker Boulevard.


  A little after six o'clock, the Corvette snarled back out of the shadowed mouth of the garage. Nudger gulped down the rest of the Big Mac he'd taken time to buy at a McDonald's drive-through, shoved the Granada into drive, and followed.

  Nubber had changed into an expensive-looking, cream-colored jacket, white shirt, and mauve tie. At an apartment building on Lindell he parked and went inside, and came out a few minutes later with an elegant dark-haired woman on his arm. Something about her reminded Nudger of Claudia.

  Nubber and the woman drove downtown and entered Tony's on Broadway, probably the city's best restaurant. Nudger had never eaten there.

  He finished his French fries and chocolate milkshake and waited, watching Tony's entrance.

  Nubber and the woman came out at nine o'clock and drove back to her condo. Nudger caught a glimpse of her at one of the windows and got a fix on which unit was hers. The lights stayed low in the condo; maybe she and Nubber were watching television. The Cardinals' game with the Mets was televised tonight; Nudger ordinarily would be home watching it.

  He listened to the game on his static-filled car radio, rooting for the Cards to hold on to their one-run lead.

  They didn't. They lost three to two after committing an error in the ninth inning. Nudger often lost that way.

  He kept an eye on the woman's windows until ten o'clock, when all of the lights went out.

  Hating Abner Nubber, really hating him, he drove back to his apartment and tried to get some sleep.

  The next morning Nudger missed Nubber at the woman's apartment but located his car parked behind the Victorian office building. At ten o'clock he followed Nubber to a house in St. Louis Hills, where a heavyset woman with dark bangs answered the door and invited him in.

  Fifteen minutes later Nubber left the house and drove to the Branton Hotel downtown, where he met a blonde woman in the cocktail lounge. This Nubber was something with women.

  As he stood in the lobby pretending to talk on a pay phone, watching Abner Nubber and the woman at a table near the bar, Nudger realized the woman was the striking blonde he'd seen leaving Nubber's office yesterday as he was entering.