by John Lutz
The waitress, who had a faint dark mustache and was not a particularly attractive woman, started to walk away, but the guy with the name tag called her back. Gave her a wide, phony smile. Seemed to be flirting with her. Maybe another arc of emotion like Adler described had just occurred and Nudger had missed it. Hadn't even seen a flash.
He didn't miss it when ponytail raised his arm to glance at his watch, then stood up from the leather armchair and swaggered with an air of purpose toward the elevator.
Two elevators were at lobby level. Nudger slowed his pace, then got in the one on the right after ponytail had entered the one on the left.
Then a dozen people began filing slowly into Nudger's elevator. Pressed against the back wall, he heard the adjacent elevator begin its ascent.
Nudger wondered if he'd ever in his life have any luck that wasn't bad.
His elevator made four stops before it reached the tenth floor.
Ponytail had gotten there ahead of him, but Nudger was just in time to see him pause before the same room the blonde woman and the man had entered, give a tight little grin, then quickly push inside.
Nudger rode the elevator back down and used a house phone to call Security.
"I don't know what to tell him," Nudger said to Claudia Bettencourt that afternoon in her apartment. She wasn't teaching summer classes this year, and Nudger found himself spending far too much time with her during the day, when he should have been working. Or trying to find work to do, anyway.
Claudia, lean, dark, beautiful, with eyes that held depths Nudger could never fathom, languidly stretched out a tan arm and poured herself a second glass of the wine Nudger had brought with him. It was a spirited Chablis and had a Nevada label. Without looking at Nudger as she poured the bargain vintage, she said, "Tell him the truth."
"The truth will hurt him."
She put down the bottle and toyed with the threads on the glass neck for the cap that lay beside it. It had been a long time since Nudger had brought her wine in a bottle with a cork. He figured, What did it matter? Neither of them was a connoisseur. "I thought you said Adler was a hotshot lawyer," she told him. "Those guys aren't exactly sensitive souls."
"True, but consider why he hired me. I mean, it isn't like a downtown legal shark to ask for that kind of thing. Completely out of character."
"A trick?"
Nudger poured himself another glass of Chablis and took a swallow. He didn't usually drink wine in the afternoon, but this thing with Adler was bothering him. "I thought it might be a trick, but if it is, I don't understand it."
"That's the idea of a trick, Nudger."
He couldn't dispute her on that one. He took another pull of wine, noticing that it tickled his throat. No, more than tickled—burned. Was wine supposed to do that?
"Attorneys are devious," Claudia said. "Consider Henry Mercato."
Nudger did. More often than he would have chosen. Mercato was the divorce lawyer of his former wife Eileen. Was in fact sleeping with Eileen. Which gave Henry a personal interest in helping her to extract as much alimony as possible from Nudger even if it meant dragging him back into court and snatching food from beneath his nose. Not child support, which Nudger would gladly have paid if he and Eileen had been blessed with children, but alimony. No one paid alimony these days. No one other than Nudger. Henry Mercato was that skilled and devious. Eileen, who was at the pinnacle of one of those barely legal home product pyramid sales scams and collected large commissions for doing nothing, needed the money not at all. But she hated Nudger and was motivated. And good at motivating Mercato.
But there was something about Adler. He was like Mercato in some ways. But then he wasn't. There was something else in the man, glowing like a fire beneath a lake. A kind of melancholy that hinted at vulnerability in someone in Adler's profession.
Nudger put down his plastic glass so hard that wine sloshed onto the table. "Damn it, I can't explain why, but even if he is a lawyer, I just don't want to hurt the guy."
Claudia smiled. "That's why he hired you, because you had a heart. What he didn't figure on was that you were such a marshmallow."
"Adler called me a romantic."
She studied him over the green neck of the bottle. "Well, I guess you're that, too. You're also a professional who was hired to do a job. Tell your client what you found out, Nudger. In this instance, revealing the truth is the kindest thing you can do for him, though maybe it won't seem that way at the time. Trust me, okay?"
He thought about it. He didn't usually trust people who urged him to do so, but he trusted Claudia. He said, "Okay, he gets the truth."
She smiled at him and he felt something flutter deep in his nervous stomach. Not unpleasantly, though. He reached out a hand and ran his fingertips over her cool wrist.
She said, "You don't have to tell him right away, do you?"
"I'm not meeting him until this evening."
"So there's time to spare for me," she said.
"Always." He meant it. Always.
She got up and walked around the table. The cold breeze from the air conditioner played over her as she passed the window, momentarily molding the thin material of her summer blouse to her lean torso, her teacup-sized breasts, the gentle curve of her waist and hip.
She sat on his lap and he kissed her.
"Adler was right about you," she said.
"That's why he's an ace criminal lawyer," Nudger said. "He has instincts about people."
Claudia didn't answer. She wasn't listening.
She didn't seem to be listening later when he asked her if he could come back tonight after reporting to Adler. He slept over with Claudia often, and tonight in particular he felt like it. Not for more sex. He knew he'd bleed along with Adler when the truth cut deep; he'd need company.
But Claudia was vague about telling him he could return. He suspected why.
He said, "Is it Biff Archway?" Archway was the soccer coach and taught sex education at the girls' high school where Claudia taught English. She'd been involved with him for a while, but supposedly that was over.
"Is what Biff Archway?" she replied, obviously irritated.
"Did you see or hear something, Nudger?"
"Is Archway coming over here after I leave?"
"I don't think it's any of your concern."
"I think it is. I don't see how you can say it isn't."
"I told you there was nothing between us other than that we're on the same faculty. We have no choice but to see each other, to get along."
"Well," Nudger said.
"You should trust me. If Biff and I are alone together, you can be sure it's business."
"It's not that I don't trust you," Nudger said. "I don't trust Archway."
"You don't have to." She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
"It's me you need to have faith in. I have faith in you."
Guilt, he thought. She knew how to work him.
He glanced at his wristwatch. He had to get moving if he was going to be on time to meet with Adler. He didn't want to leave, but he had no choice.
Claudia said, "Don't worry, Nudger. Really."
His stomach twitched. He couldn't remember a day in his life when he hadn't worried.
"Her name's Doris Vandervort," Nudger told Adler that evening at the counter in Danny's Donuts, downstairs from Nudger's office. He'd jumped right in there with the truth, though he knew it would cause pain.
They were having Dunker Delites and coffee and were the only customers. The shop was usually conducive to confidential conversations. Danny was in the back room boxing up cream horns to sell at a discount by the dozen before they went stale. Staler.
Gazing morosely into his terrible coffee, Adler said, "She didn't look the type." He lifted his half-eaten Dunker Delite, then plunked it down on its plate in disgust.
"She is, though. Security found her undressed in the room, pretending to be her accomplice's wife caught in the act with a lover. She'd managed to unlock the door so they c
ould be interrupted. The mark would figure he'd forgotten or hadn't locked it all the way in his anticipation. The so-called husband graciously accepted money in return for not telling the conventioneer's co-workers and wife back in Tulsa about his indiscretion, and not naming him as correspondent in an alienation-of-affections suit. The woman pretended to help the mark talk the husband into that forgiving and profitable gesture."
"The badger game."
"That's what they call it."
"I thought she was on her way to work every morning when I saw her on the bus. I guess, in a way, she was."
"No," Nudger said, "she was actually coming home from her job as a waitress in an all-night restaurant. A couple of mornings a month, though, she wouldn't go home. She'd go to wherever she and her accomplice were planning to work the con."
"I'm not a criminal lawyer, Nudger. You think there's enough evidence to convict?"
"There would be if the guy she picked up would testify, but he won't. He still doesn't want his wife to find out about his indiscretion, so he'll decide not to bring charges. That's what makes it such a safe con game."
Adler absently prodded his Dunker Delite with a forefinger, as if checking for signs of life. "So she'll walk, after doing something like that."
"Not for a while. She can't make bail, and it'll take the mark a day or so to buckle and drop charges. He'll probably want to make the woman and her accomplice sweat for a few days."
"Still, she'll eventually walk."
"Some of your clients have done far worse and walked," Nudger pointed out. He wasn't sure how Adler was taking this, whether he was angry as well as disappointed. Love could be rough in the real world.
"Well, I wanted to know what she was," Adler said, "and now I do know." He used a paper napkin to wipe sugar from his fingers, then slid off the counter stool and hitched up his belt. It had a buckle that looked like real gold, in the shape of a dollar sign.
"You're not gonna finish your doughnut?"
"Are you kidding?"
"Not so loud. Danny's sensitive."
Adler buttoned his pinstriped suit coat, then extended his hand. "You got the job done, Nudger. Thanks."
"It didn't take long," Nudger said. "You've got a refund coming." He reminded himself to deduct the extra forty-seven dollars he'd needed to get his car back from the city after it had been towed from the No Parking zone.
Adler stared at Nudger appraisingly. "Dumb goes with honest almost without fail. I can't prove I gave you that thousand dollars, so keep it. I would, if I were you."
Nudger didn't argue with such ironclad logic. Did that prove he was more honest than dumb? Or vice versa?
He shook hands with Adler and watched him leave the doughnut shop and stride across Manchester to where his gleaming black Cadillac was parked. The man who'd believed in love and the electric instant. What was the blonde woman to him, anyway? A reminder of some childhood imprint even he couldn't recall? Some long-buried Oedipal reflex? A nagging suggestion of something more exciting and satisfying than corporate law?
What was she?
Nudger had his own problems with the female of the species. He asked Danny for a glass of water, then sat at the counter sipping it as slowly as if it weren't free.
Danny walked over and leaned on the counter, took a few listless swipes at it with his gray towel. "You look like you got trouble, Nudge."
Nudger said, "Claudia."
Danny's docile, basset hound eyes rolled their pupils toward the door. "Where?"
"I mean, she's my problem," Nudger said.
"Oh. I thought you meant you seen her coming towards the shop. Crossing the street or something." Danny worked the towel again, moving a few crumbs around, then tucked it back in his belt. "She been going to that shrink again?"
Nudger knew Danny meant Dr. Oliver, Claudia's analyst. The doctor had once told her she should see other men as part of her process of self-actualization. That was when she'd taken up with Biff Archway the first time.
Archway irritated Nudger from the start, and not just because he became something of a romantic rival. The guy was average height but muscular, handsome in a jut-jawed, chesty sort of way. He looked like a former college football star who'd kept in shape and learned how to wear expensive clothes and could afford a spiffy car to impress the ladies. Nudger had checked on him. Archway turned out to be a former college football star who'd kept in shape and spent a large percentage of his schoolteacher pay on clothes and red sports cars. He'd also carried a 3.9 grade point average. He was easy to dislike even when he wasn't hanging around Claudia.
". . . shrink again?" Danny was saying.
"I don't think she's gone back to him," Nudger said.
Danny looked serious. "So is it that Archway bastard?"
"Maybe," Nudger said. "I think he might be going to Claudia's apartment tonight. She wouldn't tell me for sure one way or the other. She says if he is gonna be there, it'll be about the school and it's none of my business."
"If he is? She say those exact words, Nudge?"
"More or less." Nudger wondered what significance Danny saw in that.
"I was you," Danny said, "I'd drive on over there and see what was going on."
"Claudia warned me not to do that."
"Her saying so doesn't mean she really don't want you there, Nudge."
Nudger stared at Danny. Occasionally, with childlike clarity of vision, Danny could be very wise about certain matters. Intuitive if not logical. Nudger sensed this was one of those times.
"I don't follow you," he said, thinking he might glean some further insight from Danny. Some faint clue to the true nature of the universe.
Danny placed his blunt-fingered, flour-whitened hands on the counter and leaned toward Nudger. "I figure she might be testing you, Nudge."
"Testing me?"
"Seeing if you love her enough to go to her tonight and tell Archway to scram."
Nudger said, "That's absurd."
"No, no," Danny said, "women think that way sometimes."
"Not Claudia."
"Even Claudia."
"I wouldn't bet on it."
"But you are betting on it, Nudge, and the stakes are high." He nodded knowingly and pushed away from the counter, leaving two flour handprints on the stainless steel surface.
Nudger sat silently while Danny went back to his baking. What Danny had said was eating on him, along with his conversation with Adler. In some way it was all connected, and Nudger couldn't figure out how.
He walked around the counter and helped himself to a cup of Danny's sludge-like coffee from the huge, complex urn. It wasn't easy getting the stuff down, but he knew it would keep him awake. Alert. His stomach was kicking violently as he walked toward the door.
"Where you goin', Nudge?" Danny called from the door to the back room.
"Following your advice," Nudger said. "I'm going to see Claudia, whether or not she's alone."
"Good," Danny said, beaming and wiping his ghostly white hands on his apron. It obviously pleased him immensely to see Nudger acting on his suggestion. "It's the thing to do. You can't go wrong."
"I've thought that before and gone wrong."
"It'll work out this time," Danny assured him. "I got a kinda sixth sense about these things. Wanna take her some of yesterday's doughnuts? That'll get you in tight. I'll pop 'em in the microwave and freshen 'em up if you want."
Nudger said, "I think not."
There was the sleek red convertible, Archway's, parked on Wilmington right in front of Claudia's apartment. Nudger knew it was Archway's car because there was a Stowe High School parking permit dangling from the rearview mirror.
Okay, Nudger told himself, driving around the block and trying to ignore what felt like a sharp-clawed hamster fight in his stomach, so Archway was there. With Claudia. She hadn't said that wasn't going to happen, just said that if it did, it would be strictly business. School business. Her business and none of his. She and Archway would be doing whatever teach
ers did when they got together professionally. Could be anything. Possibly they were discussing difficult students, discipline problems. Nudger remembered being one of those, but unintentionally, as he recalled. His teachers had been upset. Teachers could be sensitive. Maybe the faculty out at Stowe High School was going on strike.
Or maybe the school had too much money and the faculty was trying to figure out what on earth to do with it all.
The truth was that none of those possibilities seemed at all likely to Nudger. He was thinking of the way Claudia moved when she walked, the way she tossed her long dark hair to get it out of her eyes, the way she smelled.
He slammed on the brakes.
An old, stooped fellow wearing a Cardinals cap, watering his lawn even though it was almost dark out, glared at him as he steered the car into a driveway, then backed it out so it was turned around and headed back to Claudia's apartment and the parking space he'd seen across the street from Archway's sporty red convertible. Staring fiercely from beneath the bill of his red baseball cap, the old guy looked about to throw a wicked fastball at Nudger's head. But he merely lost momentary control of his hose, and its stream of water knocked over one of the two plastic flamingos flanking the steps to the porch.
Nudger knew he should keep on driving, turn the corner, and go home. But he didn't. Couldn't. He parked the Granada and climbed out, plucking his shirt away from where it was plastered to his back with perspiration. He stood still then and stared up at Claudia's apartment.
The lights were off up there.
Well, maybe she and Archway had gone somewhere in Claudia's car.
But there was Claudia's little blue Chevette parked down the block. Nudger recognized it by the dent in the front fender.
His stomach did fast loops.
Don't make an ass of yourself, he thought. Don't jump to conclusions.
But suspicion and jealousy had him like a drug. It was dusk, so it had to be almost dark in the apartment, and the lights were out. Under the circumstances, what would anybody think?
He walked down the block a short distance so he could make sure the dining room light was also out.