by John Lutz
He stepped into the elevator and descended.
XXXII
H e was plunging through cold blackness, gaining speed, trying to see what lay below, his scream and the wind’s scream the same terrified howl.
He never landed.
Nudger was awakened by his phone and his alarm clock jangling simultaneously in an urgent mad symphony. He came awake confused, sat for a moment while consciousness flooded into him, then lifted the alarm clock and said hello.
That didn’t work.
He shut off the alarm with one hand and answered the phone with the other. He noticed that the clock had only one hand, pointing straight up.
As he said hello into the receiver, he came fully awake and realized that the hour hand was hiding behind the minute hand. Noon.
“Nudge,” said the voice on the phone, “this is Hammersmith. Were you sleeping?”
“It doesn’t matter, Jack. I have to get up.”
“I thought you ought to know,” Hammersmith said, “Agnes Boyington’s dead.”
Nudger felt a stunned, light-headed disbelief. Impossible! The world’s Agnes Boyingtons didn’t die. Did they?
“She hanged herself in the hold-over cell,” Hammersmith said.
“Hanged herself���” Nudger repeated. “Jesus! How did she do that?”
“Tore her dress into strips, tied them together, and made a noose, then looped the other end around the overhead light fixture. It held her weight. She had to keep her feet off the floor until she lost consciousness, but she managed.”
“She would,” Nudger said. “And she’d allow for fabric stretch.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“You okay, Nudge? You sound strange.”
“I’m tired, is all.”
“Yeah.” Hammersmith chuckled tonelessly. “I guess you got a right to be worn out.”
“What about Jenine?”
“She already knows about her mother’s death. She didn’t seem sorry. But in her condition, maybe the news didn’t register.”
“Or maybe it did,” Nudger said.
“Also, we picked up Hugo Rumbo as an accessory. He was down on Eighth Street, disguised as a wino, trying not to be noticed in an odd-looking shriveled plaid sport coat. He was about as inconspicuous as Frankenstein’s monster at the dance. One of the street people tipped us.”
“No matter how cunning they are, they always make one mistake, don’t they?”
“You got it, Nudge.”
“Thanks for calling, Jack.”
“Sure. Go back to sleep.”
“You and Dr. Antonelli.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
It was one o’clock when Nudger entered Incarnate Word Hospital carrying a dozen tissue-wrapped long-stemmed red roses. He had no trouble getting in to see Claudia; Dr. Antonelli had left word at the nurses’ desk that he was to be let into her room.
She was awake, lying with her head propped up on the wadded pillow as if she’d been reading. But there was no book or magazine in sight. She was simply staring straight ahead. The other bed in the room was still unoccupied; she was alone.
When she saw Nudger she moved her head slightly in his direction and smiled. Her face looked better, fuller, as if she’d gained ten healthy pounds. Her neck looked worse. The livid purple bruise had spread to the underside of her jaw.
“Flowers,” she said, in a voice so gravelly and low he could barely hear it. “Thank you, Nudger.”
Nudger looked around for something to put the roses in. There was nothing, not even a bedpan. He laid them gently on the bedside table. Then he leaned over the bed and kissed Claudia on the cheek. She didn’t move.
Her eyes slid sideways to take in the horizontal bouquet. “It’s a solitary red rose that’s an expression of unending love,” she said.
“Then imagine what a dozen must mean,” Nudger told her. “You’re lucky that’s a single bed.”
She smiled wider, though it had to hurt. “They tell me I’ll recover completely. I can go home and become an outpatient tomorrow.”
He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared down at her. “Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t do it. I tried and failed.” She looked away from him, off to the side, and he knew she wasn’t sure herself why she’d attempted suicide. The dark wind. “Everything seemed to be closing in on me again,” she said, “and I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Partly, of loving you. The last time I loved a man it didn’t work out very well for him or me.”
Nudger sandwiched her cool hand between both of his. “Don’t be afraid of that, ever. Things will work out. There’s always reason to hope. Hope is nourishment for the soul.”
“It’s junk food.”
Nudger shrugged. “That’s the tastiest kind. Stay a kid and enjoy your cookies and candy. Have hope.”
“I do. Right now. But I’m not so sure it will stay with me.” She swallowed with obvious pain, her discolored throat working laboriously. “I guess they’ll make me start seeing Dr. Oliver again.”
“Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Good. I think Oliver can help you.”
She looked up at Nudger, her eyes so very dark against her pale flesh. Gypsy eyes. Angel eyes. The endless way out. “I think you can help me more,” she said.
Nudger leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips, careful not to hurt her. She’d said what he needed to hear. She would be all right; he would see to it. He wouldn’t let her be devoured by her past. Or lose herself in the sad solace of the nightlines. He’d strengthen her with love and teach her the most valuable skill a person could possess in what the world had become; the Nudger specialty. He would teach her to survive.
The door swished open and Dr. Antonelli was in the room, flanked by two starched nurses. The attitude of the three of them was that of overworked, harried people making important rounds. Antonelli held a clipboard propped against his right hip, and the taller of the nurses was carrying a stethoscope, an instrument to measure blood pressure, and a gleaming many-tubed contraption Nudger didn’t recognize. They were here on doctor business.
When Dr. Antonelli saw Nudger he beamed amiably.
“Ah, Mr. Nudger,” he said. “You’re looking better. And you brought flowers! How nice! Hello. Goodbye. Get out. Go away.”
Nudger went away, but not far. NIGHTLINES: A Word After by John Lutz
A
fter a false start or two, this is the novel that kicked off the Nudger series full blown and as I conceived it. Nudger is designed not so much as to be one of Chandler’s white knights-slightly smarter and tougher than those around him, and a move ahead of others on the mean streets-as he is to be a client type who somehow found himself as the private detective in the book. He is hapless and star-crossed and often afraid, unsuited for his work yet in it because he is even less suited for other occupations. It is all he knows and he is trapped in his world and experience, and there is nothing to do but pop an antacid tablet to calm his nervous stomach, then forge ahead. His saving grace-and even at times nobility-is that he doesn’t give up, at least for long. When crushed, which is often, he rein-flates. When humiliated, he gathers the damaged pieces of his ego, rebuilds, and carries on. He is the common man, enhanced, but not so much that he’s unrecognizable.
Some years ago, a reviewer wrote that Nudger was closer to Charlie Chaplin than to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Astute reviewer. One of the reasons I named the character Nudger was to draw the difference between his methods and Mike Hammer’s. Hammer hammers, Nudger nudges. Gently but persistently, persistently���
In Nightlines, he uncovers people much like himself-outsiders, nighthawks, who talk with each other after working hours on a little known phone company open line that is normally used by repairmen to check equipment. This was unique at the time it was written, in a society without email, Internet message boards or chat rooms,
where a conference call was high tech. And when most, if not all, big cities had such phone lines that were discovered and used by a relative few of the general population late at night. For the most part, they were the late-shifters, the shiftless, loners and losers and the luckless. Nudger’s people. Some of them were troubled, desperate, and in need of help. Nudger’s clients.
They’re still out there, of course, and it’s only an illusion that they are separate from the rest of us, that they work no influence. That is what Nightlines attempts to explore. I hope the reader enjoyed exploring along with Nudger.
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