by John Lutz
Nudger quickly looked away as Rand had, and swallowed. Swallowed again. The bitter taste remained thick at the base of his tongue.
Okay, he knew now. The tall man and the gunman had gotten Rand into the house to give him an object lesson, show him what might happen if he didn’t cooperate with them, if he didn’t do more than simply come across with “it.” Nudger figured “it” would be inside information that could earn a fortune in the stock market.
He stepped around the dead dog and the oval of blood soaked into the carpet and wandered toward the kitchen, checking out the rest of the house while he was inside. It was furnished much like the living and dining rooms. Nothing suggested the decorator touch.
He went numb and heard himself gasp. Bile rose bitterly in his throat and he gulped it back down, shuddering.
A man was seated at the small wooden table, staring at Nudger but not seeing him or anything else with his wide, fixed gaze. He was a skinny guy in a black T-shirt with an American flag printed on the chest and the words “America First.” His arms hung limply at his sides, and there was an amazing amount of crusted and coagulating blood on the tile floor. Nudger saw an open straight razor on the floor, near the chair. Without moving his feet, he stooped and peered beneath table level and saw gaping slashes in the man’s wrists. “My God!” he said softly. He remembered Rand’s second “Oh, Jesus!” as the three men were leaving the house by the back way.
Something else caught Nudger’s eye as he straightened up. What had appeared to be spilled sugar or salt from a row of canisters on the table seemed to be spread in a deliberate pattern. Sugar, he decided, seeing the lid was off the round ceramic canister.
Careful not to step in blood, he edged forward for a closer look.
The dead man had trailed sugar over the table to spell out “Enough.” A suicide note of sorts, though Nudger doubted its source. Rand’s associates had to have known the corpse was in the house, and were probably responsible for it. Probably they’d set it up so it appeared that the man had put his dog to death, maybe for a trial run, then killed himself.
Nudger backed out of the hot kitchen that held the coppery smell of spilled blood. It was a stench he could taste. He remembered the dog and skirted the wall as he hurried into the living room, eyes straight ahead.
He paused then, staring at the phone. He had an obligation to notify the police. To identify himself and explain how he’d found the body, how he’d come to be here.
Or did he?
Certainly it would be better for him not to have been here. In his line of work, sometimes half the secret of success was not showing up.
After taking a moment to compose himself, he left the house and walked as casually as possible back to his car, though he didn’t think anyone was watching.
But then, the three men in the house hadn’t thought Nudger was watching.
Not a comforting thought.
He climbed into the Granada and drove around until he found a major thoroughfare. From one of those drive-up phone booths at the corner of a service station, he made an anonymous phone call to the county police. Let them examine the house on Latimer Lane. Let them draw their own conclusions.
After all, it might have been suicide.
CHAPTER 13
It was dusk when Nudger reached his office and climbed out of the Granada. He felt better, calmer. The vision of the dead man at the kitchen table was less vivid and more avoidable in his mind.
Still, death and dusk could change a person’s perspective on the world. The office buildings and stores along Manchester took on an almost ethereal look. A white pigeon settled like a dove on the roof of the K-mart parking garage. A bus without passengers rumbled past Nudger toward McCausland Avenue, leaving diesel exhaust shimmering like wild spirits in the hazy, shadowed evening. He felt like a figure in a surreal landscape as he crossed the street to Danny’s Donuts, and the door alongside of it that lead to his office.
He checked his answering machine but there was nothing on it of interest. A reminder that his payment was past due on the small loan he’d taken out on the Granada. (It was good that the finance company didn’t know how he’d decided to utilize the money, along with the recent signature loans he’d arranged at criminally high interest rates so he could finance his stock purchases.) Some invective from Eileen, who hadn’t even waited for the beep before berating him for not keeping up with his alimony payments. (His stocks’ impending appreciation would take care of that.) She’d run out of time on the tape, too. The last words of her message were, “My lawyer will skin your—” Henry Mercato was probably sitting or lying next to her, smoking one of his skinny brown cigars and smiling with sharklike cunning, possibly after practicing safe sex, if such a thing was possible with Eileen. Nudger’s stomach did its Eileen maneuver, as if something with sharp claws had taken some turns on an internal treadmill.
He erased his messages and phoned Hammersmith at the Third District, but was told the lieutenant had left. Nudger tried Hammersmith’s home number. His son Jed answered the phone and told Nudger to wait just a minute, his dad was out spreading fertilizer before it got completely dark in the yard. Taking his work home with him, Nudger thought, but didn’t mention that when Hammersmith came to the phone.
“I heard,” Nudger said, “that the county police got a call tonight about a dead man in a house on Latimer Lane.”
Hammersmith didn’t answer for a moment, knowing it was one of those times when it was best to know only so much. “What else did you hear, Nudge?” Not “Where did you hear it?” Wily Hammersmith.
Nudger told him about “someone” seeing Rand and the two other men in the house after the man’s death, all observed through a window. “It will be considered a suicide,” he said.
“And if it isn’t?” Hammersmith said.
“If it isn’t, then I’ll play it a different way.” It would be withholding information in a homicide if the county police catalogued the man’s death as murder, something neither he nor Hammersmith could afford to do if they didn’t want to explore the world of unemployment. “After all, the guy really might have slit his own wrists.”
“And I might go back outside and have a lawn. I was gonna call you anyway, Nudge. I talked to some people in Narcotics and found out some things. The Mirabelle Rogers who owns the Mercedes is herself owned by King Chambers, who fits the description of the tall man you saw lunching with Rand.”
“And who was in the Latimer Lane house with Rand and the guy with the gun and earring, whose name, by the way, is Aaron. At least that’s what I heard Chambers call him.”
“Aaron I still can’t tell you a thing about,” Hammersmith said, “except if he’s associated with King Chambers he’s plenty dangerous. But you knew that.”
“Yeah. He left me with that impression after pointing a gun at me and saying he was going to kill me.”
“The thing you should know is that Aaron of the earring is probably soft as a baby duck compared to Chambers.”
“I never heard of King Chambers before all of this,” Nudger admitted.
“Then you’ve been associating with the right people. Chambers is a major drug dealer who’s been outsmarting us and the DEA for years. He’s also principal owner of three escort services that are fronts for prostitution, though you won’t find his name on the corporate records. Having his car registered to one of his girls is in character, insofar as he has character. He’s rumored to have ordered folks killed as part of doing business, and he does a lot of business.”
“I don’t understand what a whitebread type like Rand is doing with those two,” Nudger said.
“Maybe he’s into drugs. Or into women more accommodating than his wife. Both those things are always possible.”
“Well, he doesn’t have a marriage that’d lend itself to surprises from Frederick’s of Hollywood.”
“How do you know that, Nudge?”
“A guess. When the information comes in on the dead guy on Latimer Lane, will you c
lue me in?”
“Didn’t you bother to look around and get his identity when you weren’t in the house you never entered?”
“I would have been too anxious to get outa there, if I’d been in there.”
“Yeah . . . your tummy problem. Anything else not to know?”
“Nothing I know of, or don’t.”
“Okay. I think. I’m going back out to kill some weeds, feed some grass. Put one over on mother nature through chemistry.” Click!
Just like that, Hammersmith was gone. Irritating. Nudger hung up the phone.
He scratched viciously and futilely at a mosquito bite on his forearm, until finally he made it bleed and it felt better. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. Not too late to call Claudia.
She didn’t answer her phone. Maybe she was still mad at him for buying stocks. Mad because he was into something she didn’t understand, and she only remembered all those stories about the collapse of the market on Black Tuesday. Or was it Black Monday? Whatever. That was in the past. If she would take a few minutes to thumb through Money magazine, she’d realize he wasn’t being foolish. There was this couple in Connecticut who just by giving up their car and riding bicycles to work had—
The phone rang and interrupted his thoughts. He decided not to answer; he’d wait for the message and pick up if it was anyone he wanted to talk to.
Beep!
“You bastard, Nudger!” Eileen.
He covered his ears as her message continued. She did this sometimes for amusement. She’d confided to him once that Mercato had told her it was good for her to let off tension this way. As long as she didn’t say anything that might hurt her in court when she and Henry converged on him for the kill.
When the machine’s recording light had blinked off, Nudger uncovered his ears. Then he called Claudia again with the same unsatisfactory result.
When he got tired of listening to her phone ringing, he hung up and sat staring at the wood grain of his desk, as if the patterns weren’t random and might mean something profound. He thought it was possible Claudia was out with another man. Not likely, but possible. When she got disgusted with him she sometimes saw Biff Archway, who coached the girls’ soccer team and taught sex education out at Harriet Beecher Stowe girls school. He was a barrel-chested, handsome guy who’d been a college football star and dressed like an L.L. Bean model. Nudger hated Biff Archway.
It wouldn’t hurt, he decided, if he drove over to Claudia’s apartment and made sure she wasn’t home. Or that Archway’s car wasn’t parked on the block. Nudger’s relationship with Claudia sometimes caused stomach pains.
You’d think I’d be lucky at cards, he thought, as he went out the door.
But he hardly ever was.
CHAPTER 14
He’d stopped at MunchaBunch first, so it was dark when he got to Wilmington and drove past Claudia’s apartment. Her car was nowhere on the block. She didn’t have a usual parking space. A slot at the curb was precious in that part of South St. Louis, and residents often had to park some distance from their homes. It wasn’t unusual to see trash cans or lawn chairs in empty parking spaces to keep them unoccupied while people were away on brief errands.
So it wouldn’t be unusual if the red Mustang convertible parked two blocks down from Claudia’s building was Biff Archway’s. He might have parked, then walked to Claudia’s apartment, and they’d gone out in her car rather than walk all the way to Archway’s.
Nudger swallowed the bite of doughnut he’d been chewing and slowed down as he passed the convertible for the third time. It seemed to be exactly like Archway’s car, if it wasn’t actually his. Same year, same model—every—thing. There was a lacy white garter hanging from the rearview mirror, though. Nudger didn’t remember it from the last time he’d seen Archway’s car, but it had been quite a while. A white garter, huh? It would be just like Archway to dangle such a trophy from his mirror. Maybe he’d raped a bride. No, he’d probably been able to seduce her fair and square before the honeymoon. Nudger memorized the car’s license plate number; someday he’d compare it to Archway’s convertible.
He drove around the block a final time and saw that Claudia’s windows were still dark. For a second he considered parking and going inside to knock on her door, make sure she and Archway weren’t . . . No, that was too sick and cynical even for him. Unthinkable!
He poked another tiny doughnut into his mouth and stomped on the accelerator. The Granada’s tires almost squealed as it rocked and rattled up to forty miles an hour before he braked for the stop sign at the corner.
Driving more sensibly, he took Grand Avenue north to Highway 40 and set course for Ladue to collect the day’s taping from the trunk of the blue Chevy.
After cranking down the window to let in the warm but pleasant breeze, he switched on the radio and tuned to the ball game Danny and Ray would be watching on TV in Ray’s apartment. The Cubs were ahead ten to one in the eighth inning. Nudger was doubly glad he hadn’t taken Danny up on his invitation. Cub fan Ray would be unbearable.
An hour later Nudger was in his apartment, feeling bloated with miniature doughnuts, sipping decaf, and listening to the Rand tape.
6:45 P.M., real time:
SYDNEY: “I wouldn’t know where Luanne is. She seems to pay more attention to you than to anyone else these days.”
RAND: “I told her to be here for dinner. She doesn’t do anything I say.”
SYDNEY: “She doesn’t do anything anybody says. You suppose that’s healthy?”
RAND: “It’s normal behavior for a teenage girl, but I still don’t like it. Did she come home from school at the regular time?”
SYDNEY: “Hasn’t been home at all. Hasn’t been to school, if you ask me. Her counselor says she’s absent more than she’s there. She’s gonna flunk if she doesn’t—”
RAND: “—I’m not worried about her grades, I’m worried about her.”
SYDNEY: “Maybe with good reason.”
RAND: “Don’t try to be cryptic. It bores. You got anything to say directly?”
SYDNEY: “No.”
A door slamming.
7:32 P.M., real time:
“Eberhardt’s Liquors.”
SYDNEY: “This is Mrs. Rand, Eb. Can you have your boy bring over a fifth . . . ”
(Nudger fast-forwarded through the carryout order and its delivery fifteen minutes later.)
10:08 P.M., real time:
RAND: “Luanne? Luanne? Ah! Where the fuck have you been?”
LUANNE: “Out’s where.”
RAND: “It’s past ten and your mother says this is the first time you’ve touched base since leaving the house this morning.”
LUANNE: “Old Mom’s not much anymore on how time passes. Or anything else that goes on under her nose, if you catch my meaning.”
RAND: “Don’t smart-ass me. And don’t insult your mother. Who’ve you been with?”
LUANNE: “I thought you liked me smart-assed.”
RAND: “Don’t press. Who were you with tonight?”
LUANNE: “You mean in the biblical sense?”
RAND: “Luanne, damnit!”
LUANNE: “Okay, okay. I was with Nan and some other kids. Over at her house.”
RAND: “Nan Grant?”
LUANNE: “Not Nan Reagan.”
RAND: “Jesus Christ! Nan Grant. Watch what you say to that one.”
LUANNE: “I watch what I say to everyone, just like I was a comic-strip character and my words were in little white balloons. God, I’m thirsty!”
Silence.
Footsteps.
LUANNE: “We outa real-life soda? God, I hate that diet shit!”
RAND: “I had a talk about you today. Until Labor Day—”
SYDNEY: “So, you’re finally home.”
LUANNE: “And you’re finally drunk. Big fucking surprise.”
SYDNEY: “Watch your mouth. Dale, tell her to watch her mouth, why don’t you?”
RAND: “That’s ju
st what I’ve been telling her.”
LUANNE: “You two are real prizes.”
SYDNEY: “We try, anyway.”
LUANNE: “Try what?”
RAND: “To keep you out of permanent trouble.”
SYDNEY: “You’ll understand and appreciate it someday. Won’t she, Dale?”
RAND (his voice sad): “I doubt it.”
LUANNE: “Screw this! I’m going up to bed. Gonna lock my door and forget all about you dorky people till morning.
RAND: “I’m going to bed too.”
SYDNEY: “I’m staying up a while. Gonna watch television. Maybe ‘Love Connection’ is on, even if it’s a rerun.” After a pause: “I’ll be up in fifteen minutes, Dale. Maybe sooner.
10:27 P.M., real time:
CHUCK WOOLERY: “Welcome to—”
Nudger switched off the recorder.
Then he fast-forwarded it to make sure there was nothing more on the tape.
Only silence.
He sat sipping his cooled decaf and letting his mind roam.
At 11:00 P.M. he pulled the phone over to him and punched out Claudia’s number.
He was surprised when she picked up.
“Where you been this evening?” he asked.
“Spaghetti dinner out at the school. I was just about to go to bed, Nudger.”
“Were you by yourself?”
“No, and it’s a good thing—there were acres of spaghetti. The PTA and the kids ate most of it.”
“I mean, did you go there alone?”
“Of course. Well, I didn’t drive there alone. Biff Archway delivered some papers to my place, then I drove both of us out to the school because he’s been having car trouble.”