The right to sing the blues an-3

by John Lutz

  The right to sing the blues

  ( Alo Nudger - 3 )

  John Lutz

  John Lutz

  The right to sing the blues

  I

  Nudger belched and said, " 'S'cuse me. "

  "You want some more coffee, Nudge?"

  Danny asked, pausing as he wiped down the stainless-steel counter with the grayish towel he usually kept tucked in his belt. He looked over at Nudger with his somber basset-hound eyes, concerned eyes. "Maybe it'd help to settle your stomach."

  Maybe it would eat a hole through my entire digestive tract, Nudger thought. But he said, "No, thanks, Danny," and thumbed back the foil on a roll of antacid tablets. He popped one of the chalky white disks into his mouth and gazed down at what was left of his Danny's Dunker Delite before him on the counter.

  He was eating breakfast at Danny's Donuts because Danny would let him postpone payment indefinitely. For this Nudger was grateful. But he had braved a Dunker Delite four mornings in a row now, and he was afraid that if this culinary daring continued, he'd begin to look like one of the formidable specials served at Danny's Donuts; he might become as round and polysaturated as a Dunker Delite, and not nearly so hard.

  He lifted his foam cup to take a sip of Danny's horrendous coffee and wished the private-investigation business would pick up. Didn't sultry blondes in distress wander into PIs' offices anymore? Then talk a while, pout a while, flirt a while, and pay a generous retainer?

  Of course, he might never find out unless he went upstairs to his office. Not much business of any kind was transpiring here at Danny's counter.

  Nudger didn't feel like trudging upstairs to his bare desk, inanity-loaded answering machine, dusty file cabinets, and silent phone. It all reminded him of the overdue rent.

  Danny knew why Nudger was breakfasting at the doughnut shop. "Things'll get better, Nudge," he said, expertly snapping the towel to flick a stubborn crumb off the counter. There was no one else in the place, and hadn't been since the last secretary from the building across the street had left with her grease-spotted box of a dozen glazed to-go. How Danny stayed in business was more of a mystery than Nudger could solve. "You know how it goes," Danny added. "Just when you think you're at the end of your rope, somehow you find a way to pull yourself up."

  "Unless there's a noose at the end of the rope," Nudger said.

  Danny ignored him and drew himself a large cup of coffee from the big steel urn. He had a frequent-user's immunity to the stuff. "Like last year, when our esteemed landlord was about to evict me," he said, leaning on the counter and testing the steaming coffee with his fingertip. "I really thought I was gonna have to toss in the towel, then along came the cream horns."

  Nudger looked up from his coffee. "Cream horns?"

  "Yeah, a thousand of 'em. This little gal who worked at the K-Mart up the street used to come down here every day and buy one of my cream horns for her lunch. She loved the things. Then I didn't see her for a while, and I heard she got engaged to some rich lawyer out in Ladue. Well, she wanted my cream horns served at her wedding reception. She came in here the week before the wedding and placed an order for a thousand cream horns. Saved my business."

  "Something old, something blue," Nudger said.

  "Huh?"

  "Nothing, Danny." Nudger swiveled and stood up from his stool. His lower back ached from sitting too long slumped over. "I'll be upstairs waiting to hear from someone who needs a thousand cream horns traced."

  "You never know, Nudge."

  "It seems that way sometimes. See you later, Danny."

  Carrying his half-cup of coffee, Nudger pushed out the door into the morning heat. He made a sharp U-turn and went through another door, right next to Danny's, that opened onto the narrow, steep stairway up to his office.

  As he climbed the creaking stairs, he splashed coffee onto his thumb and cursed. He stooped to pick up the mail on the landing, unlocked his office door, went inside, and switched on the window air conditioner before he did anything else. It was nine-thirty in the morning and the office was hot enough to bake a potato; a typical July day in St. Louis, home of the Heat Alert.

  He tossed the mail on the desk and sat down in his squealing swivel chair, braced for its shrill Good-Morneeeng. He shoved the foam coffee cup away in distaste. The cool draft from the humming, gurgling air conditioner danced between the spokes of his chair, over his damp shoulder blades.

  While he waited to get cool, he regarded the pile of mail. Finally he picked it up from the desk and leafed through it.

  There were no surprises, only offers to buy accident insurance, subscribe to magazines, tour lakeside property, enter the Reader's Digest $100,000 sweepstakes. Damn!-the electric bill. Nudger studied it and wondered how much electricity a secondhand IBM typewriter and a used window air conditioner actually consumed.

  Whoops!

  A white envelope Nudger hadn't noticed slipped out from between the insurance pitch and the offer of a free camera for touring Paradise Estates, flipped once in midair, and bounced off the toe of his shoe. Even through the shoe he could tell that it was heavy, and he could see that the address was handwritten and not typed or printed on a label. Maybe it was worth opening.

  Nudger leaned forward in the squealing swivel chair and scooped up the envelope. It was plastered with stamps and had a New Orleans postmark. There was no return address. Nudger's office address was written in a bold yet flowery hand, dashed off with a thick felt-tipped blue pen. He hefted the envelope, leaned back, and tore open the sealed flap.

  The envelope contained a round-trip airline ticket to New Orleans, first class, in Nudger's name. The flight left St. Louis at 11:05 the next morning.

  Nudger dug in the envelope and came up with a folded note and a business card. The note was brief and written on plain white paper in the same flowery handwriting used on the envelope.

  Nudger, my man,

  I need the services of a private investigator. Let's talk in person as soon as you get into New Orleans. The Hotel Majestueux is holding a room in your name. Phone me when you arrive and we'll meet. This will be worth your while. If you hear me out and then disagree, fly again home. You have nothing to lose. I have everything to lose. Come talk to a worried man with money. Please. Fat Jack McGee

  The card was engraved with a logo of a clarinet emitting a cartoon swirl of musical notes. It was also engraved with "Fat Jack McGee," a New Orleans address, and two phone numbers.

  Fat Jack McGee. The clarinet.

  Nudger knew about Fat Jack McGee, had several of his records cut in the sixties and early seventies in his jazz collection. Like many gifted jazz musicians, though not known to the general public, Fat Jack was one of the elite in the jazz world. He had played clarinet with his own band for years, then semi-retired to a jazz club he'd bought in New Orleans. While he still composed music for other musicians, some of them pop stars, he no longer recorded, and from what Nudger had read he performed for his paying customers only occasionally. All in all, his was an accomplished and lucrative career.

  Nudger knew how Fat Jack had acquired money. He wondered how he'd acquired worry.

  He also wondered if it was worth going to New Orleans to find out. Benedict and Schill, a couple of lawyers Nudger sometimes worked for, had promised to throw him some business at the end of their next ambulance chase. If Nudger left the city, he might miss that opportunity and waste several days in New Orleans while his rent rolled on. The Fat Jack McGee thing might already be solved or have evaporated by the time Nudger showed up. Or McGee could simply change his mind about hiring a private investigator. Benedict and Schill had come through before. Fat Jack McGee hadn't, except on long-playing albums.
>
  The phone jangled, making Nudger jump and the swivel chair cry Eek!

  He waited three rings before answering; mustn't seem anxious. Then he dragged the phone across the desk toward him, lifted the receiver, and with a heart full of hope identified himself.

  "It's me," said his former wife Eileen. "You know why I'm calling."

  Nudger knew. "Not our anniversary?"

  "I don't want to make tiny, tiny small talk," she said. "I want the back alimony you owe me. Five hundred dollars."

  "Right now, that isn't possible," Nudger said.

  "Hauling you back into court is possible."

  Nudger wasn't really sure she would do that. The alimony she'd been granted was exorbitant, thanks to her lawyer who had descended from sharks. And though Eileen didn't have the means to earn a living at the time of the divorce, she was now at the top of a sales pyramid in one of those home products rackets, drawing an obscene percentage of the earnings of the salespeople under her, plus a commission whenever they recruited someone into the company. She was a district manager. Pyramid Power was hers. She was making a better living than Nudger was now, or ever had, for that matter. Surely a judge would take that into consideration. Well, maybe…

  "Are you there?"

  "Here."

  "I talked with my lawyer. He says give you a week, then we'll skin you alive and scrape the fat off your hide."

  "He has a way of putting things."

  "And of getting things. I don't want to spend more time in court, but I will if I have to. I want my money. Soon." She'd sure gotten assertive since getting into sales. She seemed especially voracious today.

  "Will you send cash? Or a check?"

  Nudger sighed. "A check. As soon as possible."

  "Which will be?"

  "Days. Weeks at the most. I'm getting a retainer soon."

  "Probably to straighten your teeth with my money."

  "No, the other kind of retainer. I've got a job in New Orleans. And my teeth are straight."

  "Okay, you've got one week," she said. "And no more. Seven days. Understand?"

  "Sure. Are you getting any sex, Eileen?" He just had to aggravate her, couldn't stop himself. Sick.

  As she slammed down the receiver she shouted something he couldn't understand, but it had the word "God" in it. Could she have found religion?

  Nudger listened to the lonely sound of the broken connection for a few seconds, then replaced the receiver. Nothing like having your mind made up for you. He phoned the airport to confirm his reservation for New Orleans, and a very pleasant woman named Rhonda assured him that he was booked first class. Nudger locked the airline ticket in his top desk drawer, thinking he'd rather talk on the phone to Rhonda than Eileen any day.

  He diligently filled out the $100,000 sweepstakes form, then, whistling out of tune, went downstairs to get another cup of coffee and a cream horn.

  II

  The flight to New Orleans took a little over an hour in a sky as uniformly blue and unmarred as the inside of a fine china bowl.

  Nudger rented a car-a cheap subcompact, since he didn't know if he'd take this job and have his expenses cov- ered-at New Orleans International Airport and drove toward the city. Louisiana was just as hot as Missouri, only here Spanish moss drooped from the roadside trees like gloomy black Christmas tinsel somebody had forgotten to take down. Just looking at the graceful yet oppressive stuff made the heat seem fiercer and stickier. Nudger reached out and switched the little red car's air conditioner on high. Dust and debris blew up into his face with the sudden blast of cold air, then settled back down rearranged.

  New Orleans is an old city of pastel stucco, ornate black wrought iron, colorful clinging bougainvillea, white-and- gray tropical-weight clothing, French-Cajun cooking, and black music. The Hotel Majestueux fit right into that scene, an old ten-story building with a fake but weathered stucco facade. There was a gold awning out over the sidewalk in front of the entrance, with the name of the hotel lettered in delicate white script along the sides. A uniformed doorman stood in the deep shade beneath the awning, studiously reading a folded newspaper.

  Nudger parked the subcompact half a block down, climbed from the tiny bucket seat, and checked to make sure his limbs would still extend to their fullest. Subcompactness could be catching. He unlocked the car's miniature trunk and got out his luggage.

  As he carried his single brown nylon suitcase toward the hotel, he looked over the neighborhood. It was old, gone a measure to seed, but not all that bad. The Chamber of Commerce would describe it as colorful. Tourists would agree, but would spend their money on Bourbon Street and at the Superdome.

  "Carry that for you, sir?" the doorman asked, when it became apparent that Nudger was about to enter the lobby with his suitcase.

  Nudger declined by shaking his head no and walked on past. Up close, the doorman's ornate uniform had the same genteel seediness about it as the neighborhood. He was an elderly black man, wiry and stooped. It was a racing form he'd been studying, Nudger noted, as he pushed open the glass doors. The doorman didn't look as if he had an eye for winners.

  The Majestueux lobby was large, carpeted in red, and furnished in a kind of hotel French provincial that lent an air of hominess. There was plenty of aged oak paneling, setting off large potted ferns and flowering plants that looked real. A fancy brass clock and elaborate brass floor indicators were built into rich paneling above the elevator doors. Behind the polished wood desk loomed a seven-foot-tall, narrow, gray-haired man. A bellman was on the far side of the lobby doing something to a stuck window to make it go either farther up or farther down. With a kind of condescending nobility, a tall Creole beauty dressed in the manner of a restaurant hostess stood with her arms crossed in the doorway of the hotel coffee shop and idly watched the bellman's efforts. Another bellman was behind her, looking out over her shoulder. Nobody here rushed to take Nudger's luggage.

  The human tower behind the desk checked and said sure enough, there was a reservation in Nudger's name. Nudger produced his VISA card, wondering if he had enough credit left on it to impress the desk clerk if it became necessary.

  But there was no need for clout here. The clerk shook his cadaverous narrow head and said, "Room's been prepaid, Mr. Nudger."

  While Nudger returned the credit card to his wallet, the tall guy slapped a big old-fashioned desk bell. It had too beautiful and resonating a ring to serve such a mundane purpose. The clerk yelled, "Front," in a brisk, commanding voice, and the bellman by the window tore himself away from his handyman puttering and started to walk across the lobby toward the desk.

  "Three-oh-four, Larry," the desk clerk said from on high.

  Larry took the key from him and picked up Nudger's suitcase. He was a chunky, medium-height man with thick raven-black hair and a mottled complexion like heavily creamed coffee that hadn't been stirred. Pausing to avoid a young couple with the self-involved look of honeymooners, he stepped nimbly around them into the elevator, punched a floor button, and moved back to make room for Nudger.

  The third-floor room was large, on the verge of needing redecorating, but on the whole very pleasant. It was done in shades of blue, with thick draperies that matched the bedspread. The headboard, dresser, and writing desk didn't match and were of heavy walnut construction, not the usual mass-produced hotel furnishings. Larry smoothly showed Nudger that the color TV worked, introduced him to the white-tiled bathroom but not the small roach that scurried behind the washbasin, then handed over the room key.

  Larry had black, intense eyes. He hadn't said a word, and maybe he couldn't talk, but he was a hell of a watcher. Nudger tipped him two dollars, eager to be rid of his presence. Larry grunted as he pocketed the bills, shot a mechanical smile in Nudger's direction, and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Nudger walked over and slid the bolt home, locking the door from the inside.

  He unpacked hurriedly, then turned down the thermostat on the window air conditioner and removed his sport coat. From an
inside pocket of the coat he drew the envelope Fat Jack McGee had sent him, then draped the coat on the back of the desk chair. With the envelope's contents spread before him on the bed, he reread the letter. Then he picked up the Touch-Tone phone from the bedside table and with his forefinger pecked out the office number printed on Fat Jack McGee's thick white business card. It was time to arrange that meeting the rotund jazz legend wanted so badly. "There's this that you need to know about jazz," Fat Jack told Nudger an hour later. "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 said across the table to Nudger, using 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, which Nudger didn't think belonged on the plate to begin with. Fat Jack had told him it was Hollister who was troubling him, but he hadn't said how or why.

  "Willy Hollister," Fat Jack said, with the unmistakable reverence one consummate artist feels for the work of another, "plays ultrafine piano."

  A white-vested waiter appeared like a jungle native from around a potted palm, carrying chicory coffee on a silver tray, and deftly placed cups before Nudger and Fat Jack with a gingerness that suggested the dark liquid might explode if spilled.

  "Then what's your problem with Hollister?" Nudger asked, sipping the thick, rich brew. He rated it delicious simply on the basis of the aroma, but the taste didn't disappoint. "Didn't you hire him to play his best piano at your club?"

  "Hey, there's no problem with his music," Fat Jack said hastily. "Before I go into any detail, Nudger, I gotta know if you'll hang around New Orleans till you can clear up this matter for old Fat Jack." Fat Jack's tiny pinkish eyes glittered with mean humor. "For a fat fee, of course."