Time Exposure (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  He sighed. See each other in dreams, he thought. “You afraid of ants?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondered.” He pried the lid off his cup, managing to tear the plastic and prick his finger, and stared at the rising steam. He wasn’t going to drink the coffee; his stomach was bucking. “I suppose we do see each other,” he said. Trouble was, Archway seemed to be seeing more of Claudia than he was. And putting in quality time.

  She walked around the desk and bent down gracefully. Kissed him on top of the head where he was just beginning to go bald. He grabbed her wrist but she grinned and pulled away. Had on a jangly gold bracelet that tinkled like gypsy finger cymbals. Gorgeous queen of the gypsies.

  He said, “Dance for me.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Don’t be impetuous, Nudger. I’ve got to get to the school if I want to keep my job. No time for nonsense.”

  “Time should be made.”

  “I’ll be home this evening. Time can be made then. Why don’t you drop by?”

  “You’ll dance?”

  “Something better.”

  “Better?”

  She sort of pirouetted out the door. Nudger thought he heard the tinkle of finger cymbals, but it must have been the bracelet.

  He listened to the fading tap of her high heels as she took the stairs fast, in a hurry to get to her work. Amazing how women could run down stairs in shoes like that. So much about women amazed him.

  He stood up, walked to the window, and looked down.

  She was crossing the street. Paused to let a westbound semi rumble past, held down her skirt so the breeze wouldn’t give passengers a leg show. It reminded Nudger of when Adelaide Lacy had crossed the street toward the doughnut shop the day she’d hired him. Images orbiting forever, like radio signals in the ether. More déjà vu every year. On the opposite sidewalk, two executive types in dark business suits momentarily broke stride to glance at Claudia in surprised and brief admiration. The way men look at women.

  Her white Chevette was parked half a block up, where Nudger hadn’t noticed it. She climbed in behind the steering wheel. He saw the little car shudder as its engine started. It trembled eagerly. Then it bolted away from the curb and disappeared in dappled sunlight, picking up speed.

  Nudger turned away from the window and sat down again behind his desk. Stared at the backs of his eyelids. Thought about the coming evening.

  Something better.

  14

  Nudger sat in his desk chair, swiveling back and forth, staring out the window at the sky trying to make up its mind about what kind of weather to send at the city. The way he couldn’t make up his mind about Mary Lacy. About what kind of woman she was. It was something he couldn’t quite get a handle on, and it might have a lot to do with what had actually happened to her and Virgil Hiller.

  Hiller had been a politico firmly plugged into the old boy network. A man of compromise, with others and doubtless with himself. No major surprise that he’d succumb to the temptations of an extramarital affair and half a million dollars. But Mary Lacy—if she was as her own sister described her—was another matter. It was difficult for Nudger to imagine her playing the other woman for a guy like Hiller. And if Hiller was dead, as Dobbs’s photograph strongly suggested, then where was Mary Lacy?

  Nudger decided it might be a good idea to get some insight into Mary not provided by sister Adelaide, or by merely snooping around Mary’s apartment.

  He locked up the office and drove back to the flat on Hoover, in search of a nosy neighbor.

  He only had to knock on two doors before he came up with Mrs. McCloy, the elderly widow who lived in the unit directly above Mary’s. As soon as Nudger had given her his vague cover story about being an insurance investigator determining the status of Mary Lacy’s policy, Mrs. McCloy showed an uncommon willingness to gossip. Nudger’s attentive ear was just what she’d been waiting for all these empty days.

  She was a tiny, withered woman with wispy gray hair and watery blue eyes. There was a shrewd angularity to her thin lips, as if they were constantly pursed as she calculated, but it was probably due to badly fitted dentures rather than mental adroitness. She was wearing an embroidered pink something that might pass for either a robe or a dress. Nudger decided it was a robe. There was about her the scent of the old—a faint mingling of stale perspiration and spilled medicine, of musty final chapters.

  “I just put on water for tea,” she said hopefully. “‘Less you’d prefer coffee.”

  And Nudger had been worried about lack of cooperation. He told her tea sounded great and followed her short, stooped frame into her living room. No wonder the elderly were the favorite targets of con men.

  The living room probably looked the way it had twenty years ago. A threadbare sofa with curved mahogany arms, a matching wing chair, a worn oriental rug, an arrangement of black-and-white portraits in oval Bakelite frames, a painted brick fireplace with a studied arrangement of artificial flowers in front of its opening. Nudger didn’t remember a fireplace in Mary Lacy’s apartment; he wondered if there was one and it had been walled up.

  The weather had decided to be cool, at least for the moment, and Mrs. McCloy had the thermostat set on high. It had to be eighty degrees in the cluttered apartment. Nudger immediately regretted his acceptance of the tea offer. Hot caffeine drinks when he was already overheated made his heart race. Someday the old pump might shake itself to pieces.

  Mrs. McCloy gave a sly, crooked smile and limped into the kitchen. Just you wait, the smile said. I’m not a gossip, but we’ll settle in all cozy with our cups of hot tea and I’ll have something very important to tell you. Since you asked.

  Above the mantel was a large crucifix, and on the opposite wall hung a poster-size print of Moses watching the recently parted Red Sea close on the hapless pursuing Egyptian army. It might not have been historically accurate, but it sure was graphic. Moses seemed unmoved by all the suffering. Wore a kind of smug, serves-you-right expression. On the mantel was an oval-framed black-and-white photograph of a hatchet-faced man in a World War Two army garrison cap. The late Mr. McCloy, no doubt. He was staring three-quarter-face into the camera, wearing the same expression as Moses. Except for something in the eyes. Mr. McCloy had the most avaricious eyes Nudger had ever seen; pure greed huddled in them and peered out like reclusive sea creatures.

  Mrs. McCloy limped back into the living room with a round wicker tray containing a china teapot and two matching cracked cups with a rose pattern on them. Nudger told her no thanks on the cream or sugar, and with an unsteady hand she poured him a cup of tea and gave it to him. The delicate cup rattled like a glass engine on its saucer until he took possession.

  Nudger carried his tea to the old sofa and sat down, careful not to splosh any of the hot stuff onto his hand as he sank into the cushion. Mrs. McCloy settled down opposite him in the wing chair, looking lost in its enfolding vastness. She balanced her saucer firmly on one knee, took a sip of tea, and said, “Now we can talk.” As if tea were a necessary lubricant for the larynx.

  Nudger said, “I was wondering how well you knew Mary Lacy.”

  “Weller than she thought,” the old woman said, the tilted set of her lips almost arcing into a smile. “These old buildings, sound carries through the vents something awful. Gotta watch what you say, you don’t want it to become common knowledge.”

  Ah! This interested Nudger. “Really? You could hear through the vents what went on in Miss Lacy’s apartment?”

  “You betcha.”

  Nudger sipped his own tea. Bitter, with tiny leaves bobbing in it like flotsam from a cup-scale sunken ship. “I guess,” he said carefully, “over time, through the ductwork, you formed some kind of opinion of Miss Lacy.”

  “Uh-hm. Wasn’t what she seemed, that one. Oh, nice enough, but not what she seemed.” She sniffled. “Nope, not at all.”

  “In what way?”

  “I mean, she seemed respectable. All st
iff-backed and proper. But at least once a week a man with a beard’d come to her place late, stay about ten minutes, then leave.”

  Ten minutes. Nudger tried to imagine what might have gone on in ten-minute increments. Thought about Claudia. Hmm. Quite a lot, maybe.

  Mrs. McCloy leaned forward. This was it; she was about to cough up the pearl. “Like Mr. McCloy often cautioned me, I’m far too apt to see the good in folks. But it came to me eventually, Mr. Nudger, that Miss Lacy wasn’t the upright Christian everybody thought.” She tilted her head and waited for his reaction. Watched him the way a bird watches a worm.

  Nudger said, “Between you and me, I’m not surprised. Some people will take advantage.”

  “It was drugs she was buying from that man.”

  Huh? “You’re sure about that?”

  She nodded almost fiercely. “Real sure. Don’t you think I’d verify something like that before I’d pass it on? Some kinds of pills she said she needed to make her sleep, then some kinds to help her come all the way awake in the morning. So she could put on her makeup and face the world, I heard her say one time. She couldn’t just say no—not that one. Downers, uppers, reds, yellows, that’s some of the kinds I heard them talking about. I watch TV, know what that sorta talk means.” Now she did smile. Nudger was beginning to dislike this sweet old soul. “I know something else, too.”

  He pretended more awe than he felt. “Something else?”

  “Was a woman come to visit her now and again.”

  Nudger didn’t understand at first. “A friend?”

  “More’n a friend, I can tell you. Lots more.”

  Oh-ho. “What about men friends? She have any of those?”

  “Not a one. Every now and again, though, this woman’d turn up, stay the whole night. I’d see her leave about seven in the morning. Half hour later, Mary Lacy’d go prancing out to her car, all dressed neat as a Sunday school teacher, on her way to that city government job of hers.” Another prim sip of tea. Very proper. But an amber drop clung for a moment to her withered lower lip and then plummetted to leave a tiny, spreading dark stain on her robe. Like acid, Nudger thought. “No gentleman callers, Mr. Nudger. She weren’t no bisexual, I can say for sure.”

  “You mentioned a bearded man.”

  “Oh, him. I guess you could say he was a caller. But I told you, he was all business, him and his pills, and stayed only about ten minutes.”

  “You tell the police any of this, Mrs. McCloy?”

  “Nope. Police never asked. Talked to me for only a few minutes, they did. Just wanted to know what kinda hours she kept, and if she’d been acting strange lately. Well, she kept regular hours, all right. It’s what she did with ‘em that’d surprise some folks.”

  “Considering the police think she ran away with her male boss,” Nudger said, “don’t you think this is important information?”

  “Maybe. I’m telling you, ain’t I? Thing is, Mr. Nudger, I don’t have any love for the police. Nor did Mr. McCloy. I called ‘em ten times last month to get that Mr. Adler down on the first floor to park his pickup truck somewheres other than directly below my window. At first they was polite, then they got downright rude to me. Like I ain’t paid taxes all my life. Go look out the window, Mr. Nudger. Just you go and look.”

  Nudger leveled his teacup, stood up, and walked to the window to look outside.

  There was a rusty black Ford pickup truck parked at the curb. Several greasy car engine components were scattered over its bed, along with pieces of scrap lumber and some empty beer cans.

  He didn’t know exactly what was expected of him. “It’s out there,” he said, and returned to the sofa.

  “You betcha it is. And after all my phone calls and complaints. Think I’d tell anything interesting to the police? Do you?”

  “Guess not,” Nudger said.

  “Don’t that provide one heck of a view? A work vehicle parked there most all the time. Makes the neighborhood look like a junkyard. Mr. McCloy’d raise holy b’Jesus if he was alive today.” Some small part of Mr. McCloy would remain alive as long as she lived.

  “Er, when this woman stayed the night. . . how do you know what she and Miss Lacy did?”

  Mrs. McCloy chuckled deep in her throat. A phlegmy, ugly sound. “Bedroom ductwork’s right alongside the bed, Mr. Nudger. I might as well been in the same room with ‘em. Not that they know’d nor cared, the way they acted. Lord be merciful! Such sounds you never heard.”

  “Know what the woman looks like?”

  “Some. I seen her from the back a few times when she left. Big woman, tall and broad, with thick brown hair combed straight back like my aunt Sarah used to wear hers.”

  “How’d she dress?”

  “Sarah?”

  “Mary Lacy’s friend.”

  “Always the same—tight blue jeans and a sweatshirt or T-shirt. The jeans had little silver things going down the seams, so they glittered when she walked. She thought that was attractive, I s’pose.”

  “Studs?”

  “Beg pardon.”

  “Silver studs? On the jeans?”

  “I’d call ‘em that, surely. Though I was never much of a hand with needle and thread. Mr. McCloy bought all our clothes. Had a fine job with the railroad. But that went by the by when the unions got gutless.”

  “Did you ever hear Miss Lacy call the woman by name?”

  “Never. Called her lotsa things, but not her name. They had like pet names for each other, and they changed all the time.”

  “What about the man with the beard?”

  “He was never in the bedroom.”

  “I mean, did you hear his name?”

  “Skip, I think she called him. Never a last name. just Skip. They was only seller and buyer, them two. Here’s your little pills, here’s your money, and have a nice day.”

  “Did you get a good look at the bearded man?”

  “Nope. Same as the woman. Seen him from the back, is all. Wiry little fella with lotsa black hair and that bushy beard. Beard was kinda reddish, maybe. Never seen how him nor the woman got here, either. Took the bus and got off at the corner, for all I know.”

  Nudger was almost afraid to ask. “What about other visitors?”

  “None to speak of, other than a sister came to see her about once a week. Pretty blond thing.”

  Adelaide.

  Nudger suddenly felt confined in the overfurnished, claustrophobic apartment with the old lady who smelled of dust and medicine. He wanted out. Had to get out.

  He pretended to finish his tea, then placed the half-full cup and its saucer on a doily on a nearby table. There were lace doilies all over the place, on tables, draped over chair arms and backs, like ornate, sepulchral leaves that had floated down and stuck there. He stood up. Made himself smile. The smile part wasn’t easy.

  “Thanks for your help, Mrs. McCloy.”

  “You gotta go?” She sounded distraught.

  “Afraid I do.”

  “Well, glad we had the chance to talk, Mr. Nudger.”

  That was for sure.

  She put down her tea, straightened up out of the grasp of the wing chair, and wobbled with him to the door.

  “It ain’t like I’m a common and nosy old woman, eavesdropping on the neighbors. It’s just that, nighttime especially, sounds drift right up through the ductwork.”

  “One other thing,” Nudger said. “If Miss Lacy had a, er, girlfriend, why do you suppose she ran away with her male boss?”

  Mrs. McCloy seemed surprised that he’d ask. “Why, the money, Mr. Nudger. Like Mr. McCloy always said before he died and left me a poor widow, everybody does everything for the money.”

  When she smiled at him this time there was no mistaking the calculating cast to her parchment features. Eyes like the ones in the oval frame on the mantel.

  He gave her ten dollars, peeling it off slowly in ones so it seemed like a lot. Money, money.

  She grinned wickedly, Mr. McCloy’s widow, and stuffed the bills int
o the pocket of her robe.

  15

  Nudger was sure he knew Skip. Small-time, grubby, and groovy Skip Monohan, who lived in a run-down apartment over on Waldemar and did nickel-and-dime deals in stolen merchandise and minor drug deliveries. Skip did a lot of business in Maplewood, where Nudger’s office was located, and adjoining Richmond Heights, where Mary Lacy lived. She was on Skip’s route, so to speak.

  As Nudger drove down Manchester toward Waldemar, he thought over what Mrs. McCloy had told him about Mary Lacy. He wasn’t sure how much of it he believed. This was, after all, gossip from the mind and mouth of a snooping old woman. Possibly nothing more. Maybe Skip could corroborate the drug part. Or cast more suspicion on it.

  But suppose everything Mrs. McCloy had said turned out to be true. So Mary Lacy liked women, and that made it all the more unlikely she’d run away with Hiller. Unlikely, but not impossible.

  Nudger supposed it made sense that Mary had found love in the arms of one of her own sex, considering how his had treated her. Or was that sound reasoning? Nudger’s own heart had been kicked around like a rock on the way to school, and still he returned to women, with longing and hope in soul and groin. On the other hand, he’d never been violently raped by a member of the opposite sex, as had Mary Lacy. Hmm. He was getting confused. Better stay with facts instead of speculation.

  Skip’s apartment was near the corner, with a view of the gray and depressing closed Scullin Steel mill across Manchester. The mill wasn’t going to reopen; there were occasional rumors of a shopping mall to be built on the site. The city needed another one of those, all right. Despite big talk and big plans the past several years, the partially razed steel mill remained like a sprawling, miserable monument to outmoded industry. Long gray buildings with high opaque windows; rusting cranes and winches; a few empty and deteriorating rail cars still languishing on the siding. A line of scraggly pine trees, planted along Manchester by the city to disguise the ruin, only added to the depressing view. Even a guy like Skip Monohan didn’t deserve to look at this every morning.