The Right to Sing the Blues (Alo Nudger Book 3)

by John Lutz

  “That may or may not be true about the drinking, Nudge. The ME says his liver was about gone and he'd have probably died within six months on his own if somebody hadn't helped him across.”

  “How about needle tracks?” Nudger asked. “Did the ME find any on Billy's body?”

  Hammersmith smacked his lips and puffed on his cigar; over the phone he sounded like a locomotive in heat. “How astute of you to ask, Nudge. No needle-entry signs, not under the tongue or between the toes or anywhere else.”

  “Do you know what was used to beat him to death?”

  “No. It could have been a number of things. He actually died of asphyxiation.”

  “Asphyxiation?” Nudger repeated. “Somebody choked him?”

  “Whatever was used on him hit him in the throat, crushed his larynx and windpipe cartilage, made it impossible for him to get air.”

  Nudger couldn't help it; he imagined for a moment how it would be, the final, horrible panic: thrashing around wildly on the floor, struggling futilely to suck in oxygen, feeling your heart sledgehammer against your ribs, your entire body about to crumple inward around its internal airless ruins. The rage. The terror.

  Hammersmith surprised Nudger. “I'm sorry, Nudge. Was he a pretty good friend?”

  “To a lot of music lovers,” Nudger said. “You haven't answered my question, Jack.”

  “I know. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Could be the obvious—old junkie followed home and killed for his stash.”

  “Or it could be that somebody planted the heroin to make it look that way.”

  “A guy that clever,” Hammersmith said, “he's smart enough to buy a plane ticket south. All the way to New Orleans.” Slurp, wheeze on the cigar. “You see any connection down there with Weep's death?”

  “Nothing firm. Hollister maybe, but I checked him out. He didn't have a chance to leave town and get back here the night Billy was murdered. The times don't quite fit.”

  “My clothes don't quite fit, either,” Hammersmith said, “but I wear them.” Which was a lie; the obese Hammersmith had most of his clothes tailored to his sleek bulk. “Maybe Hollister found a way.”

  “That would be like a thirty-eight short on you,” Nudger said.

  Hammersmith said something that sounded like a growl.

  “I'll let you know if anything down here does gel,” Nudger told him.

  “Do that,” Hammersmith said. He made another disgusting airy slurping sound with the cigar. “In the meantime, I'll be here standing tall between the citizens and the savages.”

  “How do you know who's who?” Nudger asked, but a dial tone hit him in the ear. Hammersmith, who had a thing about getting in the last word on the phone, had hung up.

  That was okay. He couldn't have answered Nudger's question anyway. Nobody could. That was the world's and Nudger's problem.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Who's he working for?” Hollister asked.

  “I don't know. He won't say.” Ineida didn't tell Hollister that she'd offered Nudger money to pull away from whatever his business was in New Orleans. Whatever his interest was in her and Willy.

  They were in the Croissant Bar in the French Quarter, where they often shared breakfast in a back booth. Neither was eating today. A blueberry croissant with one small bite out of it lay growing stale on a napkin next to Hollister's steaming coffee cup. There was nothing but an untouched glass of orange juice on the table in front of Ineida. She wasn't feeling well this morning.

  “It doesn't matter who he is or who he's working for,” Ineida said. “We're not doing anything illegal; he can't do anything about us or to us. We can ignore him.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself more than Hollister.

  After a lot of thought, Hollister had decided on this one last attempt to learn more about Nudger. He wasn't surprised Ineida had failed to do so. But she was right; they weren't breaking any laws. No one could be arrested for what they were thinking, or for the pain to be.

  Long after his mother's death, he had learned to play the blues, the music of the lost. The very core of suffering. He'd learned to draw on the emptiness brought about by his mother dying and the years that followed. He had thought a lot about pain. In school in Illinois. Later in New York. His mother had loved him, and his father had told him after her death how much she had been loved by both of them. Had told him over and over again. Willy had sensed the fear in his father, and the agony. He'd played his father's pain and it had worked; it had permeated his music in the little New York clubs he'd played, then in the blues cities of the Midwest. And when his father died, Hollister found that he could no longer draw on that pain. It didn't matter, he discovered. His own pain worked even better. So much better. But he needed a fix now and then to sustain him. Like a masochist, though he knew he wasn't that; just the opposite. Like a vampire. Just like a vampire. Hollister shuddered. He didn't like the comparison.

  “You look tired,” Ineida was telling him. “You okay, babe?”

  “Didn't sleep much last night,” he said. He smiled at her. “I'm not sure why. Thinking of you, maybe. Wishing you were with me even while my mind was working on every other thing that drifted into it.”

  She touched his hand, returned the smile. She really was a beautiful woman, he thought. He was lucky. The need rose powerfully in him, the terrible need and the regret. Looking into her unknowing eyes, he was pulled in every direction, while something small but wise seemed to walk around the inside of his skull, understanding what it was all about, stage-directing his thoughts and longings.

  “Nothing matters to us but us,” Ineida said fiercely to him.

  Which was almost true, Hollister realized. Almost. He could, if he chose, spend the rest of his life with this woman. He did love her. He looked into her eyes again and told her so.

  He could hear the music now, beckoning him, urging him. But it would be slightly different this time. It would be better.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, listening inside himself.

  It was time, he knew. In music, timing was everything.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nudger thought he'd feel stronger after breakfast. Instead he was slightly nauseated and weaker. Maybe his conversation with Hammersmith had done that to him; maybe the cigar had worked psychologically, even over the phone and all that distance.

  When he stood up, a wave of dizziness almost forced him to sit back down. He managed to push the cart with the breakfast dishes outside into the hall, hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, then lock himself in his room and walk to the bed.

  Tired. He hadn't realized how tired he was. Everything that had happened recently seemed to be catching up, enveloping him now. Or was he seeking escape into sleep? Escape from this entire mad business. There were plenty of maybes that might apply. Nudger couldn't figure out exactly why he was suddenly exhausted, but he was; that he knew for sure. He half fell onto the bed and lay on his stomach.

  He slept until early evening, then got up in the quiet dusk and staggered into the bathroom to switch on the light and lean over the toilet bowl. He noted with satisfaction that his urine wasn't quite so red. Gee, how could a guy see that and not feel that everything was right with the world?

  Nudger knew how, even given as he was to baseless optimism. The pain was back, threatening to get really vicious, so he went back to the bed and lay down, went immediately to sleep again, and slept until nine-twenty the next morning. Time sure flew when you weren't having fun.

  Déjà vu seemed to play a prominent role in Nudger's life, he reflected, wondering if it was like that with everyone. This morning was a repeat of yesterday morning, only without Sandra Reckoner. The hot needle shower to ease aches and stiffness, the clean, unwrinkled clothes, the eggs, juice, and coffee served up by the gawky young bellhop who rolled the car in and looked around for Ineida, his protruding Adam's apple bobbing frantically like some kind of carnal radar.

  “She's not here,” Nudger said.


  “Yes, sir,” the bellhop answered, leaving the tray in front of the blue chair again. “I can see that.” It was as if Nudger had diabolically dictated that Ineida disappear. The kid seemed to hold it against him, so Nudger tipped him a mere dollar and watched him sulk and disappear himself.

  Plenty of appetite this morning, and nothing to spoil it. Nudger forked down the omelet, ate every crumb of the toast, and drained his orange-juice glass. Then he sat and leisurely sipped two cups of coffee, realizing with hope and satisfaction that he felt tolerably well today. Some pain was still present, but he could tune it out enough to coexist with it. He could be Nudger again, and not merely a thing that lay motionless and ached.

  Still moving stiffly, but not nearly as slowly as his creeping pace of yesterday, he gingerly labored into his sport jacket and straightened his open shirt collar. Then he left the hotel and walked through golden-molasses sunshine to Fat Jack's club.

  Fat Jack was in his office this morning, at his desk studying a folder full of sheet music with a sketchy and faded look to the notes. He had his suit coat off and was wearing a pristine white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms like fleshy hams.

  “Hey, high tech,” Fat Jack said. He gave a little offhand wave.

  “Hi,” Nudger said, somewhat confused. Had Fat Jack said “tech,” or had he greeted him as “Tex”?

  “Guy sent me some blues numbers written by his computer,” Fat Jack explained. Tech. “Wants me to have the band play them some night. Trouble is, the computer doesn't write like W. C. Handy, it writes like IBM. Can you believe it, one of the numbers here is called ‘Dot Matrix Momma of Mine.’ ”

  “Catchy.”

  “So's syphilis.”

  Nudger guessed Fat Jack didn't like the dot matrix number.

  “Where you been?” Fat Jack asked.

  “Slept late; I was beat.”

  “Not this morning. I mean yesterday.”

  “Yesterday morning's when Ineida came to my hotel to see me,” Nudger said, turning away the thrust of Fat Jack's question like a seasoned politician on “Meet the Press.” “She offered me twenty thousand dollars to leave her and Hollister alone.”

  Fat Jack looked thoughtful and shifted his immense weight; the chair somewhere beneath him groaned for mercy.

  “She said it was her money,” Nudger said. “Do you think she could come up with that much on her own without her father knowing about it?”

  “He might not know about it now,” Fat Jack said, “but you can bet he will know about it, whether it's her money or his.” He suddenly glanced sharply up at Nudger. “Hey, how come you turned down her offer?”

  Nudger shrugged. “I'll make it up when I send you your bill.”

  Fat Jack was too lost in concern even to respond to that outrageous suggestion. He used his sausage-fingered left hand to worry the gold pinky ring on his right. “What did she say when you refused her offer, old sleuth?”

  “She couldn't understand why she couldn't buy something she wanted that badly. She got mad.”

  “People like that,” Fat Jack said, “they know the value of money. Hey, I mean the real value. Even at her age, been rich all her life. Folks like you and me, we think we understand, but we don't. Usually not till it's too late. You must have confused her for sure, a private cop without a price tag.”

  “She assumed somebody was paying me more for staying on the job than she was offering me to quit.”

  “Hey.”

  “She wants to know what's going on,” Nudger said, “wants to know how she figures into it. I think maybe it's time we tell her, see how it all falls.”

  “No,” Fat Jack said quickly. “No matter how it falls, it will all land on me.”

  “But think how much heavier it will be if David Collins finds out you had information that might have saved his daughter from Hollister and you kept silent.”

  Fat Jack was scooting one of the computer-composed numbers back and forth on the flat desktop with his fingertips, pondering Nudger's question. Nudger could read the piece's title, even though from his perspective it was upside down: “Floppy Disk Fanny.” He liked that one. The desk phone rang.

  Fat Jack picked up the receiver, pressed it above the jowl on the right side of his broad head, and identified himself. A few seconds passed, and his face went as white as his shirt.

  “Yes, sir” he said. Both jowls began to quiver; loose flesh beneath his left eye started to dance. It was as if the thin man who's supposed to be inside every fat man was struggling to get out. Nudger was getting nervous just looking at him.

  “You can't mean it,” Fat Jack said. “Hey, maybe it's a joke, is all.” Pause. “Okay, it ain't a joke.” He listened a while longer and then said, “Yes, sir” again and hung up. He didn't say anything else for a long time. Nudger didn't say anything either. The air conditioner behind the desk hummed and gurgled; traffic outside on Conti swished by with the low, tense singing of rubber on hot pavement.

  Fat Jack spoke first. He sounded out of breath. “That was David Collins. Ineida's gone. Not home. Not anywhere. Bed hasn't been slept in.”

  “Then she and Hollister left as they planned.”

  “You mean as Hollister planned. Collins got a note in the mail.”

  “Note?” Nudger asked. His stomach did a flip; it was way ahead of his brain, reacting to a suspicion not yet fully formed.

  “A ransom note,” Fat Jack confirmed. “Unsigned, in cut-out newspaper words, just like in some cornball TV cop show.” Fat Jack paused, perspiring. “Oh, Christ—cop! Collins said Livingston is on his way over here now to talk to me about Hollister.”

  “Why isn't he on his way to talk to Hollister? That would make more sense.”

  “No, it wouldn't. Hollister's disappeared, too. And his clothes are missing from his closet.” Fat Jack's little pink eyes were bulging in his blanched face. He was suffering plenty; things he couldn't fathom were happening too fast. “We kept quiet too long about them letters you found. I better not tell Livingston about them.”

  “Not unless he asks,” Nudger said. “And he won't.”

  “If he finds out about them and demands to have them, we're caught between having to withhold evidence or admitting something Collins won't be able to forgive. Some choice!”

  “It's not one we'll have to make,” Nudger said, “because the letters are gone.”

  “Huh? Gone where?”

  “I don't know. They were stolen from my room.”

  A tremor ran through Fat Jack with this new source of worry. Its epicenter must have been his heart; he clutched his chest in a way that had Nudger concerned for a moment, then he seemed to calm down and dropped his hands to the desk. “Do you figure Collins might have got them?”

  “I think we can rule it out,” Nudger said. He knew that if Frick or Frack had been in his room and found the letters, they would have mentioned it to him during their encounter in the alley. Or they would have phoned David Collins for instructions and that encounter would have been far more serious.

  “You got any idea who might have the letters?” Fat Jack asked.

  “No,” Nudger lied. “Have the police been officially contacted about Ineida's kidnapping?”

  “Collins isn't the sort to trust the police on something like this,” Fat Jack said. “He'll try taking care of it on his own, and in his own fashion.”

  Nudger thought about asking how Livingston knew about Ineida's disappearance, but he decided that would be naive.

  Fat Jack suddenly grimaced, as if something inside his head had been reeled painfully tight. “Just what the hell am I going to say to Livingston?”

  “Play it by ear,” Nudger told him. “You've been doing that all your life and it's worked out fine.” He stood up.

  “Where you going?”

  “I'm leaving,” Nudger said, “before Livingston gets here. There's no sense in making this easy for him.”

  “Or difficult for you.”

  “It works out that way
, for a change.”

  Fat Jack nodded, his eyes unfocused yet thoughtful, already rehearsing in his mind the lines he would use on Livingston. His survival instincts had been aroused. He wasn't a man to bow easily or gracefully to trouble, and he had seen plenty of trouble in his life. He knew a multitude of moves and would use them all.

  “By the way” Nudger said, “do you know a woman named Marilyn Eeker?”

  “Eeker? …” Fat Jack mumbled absently, his mind not on the question. “No, never heard of her.”

  “A petite blonde, about forty.”

  Still engrossed in his own worsening dilemma, Fat Jack didn't bother to answer. Maybe he hadn't heard.

  He didn't seem to notice when Nudger left.

  TWENTY-SIX

  They were waiting for Nudger by his car, around the corner from Fat Jack's. Frick and Frack. His stomach growled something that sounded like “Please, noooo!” He considered turning and running, even though they'd seen him and could easily overtake him. Fear and memory churned around in his gut like something alive and violent. He tried to fight it down; it wouldn't stay.

  Nudger figured the best way to deal with this was to walk on to his car and try to hide his fright. His aches from his previous beating seemed to flare up now that he was in the proximity of perpetrators Frick and Frack. He wished he'd stayed in Fat Jack's office and opted for Livingston instead of being here now, walking like a school kid toward two class bullies.

  At first Nudger thought the little red subcompact had a flat tire. Then he saw that its left front side was six inches lower than the right because Frick had one of his gigantic feet resting on the bumper. When Nudger got closer the car bobbed level as Frick removed the foot, straightened up, and both men stood facing him squarely, not smiling, waiting for him.

  “Don't worry, my friend,” Frick told him. “None of the rough persuasion this time.”

  “Nice of you to let my internal bruises heal,” Nudger said, stopping a safe five feet from the two men. His voice hadn't squeaked as much as he'd feared. Traffic continued to flow past where the car was parked; a few drivers slowed down to gawk at the impressive bulk of Frick and Frack, then drove on in a hurry, hoping they hadn't offended with their slackened speed and curious glances, praying their engines wouldn't stall.