The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "You help me, Nudge, and I'll pay you a couple of thousand—when the inheritance comes."

  Nudger eased the coffee cup off to the side. He looked at Danny. "I think it's time your Uncle Benj checked out of Chaser Heights," he said.

  "You know a way to manage it?"

  Nudger always figured there was a way. That was a two-edged attitude, though, because he always had to figure there was a way for the other guy, too. All of which didn't help Nudger's nervous stomach. Nor did the knowledge that he had to go back out to Chaser Heights that night and case the joint.

  The next evening, Nudger and Danny parked Nudger's Volkswagen on a narrow dirt access road that ran through the woods behind Chaser Heights. Nudger was glad to see that Danny was only slightly nervous; the fool had complete faith in him. Both men put on the long black vinyl raincoats with matching hooded caps that Nudger had rented. They pinned badges on the coats and on the fronts of the caps. The sun was down and it was almost totally dark as they made their way through the trees and across the clearing to the rear of Chaser Heights.

  They huddled against a brick back wall. Nudger checked the tops of the leafless trees, where the moon seemed to be nibbling at the thin upper branches, to verify which way the breeze was blowing. From a huge pocket of his raincoat he drew a plastic bag stuffed with oil-soaked rags. Danny drew a similar bag from his pocket. They laid the bags near the rear of the building, in tall dry grass that would catch well and produce a maximum amount of smoke. Danny was smiling confidently in the fearlessness born of incomprehension, a kid playing a game.

  Nudger used a cigarette lighter to ignite the two bags and their contents. While Danny crept around to the side of the building to set fire to a third bag, Nudger forced open a basement window and lowered himself inside. He had noticed the sprinkler system in the halls on his first visit. Following the yellowish beam of a penlight, he made his way to the system's pressure controls in the basement and turned the lever that built the water pressure all the way to high, hearing an electric pump hum to life and the hiss of rushing water.

  With a hatchet strapped inside his coat, Nudger broke the lever from the spigot with one sharp blow and then headed for the stairs to the upper floor. He opened the door to the back first-floor hall and then the rear door to admit Danny. Already he could hear movement, voices. And as Danny stepped inside and both men put on their respirator masks, Nudger saw that the burning bags and weeds were creating plenty of smoke, all of it drifting away from Chaser Heights. Just then the pressure built up enough to activate the sprinkler system in the halls throughout the building, sending a cold spray on anyone caught outside a room. There were several startled shouts, a few curses.

  Each carrying a hatchet, Nudger and Danny bustled down the halls in their badge-adorned black slickers and hoods, the respirators snug over their faces. They pulled the respirators away just enough to yell, "Fire department! Everyone remain calm! Everyone out of the building!" They began kicking doors open and ushering patients through the watery halls toward the exits. Nudger was beginning to enjoy this. Not for nothing did small boys want to be firemen when they grew up.

  In the distance they could hear wails of sirens. The genuine fire department had been called and was on the way. A white-uniformed attendant, one of the thugs who had been in Nudger's office, jogged past them with only a worried glance.

  "Where do you suppose Wedgewick and Olander are?" Danny asked.

  "You can bet they were among the first out," Nudger said. "Go get Uncle Benj and head for the car."

  Dr. Wedgewick's office was empty, as he'd thought it would be. Through the wide window behind the slate-topped desk, Nudger could see more than a dozen people gathered on the front grounds. Beyond them flashing red lights were approaching, casting wavering, distorted shadows; the sirens had built to a deafening warble. The Mayfair County fire engine even had a loud bell that jangled with a frantic kind of gaiety, as if fires were fun.

  The door of a wall safe was hanging open. Nudger went to it and found that the safe was empty. After glancing again out the front window, he left the office.

  Everyone in front of Chaser Heights seemed to be shouting. Volunteer firemen were playing out hose and advancing on the building like an invading army. Patients and staff were milling about, asking questions. Nudger joined them. At the edge of the crowd stood Dr. Wedgewick, holding a large brown briefcase.

  "Are you in charge, sir?" Nudger inquired from beneath his respirator.

  Dr. Wedgewick hesitated. "Yes, I'm Dr. Wedgewick, chief administrator here."

  "Could you come with me, sir?" Nudger asked. "There's something you should see." He wheeled and began walking briskly toward the side of the building. All very official.

  Dr. Wedgewick followed.

  When they had turned the corner, Nudger removed his respirator. "The briefcase, please," he said, not meaning the please.

  "Why, you can't! . . ." Then Dr. Wedgewick's eyes darted to the hatchet Nudger had raised, and remained fixed there. He handed the briefcase to Nudger. His hand was trembling.

  "Millicent!" Dr. Wedgewick suddenly whirled and ran back the way they had come, all the time pointing to Nudger.

  Nudger saw the unmistakably bulky figure of Millicent Olander-Olaphant. He took off for the woods behind the building. He didn't have to look back to know Millicent and the good doctor were following.

  Running desperately through the woods, Nudger shed his cumbersome coat, hood, and respirator. He kept the ax and briefcase, using both to smash through the branches that whipped at his face and arms. Behind him someone was crashing through the dry winter leaves.

  Nudger had the advantage. He knew where the car was parked. He put on as much speed as he could. The pounding of his heart was almost as loud as his rasping breath.

  As he broke onto the road Nudger saw a dark form in the rear seat. Still wearing raincoat and hood, Danny stood leaning against the left front fender with his arms crossed. "Quick, get in!" Nudger shouted as he yanked open the driver's side door. He tossed the briefcase and hatchet onto the backseat next to Uncle Benj. His chest ached; his heart was trying to escape from his body.

  Danny was barely into the passenger's seat when the engine caught and began its anxious clatter. As Nudger hit first gear and pulled away, he saw the fleeting shadows of pursuing figures in the rearview mirror.

  "Who was chasing you?" Danny asked, straining to peer behind them into the darkness.

  "My quarrelsome friends from that morning in my office."

  "You think they'll get the cops, Nudge?" Danny sounded apprehensive.

  Nudger snorted. "I think it's going to be the other way around!" He jerked the VW into a two-wheeled turn, bounced over some ruts, and was back on the main road, picking up speed.

  From behind him came a chuckle and Uncle Benj said, "Hey, young fella, where's the fire?"

  Nudger thought it wise to stay in the presence of witnesses while he had the briefcase he'd taken from Dr. Wedgewick. He'd known that Dr. Wedgewick wouldn't have paid off the county sheriff, Caster, without keeping some sort of receipts. And when fire supposedly broke out at Chaser Heights and Dr. Wedgewick hurriedly cleaned out the safe, it figured that the doctor would number those receipts among his most valuable possessions.

  In Danny's Donuts, Nudger examined the briefcase's contents. There was a great deal of money inside. Also some stock certificates. And among other various papers a notebook containing the dates, times, and amounts of the payoffs to Sheriff Caster. There also were several videocassettes, which the notebook referred to as documentation of the payoffs. Nudger had to admit that Dr. Wedgewick was thorough, but then wasn't the doctor the type?

  Nudger went to the phone and called Jack Hammersmith at the Third Precinct. Hammersmith said he'd be around in ten minutes. "I don't understand how you manage to emerge from these misadventures relatively unscathed," he said. He was quite serious.

  "Pureness of heart very probably is a factor," Nudger told him. Hammersmit
h broke the connection without saying goodbye.

  "I forgot to give this to you earlier, Nudge," Danny said, holding out a small lavender envelope. "It's from Eileen. She said she could never find you and I was to deliver it."

  Nudger grunted and crammed the envelope into his shirt pocket. "Ain't you gonna open it?" Uncle Benj asked, from where he sat near the end of the counter.

  "I know what it is," Nudger told him. "It's from my former spouse and makes more than passing reference to neglected alimony payments!"

  Uncle Benj chortled. "Women can do that to you—drive you to drink if you let 'em." He sat up straighter and drew a deep breath. "You know, Danny boy," he said heartily, "despite the drugs and all the arm-twisting out at that place, I ain't had a drop of the sauce for weeks and I think my stay there did help me. I feel great, like I'll live to be a hundred!"

  Danny bit his lower lip glumly, then he smiled and ducked behind the counter.

  "Have a doughnut, Uncle Benj," he said.

  Nudger thought about Danny's inheritance, about the rent due upstairs, about the envelope from Eileen.

  "Don't forget to give him some of your coffee," he said to Danny with a meaningful nod.

  If Uncle Benj was going to escape the bottle, maybe he'd fall prey to the cup.

  Only One Way to Land

  July in Del Moray, Florida, south of Fort Myers and east of the Ten Thousand Islands. Hot, steamy, about to storm.

  Nudger sat at one of the Del Moray Yacht Club's white metal outside tables, across from Candy Caruthers. In front of each of them was a tall, wet, and greenish creation known as the Tidal Wave, the club's official drink. It was crème de menthe that gave the drink its greenish cast, and that wasn't to Nudger's taste. He took a few polite sips of the artless concoction, then ignored it.

  A sea breeze was gusting in hard off the Gulf, pushing low black clouds laden with afternoon rain. The tall palm trees along the beach bent gracefully landward and rhythmically tossed their crowns of lush green fronds, as if dancing to some secret, mad music in the wind.

  Candy Caruthers was privy to the music, too. She peeked with a glittering blue eye from between the long strands of honey blonde hair that had blown across her face. "I love the wind," she told Nudger.

  "It freshens things."

  Candy laughed loudly. "There's no doubt that things around here need freshening." Still smiling, she took a sip of her Tidal Wave. "I don't mean here specifically." She waved a lissome bare arm to encompass the plush yacht club. "I mean it would be oh so nice if the wind could blow away the troubles of the Caruthers family."

  Nudger figured that would require a hurricane. Thanks to the voracious news media, the Caruthers family's troubles were no secret. Candy's father, Calvin "Cap" Caruthers, a silver-haired vigorous man in his mid-sixties, was being divorced from his twenty-six-year-old wife Melissa. They were a rich and well-known couple; Cap Caruthers had been a war hero, and Melissa would have been a celebrity of sorts on the basis of appearance alone. She was a gaunt, dark-haired beauty who had been a fashion model before her marriage to Caruthers six years ago. Caruthers had noticed her on a glossy magazine cover, decided he wanted her, and turned that wish into reality. Now they were in the middle of a messy divorce in which each party was accusing the other of everything from snoring too loudly to sexual perversion. If anyone other than the principals knew how much of this was true, it would be Candy. She lived in the same house as her father and stepmother, and had in fact been dragged into the case as the alleged participant in some of the bad behavior.

  "I assume," Nudger said, "that your father's divorce and all the accompanying sensationalism is why you paid my way down here."

  "No," Candy said. "The divorce only complicates matters. And it might disappoint you to know that ninety-nine percent of everything you've heard or read about the Caruthers family and drugs and sex is pure nonsense. It's all charges and countercharges dreamed up by Mom's and Daddy's lawyers."

  "Mom?"

  "Melissa—my stepmother. We're very close."

  "According to the news media—"

  "The hell with the news media. We're like sisters, actually. We're both the same age, twenty-six, and we both care about my father."

  "Melissa still cares?"

  "Yes." She was emphatic. "Oh, Mom wants the divorce, but in her own way she still likes Daddy, even if she doesn't love him. It's impossible not to like him."

  "Then why do you need my services? And why not a local PI?"

  "You were recommended to me by David Collins," Candy said.

  "The man who owns most of New Orleans."

  "David is an old friend of Daddy's, and we've met once or twice. I heard you got his daughter Ineida out of trouble. So when I needed someone, I decided on you."

  "That makes some sense."

  Candy drilled him with an appraising smile. "Some, but not enough. All right, Mr. Nudger, the other reason is that I can't trust a local investigator. With the divorce still in the courts, anyone from Florida I hired might be influenced by Daddy or Mom. They each have a wide circle of acquaintances that could apply pressure if a Florida investigator's license were at stake."

  Nudger gazed out at the rolling blue-green Gulf. It was causing the sleek, docked sailboats to bob in unison at their moorings. "Okay," he said, after a pause. "It's savvy of you to recruit your knight from beyond the border."

  "What a romantic concept!" she said. She sounded as if she'd just discovered a jewel in a popcorn box.

  Nudger shrugged. "The essential me." He knew better, but why puncture her illusions? "Tell me about the offending dragon."

  Candy rotated her Tidal Wave on the table's smooth metal surface, staring at the distortion of the damp ring around the glass. "Someone is watching the house."

  "That isn't surprising, considering the divorce."

  "Perhaps not. But I happen to know something the press, and Mom, don't know. Daddy is almost broke."

  "Legal fees, no doubt. I'm a divorced man myself."

  "He expects to get a great deal of money shortly; I overheard him talking about it during a phone conversation. That made me wonder how he's been getting his money for the last few years. It's come infrequently, but in huge amounts. He's no longer active in business, so what's the source of his income?"

  "There are lots of possibilities," Nudger told her. "Loan payments, stock dividends?"

  "No," Candy interrupted. "Lately he's been acting rather furtive. I'm afraid he's involved in something illegal. I'd like you to find out if he is, and if so what that something illegal is."

  Nudger felt his nervous stomach give a warning kick. He got out his roll of antacid tablets, thumbed back the aluminum foil, and popped one of the chalky white discs into his mouth. "Why do you want to know this?" he asked.

  "So I can protect him."

  Nudger sighed, finished chewing, and swallowed. "Candy, I believe you do love your father, which is why I feel I should warn you that the divorce might be wrapped up in whatever he's doing. You might find out something you'll wish you didn't know."

  She shook her head firmly, and her plain but pleasant features fell, as if from long practice, into a cast of determination. "I don't live my life trying to avoid painful conclusions, Mr. Nudger. That's a trap that snares too many of the wealthy. It's a temptation to sidestep reality when you can afford to think whatever is most convenient."

  "I have the temptation myself, but not the means." Nudger found himself liking Candy Caruthers and wanting to help her. Hers was a world that could easily twist soul and reason. Despite that, she seemed to possess wisdom uncommon to youth. A lot of pain had to go along with it. "Will you do what I ask, Mr. Nudger?"

  Nudger watched a large cabin cruiser drift lazily away from the dock, shifted his gaze to the beach cabanas, the private pool entrance, the restaurant with its designer-labeled diners and drinkers, and the white-coated waiters gliding discreetly and subserviently among them. "All right," he said.

  "Thank you, Mr. N
udger." She meant it. She clasped his hand and squeezed it. "What can I tell you that might help?"

  "First," Nudger said, "I think we should discuss my fee."

  Candy released his hand and grinned apologetically. "I'm sorry. I simply forgot."

  "It's been uppermost in my mind."

  A waiter drifted near and Candy motioned for two more Tidal Waves. Nudger said he'd prefer bourbon and water. "Sorry again," Candy said.

  Nudger told her that was okay, they'd get along. A gull wheeled in close in an exquisite arc against the wind and screamed before sailing back toward the expanse of sand and sea. The scream sounded human. Female. Maybe it was a warning.

  Later that afternoon, after a heavy but brief rain that left the streets damp and steaming in the lowering sun, Nudger took his rented subcompact car from the lot of his motel, the Blynken and Nod, and followed Candy's directions to the Caruthers estate.

  The estate's grounds were spacious and well kept, and the house itself was like something off the cover of a Gothic novel. Steep wooden steps near the rear of the staunch Victorian home zigzagged their way down to a private beach and a boathouse and dock. A shaky looking, weathered wood pier jutted like an accusing finger out to sea, into water deep enough to accommodate the small streamlined yacht that was anchored there. Nudger studied the sleek yacht through his binoculars. He admired its lines, but he saw no sign of life on board.

  He spent about half an hour looking over the grounds. After determining the safest spots from which he could observe the house from concealment, he decided to drive to a seafood restaurant he'd noticed down the highway and get some supper, then return to the motel for a nap. He would come back to the Caruthers estate after dark. Candy had told him that whoever was watching the place was nocturnal.

  The seafood soup Nudger spooned down at the restaurant was authentic enough to taste polluted. It was followed by a fried something that probably Jacques Cousteau hadn't catalogued. Back in his room at the Blynken and Nod, instead of sleeping, Nudger lay on the rumpled bed watching television and chomping antacid tablets. The violence on the small screen was appalling. By the time his stomach calmed down, it was dark outside.