The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "Caruthers or his wife hire you?" DeMent asked. He had beady ferret eyes that glared out from padded cheeks. A shrewd and careful man, a man who walked on the edge. This was the small-time investigator that Hammersmith had mentioned, the non-swimmer in the deep end of the pool. Nudger wondered if his own features conveyed the same desperate, calculating expression.

  "It doesn't matter who hired me," he said. "What I need to know is, did you report to Oh that Caruthers put to sea night before last in his yacht?"

  DeMent shrugged. "Why should I answer you?" He glanced around. "Where's Oh?"

  "He's gone," Nudger said. "I hope you collected your fee in advance."

  DeMent ran out of patience. "Listen, you . . ." He lowered his head and took a step toward Nudger.

  Nudger ignored him, turned, and walked toward the door.

  "Hey! Where are you going?" DeMent asked.

  "To the Caruthers estate. Want to come along?" DeMent stood weighing the odds, like a menacing, bewildered bull frozen in puzzlement in the bull ring. He didn't want to go with Nudger, but the alternative was to be left standing and wondering in Oh's room.

  "Okay," he said in disgust. "I'm coming with you." He said it as if he were in charge.

  "Good," Nudger said. "Let's take your car. It'll be faster, not to mention more comfortable."

  When they reached the Caruthers estate, they found Candy Caruthers and a slender, dark-haired woman having breakfast on the patio overlooking the Gulf. Nudger recognized the woman as Melissa Caruthers. She looked as if she could resume her modeling career tomorrow.

  Candy glanced from Nudger to DeMent to Melissa. Back to Nudger. "Since Daddy was gone," she said, "I invited Mom here for—"

  "Moral support," Melissa finished her stepdaughter's sentence. "Despite what the news media might say." She began to introduce herself.

  "I know who you are," Nudger interrupted. He introduced himself and DeMent, who stood in belligerent, watchful stupefaction.

  "I assumed you were with the people in the house," Melissa said.

  "What people?"

  "The FBI," Candy said to Nudger. "They've been here since early this morning. They're waiting for Daddy to return."

  "Is there any way to contact your father's yacht?" Nudger asked.

  "That's what we're here to prevent," Frank Slayton said as he opened sliding glass doors and stepped out into the sunlight on the patio. A tall man with Latin features, as square-edged clean-cut as Slayton, followed him outside. "This is Agent Sam Ortero," Slayton said. "What's going on, Nudger?"

  While the others watched intently, Nudger drew Slayton aside and told him everything.

  "We're tracking Caruthers' yacht," Slayton said. "We're sure he picked up a narcotics shipment in Mexico, and we're waiting here to confiscate it and place him under arrest when he docks."

  "If he docks," Nudger corrected. "Can we contact him by radio?"

  "I can't allow that," Slayton said. "We can't be sure that what you think is true." The agent rubbed his handsome, squarish chin, looked glum. "On the other hand, if you are right, we won't have anyone to interrogate. We're trying to eliminate the regular importation of millions of dollars' worth of illegal drugs."

  "Time could be running out," Nudger said. He slipped an antacid tablet into his mouth and chewed with metronome precision, glancing at the others still staring curiously at him and Slayton.

  Beyond the patio a pelican swooped low over the sea, seeking its prey. It dived. It missed.

  Slayton came to a quick, firm decision in that FBI way of his. "I'm going to have a fast Coast Guard boat pick us up here," he said.

  "Us?"

  "We're all going," Slayton said. "I don't want anyone staying behind and possibly contacting Cap Caruthers by radio."

  After Slayton had hurried back into the house to call the Coast Guard, DeMent swaggered with pugnacious pudginess over to Nudger, his dark eyes narrowed angrily. "You drag me up here and I get tangled up with the FBI and I still don't know what's going on," he growled. "I don't like it a bit."

  "What will perk you up," Nudger told him, "is some fresh sea air."

  The Coast Guard cutter was a forty-foot craft with speed. Its gray bow was raised high and proud, and its hull slapped over the waves as it headed away from the Caruthers dock out into the blue Gulf. Nudger stood near Slayton by the rail, squinting against the sea spray that was cooling him in the hot glare of the sun off the shimmering water. The Coast Guard had a fix on the Sea Dreamer's position and was on course to reach the unsuspecting Cap Caruthers in the shortest time possible.

  They'd been out on the Gulf for about forty-five minutes when the captain on the bridge shouted down at Slayton and pointed off the port bow. Nudger stared in the direction the captain had pointed and could make out a tiny dark shape near the horizon. Slayton borrowed the captain's binoculars, aimed and focused them.

  "It's the Sea Dreamer," he said.

  Nudger felt on his face the subtle change of wind direction as the boat altered course. He almost stumbled on the deck as the bow lifted higher and they gained speed. The sound of the waves slapping against the hull was like irregular rifle fire. Candy, Melissa, and DeMent all rushed unsteadily to the side of the deck where Nudger and Slayton stood. They all craned their necks for a view of the Sea Dreamer.

  Then Nudger glimpsed another dark speck—above the horizon. He snatched the binoculars from Slayton and pressed their rubber cups to his eyes. It took him a few seconds to locate the airborne speck. He prayed that it was a gull, but it hadn't moved like a gull against the sky.

  When he focused the binoculars, he saw that the speck was the red and silver aircraft that Oh had landed at the Del Moray airport. He cursed, pointed, and handed the binoculars back to Slayton, who focused on the plane and echoed Nudger's curse.

  Within half a minute they could all see the plane quite clearly with the naked eye. They watched the sun glint off its silver wings and its red El-Tron emblem as it soared, dipped, and headed toward the Sea Dreamer. It was only a few feet above the waves, bearing down on the yacht in classic kamikaze fashion.

  "I wouldn't have believed it," Slayton said almost reverently, "that the shame could last all those years . . ."

  "You were never a kamikaze pilot," Nudger said. And then softly, "Banzai."

  Cap Caruthers was running illegal cargo, all right. A figure appeared on the Sea Dreamer's aft deck and flung a tarpaulin off a brace of high-caliber machine guns, swiveled the twin barrels toward the oncoming plane, and opened fire. The chattering pop of the guns wafted over the water toward the Coast Guard cutter as it closed the distance between it and the Sea Dreamer.

  Pieces flew from the small plane. It shuddered but didn't alter course in the face of the machine gun fire. A tall man—Cap Caruthers—appeared on the Sea Dreamer's flying bridge and calmly studied the plane through binoculars. The bullets that missed the plane were raising geysers of water behind it as it droned inexorably toward its target. Nudger stood in breathless, silent fascination. He couldn't have turned away. This was like watching Victory at Sea in color.

  The plane's left wing dipped and almost touched the water, and for an instant Nudger thought it would go down. But it righted itself, climbed sharply, then dived straight toward the Sea Dreamer's bridge.

  There must have been explosives on the plane. Both it and the yacht disappeared in a huge ball of fire that rose like a brilliant sun gone mad into the blue sky. A few seconds later the roar of the explosion hurt Nudger's ears and left them buzzing. The shock wave rocked the Coast Guard boat.

  The Gulf breeze soon cleared away black smoke to reveal only a broken tail section, a curve of shattered hull, and various smaller pieces of smoldering debris where the Sea Dreamer had floated. Cap Caruthers and his ship were below the waves; a forty-year-old fanatical mission of destruction had been completed.

  Melissa was stunned, her face pale and old. One of the crewmen helped her below deck. Candy was sobbing, gasping for breath. She burrowed he
r face into Nudger's chest, and he felt her body's shuddering merge with the vibration of the boat.

  "There goes our source of information," Nudger heard Slayton murmur.

  "There goes my fee," DeMent said, and spat over the side. Nudger pulled Candy closer to him and pressed his hand over her free ear.

  The Coast Guard cutter circled for a while, though everyone knew it was pointless to search for survivors. After radioing the exact position of the tragedy, the captain set a course for shore.

  It was when they were within eight miles of Del Moray that Nudger noticed, among the many fishing vessels and pleasure boats, the Dandy Dan headed into shore and only a few hundred yards from the docks.

  The Dominique was a twenty thousand ton freighter of the Pegasus Line. It was loaded with a cargo of heavy construction equipment bound for several South American ports and was due to cast off in an hour.

  Nudger sat uncomfortably in a wooden chair in one of the Dominique's few passenger compartments, chewing antacid tablets and waiting. The subtle, steady rocking of the ship at her berth was making him slightly nauseated.

  But when the compartment door opened, Nudger forgot his discomfort and smiled at the man who entered.

  "We need to talk," Nudger said, not getting up.

  Shock crossed Oh's face like a passing shadow. Then he frowned slightly, glanced about, and entered the compartment all the way and closed the door. He had been carrying a large leather suitcase, which he placed carefully beside the bunk, as if the deliberate act would allow him time to think.

  "Who are you?" he asked as he straightened and faced Nudger.

  Nudger told him. Then he said, "You're a realist, Mr. Oh, a hard-nosed businessman who wouldn't hold a forty-year-old grudge about being prevented from committing suicide."

  "'Grudge' is hardly an adequate term, Mr. Nudger."

  "Whatever the term, you've proved by your actions since the war that you're not the suicidal type after all. You're also not the type to let the valuable cargo that Caruthers was carrying on the Sea Dreamer go to the bottom of the Gulf—unless of course you'd already been paid for that cargo."

  Oh smiled confidently, barely twitching his lips. He had a nifty poker face. "Please explain, Mr. Nudger."

  "You and Cap Caruthers were in business together for a long time. You were his narcotics supplier. Then the divorce hearing came up and the news media started digging into Caruthers, and I'm sure you found out the FBI was onto him. You hired a detective to watch Caruthers so you could be sure he hadn't talked yet to the FBI, but exposure of your operation was almost inevitable. You decided to make one more big profit and get out in such a way that everyone would assume you were dead. So you sold Caruthers a final shipment—probably worthless—to smuggle in on the Sea Dreamer, pocketed the money, and when he was almost back to the Florida coast, where you could be sure there would be witnesses, you flew the El-Tron company aircraft into the Sea Dreamer and sent ship and plane to the bottom, just as you tried to do so many years ago. But this time you were more sensible. You flew your plane from the Dandy Dan, by remote control. Banzai. Mission accomplished. Now here you are alive and on your way to the good life in South America under an assumed name. No samurai you."

  Oh still seemed unperturbed, as if he'd been listening only absently to Nudger. But he said, "Very nicely thought out, Mr. Nudger."

  "And true."

  Oh smiled. "Standing here embarrassingly alive as I am, I can hardly deny it. The question is, what now?" He reached into an inside pocket of his suit coat and withdrew a small revolver. "Merely a bargaining chip," he explained, nodding toward the gun. "Don't be alarmed."

  Nudger had never looked into a revolver barrel and not been alarmed. And he wasn't deceived by Oh's reassurances. Guns were for killing, and that was what Oh intended doing with this one.

  The door from the adjoining compartment opened, and Slayton and Ortero walked through, also with guns drawn, trained on Oh. Nudger let out a relieved breath when the gun that was aimed at him lowered, but Oh's finger remained firm on the trigger.

  For a moment Nudger thought that this elderly executive might actually decide to shoot it out. Oh's eyes were steady and unreadable. Violence had already begun in Nudger's stomach.

  But the inclination for suicide had left Oh decades ago. He sensibly handed over the revolver to Slayton and presented no resistance as he was handcuffed and read his rights. He was a businessman cutting his losses, already anticipating long legal wars.

  "I assume you were eavesdropping," Oh said to Slayton.

  Nudger stood up on shaking legs and grinned. "No one had to eavesdrop," he said to Oh, as he removed a small flat instrument from his breast pocket. "Our conversation is accurately preserved in tone and content, all right here on tape in this small but efficient recorder. It's the best that El-Tron manufactures."

  Time Exposure

  She was upset about something. All mussed by external and internal stormy weather, all wild blonde hair and wild blue eyes, haunted by the lightning. That was what had driven her to Nudger's office. She made Nudger, who was used to dumpy divorcees and pilfered cash registers, feel like Sam Spade. Nudger liked that.

  "Mr. Nudger?' she asked tentatively, brushing water from her raincoat with the back of her hand, lowering her neat frame into the chair before Nudger's desk. The action allowed a glimpse of startlingly pale legs with slender ankles.

  Nudger nodded to the ankles. A sheet of rain hit the window as if the wind had flung it there out of malice.

  "I'm Adelaide Lacy," the wet blonde said. "I want to hire you."

  Nudger sized her up for potential to pay, as was his habit. She was wearing a navy blue dress. Her clothes were expensive but not high fashion; she was about thirty-five, neatly groomed, and wore no wedding ring. She didn't appear to be the sort you'd go to in order to finance a business venture, but she looked as if she could afford Nudger's piddling fee. Nudger's alternative was another hand of solitaire.

  "What's bothering you . . . Miss, is it?" She nodded. "Miss Lacy?"

  "These." She removed a squarish brown envelope from her purse and leaned forward to place it on the desk. "You'd better look, then I'll explain."

  Nudger opened the damp envelope and withdrew an eight-by-ten black and white photograph of a downtown street. He recognized the street: Locust Avenue. The photograph was sharp; there were no people or traffic, only buildings. Beneath the first photo was a second, a blow-up of one of the buildings, the Arcade Building, an office building Nudger had been in more than once. There was a curious thing about that photograph. All of the windows in the Arcade Building seemed to reveal empty rooms, all except one. In that window was a heavyset, balding man seated at a desk, a pencil resting between his fingers, his head slightly bowed. He was in sharp focus; Nudger could count the buttons on his shirt. He looked familiar to Nudger, but Nudger couldn't place him.

  "You want something to drink, Miss Lacy?" Nudger asked, putting down the photographs on his desk. He wanted to slow the pace of this encounter; he was experiencing intimations that made him uneasy.

  "Call me Adelaide," she said, smiling nervously. "And no thanks. A photographer named Paul Dobbs came to me with those two days ago," she went on. "He said he'd been commissioned by an architectural firm to take photos of certain downtown streets. His employer was interested in the buildings, nothing else. So Dobbs would set up his camera just after sundown, when it was still light out but shadows were minimal and downtown was pretty much deserted. Then with special film he'd take forty-five minute time exposures."

  "Very long exposures," Nudger said.

  "And for good reason," Adelaide told him. "As Dobbs explained it, at that slow exposure rate, occasional passing cars, buses, or pedestrians wouldn't show up in the photo; they'd be moving too fast for their images to form on the film. There could be a bank holdup on those streets and it wouldn't appear in the photograph."

  Nudger understood. The same held true of any movement inside the windows o
f the photographed buildings. That was why all the rooms appeared empty. All but one. Nudger felt a cold weight in his stomach. He was liking this less and less. Soon his insides would be forcibly reminding him that he was ill-suited by temperament for his work.

  Adelaide Lacy confirmed what he was thinking. "Dobbs told me that the only way that man could appear so sharply focused in that window would be if he was as still as the building itself. If he was dead."

  Nudger's stomach kicked. He picked up a foil-wrapped roll of antacid tablets, slipped one of the thin white disks onto his tongue, and began to chew. "Dead." Gee, he disliked that word!

  "What else did Dobbs say?" he asked. More rain, a sudden noisy downpour. Lightning flashed like a warning; thunder rumbled life fateful laughter.

  Adelaide shifted in her chair, obviously made uncomfortable by the thought of what she was about to say. "Dobbs noticed the man in the window in one of his photographs, blew up the scene, and took it to a friend who is a reporter on the Globe-Democrat. The reporter told him he was crazy, that the city leased that floor of the Arcade Building, and that the man in the photo was Virgil Hiller, the city comptroller."

  Face and name suddenly connected in Nudger's mind. He popped another antacid tablet into his mouth.

  "The next day Hiller and his secretary had disappeared," Adelaide said, "along with a million dollars in City funds."

  "And that made Dobbs all the more suspicious of murder."

  "Sure. But the assistant comptroller and even the mayor claimed they saw Hiller alive the morning after Dobbs's photograph was taken."

  "Did Dobbs buy their story?"

  Adelaide shrugged. "He had no choice. I mean, contradicting the mayor . . ."

  "Right, City Hall and all that. So what did Dobbs do?"

  Adelaide widened her luminous blue eyes in faint surprise. "Why, he came to me. He told me everything." She saw suddenly that she'd gotten ahead of herself, smiled a nervous, shadowy smile, and sat back. "Virgil Hiller's secretary, the woman he supposedly ran away with, is my sister Mary, Mr. Nudger. And I know what she really thought of her boss. She told me often enough he was a tyrannical creep and a secret drunk. She'd never have run away with him."