The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "How did Beal react?"

  "He took his insurance money and moved north to start over."

  "What about Farnworth being murdered?" I asked.

  "That happened two months ago, in Galveston. His body was discovered in a hotel. He'd been tortured before he was killed."

  "So the law went to Beal as the logical suspect."

  Catlin nodded. "Only Beal couldn't have killed Farnworth. He was in New York at the time, at a company meeting. His boss, Gavner, and William Davis, Gavner Enterprises' New York office manager, swore to it. At the exact time of Farnworth's death in Galveston, Beal was in conference in New York discussing a new line of interlocking file cabinets. I can show you Gavner's statement and the signed deposition the NYPD obtained from Davis." He smiled his ugly smile. "Like I told you—it's irrelevant."

  I was prepared to admit that the Farnworth murder probably had nothing to do with Beal's disappearance, but my stomach sensed otherwise. I unpeeled the foil from a roll of white discs, popped one into my mouth, and chewed reflectively.

  "I bet you're developing an ulcer," Catlin said concernedly. "For your own sake, why don't you get into some other line of work and never come back here?"

  "Tempting," I said, and meant it.

  After leaving Catlin, I decided to pay another visit to Gavner and find out what, if anything, Beal had said to him about the Farnworth murder, and to discover Beal's reaction when he'd been informed of Farnworth's death. I phoned Gavner Enterprises from a booth on Twelfth Street, but a recorded voice informed me that Mr. Gavner was out and asked if I'd like to leave a message. After the tone, I informed the recorder that I had no message to leave and hung up. Apparently Gavner had departed for home after a hard day's work.

  I stopped for a quick supper at a Culinary Cow steakhouse, took two antacid tablets, drove back to my trailer, and went to bed.

  After sleeping late the next morning, I drove downtown to Gavner Enterprises and found the door locked. The building manager told me that Gavner had moved out the day before. He'd rented the office on a month-to-month basis and had left no forwarding address. I talked the manager into letting me into the empty office in the hope of finding some clue as to where Gavner had gone, but the place was so bare it might as well have been hosed clean.

  When I phoned Catlin to tell him about Gavner's sudden move, he seemed surprised but not particularly aroused.

  "Moving isn't a crime," he said, "even if it is unusually fast."

  "Maybe you ought to tell me what your investigation turned up on Gerald Gavner," I said.

  "I'll indulge you," he said, and excused himself to get the file on Gavner. "Gavner was born in Plinton, Georgia," Catlin said, "on August 20th, 1929. He lived in Georgia most of his life, then moved north to start Gavner Enterprises, which sells business equipment to various companies nationwide." Gavner had told the police he was single and listed his address as the Hawthorn Arms, a luxury apartment building on the west side of town.

  "If you turn anything up," Catlin told me, "share it."

  "You'd probably consider it irrelevant," I said, and hung up.

  I was perspiring, and my stomach felt as if it were trying to digest metal filings. This wasn't my kind of case. When you get involved with murderers, things can get violent. The last time one of my cases turned violent I was badly hurt. Though I didn't want that to happen again, I knew I was caught in currents I couldn't control. I drove to the plush Hawthorn Arms, asked for Gerald P. Gavner.

  I was told the expected—that Gerald P. Gavner had moved out. He'd paid the last two months of the lease on his furnished apartment the day before, and the doorman had helped him with his two large suitcases and summoned a taxi.

  I phoned Helen Farrow from the lobby and brought her up to date. She asked me to meet her at her apartment in an hour.

  "I want you to find out about Gavner for me," she said as soon as I'd stepped in from the hail. "Whatever happened to Harry, Gavner knows about it."

  "Not necessarily," I cautioned her. "There might be no connection. Gavner could have something to hide, and the police questioning him about Beal's death might have made him figure it was time to move on. Anyone investigating Beal's disappearance would be likely to tumble onto anything illegal Gavner Enterprises might have been involved in."

  "I want you to investigate Gavner anyway," Helen persisted. She was smoking another cigarette in that seemingly painful manner. "Go to wherever he's from—find out everything."

  "You're talking about money, Helen. More than I want to charge and more than you can pay."

  She smiled and handed me something small, neatly folded and faintly scented. It was a thousand-dollar bill.

  "Ten of those came yesterday in the mail," she said. "There wasn't any note or anything in the envelope—just the ten bills." Her drab eyes brightened with the hope she was living on. "It means Harry's alive. I think you can find him through Gavner."

  I asked her to show me the envelope the money had arrived in. It was a cheap manila envelope with her name and address typed on it. There was no return address.

  "This could be Beal's way of telling you thanks and goodbye," I told her. She'd thought of that, judging by her guarded expression and the glint of tears in her eyes. "But what I think is happening," I continued, "is that we've scared somebody, and the money is that person's way of trying to buy you off so you'll stop searching for Beal."

  "I want to use the money to find him," she said fervently.

  "I don't know if that's smart, Helen. If it is someone trying to buy you off, he may try to stop you some other way."

  Her answer was to hand me another thousand-dollar bill. "Use as much of it as you have to," she said. "Buy whatever information you need. I can't think of any way I'd rather spend the money." She glared challengingly at me. "I'm not afraid, are you?"

  "Yes. But I'll go to Gavner's hometown and start digging if you'll promise to put the rest of the money in the bank and keep your doors locked."

  She smiled again. Soft light from the curtained window highlighted her features, and I decided that twenty years ago she must have been passable. "It's a deal," she said.

  I was on the afternoon flight to Atlanta, and from the Atlanta airport I drove a rented car west to Plinton, Georgia. Plinton was a small town, and it didn't take me long to discover that the Gavner family, with their boy Gerald, had moved in 1930 to Carver, a hundred miles south.

  In the small farming town of Carver I discovered some members of the Gavner family still living there. They told me that Gerald Gavner had died of internal injuries after being struck by a car. They gave me directions to his grave, and I stood in the neatly kept little cemetery and looked at the dates carved on the weather-smoothed tombstone: August 20, 1929—June 12, 1933.

  I knew then what had happened. Someone had assumed Gerald Gavner's identity, obtaining a copy of his birth certificate from Plinton and using it to obtain various identification documents from library cards and gasoline credit cards to a driver's license, possibly even working up to a Social Security card. It's often done in the underworld, and the identification will stand up under a cursory investigation. The name on all the identification belongs to someone long dead, but someone who existed long enough to provide the foundation for the structure of phony identification. It's handy if the bearer of all that ID wants to engage in something illegal—like the operation of a dummy company to serve as a front for something profitable but risky.

  I wanted to find out more about Gavner Enterprises, and I knew who could tell me. After booking into a motel on the outskirts of Carver, I phoned Helen and told her I was flying to New York the next day.

  William Davis had vacated the New York office of Gavner Enterprises with the same abruptness with which Gavner himself had vacated the home office. So if Gavner had been involved in something crooked, Davis was too.

  The New York office, in an undistinguished building on East Fifty-Third Street, had been emptied as thoroughly as the home office, ex
cept for a skinny girl who was cleaning out the receptionist's desk and looking forlorn.

  She said her name was Millie Ann and that Mr. Davis had given her notice the day before and left immediately.

  "Left for where?" I asked.

  She shook her frizzy blonde head. "He didn't say. I didn't think it was my place to ask. I've only been working here a few months, part-time."

  "Don't you have any idea? It's important, and I know he'd want to see me."

  Millie Ann paused in her efforts to stuff several magazines and bottles of nail polish into a small paper bag. I could see she was debating with herself—and that she was miffed at losing her job on such short notice.

  "You might try the Hangout—it's a bar on Fifty-Second Street. Mr. Davis went there sometimes. Talk to Frank, the bartender."

  "Were Frank and Mr. Davis friendly beyond a bartender-customer relationship?"

  "I don't know." She rolled a romance magazine tightly.

  "But I was in there last night with my boyfriend and I saw Mr. Davis come in, talk to Frank, and hand him a big yellow envelope and some money. He acted real nervous. The skin under one of his eyes was jumping around, like."

  "Did he see you?"

  "What does Mr. Davis look like?" I asked.

  She frowned. "Average size, I guess. About forty-five, maybe a little more. Not too bad-looking—red hair, a nice smile. He dressed pretty neat."

  I thanked Millie Ann, told her I hoped she'd find work soon, and left.

  The Hangout was a respectable-looking if dim lounge with a long, padded bar worked by a lanky man with a gleaming bald head and a down-turned moustache.

  "Frank the bartender, I presume," I said, sitting near the end of the bar where he was stacking glasses.

  He nodded and gave me a puzzled smile. I ordered a beer. When he'd brought the beer I asked him if he knew where I could find Bill Davis.

  He didn't pretend not to know Davis, but he shrugged and shook his head.

  "It's important to both Davis and me that I find him," I said, placing a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

  Frank looked solemnly at the hundred. "I don't know where he is. If I did know, I'd tell you for sure."

  "What about the envelope he gave you?"

  Frank seemed surprised.

  "That won't tell you where he's at."

  "Did Davis say what was in the envelope?" My hand reached out as if to withdraw the crinkled bill on the bar. "Sure," Frank said hastily, and my hand paused. He watched my hand. "All that's in it are some other smaller envelopes, addressed to somebody I never heard of. I'm supposed to mail one the first of every month for the next year."

  "Let me look at one of those envelopes," I said. "Mr. Davis would want you to show it to me—believe me." I drew another hundred-dollar bill from my pocket and held it casually.

  Frank shrugged as if the matter were really of no importance, went to a small safe in a cabinet behind the bar, and bent over it for a few minutes. Then he returned with a small white envelope. When I released my grip on the second bill and let it drop on top of the first, he set the envelope on the bar so I could read the address: "Mr. Norman Llewelyn, Hill Manor, Hillsboro, Missouri."

  The next afternoon I turned my rented Chevy into a driveway beside a freshly painted metal sign lettered HILL MANOR-REST HOME. Though only about fifty miles southwest of the St. Louis city limits, Hillsboro was very country, and Hill Manor was secluded well off the main highway in low, densely wooded hills.

  As I followed the curve of the narrow blacktop drive, the rest home came into view. It was a rambling three-story white frame structure that looked like a modernized and enlarged farmhouse. The grounds were neatly kept, the grass green and mowed beneath the two large elms that flanked the steps onto a wide gray-floored porch. A few people sat reading in the rocking chairs that lined the porch. They ignored me as I parked the car and went in through the double-door entrance.

  I was in a large, cool reception area. A television room off to the left emitted the sounds of a soap opera. Beneath a large brass chandelier was a counter, and behind the counter stood a bespectacled elderly woman in a white uniform.

  "I'm here to see Mr. Norman Llewelyn," I told her through one of my best smiles.

  "He's in 326, at the end of the hall on the third floor," the woman said. "I'll ring upstairs and have someone tell him you're on your way up. What name should I give?"

  "I'd rather surprise him," I said, and before she could answer I leaned over the counter and spoke confidentially. "I'm an old friend, and I came here primarily to make sure all of his bills are being paid."

  "Oh, there's no problem there," she assured me. "Mr. Llewelyn has a wealthy aunt who sends cash every month to cover his expenses."

  I nodded to her and walked toward the wide stairway.

  When I entered Room 326 without knocking, Llewelyn was sitting in a wicker chair by a tall window, gazing down at something. His back was to me, and I saw only a slumping, gray-haired form haloed by the fading afternoon light. One finger was rhythmically tapping the arm of the chair.

  I said, "Hello, Harry Beal."

  He turned and jumped halfway out of the chair, then sank back. His mobile face went through a series of expressions and settled on a pasty, resigned smile.

  "I don't know what you're talking about or who you are," he said in a calm voice, but without real conviction. "My name is Norman Llewelyn. I'm here for a rest cure."

  "You'd have succeeded but for Helen Farrow," I told him. "You had to murder Farnworth; you devoted your life to his death, planned it for six years. But with such a strong motive to kill him, you knew that even if he had seemed to die accidentally the police would suspect you of killing him. So you manufactured the perfect alibi for yourself. You used the names of dead people and their records of birth to build several identities—taking months, maybe years to establish them. You created synthetic lives—witnesses to provide you with a completely leak proof alibi for the time of Farnworth's murder."

  "Whoever Farnworth is or was, I've never heard of him before." The wicker chair creaked softly.

  "You were in New York, Gavner said—but you were Gavner. Davis corroborated your presence there—but you were Davis. You knew the Davis statement would be done by deposition, without the same people seeing either Gavner or Davis. But you effected mild disguises so your descriptions would differ. You wore a red wig as Davis, and you were careful not to stand up in your phony Gavner Enterprises office as Gavner so I wouldn't get an estimate of your height or build."

  He began to squirm, a tic began under his right eye. "You're insane," he told me. Then his voice slipped into the concise efficient cadence of Gavner. "I demand that you leave—now!" Again his face and voice changed. He seemed to be slipping from personality to personality of the identities he'd created, as if the real Harry Beal had been lost among the long-dead.

  "I didn't figure on her loving me," he said finally, in a slow natural voice that probably was his own.

  "You needed someone like Helen Farrow to substantiate your death," I said. "You phoned her to establish the possibility of murder, but left your clothes on the bridge to suggest suicide. That way, if the police suspected anything it would be your murder—and that would throw off the idea of you faking a suicide to go underground after killing Farnworth. Helen would keep the law moving in that direction if it was disposed to investigate your death."

  "I didn't figure on her loving me," Beal repeated in a hoarse voice. "Not that much . . ."

  I didn't know if he was actually mad or not. Llewelyn was just another of his carefully contrived false identities, the one he'd kept in reserve to slip into when his scheme was finished. He planned to stay at Hill Manor until he felt well enough to check out and return to New York, to reclaim what was left of the money he'd earmarked for his recuperation and left to be mailed regularly from the Hangout.

  Leaving him slumped in the wicker chair, I walked from the suddenly stifling room and went downstairs to use
the phone at the desk.

  But I never completed the call.

  I heard screams, then a commotion beyond the French windows at the far end of the reception area. I put down the receiver and went with the white-uniformed woman from behind the counter as she ran to open the French windows.

  Beal was sprawled on the stones of the patio, where he had landed after plunging from his window.

  This time he was definitely dead.

  Standing there staring at his pathetically contorted corpse, I saw no real point in contacting the law. The easiest course for everyone was to keep Beal's death a suicide on the Jefferson Bridge—in another place, another time.

  Amid hushed voices, sobbing, and confusion, I made my way around the side of the building to my car and drove away.

  I would go home and explain to Helen Farrow that Beal was dead and better off that way, and that now she should pick up what was left of her life and forget him. I cringed at the thought of telling her—but hadn't I warned her when I accepted the case that she'd be disappointed.

  As Beal had discovered, sometimes it's impossible to convince the Helen Farrows of the world of anything they refuse to believe.

  I stopped for a red light and chewed an antacid tablet as I waited for it to change.

  Flotsam and Jetsam

  When a customer hefted a grease-spotted box of glazed-to-go and cracked, "You'd make more money selling these by the pound," Danny didn't smile his customary good-business grimace to hide the hurt.

  After the customer had left and Nudger was the only one other than Danny in Danny's Donuts, Nudger sipped his horrendous coffee and studied Danny over the stained rim of the Styrofoam cup. Danny, who resembled a scrawny basset hound, had larger, deeper, and darker circles than usual beneath his sad brown eyes, and the lines on his drooping features appeared longer and more defined. Something was gnawing on him. If this kept up, he would go from basset hound to bloodhound, a less lovable breed.