The Nudger Dilemmas

by John Lutz

  "So who invited you here?" Hammersmith said behind him.

  Nudger didn't recall inviting anyone to drop by at four a.m. at his apartment on Sutton, but there seemed to be someone in the hall, pounding on his door with a sledgehammer. He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes, trying to convince himself this was a dream and he wouldn't have to cope and could go back to sleep.

  The pounding continued. Even the walls were shaking. "Nudge?"

  Nudger recognized the voice filtering in through the locked door. Danny.

  "Hey, Nudge!"

  Nudger's stomach came belatedly awake and gave him a swift mule kick that helped to propel him out of bed. Soon the neighbors would be on the phone, in the hall, shouting, threatening to call the landlord or the police, meaning it all.

  The muscle-bound drug-head down the hall in 4-C might get violent; he'd almost killed a meter reader last month.

  "Damn!" Nudger stubbed his toe on the nightstand. He managed to switch on the reading lamp, which provided enough light for him to find his way out of the bedroom and into the living room. Switching on another lamp, he made it to the door and unlocked it.

  It was like opening the door to a distillery. Danny was slouched against the wall in the hall. He staggered back with a dumb grin on his long face, almost losing his balance, and stared at Nudger. "You ain't got nothin' on, Nudge. You're naked."

  Which was true, Nudger suddenly realized, coming one hundred percent awake just in time to see the door across the hall open and old Mrs. Hobson peer out above her gold-rimmed spectacles. The Hobson door quickly closed, then opened again a fraction of an inch.

  "Shut up down there or let me join the party!" a deep voice yelled from the landing upstairs.

  Nudger quickly grabbed Danny and yanked him inside, then shut and relocked the door. He went back into the bedroom and put on a robe and the leather slippers his true love Claudia Bettencourt had given him on an expensive whim, then he returned to the living room. Danny was now slumped in Nudger's favorite armchair, his head lolling. He had vomited on the chair and on the carpet. He looked as pale and sick as Nudger had ever seen him.

  "What happened, Danny?" But Nudger knew what had happened.

  "Smallish drink," Danny said, his voice slurred.

  "How many?" Nudger asked.

  "Thousands."

  "Stay there," Nudger said. He went into the kitchen and got Mr. Coffee going. When he came back, he saw that Danny had passed out.

  "The hell with this," Nudger said. He would let Danny sleep. He got some wet towels, cleaned up Danny, cleaned the armchair and the carpet. Then he wrestled the limp Danny until he'd removed his shirt and shoes and dumped him onto the sofa.

  "Doughnuts," Danny said, snuggling in.

  "What?"

  "Remember when you caught that old guy in my shop and chased him, thought he had a bag of the day's receipts. But all he had was doughnuts. He was hungry, was all. Two dozen glazed doughnuts. His name was Masterson, gray guy about ninety years old. Bum with a hole in his shoe with newspaper sticking out of it. Hell, we let him have the doughnuts. What did I care; I was drunk at the time. That's when I was drinkin' heavy, Nudge."

  Nudger thought back. "That's been over seven years ago, Danny."

  "Eight at least," Danny said, his voice still thick.

  "How come you remembered that?" Nudger asked.

  Danny ignored him. "He'd have got sick if he'd eaten all them doughnuts," he said. He would never have said that if he'd been sober. Fiercely proud of his weighty cuisine was Danny. Soft snoring began to drift up from the sofa.

  Nudger poured himself a cup of coffee and let Danny sleep.

  He sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and thinking, until almost dawn. Then he went back to bed and tried to sleep for a while, but that didn't work. At eight in the morning, he felt almost as bad as Danny looked.

  Danny probably felt even worse than he looked. He sat on the edge of the sofa, holding his head with both bands as if it were fragile crystal. "Fell off the wagon," he said sheepishly, when he'd managed to free his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

  "Why?" Nudger asked.

  Danny shrugged, wincing. "Got to thinking about Akron and Perry. It ain't right, how they stayed dry so long and then wound up booze-soaked and dead. It ain't fair."

  "Life isn't renowned for its evenhandedness."

  "Don't I know it, Nudge." Danny brought off a smile. Brave man, risking having his cheeks shatter. "You know it, too, what with people pounding on your door in the middle of the night."

  "What made you think of the old bum with the doughnuts?" Nudger asked.

  Danny looked bewildered. "Huh? What old bum?"

  "Take a shower," Nudger said. "I'll get us some breakfast."

  "Nothing to eat for me, Nudge," Danny said, making it to his feet. "Just black coffee and a gallon of orange juice." He stumbled bleary-eyed into the bathroom. Nudger listened to the tap water run as Danny drank glass after glass of water from the washbasin faucet before climbing into the shower.

  Over his third glass of orange juice, Danny said, "I ain't been that far gone in over six years, Nudge, except for when Uncle Benj died and didn't leave me any money. He got to be a mean old bastard, a dry drunk who wouldn't drink or admit his problem. They're the worst kind of alcoholic."

  Maybe, Nudger thought, but Uncle Benj's liver might have disagreed.

  After breakfast, Danny looked, and seemed to feel, reasonably human. While Nudger listened, he phoned someone named Ernie, an AA buddy and confidant who promised to meet him that morning. Then, assuring Nudger that he was all right and would stay sober, he left to open the doughnut shop.

  Nudger picked up the phone and made a ten o'clock appointment with Dr. Abe Addleman, a reformed alcoholic and the head physician at the Pickering Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center, who knew more about alcoholism firsthand and textbook than anyone else in the city.

  Mays was still in town, registered under his own name at the Mayfair, a classy old downtown hotel with acres of carpeting and wood paneling. Hammersmith's check of major hotels had located him within an hour. The age of the computer. Nudger rode the elevator to the hotel's fifth floor, chomping antacid tablets as he rose. In the hall, he adjusted his clothing and buttoned his sport coat.

  He knocked on Mays's door, heard movement inside the room, and within a few seconds the door opened. Jack Mays, older and heavier than the grinning, tow-headed sailor Danny had pointed out in the Kelso crew photograph, stood staring blankly at Nudger.

  "I was expecting Room Service."

  "Sorry," Nudger said. "I'm a friend of a friend of Artie Akron and Mack Perry. Can I come in so we can talk?"

  "Talk about what?"

  "Old times. I'll talk, and you interrupt me if I'm wrong about something. Though I suspect I've got everything pretty well figured out."

  Wariness glimmered for a moment in Mays's flat gray eyes. Desperation crossed his face like a shadow, and he ran a hand through his thinning blonde hair. He had his white shirtsleeves rolled up; when he raised an arm to lean on the doorjamb, Nudger glimpsed a faded blue anchor tattoo high on his forearm. "This a shakedown?" he asked.

  Nudger didn't answer. Mays stepped back to let him in, then closed the door and walked to the window. He stared down at the traffic on St. Charles, studiously not looking at Nudger. Nudger could almost hear the gears in Mays's mind whirring.

  "You got out of Raiford Prison in Florida last month," Nudger said, "after serving seven years on a narcotics charge."

  Mays snorted. "Those aren't old times."

  "But they pertain to old times on the Kelso. You peddled drugs and bootleg liquor on board ship back then, didn't you?"

  "Sure. No big deal. Half the guys in Nam used one thing or another. It was a bad war."

  "Especially for you, Mays. The Kelso's captain found out about your drug-dealing and was going to have you court-martialed. There was a confrontation on the bridge, when the two of you were alone for a few minutes. That's
when the North Vietnamese attack occurred and the ship was hit. You used the opportunity to kill the captain so he couldn't make good on his court-martial threat. When Artie Akron and Danny Evers got to their feet after the explosion, they saw the captain still standing. After the bridge had burned, his body was found in the debris."

  "They were mistaken about Captain Stevenson," Mays said, looking at Nudger now. "They were disoriented. He was killed in the explosion on the bridge. Akron knew they'd been wrong about seeing the captain on his feet five minutes after they thought they saw him. Akron was trying to pull him from the flames—got a medal for it even though he couldn't reach Stevenson. It didn't matter, though, because Captain Stevenson was already dead. He was killed almost instantly when the torpedo hit."

  "That's what they thought all these years. But that's not what you admitted to them in Honolulu, when the three of you were drunk."

  Mays smiled a mean smile. "You got to Danny Evers."

  "Sure. Danny and I are old friends. I did what you planned to do, what you were hanging around town waiting for the opportunity to do when enough time had passed after Mack Perry's death. I got Danny drunk this afternoon. Only I did it with his permission, and in the presence of a doctor. And a stenographer."

  Mays took a step toward Nudger, then stood still, poised. Dangerous. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. His eyes were the color of a flat gray-green sea where sharks swam. Nudger's stomach turned over, but he talked on despite fear.

  "You, Akron, and Danny were falling-down-drunk in Honolulu when you admitted having killed the captain and told how you did it. Then you tried to make amends for your slip of the tongue and your booze-affected judgment by saying you were only joking. But you all knew it hadn't been a joke. The next morning, Akron and Danny didn't remember any of the conversation, or didn't seem to. And you weren't about to bring it up. But you watched them, and whenever there was a Kelso St. Louis reunion, you showed up and reassured yourself that they still didn't recall the drunken conversation in Hawaii so many years ago. When you got out of prison, you came here for the twentieth reunion, found out there wasn't going to be one, and also discovered that Akron, Danny, and Mack Perry were attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. You didn't know they'd become problem drinkers, but you knew what I confirmed this afternoon: When something happens to someone while very drunk, he tends to forget it when sober, but he might just remember it when he's drunk again, even years later. Some doctors even say that's the reason alcoholics drink, to try, usually futilely, to get in touch with the part of their lives they can only recall when extremely drunk; it's as if a piece of their past is missing. You were afraid Akron or Danny would fall off the wagon, get blind drunk, and happen to remember the Honolulu conversation and mention it to the wrong party. But why did you kill Mack Perry?"

  "He was going to AA meetings with Artie Akron and Danny. When alkies get into the bottle they sometimes spill their guts to a fellow AA member, especially if he's an old friend and shipmate. If they'd just been social drinkers, I could have let them live. Perry always had a drinking problem, but how do you figure the other two, Danny and Akron, becoming alcoholics?"

  "Maybe you gave them their reason to drink," Nudger said. "One that was buried in their subconscious minds."

  "Freud stuff," Mays said, grinning. He shrugged. "They couldn't prove anything, not after all those years."

  "Sure they could. You told them you shot the Kelso's captain with a pistol you stole from ordnance. If his body was exhumed, even now, the bullet might be there in the coffin with him."

  "Might," Mays said. "The bullet might have passed through him when I shot him. Or even fallen out of his body; he was burned almost to a cinder."

  "It's a big might," Nudger told him. "Too big not to act on if a murder charge is at stake. You could take a chance on your old shipmates not remembering, until you found out they were problem drinkers, alcoholics. Enough deep drunks, if any of them started drinking again, and the secret might unexpectedly pop out of the past. The only sure way to prevent that from happening was to kill them. But first you got them drunk, to make sure they were capable of falling off the wagon and might repeat what was said in Honolulu, to somehow justify the murders as well as to provide a cover for the deaths. You knew the police wouldn't make a connection or look too closely into the street murders of a few middle-aged drunks, killed and rolled for their wallets. The thing about your old shipmates that frightened you, their alcoholism, was what provided a safe means of getting rid of them."

  A gradual change came over Mays, a darkening of his complexion and a hardening of his broad features. It was as if something in a far, shadowed corner of his mind had been flushed out of hiding. "I could live knowing they might have a few too many now and then," he said. "It was unlikely they'd remember what I said all those years ago. But to a gut-deep, genuine alcoholic, time means nothing. Anything might surface. Twenty years ago is like twenty minutes ago. You're right. I couldn't take the chance anymore that they might talk." He moved around so he was between Nudger and the door. "And I can't take the chance that you might talk, no matter how much you shake me down for." He scooped up a heavy glass ashtray and sprang at Nudger.

  Nudger yelled in surprise, tried to back away, and lost his footing. It was a good thing; as he fell backward onto the carpet, he felt a swish of air and glimpsed the bulky ashtray arc past his head. Mays lost his grip on the ashtray at the end of his swing. It went skipping across the room and broke against the far wall. Snarling, he lunged at Nudger just as Nudger had gotten up on one knee.

  They went down together, rolling on the floor and seeking handholds on each other. Nudger shoved the palm of his hand against Mays's perspiring face; it slipped off, and he had the brief satisfaction of feeling his elbow crack into Mays's cheekbone. He tried to grasp Mays's hair, but there wasn't enough of it to grip, and Nudger's hand shot away with a few blonde strands between the fingers of his clenched fist. Mays had one hand against Nudger's chest, pressing him to the floor. His other hand found Nudger's eyes and tried to gouge them out. Nudger twisted his neck, turning his face to the carpet. He could smell something garlicky Mays had had for lunch. He could hear Mays's labored, rasping breathing. Or was that his own rasping struggle for air? Two middle-aged guys out of shape and fighting for their lives.

  Then Mays was sitting up, one hand beneath Nudger's shirt. There was amazement and rage in his contorted features. "You bastard! You're wired! Everything we said's been recorded!"

  With strength exploding from this fresh infusion of rage, he lunged again at Nudger, trying for a chokehold. This time Nudger managed to bend his knee and place a foot against Mays's soft midsection. He shoved hard and Mays grunted and lurched backward into a crouch, slamming into the wall and hitting his head hard. He glared at Nudger and felt around on the floor for one of the jagged pieces of the broken ashtray.

  "Lose a contact lens?" Hammersmith asked. His bulk suddenly loomed over Mays. Two blue uniforms flanked him, behind Police Special revolvers aimed steady and ready at Mays.

  "Did you get enough of that on tape?" Nudger asked, peeling adhesive strips and transmitter from his bare chest, wincing with pain.

  "Every incriminating word," Hammersmith said. He began reading Mays his rights as two more uniforms came in and jerked Mays to his feet, frisked him, and handcuffed his wrists behind his back.

  "I didn't have any choice about what I did," Mays was saying, looking at Nudger now as if pleading for understanding and pity. "They knew about me, even if they didn't realize it. The knowledge was out there, floating around like something rotten in their memories. It could have washed ashore on alcohol anytime, with any unexpected change in the current. I couldn't live knowing that, so the three of them had to die."

  "Two out of three isn't bad," Hammersmith told him. "It might win you the gas chamber."

  The Thunder of Guilt

  It didn't begin as anything unusual. The big guy, Arthur Leland, came into Nudger's office and hired him to
follow his wife, Beatrice. Nudger got a lot of that kind of work; his seedy address seemed to attract it. Even if clients had plenty of money, like Leland, and lived in a good part of town, also like Leland, they seemed to think they should hire a private investigator they considered to be from the unwashed underside of life to follow an errant spouse. Dirty folks for dirty work.

  Leland owned and managed a construction company specializing in commercial projects. There was real agony on his veiny, ruddy face as he told Nudger, "Bea is a good woman. She's had some strain lately. We're both forty-one, Nudger. She became pregnant six months ago and had an abortion. It went against her grain, and I guess I talked her into it. A week later our youngest child, Alice, was killed in an automobile crash. She was our last child at home. It . . . ruined both of us for a while. We didn't know what to do. The church didn't seem to help. I tried to talk Bea into professional counseling, but she wouldn't go. We suffered a lot. We came out of it different people."

  "And now you think she's seeing another man," Nudger said. He picked up the pity in his voice and was embarrassed; he felt sorry for both the Lelands, with their dead child and their dead or dying marriage. He didn't like the idea of following the wife to some motel, where she'd meet a man, they'd have a few drinks in the lounge, and then rent a room at the four-hour rate. The prospect of watching and reporting that made Nudger feel like the cheap goods Leland probably thought he was.

  "She goes out at odd hours during the day, doesn't tell anyone where she's going. And she lies to me at times; I know because the odometer on her car doesn't register the mileage it would if she was telling me the truth." Leland shifted his husky frame awkwardly. "I'm not looking for ammunition for a divorce, Nudger. I'm worried about Bea; I just want to know what's going on. I need to know, damn it!"

  "And you will know," Nudger told him, trying to spike the man's anger with the old positive approach.