by John Lutz
“Eight hundred fifty-three dollars and some odd cents,” Nudger corrected.
“Nine hundred.”
He shrugged. “Whatever.” Or did he enjoy taunting her? “I have the exact amount written down.”
“But not written where it counts-on a check made out to me.” He had made her angry. She began to stalk about the office, rotating her high heels slightly with each slow step as if grinding despicable small objects into the floor. She had on those silver shoes with the tiny black bows, like the pair Jeanette Boyington wore. Nudger felt that he might be developing a dislike for those shoes.
“You’ll get the money,” he said. “You know that.”
She stopped pacing and wheeled to glare at him. “But I want you to know that. If I don’t have a check in my mail by the end of next week, I’m taking you back to court.”
“Eileen, you know what they say about not being able to squeeze blood from a turnip.”
He could almost feel the heat from her eyes as she said, “I’ll settle for whatever oozes out.”
Nudger’s nervous stomach growled. It seemed to develop a language all its own when Eileen was around. It was a good thing she didn’t know what she had just been called.
“I’m giving you more than a week,” she reminded him. “That should leave you plenty of time to raise the money.”
“What I don’t have is plenty of collateral.”
She lifted her shoulders eloquently, flicked lint from her sleeve onto his floor. “That’s a problem you let develop. You should have gone back on the police force. You should have been paying me all along.”
He smiled and shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t go back, Eileen. And I can’t get a loan.”
She advanced a step and cocked her head sharply sideways. “Are you saying you’re not going to pay me?” A long-nailed forefinger was aimed like a gun at him, loaded with ammunition provided by a divorce court judge. They were bullets that stayed in the wounds and festered.
Nudger stared at that steady finger and remembered the divorce proceedings. Eileen’s lawyer was about the slickest courtroom manipulator he had ever seen. So convincing was the man that even Nudger thought the exorbitant alimony Eileen had been granted was justifiable, until several hours had passed in the real world outside the illusion-ary but credible world the lawyer had created for just long enough inside the courtroom. By then it was too late. His own lawyer had phoned to apologize, cutting the conversation short so he wouldn’t be late for his remedial law classes.
“Of course I plan to pay you,” Nudger said to Eileen, wondering how the two of them had come to this. And if they would have if the divorce had been over something simple, or at least definable, like an extramarital affair. They were both basically decent people.
“When and how much?” she asked.
“Soon, and all-well, half.”
She smiled as if she’d caught him breaking his diet at midnight. He remembered that beautiful, impenetrable skepticism. “I thought you had no collateral, no resources.”
“Someone owes me money from a job,” he said.
“And when will you be paid so I can be?”
“That depends. Should be any day. The Ringo case has been wrapped up for weeks.”
“Ringo? Sounds like a bookie or police character. What makes you think this Ringo pays his bills?”
“He’ll pay. He’s from a good family. Breeding tells.”
She sighed and scowled at him. Such a naughty boy he was. “All right,” she said. “I expect five hundred dollars by the end of next week, or it’s back to court. No more deals.”
“That’s reasonable enough,” Nudger said, reinforcing her spirit of compromise.
“And if this Ringo tells you he can’t pay, I want to know about it.”
“He’s not the type to tell anyone that,” Nudger assured her.
As Eileen started toward the door, she paused and looked around the office as if finally noticing her surroundings. Her upper lip curled as if she’d just discovered a hair in her salad. Nudger knew that she was making plenty of money selling one of those all-purpose home product lines while recruiting more salespeople. It was like a pyramid. She was a distributor now, with her own network of salespeople and a disproportionate cut of everyone’s take. To her, way up near the peak of the pyramid, this was poverty.
“How can you stand it here?” she asked.
Nudger felt anger dig its claws into his guts. But he knew the folly of stumbling into an argument with Eileen at this point. She was inviting him to thrash around in quicksand.
“The roof doesn’t leak,” he said, “and the rent is cheap, so I can save up and make alimony payments.”
She was smiling as she left. He didn’t get up to show her out.
To think that theirs had begun as an amicable divorce.
She certainly wasn’t the woman he’d married. But didn’t every divorced man think that about his ex? And since she’d gotten into sales, Eileen had become particularly bitchy and aggressive. Perhaps that rapacious aspect of her personality had been there all along beneath the surface, held submerged by her socially imposed self-image and the demanding but stifling roles of helpmate and homemaker, and the divorce had freed that part of her. Whatever the reason, the beast was on the loose. Nudger had married a female Dr. Jekyll; now he was contending with Ms. Hyde. These things happened in the chemistry of human relationships. Maybe people should never marry; maybe it was tinkering with the laws of nature and that’s why staying married was so tough. It was something for the marriage counselors and psychologists to consider.
Nudger returned his head to the cradle of his arms, and dreamed again of the sea.
X
Nudger was told at the Third District that Hammersmith had just gone out to eat lunch. He’d left a message for Nudger, inviting him to join him at Ricardo’s in the adjoining Fourth District.
Nudger was familiar with Ricardo’s, though he hadn’t been there in the past several years. The restaurant had been in existence at the same location on Ninth and Locust for more than a decade. Nudger remembered eating there when he was a police rookie attending the Academy, and he and Hammersmith had stopped in there a few times when they were assigned to the same two-man patrol car. It had become one of Hammersmith’s favorite restaurants.
As Nudger tugged open a heavy wood door with a stained-glass insert and stepped into Ricardo’s, he was struck by the size of the place. The owner, Gino Ricardo, must have leased the space next door and eliminated a wall. The long mahogany bar was where Nudger recalled, along the north wall, to the left of the door, and the general decor seemed much the same. There were the heavy dark drapes, plush carpet, and red tablecloths. Thick oak partitions afforded privacy and provided only occasional glimpses of the tops of heads of tall diners. Ricardo’s was a restaurant where, even when it was crowded, a conversation could be carried on with reasonable assurance that it wouldn’t be overheard. Though within walking distance of Police Headquarters at Tucker and Clark, it was the scene of countless tense and confidential exchanges between the police and their informants.
Ricardo’s was crowded now. The long bar was two-deep with customers drinking or waiting for drinks, some of them marking time until a table became available. Waitresses and busboys scurried around among the oak partitions like industrious mice in a maze they had mastered. A maitre d’ in a serious blue suit was approaching to ask Nudger if he had a reservation, when Nudger caught familiar movement from the corner of his vision. Hammersmith had sat where he could see the entrance and was standing now and motioning Nudger over to his table.
Nudger sat down across from Hammersmith, who had before him an awesomely large pizza whose embellishments ran the gamut of the garden, and a tall frosted stein of draft beer. Nudger ordered a chicken salad sandwich and a glass of milk from a waitress who looked like a young, skinny Gina Lollobrigida.
“Don’t be crazy,” Hammersmith said. “This is a great Italian restaurant. They’ve got
lasagna and cannelloni and fettuccine. They’ve got pizza any size and way, spaghetti and ravioli and other olis and onis and inis. And you ask for-”
“My stomach’s been bothering me,” Nudger interrupted. He could understand how Hammersmith had reached his corpulent state. There was real passion in his voice when he spoke of food. “Besides, if I order light, you might offer to pick up the check.”
“You look glum,” Hammersmith said, changing the subject. “Something the matter?”
“I had a visit from Eileen.”
Hammersmith took a wolfish bite of pizza, used a plump finger to tuck in a string of cheese that was dangling from the corner of his mouth, and nodded in understanding. When he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “Nice woman, Eileen.”
“For somebody else, not for me.”
“The divorce was your fault. You bring out the worst in women, Nudge.”
Nudger said nothing as the waitress brought his sandwich and milk. He took a cautious bite of the sandwich. It was delicious, despite its lack of ethnicity. Hammersmith could be wrong.
Neither man said anything until Nudger had finished eating. Then Hammersmith offered him one of the three remaining oversized slices of pizza and Nudger declined. Around them were the muted sounds of flatware and china in subdued cacophony. Buzz of conversation, occasional laughter, clink of ice cubes against glass. Nudger rested the back of his head against the oak partition behind his chair and waited.
Hammersmith enjoyed a long swig of beer and set the stein down on the red tablecloth. “Hugo Rumbo is his real name,” he said, “and he hasn’t got much of an arrest record. Stole a car when he was a teenager, and an assault charge four years ago. He’s forty years old, had some amateur fights and a few matches as a pro boxer. Nobody ever compared him to Marciano. The way I heard it, his feet and hands were always fighting in two different rounds, and he got hurt bad and had to quit the fight game. Now he picks up money as a sparring partner over at the South Broadway Gym, and besides his old Buick he has a pickup truck and does yardwork and hauling. Other than the usual shady characters who hang around boxing, he has no disreputable friends and no mob connections. He’s ornery and clumsy and washed up, not a pro either in or out of the ring.”
“Did somebody talk with him?”
“No, he has no idea we checked into his background. If he means you bodily harm, we wouldn’t want to frighten him away.”
The waitress came over and cleared away some of the dishes, placed the point of a pencil to the dimple on her chin, and asked if there would be anything else. Hammersmith said no, he’d already eaten two Gourmet Deluxe pizzas and drunk two steins of beer. Nudger asked for another small glass of milk. The waitress scrawled the order on a pad and hurried away with the impatient, fluid gait of the very young.
“The thing you should know,” Hammersmith said, “is that one of the people Rumbo frequently does work for is Agnes Boyington.”
Nudger wasn’t surprised, now that he knew Rumbo wasn’t a professional enforcer. “She tried to buy me off the case,” he said.
“Why? Her daughter was murdered and you’re trying to find the perp. You should be chief among the good guys.”
“She doesn’t want her other daughter suffering mental strain, but above all she doesn’t want the family name besmirched by what might be revealed in the press about the dead twin. The Puritans have nothing on Agnes Boyington. She runs a tight little matriarchy.”
“I gathered she was one of those.” Hammersmith tilted back his head to drain the last of his beer, then pushed the empty mug away to the center of the table. “Could be coincidence,” he said. “Maybe you cut Rumbo off when you made a left turn, and he sulked and followed you so he could set you straight about rules of the road. Maybe what happened has nothing to do with Agnes Boyington. Actually, she doesn’t seem like the sort to hire a thug.”
“She’s the sort that will do what’s necessary to get what she wants. You’re fooling yourself with that coincidence talk.”
“I’m not fooling myself,” Hammersmith said. “I just wanted to see what you thought of the idea.”
“What I think is that I need to have a talk with Agnes Boyington.”
The waitress appeared again, and placed Nudger’s glass of milk on the table along with the check. She smiled and commanded them to have a nice day and discreetly withdrew.
Hammersmith transferred his wadded red napkin from his lap to the table and stood up, brushing crumbs from his paunch. “I’ve got to get back to the station house,” he said. “Crime doesn’t stop for lunch, you know.” He scrutinized the check and placed some folding money on the table. “This’ll take care of half,” he said.
“Sometimes crime goes to lunch at Ricardo’s,” Nudger told him.
Hammersmith smiled, said goodbye, and walked away. Nudger saw him nod to the maitre d’ and light up a cigar as he pushed through the door to the street.
Nudger took his time finishing his second glass of milk, enjoying the restaurant’s warm and garlicky ambience. Then he summoned the waitress and paid the check, leaving most of Hammersmith’s “half” for the tip.
He drove from Ricardo’s back to his office. When he checked his telephone recorder he found that Claudia hadn’t called but Jeanette Boyington had.
When Nudger returned Jeanette’s call she told him angrily that she’d phoned him four times and had gotten only the recorder. She’d made another appointment, for two o’clock, at the fountain again in the Twin Oaks Mall. She was to meet a lonely man named Rudy.
“This one has blond hair,” she said. “I got him to tell me that on the phone. It’s easy to get them to trade general descriptions, and if they have dark hair I don’t make an appointment with them.” She told Nudger what Rudy would be wearing. He was the white-belt, polyester type. A step up from Sandy.
“You sound as if you’re enjoying yourself,” Nudger said, catching a smug sense of power in her tone that gave him a chill.
“I am. I feel that we’re doing something that will result in the apprehension of my sister’s murderer, without him even suspecting. That’s the only part of this I’m enjoying, but I’m enjoying it immensely, to the very depths of my soul.” Her voice crackled with cold fury.
Some family, Nudger thought, hanging up the phone. There were flaws, aberrations, genetic and otherwise, that were passed down from generation to generation in certain families, affecting differently each person contracting them. He reflected that it would be an exercise of morbid fascination to trace the Boyington family tree back to its diseased and twisted roots.
Rudy must have had second thoughts. Or maybe since 3 A.M. he’d met someone more his type. For whatever reason, he didn’t show up for his appointment with Jeanette at the fountain in Twin Oaks Mall. Nudger watched for him until half past two before giving up and going back to the office.
The morning mail had arrived during the afternoon. Hidden among the advertisements and incredible offers was a note from Mrs. Natalie Mallowan, Ringo’s owner, explaining that she would be somewhat later than she’d anticipated with the nine hundred dollars she owed Nudger. She assured him that Ringo was well and seemed to be suffering no ill effects from his time away from her.
Nudger was glad about Ringo, but he hoped Natalie Mallowan could come up with his fee before the end of next week.
If only he could introduce Eileen to Natalie and explain that there was no need to transfer the money twice and they might as well leave him out of it. Natalie could owe Eileen, okay?
But that sort of thing hadn’t worked since his schoolyard days. It was a character-builder to make paying one’s debts as difficult as possible. Even banks wouldn’t let you assume loans anymore.
The desk phone rang. Hammersmith calling. Nudger recognized the special edge in his voice; it went back years.
“I’m at an apartment over on Spring,” Hammersmith said. “It’s leased to a woman named Grace Valpone. I think you should come right over here, Nudge.”
&nb
sp; Nudger felt the old hollow coldness in the pit of his stomach, the heady shortness of breath. “Who’s Grace Valpone?” he asked.
“We don’t know. She can’t tell us. She’s in her bathtub, not taking a bath. She’s dead.”
XI
Grace Valpone’s apartment was in an old U-shaped brick building with ornate gray stone cornices. There was a circular area that had once been a garden in the center of the network of walkways to the entrances. Now it was bare earth with a few withered azaleas in the middle and a futile sprinkling of grass seed, bisected by what looked like tricycle tracks. A few dozen neighbors were milling around the many police cars blocking the quiet residential street and parked at crazy angles to the curb. Uniformed cops kept the gawkers out of harm’s way. Some of the patrol cars’ roof lights were still on and rotating, casting pale hues against the slanted late afternoon sunlight. One of the cars’ radios, tuned to top volume, sputtered and crackled occasionally with code numbers, car designations, and addresses. Official stuff. The neighbors were impressed. They shifted about uneasily, exchanging comments and I-told-you-so’s, excited and a little scared.
A calm, striped cat disdainfully observed Nudger from a perch on a windowsill as he gave the hard-faced cop at the building’s west entrance his ID and explained that Hammersmith was expecting him. The cop nodded, stepping aside to give him room to pass.
Nudger’s stomach was becoming light and queasy. “Is it a messy one?” he asked.
“She’s been dead a couple of days,” the cop said.
Nudger swallowed the acidic, coppery taste along the edges of his tongue. The cop smiled. The cat didn’t blink.
“First floor, at the end of the hall,” the cop said, as Nudger pushed open the door and entered a vestibule profaned with graffiti.
There had been no need for directions. From halfway up the stairs Nudger could see plenty of activity in the hall, and, through the wide-open door, in the apartment’s living room.
As he entered, a familiar, faintly medicinal scent wafted to him, then was gone. He tried to identify it but couldn’t.
