Thicker Than Blood (Alo Nudger Series)

by John Lutz

  “Nevertheless, if you’re not too sore from the rubber hoses, maybe we oughta go someplace and chat.”

  “I’m dog-tired,” Nudger said. “And they didn’t need rubber hoses. They’re good at their work.”

  “They gotta be, out here in moneyland. Taxpayers with clout are forever on their ass.”

  “People like Dale Rand?”

  “Sure. And they’re naturally curious about who shot at him, being the police.”

  “Well, I told them who squeezed the trigger.”

  “You’re a heroic figure, Nudge. It’s gonna be in the morning paper. Get you a big kiss from Claudia, I’ll bet.”

  Nudger couldn’t help but feel a thrust of hope. Stirrings of pride. Had Biff Archway ever hurled himself at a loaded gun? “Let’s go get some coffee, have that talk.”

  “Right.” Hammersmith nodded toward his unmarked Pontiac. “I’ll follow.”

  Nudger got in the Granada and drove to the Steak ‘n’ Shake restaurant on Manchester, not far from his apartment. On the way over, it began to rain, so gently it was almost a mist. The Granada’s wipers were frustrated by it and screeched on the windshield with impotence, further fraying Nudger’s nerves.

  When Hammersmith arrived, Nudger was already inside the restaurant, seated in a booth in the No-Smoking section, facing north so he could see traffic out on the slick and reflecting street. A Maplewood police car sped by, siren off but roofbar lights blazing, casting beautiful red and blue hues that danced over drab wet pavement and the used-car lot across the street.

  Hammersmith paused just inside the door and glared at him for being in the No-Smoking section, then snubbed out his cigar in an ashtray and headed for the booth with that graceful, gliding walk of his that gave the impression he might be inflated with helium.

  When the waitress appeared, Nudger ordered black coffee, resigned to enduring more nervousness in exchange for wakefulness. Hammersmith said he wanted a chocolate milk shake. The waitress, a heavyset black woman with sad eyes, wrote down their order dutifully on a notepad and said she’d be right back. Because of how long it took to concoct the milk shake, it was several minutes before she returned. Neither man spoke until she’d gone back behind the counter.

  “I’m sorta walking the line, knowing what you told me about that suicide on Latimer Lane,” Hammersmith said. He sampled the milk shake and smacked his lips in appreciation.

  “There’s no reason to think Norva Beane was involved in that,” Nudger said.

  Hammersmith poked the straw in and out of his milk shake, sinking the maraschino cherry that had been perched on top on a dabble of whipped cream. “You were at the scene because she hired you, Nudge.”

  True enough. Nudger sampled his coffee and scorched his tongue. Yeow! Why did he always do that without thinking?

  “I better know everything you told the Ladue police,” Hammersmith said.

  Nudger told him.

  By the time he’d finished, the waitress had refilled his cup, and Hammersmith was on his second milk shake.

  “I talked to some people while you were being questioned by the law,” Hammersmith said. “I guess you wanna know what I found out.”

  Nudger nodded. “That’s why I’m buying the milk shakes.”

  “Your client’s—”

  “Former client,” Nudger corrected.

  “Okay. Norva Beane’s first shot went through the Caddy’s windshield, barely missing Rand. There’s no doubt she wanted to kill him.”

  “None in my mind,” Nudger said, remembering Norva frantically hopping to the side to angle a second shot around him.

  “The first bullet deflected off the rearview mirror, went through the back of the car’s front seat, then lodged in one of the door panels. It’s too distorted to be used in a ballistics test. The second bullet hasn’t been found and probably won’t be.”

  “What about Norva?”

  “She’s disappeared like the second bullet. Ladue called in, and we sent a squad car to her apartment to pick her up. No surprise when she wasn’t home. Ladue’s there now with our guys, searching the place to know what there is to know about the lady, what’s on her closet shelf, buried in the back of her dresser drawers, in her diary if she keeps one. Figure out her motive and such.”

  “Motive? She thinks Rand swindled her out of her investment money, so she took a shot at him. Maybe that’s how it’s done in Possum Run.”

  Hammersmith dabbed milk shake from his lips with his napkin and stared at Nudger. “Possum Run?”

  “Town where she’s from.”

  “If there really is such a place.”

  “I looked on a map. It’s there, down near the Arkansas line.”

  “Far as is known,” Hammersmith said, “Norva Beane’s got no connection with Dale Rand. No motive. There’s no record of any sorta business transaction between her and Rand.”

  Nudger took too big a sip of the fresh coffee and scalded his tongue again. “Then why did she hire me?”

  “I don’t know, Nudge. But then, much of your world is a puzzle to those of us on the outside.”

  “What about Fred McMahon?”

  “I think he’s going to prison.”

  “I mean, Norva thought Rand might be in on some crooked junk-bond deal with McMahon. Maybe McMahon and Norva are connected in some way.”

  “The Ladue police say not.” Hammersmith finished his milk shake with a loud slurping sound that caused several heads to turn. He sat back and kinked the straw as if trying to render it useless for anyone else, any other milk shake. “I’ve gotta be sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me, Nudge. Our friendship’s put me in a gray area that’s almost black, and we might be talking about murder if Norva Beane takes another run at Rand for whatever reason.”

  Nudger said, “You know it all. Everything. Except for . . .”

  Hammersmith leaned forward over his empty glass with its kinked straw.

  Nudger told him about the stock information and suggested he should call his broker first thing in the morning.

  Hammersmith gazed at him with his neutral blue eyes and said, “You’ve gone stark raving bonkers. I’m going home to watch Jay Leno.”

  “It’s already higher than when I bought it,” Nudger pointed out. “Fortune Fashions is up a half.”

  Hammersmith huffed and raised his bulk to standing position. “Better lock in your profits and buy tax-free municipals.”

  He didn’t look back at Nudger as he glided to the door and outside.

  There would come a time, Nudger vowed, when with pleasure he would lay the financial page of the newspaper in front of Hammersmith with certain stocks circled in red.

  No, circled in black.

  Still exhausted, but on edge from the coffee, he decided he’d go to his apartment and watch some television himself. Maybe get bored enough to doze off.

  He paid at the register, then went out into the rain and climbed into the Granada. The old car’s interior stayed dry in weather like this, but it sure smelled musty. Like a moldy basement that leaked.

  He drove the short distance to his apartment and parked on Sutton. It began raining harder as he was crossing the street. A deluge. He forgot about dignity and ran. When he opened his apartment door, he was breathing hard and he was soaked. Also more wide awake than ever and possibly catching a summer cold. When you got exhausted like he was, then got jacked up on caffeine so you couldn’t sleep, it lowered your resistance. Bacteria loved that. It was their reason for living. He’d look in the medicine cabinet; maybe there was something he could take.

  He forgot about all that when he switched on the light and saw Norva Beane seated on the sofa.

  CHAPTER 20

  Norva looked concerned and said, “It appears to have rained hard on you, Mr. Nudger.”

  “All my life.” He smoothed wet hair back from his forehead and came the rest of the way into his apartment, closing the door behind him. Only one lamp was on, one of the matching set on either side of t
he sofa. In the soft, yellow sidelighting, Norva looked schoolgirl young and vulnerable. It was difficult to imagine her with a rifle, aiming to kill. “How did you get in here, Norva?”

  “You left the door unlocked, so I just walked on in.”

  He knew that wasn’t true. “The police are doing their best to find you.”

  “I ’spect they are.”

  “Maybe you should help them and yourself. Get a good lawyer and give yourself up.”

  “Good Lord, no! I’d never do that. Anyways, there’s no such thing as a good lawyer.”

  “I know a few, Norva, believe me.”

  “Well, giving myself up at this time is purely out of the question.” She didn’t move from where she sat on the sofa with her legs crossed. She seemed so calm and sweet in her bucktoothed, country way, this fugitive deemed armed and dangerous.

  Nudger crossed the room and sat slumped in an armchair, facing the sofa. It was warm and humid in the apartment, but that didn’t seem to bother Norva. “You haven’t been on your honor with me,” he said.

  “Well, that’s so, Mr. Nudger. I’ve told you some untruths.”

  “Lies, you mean.”

  “If you care to say it in so coarse a way. But I had my reasons.”

  “I’d like to hear them, since I’m still alive after this evening.”

  “It’s why I came here, Mr. Nudger, to square things between us. To tell you the whole story.”

  Nudger leaned back in the soft chair, resting his head against the swell of upholstery. He closed his eyes, but not quite all the way. He’d know it if Norva rose from the sofa. He said, “Are you really Norva Beane from Possum Run?”

  “That part is certainly true. The rest mostly isn’t.”

  “What else is true, Norva? What’s the pure truth?”

  “I gotta go back a ways for that, Mr. Nudger. When I was just a freshman in high school, a boy got me pregnant, then off he went and joined the Marines. I went away to Little Rock and carried to term, then gave up my baby for adoption and come back home. Everybody there acted like nothing had happened, like I’d just been away to visit an aunt like my ma said. Only word gets around in a place like Possum Run. Everybody knew what had really happened. That didn’t bother me none. What did bother me was I gave up my own baby. I been tortured by remorse ever since, even though I knew I’d made the right decision for the child at the time. A fifteen-year-old mother with neither dime nor dollar, in a place like I was from, what else could I do?”

  She’d asked the question as if she didn’t want to hear an honest answer. Hurried on with her story:

  “My own family was so poor they was barely feeding themselves. Another soul to keep alive would have broken Ma and Pa’s backs. My way was clear. But sometimes the heart won’t listen to what the head knows is right.”

  Nudger told her he understood, it was the source of many of his problems.

  “Not very long ago, Billy Halliman reappeared in Possum Run.”

  She made it seem he’d taken form like a magician’s illusion. “The father?”

  “Yep. He’d been a career military man, a mechanic working on big jets, then some defense cuts forced him to resign. Least that’s what he said. He told me he was on his way to some kinda civilian job in the Middle East, and he wanted to talk to me before he left.”

  “Seems odd he’d want to see you, after so many years.”

  “Billy wasn’t without his own remorse, Mr. Nudger. He told me he’d taken the trouble to find out what happened to our daughter, even though the adoption service tried to keep such information confidential. He thought I deserved to know what he’d learned, that she’d been raised by a family here in St. Louis. I was determined to find out what I could about her, maybe to put my mind at ease. But what I discovered from Billy and my own inquiries was that she grew up and was living in an environment even worse than any I coulda gave her. A twisted and evil environment, Mr. Nudger. I feel even more guilt and remorse about giving her up now, and I’m in a frightful rage at the adoptive parents—’specially the father—who ruined my little girl’s life.”

  Something cold moved through Nudger. He leaned forward and stared at Norva.

  “What happened, Mr. Nudger, is my daughter Luanne grew up the adopted child of a drug trafficker and molester. I did truly come to you under false pretenses, and for that I apologize. I read about Fred McMahon in the newspaper, and I decided to link together him and Dale Rand so I’d have a good story when I tried to hire you. Dale Rand never had a thing to do with Fred McMahon nor any junk-bond deal—I barely know what a junk bond is—but I had good reason to kill him and still do.”

  Nudger was still trying to absorb this. “You’re saying Luanne Rand is your daughter?”

  “Yes, that’s how fate worked it out.”

  Nudger was quiet for a while, listening to night sounds off in the distance. The whir of traffic on Manchester and over on Highway 44. A distant siren. Dogs barking frantically, very far away. “You hired me to find out about Rand, but it was Luanne you were most interested in.”

  “I’d heard things about Dale Rand, and I wanted to find out more. I thought a professional like you could get the information. And you surely did a fine job of that, Mr. Nudger. What I heard was true. Now the only way I can make things up to Luanne is to kill Dale Rand.”

  She spoke as if they might be discussing killing a chicken for dinner.

  Nudger ran his fingers through his damp hair again. “I don’t think it’s that simple, Norva.”

  She stared guilelessly at him. “I do believe it is.”

  “I have to tell the police you’re here,” he said.

  “Well, of course. I figured that. One thing I know you got is professional ethics. Lots of personal ones, too. But I felt I owed it to you to explain anyways, regardless of where your sense of duty was to lead you.”

  “Murdering Dale Rand won’t change anything for Luanne that can’t be changed some other way,” he said. “And your getting imprisoned for life or executed won’t do her any good.”

  “Hardly matters now what happens to me. Best thing I can do is remove Rand from my daughter’s life, as I was the one put her in his. The man deserves to die, and I’m the instrument of justice, no matter what the law says or does.”

  “God’s justice, huh?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with God. It’s got to do with what I did to my own daughter long ago, and what I can do to save her now.”

  The flesh at the corners of her mouth twitched when she said this. Her eyes were hard and red-rimmed, not as if she’d been crying, but as if she hadn’t slept for a long time. She was exhausted, Nudger knew, and running on raw nerve. She might do anything.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “I want you to talk to a friend of mine. Guy named Hammersmith.” He reached for the phone on a nearby table.

  She said, “I think I won’t do that, Mr. Nudger.”

  A subtle change in her eyes should have warned him.

  An arm clamped around his neck from behind. Thick, powerful. He dug his fingernails into it, trying to pull it away, but it had iron invincibility. All he’d accomplished was bending back his fingernails and possibly inflicting a few scratches. He lashed backward with both fists but made only light contact when he wasn’t thrashing air. The shoulder he’d banged on the ground tackling Norva near Rand’s driveway exploded with pain. The arm around his neck tightened and he fought to breathe. Felt and heard cartilage crackling in his throat. He got panicky then, but only for a brief moment. Then he was outside himself.

  His vision blurred, his head felt weightless, as if his brain had become detached and was hurtling madly among the stars like a faintly aware comet.

  The room tilted in light-speckled blackness and whirled him away into nothingness.

  CHAPTER 21

  There went a cockroach. A small one, but he was sure it was a cockroach. It stopped. It waved its antennae as if taunting anything or anyone watching.

  Nudger hated
roaches almost as vehemently as he hated pigeons. Usually his apartment was free of them—roaches and pigeons. But the damned things got in now and then—roaches, not pigeons—in boxes or grocery bags, carried in sometimes in the clothes of other people. Nasty little invaders—the roaches, not people. And there one was, only a few inches from his face, staring at him. Not a person, but a small cockroach. It occurred to him that it was odd, being on eye level with an insect.

  Hey, what was he doing on the floor? Nudger, not the insect.

  Then he remembered last night, Norva Beane, the iron arm that had choked him into unconsciousness. The man must have been hiding in the apartment all the time Norva was telling her tale about her illegitimate daughter. Luanne. Dale Rand’s adopted daughter and maybe his victim. Good Lord, what a world!

  Nudger was stretched out on his stomach on the carpet, in front of the armchair he’d been sitting in when he was choked. His cheek was pressed flat against coarse fibers. Wet fibers. He’d drooled during the night.

  This was unpleasant. He raised himself up on his elbows, watched the alarmed cockroach scurry away, and thought: Enjoy life while you can, you little bastard, before I call the exterminator.

  When he rolled onto his side to start to get up, pain struck his shoulder like lightning. He swallowed the terrible taste in his mouth and realized his throat was dry and as sore as if he’d been . . . well, choked almost to death.

  He sat all the way up, leaning his back against the lumpy front of the armchair, and moved his left arm experimentally. The shoulder burned with pain, but he had mobility. He swallowed again. His throat still hurt. He wondered if he could speak. Said, “Testing, one, two, three.” Heard, “Traagh, un, tooo, thray.”

  Maybe a shower, then some hot coffee would help. He aggravated his shoulder again by lifting his arm to look at his watch. 9:35. He’d been unconscious for over nine hours. That was a lot of rest. Aside from the pain, he should feel refreshed. Hah!

  With great effort, he managed to get to his feet and lurch into the bathroom. Now his head was throbbing as if he had the mother of all hangovers, and any extended family. He sat on the toilet seat and worked out of his clothes, then ran some water and climbed into the shower, almost pulling down the plastic curtain with the fish design in the process. He stood for a long time letting the hot needles of water roar against his sore shoulder.