Thicker Than Blood (Alo Nudger Series)

by John Lutz

  She was running up the wide concrete steps to the entrance, not looking back, when Nudger climbed out of the car and approached Chuck, who appeared in no hurry to go inside the dread building.

  “Chuck Wise?”

  The kid with the shaved head stopped and turned around slowly, as if he couldn’t quite believe someone would know his name. There was faint dark stubble over his head that could be seen from up close, as if someone had rubbed soot there. “That’s me,” he said. He had round, full features for such a skinny kid. Or maybe the hairlessness made him look that way.

  “I was a friend of Luanne’s,” Nudger said

  “Yeah, well, so was I.”

  “I’m looking into her death.”

  Chuck’s red-rimmed blue eyes grew wary. “A cop?”

  Nudger laughed. “Not hardly. I’m a private investigator.”

  “You just dropped Nan Grant off, didn’t you?”

  “Yep. She was telling me what she knew about Luanne. She said you might be able to add to it.”

  “Well, I’m kinda late.”

  “You didn’t seem to be in any hurry. All I need’s a few minutes.”

  Chuck thought about it, then shifted the weight of his bookbag to his other shoulder. “So ask me what you want, then I’m outa here.”

  “How well did you know Luanne?”

  “Not as well as I thought. We went out a few times, is all. I thought we was more than just friends, then I kept hearing how she was keeping some mean company outside of school.”

  “What kind of mean company?”

  “Older guys. You know. So I followed her one afternoon and she met some older guy, all right.”

  “Then what?” Nudger asked, when it appeared Chuck was finished talking.

  “They talked, is all. At a bar down in South Saint Louis. I didn’t go in, but I could see them through the window. They sat at a table and had this talk, then they left.”

  “Did you know the man she met?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  “Was he a black man with a fancy gold earring by any chance?”

  “Nope. He was a white guy, going bald but with a lot of frizzy gray hair around the sides. Old. ’Bout fifty, maybe even older.”

  Horace Walling? Nudger wondered.

  “Luanne went and met some of her girlfriends after that,” Chuck said. “A few nights later, when I asked her about the guy, she told me to mind my own business. We had a big argument, then things cooled off between us and stayed cool. That was about six months ago.” For the first time, Chuck’s carefully controlled nonchalance slipped a bit. He seemed about to sob, then stiffened his features and said, “I miss her. I hope you find the shithead bastard that killed her.”

  “Did she ever—”

  Nudger had been about to ask Chuck if Luanne ever talked about her father, but the boy wheeled and hurried up the steps toward school, his canvas bag bouncing off his hip. He’d been about to lose his composure completely, Nudger was sure, and didn’t want to be observed crying. Nudger didn’t blame him.

  He turned around and got back in the car. Then he drove away from there before somebody called the police about a suspicious man hanging around outside a high school.

  He decided to hang around outside somewhere else.

  Mirabelle Rogers’ apartment.

  CHAPTER 30

  Nudger’s guess was that King Chambers had something to do with Luanne’s death. Following Chambers might bring results, and the logical place to find him and begin doing that was Mirabelle’s apartment.

  The silver Mercedes was parked in front of the building. That didn’t necessarily mean Chambers was inside with his lady love, but it was possible. Nudger drove around the block and parked a prudent distance behind the Mercedes, facing the same direction. He killed the engine, then tuned to a blues station on the radio, and settled in for a long wait. Waiting was a large part of his work, and he’d learned to put himself in a kind of suspended mental state involving half his brain. At least that was how he saw it. He was at rest, his eyes half-closed and his conscious mind at idle speed, but at the same time he was alert.

  It was hot in the parked car and getting hotter, but Nudger barely noticed. He was perspiring heavily and he would have been uncomfortable if he’d allowed himself to feel. He told himself that if the heat really began to get to him he’d start the engine and run the air conditioner. That wasn’t much of a consolation, really, since the Granada’s air conditioner leaked Freon and wasn’t much more than a fan, and running it for any length of time while the car was sitting still tended to overheat the engine. Still—

  He sat up slightly and peered through the windshield as a man exited Mirabelle’s apartment building.

  Then he saw that it wasn’t King Chambers, so he rested his head again on the warm but soft seatback and began tapping a finger on the steering wheel in time to an old Hoagy Carmichael tune, thinking there really should be a Hoagy Carmichael revival.

  When the man who’d exited the building had opened the iron gate and walked between the two stone wolf hounds, Nudger stopped thinking about Hoagie Carmichael and sat up straighter again.

  The guy still didn’t look like King Chambers, but that was because he was Dale Rand.

  Was Rand secretly spending time with Chambers’ girl?

  No. More likely he’d been seeing Chambers in the apartment, on business.

  Rand crossed the street and got into a blue Cadillac. A loaner. His own car was probably in for repairs after Norva Beane had raked it with gunfire. The comprehensive clause in his insurance should cover that. Stockbrokers were fired on all the time.

  Nudger bent down and to the side, out of sight, until he heard the Caddy whisper past. Then he straightened up and started the engine.

  He sped down the street and made a hard right turn, just in time to see the blue Caddy pass the intersection. He counted to ten at the corner, then made a left turn, and followed half a block behind Rand, leaving five cars between them. Keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead, he cranked down both front windows. Then he contorted his body and lowered the rear side window directly behind him. A breeze rushed and eddied through the car; it was itself warm, but it chased away the worst of the heat.

  Rand didn’t go far. The Cadillac wended its way through a maze of side streets, some of which were permanently blocked off to make the neighborhood less accessible and presumably safer, then it turned onto Kingshighway. After a few blocks, Rand turned again, east this time, and drove to Euclid Avenue. On Euclid he parked near a restaurant that had tables out on the sidewalk under a green awning. He got out of the Caddy and stuffed coins into the parking meter, then walked toward the restaurant.

  Nudger parked a block away and walked back on the other side of the street. He saw Rand seated in the shade of the awning at one of the outdoor tables, sipping a glass of beer. There was a small bookstore almost directly across the street. Nudger ducked inside it and pretended to browse through paperback mysteries while he kept an eye on Rand through the window.

  Rand checked his wristwatch now and then between sips of beer, apparently waiting for someone. Nudger thought a good bet would be Horace Walling.

  Wrong again.

  Gazing over the cover of a Rex Stout reprint, he watched a short, muscular man with dark hair and a dark, full beard sit down opposite Rand. He was wearing neatly pressed slacks and a short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to reveal glinting gold chains. There was a rolling motion to his walk, as if he were a small trained bear pretending to be a man. He looked familiar but Nudger couldn’t quite place him.

  The two men talked for about fifteen minutes while Nudger stalled for time, examining one book after another, wondering why so many of them featured cats on their covers. Rand and the man seemed to know each other well. At one point the bearded guy tapped Rand on the chest several times in succession as if to emphasize a point. Neither man was smiling, but the conversation seemed calm enough and in no way hostile.

  “I
recommend that one,” a voice said behind Nudger.

  The other customers had made their purchases and left, and the attractive blond woman behind the counter had walked over to help Nudger. She was wearing gray slacks, white socks, and Birkenstocks.

  “Have you read it?” Nudger asked, still watching across the street. The waitress was standing at Rand’s table now. Were the two men ordering brunch, or a drink for the bearded guy, or was Rand paying so they could leave?

  “ . . . everything written by Kaminsky,” the bookstore woman was saying.

  Rand and the bearded guy were standing up.

  “Your word’s good enough for me,” Nudger said.

  He quickly paid for the book he’d been holding, stuck it in his back pocket, and left the bookstore as Rand and the other man were leaving the restaurant.

  “You’ll be hooked,” the woman said with a smile, as Nudger closed the door behind him.

  Nudger was worried about that. About being scaled and filleted, too. He leaned his back against the store’s brick wall, trying to be small, as Rand and the other man stood near Rand’s parked car and talked.

  That was when Nudger recognized the man with the beard.

  Al Martinelli.

  Nudger had seen his photograph dozens of times in the newspapers and on TV, during a murder trial last year when Martinelli had been called as a key witness. He should have been a suspect, according to the news and Hammersmith. Martinelli was the city’s most notorious and affluent illicit drug dealer. He also owned a restaurant, which he used as a front, and did his own advertising on late-night television while wearing a chefs cap. An ego thing, apparently. Hammersmith said Martinelli hadn’t been inside the restaurant in years. Hammersmith said he himself had gone there once and found the toasted ravioli abominable and had never returned.

  The two men parted without shaking hands. Martinelli strolled with his rolling gait down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He had his hands in his pockets and appeared to be whistling. Rand wore a grim expression as he climbed into his rented ride and drove away.

  Nudger, unable to talk himself into following Martinelli, jogged to the Granada and tried to catch up with Rand.

  He did, on Kingshighway. Rand drove the Caddy south, then east on Highway 40.

  It wasn’t long before Nudger realized where they were headed: the Chadwood Country Club.

  Nudger relaxed and hung far behind the blue Cadillac. He stayed with Rand just long enough to watch him pull into the country club parking lot and meet Horace Walling. Both men hoisted golf bags out of the trunks of their cars, then disappeared into a low, tile-roofed wing of the main building.

  No point in staying around here, Nudger figured. Or it might have been his persistent fear doing his reasoning. A kind of reverse Pavlovian response: He got near this golf course and his mouth went dry.

  After making a U-turn, he drove back to his office to phone Hammersmith to tell him about seeing Dale Rand with both King Chambers and Al Martinelli. Rand was possibly a major player in the area’s drug trafficking.

  The office was so hot and humid that at any moment it might break out in toadstools, but Nudger didn’t plan on staying there long, so he left the window unit off.

  There was one message on his machine. Hammersmith had called.

  Convenient, Nudger thought, and punched out the Third District number. When he asked for Hammersmith he was put through immediately.

  “I’ve got some information for you,” he said, when Hammersmith came on the line.

  “Good,” Hammersmith said. “You can tell me about it when you get here.”

  “When I get there?”

  “The Third District station house. My office.”

  “I know where ‘here’ is,” Nudger said. “Remember, I just called you on the phone. But get there why?”

  “To go with me to identify a body.”

  Nudger realized he was holding his breath, and not a lot of it. He began to feel light-headed.

  “Nudge?”

  “Yeah?” he wheezed.

  “Somebody cut the throat of our friend Aaron. Prints confirm ID, but we’d still like an eyeball witness to say it’s him. You have to look at a morgue photo is all, considering your delicate stomach.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Is right now convenient for you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good. Afterward maybe we can go out and get some lunch. I’ll buy.”

  Nudger’s stomach flipped. “Jack?”

  But Hammersmith had hung up.

  CHAPTER 31

  There was the gold swastika earring.

  There was the pencil-line mustache.

  There was the smug smile. Only now it was below rather than above the chin.

  “That’s Aaron,” Nudger said, and handed the black-and-white morgue photo back to Hammersmith.

  They were in Hammersmith’s office at the Third. Hammersmith had ordered the photograph delivered there to spare Nudger a trip to the morgue. He was thoughtful sometimes, when he allowed himself to act on what lay beneath the protective sarcastic exterior so necessary in police work. He knew how Nudger felt about going to the morgue, how it bothered him for days afterward.

  “Fingerprints show his full name was Aaron Burr Washington Smith—no lie. Some kids found the body behind some trash cans in an alley down by Laclede’s Landing. near the river.” Hammersmith slid the photograph back into its yellow envelope. “The ME report says Aaron died about four o’clock this morning. I figure anybody running around at that time is gonna be dead the rest of the day anyway, so the murder seems kinda redundant.”

  “Are you tying it in with the Luanne Rand murder?” Nudger asked, ignoring Hammersmith’s stab at dark humor.

  “The Major Case Squad’s leaning in that direction.”

  “I lean in the direction of King Chambers.”

  “He doesn’t usually kill direct, Nudge.”

  “I know. But didn’t he usually send Aaron?”

  “Yeah. That was why he kept him around, to scare people, then do what was necessary if they weren’t scared enough. But I still don’t see Chambers hitting Aaron, especially in such a messy manner. The late Aaron was useful, maybe even indispensable. Why would Chambers do away with his naughty right hand?”

  “Aaron became a loose end that had to be snipped. Be realistic, Jack; Chambers or Aaron were never suspected of killing anybody living in a respectable neighborhood, much less Ladue. There’s plenty of heat over the Luanne Rand killing, so if Aaron did murder her on Chambers’ orders, Chambers would play it safe and make sure Aaron couldn’t talk.”

  Hammersmith leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his protruding stomach. His nails were neatly clipped and appeared to have been buffed, as if he’d recently had a manicure. “Chambers used to do that kinda thing, I’m sure, but he’s way beyond wet work now. He sees himself as a kinda chief executive. Slitting throats is menial labor. Temporary work. Even if it lasts for years, like Aaron’s job did before he got terminated.”

  “So you think Chambers called a Kelly girl?”

  “Sorta the equivalent.”

  “That would only create another dangerous loose end,” Nudger said. “Some things a guy like Chambers has to do himself. He’s perfectly capable of slitting a throat.”

  “Oh, sure. We all are, under the right circumstances.”

  Nudger didn’t know about that. His mind flashed again on the grisly photograph of Aaron stretched out on the morgue examining table. Those tables were equipped with drains. His stomach moved.

  “We’ll no doubt get around to Chambers anyway, Nudge. He doesn’t have the kinda juice to stay out of a murder case when the victim was his employee.”

  “Speaking of Chambers,” Nudger said. And he told Hammersmith about seeing Dale Rand leaving Mirabelle Rogers’ apartment, then meeting Al Martinelli at the Central West End restaurant on Euclid.

  Hammersmith fondled the greenish cigar protruding from h
is shirt pocket, but he didn’t take it out and remove the cellophane wrapper. Maybe he remembered Aaron’s photograph, and he didn’t want to pollute the air and have Nudger make a mess in his office. “That’ll put Rand in a different light with Captain Massinger,” he said. “That guy thinks Ladue residents are only capable of bloodless white-collar crimes involving the funds of blue-chip corporations.”

  “It puts Chambers next to Martinelli, too.”

  “There was never any doubt about that, Nudge. You do or sell drugs in any major way in this town, and you work for, or you’re a customer of, Al Martinelli.”

  “Then Martinelli might be Chambers’ boss.”

  “It’s probably safe to say that. He’s certainly above him in the pecking order.”

  “It’s like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes,” Nudger said. “Open one and you find another.”

  “Like life itself. And if you think King Chambers is a badass, just get mixed up with Martinelli. He’s got people working for him that barely qualify as human. Some of them probably still have tails, and long ones.”

  Nudger thought that one over. “You think feather boas will ever come back in style in a serious way?” he asked.

  “Huh? That some kinda snake?”

  “No, it’s a long, thin item you wear around your neck. They have feathers on them.”

  Hammersmith looked at him in the way Nudger had seen him stare at perpetrators guilty of inexplicable violence. “Your neck, not mine.”

  “For women, I mean. As a fashion statement.”

  Hammersmith narrowed an eye at him. “Why?”

  “For the reason women wear lotsa things—to make them more attractive?”

  “I mean, why do you care?”

  Nudger suddenly feared the SEC. A number of insiders had gone to prison in recent years as the result of Stock Exchange Commission investigations into trades based on confidential information. Just how legal were those overheard conversations that formed the basis for Nudger’s stock purchases? Nudger knew they’d stay legal if no one ever found out about them. Why drag Hammersmith into this? He was a friend. “I dunno,” Nudger said. “Claudia and I were talking about it a few nights ago.”