Nightlines (15 page)
Authors: John Lutz
“Then things were going well between the two of you.”
“Very well. We were both in love for the second time in our lives, enjoying it more than the first time.” The acute anguish gouged its way across Javers’ face again. “Romance tempered by maturity has a sweeter, more lasting quality than youthful love.”
“I guess it would.” Nudger paced nearer to the desk and wiped his perspiring hands on his pants legs. “Did Ms. Valpone ever mention any late-night phone conversations?”
Javers appeared puzzled. “Conversations with whom?”
“Anyone.” Nudger tried a smile, couldn’t tell from his side of it how well it worked. “It’s probably nothing, Mr. Javers, but it might tie in with something else.”
Javers accepted that weak explanation for Nudger’s question. “No,” he said, “she wasn’t one of those women who enjoy talking for long hours on the phone, either day or night.”
Nudger asked a few more questions, none of them really pertinent, all of them polite. It wouldn’t hurt to sow a little goodwill, in case the police objected to his talking to Javers. If the police ever learned of it. Besides, Nudger liked Javers, and talking about Grace Valpone seemed to provide some sort of relief for the man. People didn’t lose fiancées the way they did socks in dryers.
When Javers had wound down somewhat, Nudger thanked him and shook hands again, offering his condolences and meaning it. Javers got up from behind the desk and saw him out, assuring Nudger he’d do anything possible to cooperate in the investigation, so please to call on him. Nudger thanked him again and left Javers’ Tire-O-Rama, using the right door this time, nodding somberly to the pretty receptionist with the insensitive nose.
What Nudger had learned here was that Grace Valpone by all outward appearances simply wasn’t a candidate for the nighttime lines. Her future had been in order, her nights of loneliness numbered.
Or maybe there was a side to her that Javers didn’t know about. That no one knew about. A hidden, agonized side. Wasn’t that true of most of the nightline people?
He hurried across the blacktop parking lot to his car, breathing deeply of air that didn’t smell like new rubber. The humid summer day seemed to have gotten ten degrees hotter during the short time he’d been inside the building. A bead of perspiration zigzagged crazily, like a disoriented insect, down his rib cage.
As he drove from the lot, a size 13 wingtip shoe made a sharp smacking sound as it was lifted heavily from the heat-softened tar. Half a minute later, another car left the lot and turned onto Grissom Drive in the direction Nudger had taken.
XVI
I
he Volkswagen was an oven. Nudger sat inside it, across the street from Claudia’s apartment building, and felt as if maybe he should be wrapped in alu
minum foil so he’d bake evenly. The evening sun glinting off the dented hood hurt his eyes. He reached above the visor and slid his sunglasses out of their vinyl clip-on case, adjusting them with a deft tap of his forefinger to the bridge of his nose. The plastic frames were hot and sticky.
He wanted to approach Claudia before she had a chance to talk with the wife of C. Davis. She should be arriving home from work soon, and Nudger planned to get out of the car, cross the street, and confront her near the building entrance. For the past hour he’d been sweltering in the car, trying to think of an opening line. Finally he decided to let his and Claudia’s impending conversation take care of itself, let it flow naturally and hope it wasn’t a swirl down the drain.
A bedraggled brown stray dog trotted along the sidewalk and glared at Nudger. For a moment Nudger thought the dog might urinate on the car. It was that kind of look.
But the dog paused, sniffed, then trotted on with sudden purpose as if it had business downtown.
Nudger watched it in the rearview mirror, feeling a kind of kinship with the stray dog, as if they shared the same futile destiny. He wondered what he’d do if Claudia had lied to him. What did she look like? What if she turned out to be hideous? Would they still be souls rushing toward confluence? Would he still approach her? He thought he would, but he didn’t want to be put to the test.
No one had entered the building other than an elderly, stooped woman carrying a small shopping bag and advanc
ing tediously with the aid of an aluminum walker. It was too hot today for anyone but fools and stray dogs to be meddling around outside unless it was absolutely necessary. Too hot for an aged semi-invalid even if it
was
necessary.
Nudger felt the vague beginnings of heartburn. He thumbed back the wrapping on a roll of antacid tablets and tried to head off discomfort before it got a firm bite on him. He was aging alone in a hard world.
He had just popped a tablet into his mouth when she arrived. At least he assumed that the woman was Claudia.
Seen from across the street, she was indeed an average sort, medium height, dark-haired, wearing a plain but attractive blue or black dress that showed off a shapely figure somewhat on the thin side. She moved well, with a dancer’s unconscious grace; Nudger noticed that about her immediately because her smooth, elegant walk was in contrast to her angled, gritty surroundings. She was clutching a straw purse beneath her arm, walking fast toward the apartment building from the direction of the bus stop.
Nudger had to move fast himself if he was going to intercept her. Chewing and swallowing the antacid tablet so hurriedly that it made him cough, he opened the car door, tugged the sweat-plastered back of his shirt away from the upholstery, and climbed stiffly out.
Claudia—if she was Claudia—noticed him approaching and broke stride ever so slightly. Fear registered in the sudden mechanical deliberation of her walk, the squared set of her shoulders.
She got prettier as Nudger got closer. Dark eyes, lean face, nose straight but too large, the perfectly turned calves and ankles of a shoe model. His eyes took it all in. He decided the nose gave her a look of nobility. Nudger hoped this was Claudia.
Time to find out. When he was a few yards from her, standing between her and the building entrance, he said, “Claudia?”
She seemed ill at ease, yet somehow relieved that he knew her name. He wasn’t a complete stranger, out to snatch purse or virtue, an urban predator. On the other hand, he wasn’t a handsome priest.
“You’re Nudger,” she said, in a voice he recognized from the nightlines.
He moved closer, trying not to loom. “Are you angry because I found you?”
“No. I’m angry because you searched for me. Now that you’re here, it doesn’t seem to matter much.”
Nudger was trying to figure out just how to interpret that remark when she stepped around him and continued walking toward the doorway. What the hell? He followed her into the vestibule. She seemed to expect it. Or did she?
“We should talk,” he said, trying to get their meeting on less confusing ground. On any kind of ground at all.
“I guess so.” She started up the stairs and he trudged behind her, unable to stop watching the rhythmic sway of the dark dress about her legs. He could hear the soft rustle of its material against nylon. “I’m inviting you up so I can get in out of the heat,” she said, turning her head slightly so she could lob the words back over her shoulder.
Nudger said nothing as they scaled the four flights of stairs to her apartment. He decided that the dress might be a cocktail-waitress uniform. She was wearing brown sandals that didn’t go with the dress but were easy on the feet, and he had a hunch she was carrying highheeled shoes in her purse.
Without looking at him, she unlocked the door, pushed it open, and with a kind of shrug motioned for him to enter.
It was a small apartment, clean but in hectic disorder. Nudger could see into the kitchen. There were dishes, apparently washed and dried, stacked haphazardly on the sink counter. The living room, where he stood, was cluttered with paperback books, magazines, and newspapers. There was a threadbare green recliner in a corner, a sagging sofa, a coffee table marked with interlocking pale rings from damp glasses. On one end of the table sat an old Sylvania black-and-white portable TV, angled so it could be watched from the sofa. A print of water lilies, a Monet, hung on one of the pale-gray walls, and that was the only wall decoration. There were patches of gouged plaster and even a few nails protruding here and there, probably left by previous tenants. At the far end of the room was a closed door, no doubt leading to the bedroom. The telephone must be in the bedroom.
Claudia crossed the bare wood floor and switched on the window air conditioner. It rattled fiercely in protest, then settled into a steady hum and seemed resigned to doing
the job.
“The place cools off fast,” she said.
“Good,” Nudger replied. He was still hot. His face felt greasy with perspiration. He wished he knew what to say to Claudia.
“Sit down, please,” she invited.
He did, on the sofa. Its springs gave a metallic gurgle and it threatened to collapse. He watched Claudia. She watched him.
Crossing her arms tightly so that she was clutching her elbows, she said, “Now what? Gorilla jokes?”
“If you want to hear some.”
“I don’t.”
“Downstairs on the sidewalk,” Nudger said, “how did you know who I was?”
“Coreen phoned me at work and told me you’d been here.”
“C. Davis’s wife?”
“There is no C. Davis living downstairs other than Coreen. Single woman’s subterfuge. It’s necessary in this neighborhood.”
Nudger stood up, paced to the window with his fingertips inserted in his back pockets, then turned to face Claudia. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tracked you down against your wishes, but I couldn’t resist. It’s part of my line of work. I’m a private detective.”
“Christ, is there still such a thing?”
“Only the best of us survive at the trade. We’re primitives. Like iguanas and cockroaches, only not so ugly.”
“As which?”
“Ah, I detect a healthy nastiness here.”
She smiled. “Good old Nudger talk. It comforts.”
“I’m glad it does. Genuinely glad.”
“I suspect that genuineness is your talent and weakness. How did you locate me?”
Nudger explained it to her. She seemed not at all impressed by his cleverness.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, as if suddenly not wanting to be remiss as a hostess. But she didn’t apologize for the apartment’s messiness. “I think there’s beer.”
“Water will do fine,” Nudger said. He didn’t like it that she’d immediately thought of him as the beer type. Which he was.
While she walked into the kitchen and he heard tap water running, Nudger glanced at the titles of the reading material scattered around the room. There was fiction, nonfiction, mystery, mainstream, everything.
“You read a lot,” Nudger told her, when she returned and handed him a drinking glass full of water. There were three square ice cubes suspended in it, very clear ones, imprisoning muted reflected images.
“It’s escape,” she said. “I escape as often as I can.”
“From what?”
Instead of answering, she turned, went back into the kitchen, and ran a glass of water for herself. When she returned she said, “Now what again?”
“When I was here earlier today there was a man knocking on your door. A skinny, annoyed little guy with dark hair. Looked like an ugly young Frank Sinatra. He wanted me to deliver a message to you. He and the kids will be out of town this weekend, so you can’t see the kids. Who is he?
Who are the kids?” That should give her plenty to chew on, Nudger thought.
Claudia raised her ice water to her lips and sipped, gazing calmly over the glass rim at Nudger, not answering.
“Another painful subject?”
She seemed to deliberate for a moment, then she said, “The man is Ralph Ferris, my former husband. The kids are Nora and Joan, our daughters.”
And that gave Nudger plenty to chew on. “How old are Nora and Joan?”
“Twelve and ten.”
Nudger glanced around the apartment; no sign of children. “Do the girls live with Ralph?”
Something seemed to draw Claudia into herself and cause discomfort. “Yes.”
“I instinctively disliked Ralph,” Nudger said. “Was I right?”
“Ralph’s okay. The marriage would have worked out, only . . .”
Obviously she didn’t want to finish such a revealing sentence. Not yet, anyway.
“Bettencourt’s my maiden name,” she said, changing the subject just enough. All of a sudden she seemed embarrassed. She placed her glass on the coffee table. “Nudger, I never met anyone else after talking to them on the lines. I mean, I don’t use the lines for what you might be thinking.”
“I know why you use them. I’m glad we talked to each other. It’s okay.” He was trying to soothe her; she seemed seconds away from an emotional explosion. Nudger glimpsed something dark in her that had a hold on her, a voracious thing that fed on her insides and waited for opportune moments to inflict pain.
She picked up her glass and sipped more cold water. That seemed to calm the thing.
