Nightlines (21 page)

Nudger felt an undeniable shameful relief. Kelly was one of those men who had about him an air of controlled menace, of barely restrained, unpredictable violence seething beneath a crude, calm exterior. A gut-deep tough man, close to the primal.

He surprised Nudger. Instead of going to a parked car when he got outside, Kelly turned and followed the walk bordering Sears’ display windows. He stopped and stood in a relaxed wide stance, with his hands clasped behind him, a few feet from a bus stop sign.

Nudger’s cowardly relief left him and his stomach came to bothered life again, spurring him on as he hurried back through the mall to the escalators and the upper-level parking lot.

He didn’t know if he was disappointed or not when he drove the Volkswagen into the lower-level lot and saw Kelly still lolling at the bus stop. Nudger found a parking space from which he could observe Kelly, positioned the Volkswagen between the yellow lines just so, switched off the engine, and waited.

Not for long. Within ten minutes the Cross County Express belched and snorted its way through the lot and hissed to a stop, blocking Nudger’s view of Kelly. Half a dozen shoppers got out through the rear door. The bus rumbled mightily and emitted heat-shimmering black diesel exhaust, then disembarked from the curb.

Kelly was gone from where he’d been standing.

Nudger backed the Volkswagen out of its parking slot and followed the bus.

They drove east, through a string of west-county bedroom suburbs, all the way into the city. Kelly got off the bus near Oakland and Kingshighway and stood at another stop on the west side of Kingshighway, waiting to transfer to a southbound bus.

As Nudger parked on Oakland and kept Kelly in view, he pondered the fact that the man had used public transportation to get to his intended meeting with Jeanette. Certainly the women Kelly met had cars, or he would assume so.

Kelly’s own car—if he owned one—would be a hindrance and possible incriminating complication if he left it in a parking lot while he did murder. It fit, this use of the buses to meet intended victims.

Or maybe Kelly simply didn’t have a car. Or maybe he had one and it was in the shop. Maybe Kelly wasn’t a murderer, just a lonely guy making blind dates by phone.

Maybe Nudger should be careful about leaping to convenient conclusions.

The Kingshighway bus rumbled to a stop, and Kelly and two other passengers boarded. Nudger waited until the bus would be far enough ahead of him, then pulled out into the Oakland Avenue traffic and made a right turn on Kingshighway.

The bus was stopped for a red light a block ahead. Nudger joined the line of cars behind it. He didn’t have to worry about mistaking another bus for it; this one sported a large liquor advertisement below its dusty rear window, on which someone had lettered
HOT STUFF
with red spray paint across the seductive likeness of a slinky blonde in a black silk evening gown.

Nudger couldn’t have gotten close to the bus if he’d tried. Traffic was heavy on Kings-highway, moving irregularly as cars slowed or stopped to make left turns into side streets. Nudger didn’t regard that as a problem. From the angle he had, he could catch occasional glimpses of Kelly’s blond head through one of the bus’s side windows.

But when traffic thinned out near Magnolia, Nudger was surprised to see that Kelly was gone.

Like that. As if Houdini had had a hand in it.

Possibly he’d switched seats. Nudger hadn’t seen him get off at any of the stops the bus had made. A horn blared as Nudger veered the Volkswagen into the outside lane.

When he caught up with the bus, which now contained only a few passengers, he still couldn’t see Kelly inside. He dropped back half a block and continued following the bus, but with a self-deprecating kind of hopelessness. He could actually taste the bitter frustration of having gotten so close to the man who might be Jenine’s killer, only to lose him again through bad luck. Or through incompetence.

Nudger followed the bus all the way to its turnaround point, where it would stand empty before looping in a wide U-turn to make its northward run. The end of the line.

No Kelly.

Somewhere between Tholozan Avenue, where Nudger was sure he’d seen him through the bus window, and Magnolia, where Nudger was sure Kelly was no longer on the bus, Kelly had stepped from the rear door onto the sidewalk with some other passengers and disappeared. It had to have happened when Nudger was well back from the bus, when his view of the bus stop had been partially blocked by stalled traffic.

Nudger sat in the parked Volkswagen and slapped too hard at a mosquito perched on his forearm. He missed the mosquito. He hurt his arm. Letting two antacid tablets dissolve in his mouth, he turned the car around and drove back the way he’d come, ignoring his mosquito antagonist as it explored the far corner of the windshield. A truce of sorts.

Within fifteen minutes he caught up with a northbound Kingshighway bus. It had the same sexy advertisement below its back window, the slender blonde in the black silk gown. He noticed that the ad wasn’t what he’d thought. It wasn’t a liquor advertisement at all. It was an ad for Tabasco sauce, and the words
HOT STUFF
weren’t sprayed on by a vandal but were made to look that way, part of the copy. Some ad man’s contribution to creativity. A real eye-catcher.

Nudger actually groaned as he realized his mistake. Somewhere along the way he might have begun tailing a different bus. He had stupidly followed an advertising poster instead of Kelly. A poster that was probably one of hundreds being carted around the city.

In a burst of frustration, he slapped the bucket seat next to him, stinging his palm. He wondered if drinking an entire bottle of Tabasco sauce in one sitting might prove fatal. He wished he had an ad man to try it on.

XXII
I

ave you ever worn a black silk evening gown while cooking with Tabasco sauce?” Nudger asked Claudia.

“No. It sounds kinky.”

Nudger sat at Claudia’s kitchen table, nursing an icy Budweiser and enjoying watching Claudia prepare dinner. She had every burner glowing on the old white four-burner stove, busying herself from pot to skillet to pot. She was a good cook, a practiced cook, though not necessarily the kind that could blend gourmet dishes. She was more of a specialist in the basic, in the sort of food that was no less tasty because it was recognizable on the plate. Corn on the cob was boiling in one pot, green beans simmering in another, potatoes heating in a third. In an old, heavy skillet, she was pan-frying the steaks Nudger had brought. Country cooking.

He liked the here and now of his life, he decided. There was a pleasant domesticity to it. Though Claudia wasn’t wearing an apron, she was dressed in wifely-enough fashion in a sleeveless print blouse, denim skirt, and practical square-toed shoes that tried but failed to detract from the
graceful turn of her ankles. Her dark hair was worn pulled back and pinned in a loose bun, emphasizing the symmetri
cal leanness of her face and making her deep-brown eyes seem enormous. She was obviously enjoying what she was doing, in fact seemed so absorbed in it that at times Nudger wondered if she remembered he was there. The simmering food gave off tantalizing cooking scents that mingled in the tiny kitchen. The beer was cold, the woman was warm. All very snug and right. Life on the upswing.

Nudger had thought his day was completely ruined when he lost Kelly. Listening to Jeanette’s cold anger after he’d reported to her on Kelly hadn’t improved his mood, either. But when Nudger had returned to his office, there was a new client, a six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounder who described himself as a small businessman, and who wanted his lawyer investigated. Nudger had taken the job, received a reasonable retainer, and immediately phoned Eileen.

What a princess! She had agreed to give Nudger more time to pay all back alimony on the condition that he mail her the retainer he’d just received. He’d gotten a money order made out to her, pocketed the part of the retainer he hadn’t told her about, and mailed her the few hundred dollars to hold her at bay. It was something like tossing a cheese-burger to a trailing wolf.

Now here he was in Claudia’s apartment, feeling content, knowing he’d staved off disaster at least through the weekend. That was about all you could ask of this world. He sipped his beer. Claudia turned the steaks.

“Black silk evening gown?” she said.

Nudger told her about his meeting with Kelly and his abortive attempt to follow the blond suspect. She listened attentively, automatically tending to the steaks.

“Do you think you followed the wrong bus?” she asked pertinently, when he’d finished.

“I think it was the same bus, the right bus, most of the way. But I can’t be positive.”

“Do you need to be?”

“No.” He watched her switch off the burners, cross to the cabinets, and stretch to reach high for two dinner plates. It was worth watching. “But it would help immensely to be positive.”

She set the plates on the counter by the stove and began deftly transferring food to them. “What are you going to do now?”

Nudger observed the largest steak, done medium and with just the right percentage of marbled fat, hoisted on the prongs of a fork and plunked onto his plate. “I’m going to eat,” he said.

“I mean, about Kelly.”

“I’m going to haunt the neighborhood between where I last saw him on the bus and where I first noticed he was missing from it. If he’d transferred again, I’m sure I’d have seen him standing at the stop where he got off, so I’m assuming he lives in the neighborhood, or at least had some business there.”

“If you followed the right bus.”

“If . . .”

“Well, it sounds like a reasonable plan,” Claudia said, carrying the two heaping plates to the table in the small dining area. “Get yourself another beer.”

“What about the wine I brought?”

“I forgot about that. I’ll get some wineglasses.”

She produced two stemmed glasses, one with a chipped rim. Nudger got the Gallo Brothers burgundy, of a vintage not yet ripped from calendars, out of the refrigerator, uncapped it, and poured. He gave Claudia the good glass.

The meal was delicious. Claudia had fried the steaks to exactly the point where they were done but hadn’t lost much of their juice, and she had somehow seasoned the corn in the pot so that it didn’t require salt or butter. She was in the wrong job at Kimball’s.

Nudger raised his glass in a salute. “You’re a world-class cook,” he told her, meaning it. World-class. State of the art.

She seemed embarrassed. She actually smiled shyly and ducked her head, not knowing how to reply. “I use all cast-iron cookware,” she said seriously. “It makes a difference.” And so it must.

They decided to postpone dessert, then Nudger helped her to clear the table. She told him they’d wash the dishes later, after they’d had cheesecake and coffee. He didn’t argue. She might think he was sexist.

“What do you want to do now?” she asked. “Watch television?”

“Too many commercials,” Nudger said. “Watching television these days is like an evening with an aluminum-siding salesman.”

“What, then?”

“I want to do this,” Nudger said, and held her to him and kissed her mouth. He felt her arms jerk to life, coil around him, and her warm body levered forward and upward against his. He couldn’t help feeling slightly surprised. It was as easy as in the movies.

She didn’t want to pull away, but when she finally did, she looked up at him with dark crescent eyes and said, “I was hungrier for that than for steak. I’m not disappointed.”

They were both in the movies. It was grand! “It has nothing to do with iron cookware,” Nudger told her. Cary Grant.

She stared at him for a while, then nodded and smiled slightly. He knew that she saw the part of him that was detached from her and everyone else and would accept it. He could see the sweet sadness just below her surface. And her desperation, quieted at last, but patiently waiting. She led him into her bedroom.

The window was open, curtains swaying. Nudger could see the bright haze from the lights of the stadium, beyond the silhouettes of the buildings down the street. He heard the mass murmur of the night-game crowd.

As Claudia was methodically undressing, she saw the question in Nudger and said, “I had a tubal ligation. I can have no more children. Safe. Forever.”

She made love violently and searchingly. There was a delicate sadness even in her letting go.

What they were doing must have been right. Thousands cheered.

By the time they were finished and lay quietly beside each other, the warm room held the musky scent of their perspiring bodies. A night moth found its way through the window, brushed softly against Nudger’s bare leg, and then fluttered away. For an instant Nudger was with Eileen. For an instant.

“You were cautious with me,” Claudia said.

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to be.”

He laced his fingers behind his head, resting back on his pillow and listening to the faint sounds of the old building’s concessions to time, the muted swish of traffic below on Spruce Street, the occasional stirring of the ballpark crowd.