Nightlines (22 page)

“I’ve been doing some more detective work of a personal nature,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I talked with several people who know you, your friends. Including Dr. Oliver.”

She lay silently for a long time. When she answered, her voice held a flat tone of disbelief. “And you’re still here with me?”

“I believe in you.”

“You don’t have any reason to believe in me.”

“The best things in life are unreasonable.”

She was reasonable enough not to argue.

“I want you to have faith in your future,” he told her. “Hope.”

She laughed her resigned, throaty laugh. “I can’t keep hoping, and you can’t stop hoping. Yours is a bigger problem than mine.”

“When are you going to see your daughters next?” he asked. He felt the slight shift of the mattress as her body tensed.

“Next weekend. Remember? They’re out of town this weekend.”

“Let me go get them for you, bring them here or wherever you want to meet them. We’ll make a day of it—the Arch, the Zoo, whatever you and they like.”

“Ralph might not give them to you.”

“I already told him I was your boyfriend. Must have been a premonition. Ralph and I have talked, so it’s not as if we’re strangers. You can phone him and let him know I’m driving by for the girls. Or you can go with me and sit in the

car where he can see you.”

“But you don’t want me to see Ralph.”

“Why should you?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. Or not one she liked. She lay quietly beside Nudger, breathing regularly and deeply, almost as if she were asleep. He knew she was awake.

“All right,” she said at last. He felt the light touch of her fingertips on his arm, tracing a feathery path from elbow to wrist.

“What about dessert?” he said.

XXI
V

arly the next morning, Nudger began driving around the neighborhood of Kingshighway between Tholozan and Magnolia, when people were clustered at the bus stops on Kingshighway on their way to work. He stayed on Kingshighway for over an hour, bouncing along in the over
heated Volkswagen, watching the number of people at the stops decrease, not seeing the ominous blond Kelly.

At eight-thirty he turned onto Magnolia and began cruising side streets lined with similar brick homes and apartment buildings, gradually working his way north to Tholozan. He noticed that the tires had begun humming on the rough pavement. The day was heating up, softening rubber and resolve. Summer in St. Louis. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Volkswagen were air-conditioned?

The feeling that he was squandering his time crept into Nudger and spread debilitating tentacles. He had cause for discouragement. Not only might he be wrong about where Kelly had gotten off the bus, but Kelly might not even be the man he sought. “Murderer” wasn’t a label to be pasted on lightly; if it didn’t stick, there was trouble all around.

Nudger had considered telling Hammersmith about Kelly, but there really wasn’t much to tell. A vague match-up of descriptions wouldn’t excite the police, and Hammersmith was no longer in charge of the investigation anyway. Cap
tain Massey of the Major Case Squad was now running the operation, a meticulous officer competent at police work but overly concerned with PR and politics. Nudger knew Massey wouldn’t take the information about Kelly seriously. And if by chance he did, he’d inundate the Kingshighway area, where Nudger was searching, with enough blue uniforms and news-media people to force Kelly, all traffic offenders with unpaid tickets, and all owners of unlicensed pets to flee the neighborhood and go into deep cover. Some things were better left unsaid.

Nudger drove around the neighborhood until noon, then dug deep in his pocket, gassed up the Volkswagen, and drove to his office. He didn’t want to go there. The place was beginning to wear on him. It was becoming a den of depression.

He parked the car, then checked with Danny before going upstairs. Nobody had been by to see him on business, or to try to corrupt, coerce, or concuss him. Odd. But then, these things ran in cycles.

“Any sign of the monolithic Hugo Rumbo?” Nudger asked.

“Nope,” Danny said, absently flicking his towel at a fly. “You miss him?”

“Like a fever blister.”

After persistently declining the offer of a brace of doughnuts for lunch, Nudger went up to his office and checked his mail and answering machine.

Nothing interesting in the mail except a special offer on a quickdraw holster. The manufacturer promised it would shave half a second off the time between slapping leather and squeezing the trigger. If Nudger had owned a gun, he would have been intrigued. It might be fun slapping leather and yelling at people to freeze, then commanding them to thaw.

There was nothing on the answering machine other than some adolescent giggling and a loud raspberry. It cheered Nudger considerably.

He phoned Hammersmith and asked him to check Records for a rundown on Roger Davidson, the new client’s suspect lawyer. Hammersmith told Nudger he shouldn’t make a habit of using the tax-funded police computer for private business, especially since he probably didn’t earn enough to pay taxes, then said he’d get back to him by phone when he had something on Davidson.

The instant Nudger replaced the receiver, the phone jangled to vibrant life beneath his hand, startling him. He raised the receiver to his ear and said hello. He wished he hadn’t.

“This is Agnes Boyington, Mr. Nudger.”

“This is a recording. Mr. Nudger isn’t in the office. At the tone, please leave a message and he’ll return your call.”

“I know that’s you—”

Nudger whistled a high C into the phone and hung up.

The phone began ringing again almost immediately. He let it ring twelve times before picking up the receiver again. He didn’t want his phone line tied up. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want a headache.

“What is it, Agnes?” he asked.

“It’s Mrs. Boyington. I’ve been trying to get through to you all day, Nudger.” Her voice oozed annoyance.

“My answering machine was on. You could have left a message.”

“I don’t choose to talk to a machine, then be ignored by you.”

“I don’t choose to talk to you, then
not
be ignored by the police.”

“Let’s call that a misunderstanding.”

“No.”

“All right. However you view the matter makes no difference to me. I called to demand a report on what progress you’ve made in tracking down my daughter’s murderer.”

The lady had chutzpah in all its pronunciations. Nudger was awed, but it wore off fast. “I’m working for Jeanette,” he reminded Agnes Boyington. “Any information I obtain will be reported to her.”

“Any and
all
information, Nudger?”

“Of course, Boyington.”

“I’ve given more consideration to your proposal that I pay you to withdraw from the case without informing Jeanette,” Agnes Boyington said slowly and precisely, choosing her words with a care that suggested she thought the conversation might be bugged or recorded. “I think five thousand dollars would be a reasonable sum.”

“It was
you
who offered to pay
me
to drop the case,” Nudger pointed out, also thinking the conversation might be bugged or recorded. Suspicion breeds suspicion.

Not differing with him now that they were both on record, if there was a record, she said, “I know that five thousand dollars is a great deal of money to a man who lives your sort of life. Think about it, right now. It could mean a lot to you.”

Sitting there in his sparsely furnished office, gazing at shirt cuffs that would soon fall into the frayed category, Nudger couldn’t disagree with her. He said nothing. He was afraid that if he did it might be yes.

“Are you considering my offer,” Agnes Boyington asked, “or are you one of those increasingly rare Quixotic fools who won’t put a price on client loyalty? On a dreamer’s code of conduct that is nothing more than a vestige of youth. Or misplaced romanticism.”

“You forgot professional honor,” Nudger told her.

“There is no such thing in a dishonorable profession.”

“Be glad you’re not a windmill,” Nudger said, and hung up.

He sat for a long time thinking about what he might have bought for five thousand dollars, not the least of which was escape from his creditors, and from troubled sleep fragmented by dreams of debt and destruction. Agnes knew how to negotiate, how to tempt. She hadn’t offered him an astronomical amount of money, but when a man was treading shark-infested water, you might as well throw him a raft as a boat. He’d climb on. Usually. If he wasn’t a Quixotic fool.

Then he considered the vulnerable position he’d be in if he accepted Agnes Boyington’s offer. She would have him sealed like a bug in a jar, and she would remove the lid only to stick pins in him. He was sure that eventually he’d lose his livelihood as well as his self-respect. He told himself that, and not an antiquated code of honor, was why he’d hung up on her. It was an explanation he could live with and suffer no embarrassment.

As he sat staring at the phone, it occurred to him that he’d doubtless be seeing more of Hugo Rumbo. An unsettling notion. Almost as unsettling as being five thousand dollars poorer than he might have been.

Nudger looked around the office to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything switched on and unnecessarily running up his electric bill, then locked the door behind him and descended the hollow-sounding steep wooden stairs to the street door.

He would accept Danny’s offer of a two-doughnut lunch, then return to the neighborhood where he’d lost track of Kelly. If he didn’t have persistence, what did he have?

Three days later he was wondering if persistence paid. He’d covered the side streets along Kingshighway again and again, jarring over potholed pavement in the cramped, clattering Volkswagen, probably doing irreparable harm to his and the car’s insides.

Time was becoming a prime factor. Nudger had only so much of it to waste. He’d phoned his new client yesterday afternoon and reported that there were three Roger David-sons practicing law in the state of Missouri. None of them had the office address of the client’s Roger Davidson; none of them had ever heard of Nudger’s client. The Bar Association pleaded
ignorantia
. The Roger Davidson in question wasn’t even a lawyer. Case closed. A nice profit for Nudger for doing nothing but making phone calls, but not so much profit that it amounted to more than carrion for his creditors. If something didn’t happen soon on the Jeanette Boyington case, or if Natalie Mallowan didn’t pay him for finding Ringo, he’d have to contact some bona fide lawyers he knew who sometimes threw business his way at the end of ambulance chases.

Nudger bounced in his seat, almost bumping his head on the car roof, as the Volkswagen hit a high seam in the pavement. The little car’s suspension was about ruined, and the engine was laboring as if overheated. He decided to give car and driver a rest by taking time out for a cheap lunch at the diner on the corner of Kingshighway and Kemper; the place was built of glass and white metal and looked clean.

There was a shady parking space not far from the corner. Nudger maneuvered the Volkswagen into it and listened to the tiny engine putt and clatter for several revolutions after he’d switched off the ignition. He thought it might be a good idea to pop the trunk a few inches on the rear-engine car so the tired old motor would cool faster.

He’d just gotten out of the car and was about to close the door when he saw Kelly emerge from the diner, clutching a white carryout bag beneath his arm like a football, and jog across Kingshighway.

Nudger caught his breath, then in one hurried motion climbed back into the Volkswagen, bumped his knee on the dashboard, and inserted and twisted the ignition key. The engine turned over but refused to start, grinding and popping as if protesting this fresh abuse at the hands of Nudger. He twisted the key again. Again. Heat-warped metal ticked and moaned. The overheated little car sputtered something guttural and nasty at Nudger and the battery went dead. If yet another war with Germany were in the offing, Nudger would be among the first to know.

Legwork time. Nudger could still see Kelly walking along Kingshighway with his carryout order. He wouldn’t be going far if he was planning on a hot lunch. Slamming the car door hard behind him, as if that might cause well-deserved pain in the carburetor, Nudger followed.

Kelly didn’t appear worried about being watched. He never glanced back as he crossed Kingshighway at the traffic light and began walking east on Arsenal. Nudger stayed well behind him, watching his easy, powerful stride. Kelly looked as if he were merely sauntering, but Nudger had to walk fast to maintain the same distance between them.

When Kelly turned right on Morganford and was out of sight, Nudger broke into a casual jog to close distance, then paused at the corner and saw Kelly crossing the street to walk east on Hartford. Nudger walked swiftly to the corner and peered down Hartford. Kelly was half a block away, climbing some steps with a black curlicued wrought-iron railing. He took the steps two at a time, effortlessly.