The right to sing the blues an-3 Read online

  A short, paunchy man in a rumpled brown suit approached Nudger from where he'd been waiting in the deep cool shadow of the building. He had unruly receding hair, a chubby, jowly face, and he was smiling a rigor-mor- tis sort of smile. Nudger wasn't surprised when he flashed a shield. He said, still smiling, "I'm Sergeant Chambers, Mr. Nudger. How about you should follow me down to the district station house so Captain Livingston can have a chat with you?"

  "How about you should give me a choice?" Nudger said.

  Chambers shook his head no, then cocked it sharply to the side. He had gum in his mouth; he began to chew it slowly with a gum chewer's peculiar insolence, not letting the effort interfere with his toothy smile. "Sorry, can't do that."

  Nudger sighed. "Okay. I'm parked down the block."

  "I know." Chambers popped his gum; it sounded like a gunshot. "My partner's parked right behind your car."

  Nudger began to walk. Chambers fell into step beside and slightly behind him. The old doorman continued to be a nonperson, "See, Hear, and Speak No Evil" all rolled into one. In his very practical world, there was safety in anonymity. Right now, Nudger wished that philosophy were his own. If it were, he wouldn't be on his way to the station house with rumpled, gum-popping Chambers to clash with officialdom.

  If ifs were skiffs, as his ex-wife Eileen used to tell him sternly, we all would sailors be. Nudger was never sure what she meant by that. He thought that might have been her way of trying to get him to join the Navy.

  "Why does Livingston want to talk with me?" he asked, as they approached the parked cars.

  Chambers shrugged. "I dunno. I guess you been making waves." He touched Nudger's arm lightly to stop him and held open the rear door of a gray-blue sedan. "We might as well all go in the squad car," he said. "Be chummier. Save you gasoline."

  He got into the back of the car after Nudger and settled down heavily into the upholstery; he smelled like Juicy Fruit. The driver, a broad-shouldered man with a fuzzy reddish bald spot on the crown of his head, didn't look back or say anything as he started the car and drove toward the station house.

  XVI

  Chambers ushered Nudger into Livingston's office, then withdrew without saying anything; Nudger heard the loud pop of gum on the other side of the door just after it closed.

  The first thing he noticed about Livingston's office was that it was large. The wall behind the desk was mostly windows looking out over a depressed, gloomy section of New Orleans. Which puzzled Nudger for a moment, because it was a sunny day. Then he saw that the gloom was the result of a dirty film over the windows; it was all interior gloom.

  The office was plush; there were two cream-colored velour chairs angled near the desk, police-uniform-blue carpet, and something that looked like a liquor cabinet in a far corner. The walls were paneled halfway up. Real paneling, not the plastic laminated stuff. Livingston sat behind his desk, the top of which was bare except for a green desk pad, some pencils, and a large clear glass vase that was crammed full of tall, bushy flowers of a kind that Nudger didn't recognize. He wondered if Livingston had a secretary, and if it was her job to supply fresh flowers for the vase every morning. He was the type.

  "Sit down, Nudger," Livingston said brusquely.

  "And good morning to you," Nudger told him, lowering himself into one of the creamy velour chairs. It was sneaky comfortable, the kind of chair that might not lull you into dozing, but that you'd find you didn't want to stand up out of when it was time to rise. He glanced around. "The New Orleans Police Department treats its captains royally."

  Livingston peered at him around the bushy flowers, like a fox peeking out from deep cover. "Not really. You're just used to the low-rent ratholes private cops operate out of."

  "I can see it was mostly tact that got you where you are."

  "It was hard work," Livingston corrected. "And instinct. A talent for sniffing out trouble."

  "And I smell like trouble?"

  "You absolutely reek of it, Nudger."

  "I'm sure you didn't call me down here just to get a whiff of me," Nudger said, shifting his weight in the soft chair so Livingston would have to crane his neck to continue watching him around the desk flora.

  "It's been brought to my attention," Livingston said, "that just prior to our conversation in your hotel room, you were out of town for several days."

  Nudger nodded. "Business."

  "What kind of business?"

  "The private kind, I'm afraid."

  "Concerning the job you're doing here in New Orleans?"

  "Partly."

  "Then your business isn't so private that it isn't my business, too." Livingston rolled his chair to the side to get a better angle of vision across the desk, save himself from a stiff neck. "Tell me about it."

  Nudger decided it was time to give something to Livingston; if he didn't, Livingston would take and keep on taking. It was the nature of the animal. "I'll tell you whatever I can," he said.

  "Then it should be easy for you. I only want to know three things: Where did you go? Who did you see? What did you find out?"

  "I went to Cleveland, Kansas City, Chicago, and St. Louis. I talked to people connected with the jazz scene."

  "Talked to them about what?" Livingston asked, when Nudger didn't continue.

  "Willy Hollister."

  Livingston sat back and toyed with one of the sharp yellow pencils on the desk, adroitly holding its center still and rotating the ends, as if it were a compass needle that might point out the truth. "Hollister. The piano player over at Fat Jack's club?"

  Nudger nodded.

  "And what did you find out?"

  "About Hollister?"

  The pencil stopped being a compass; it became a gun, aimed at Nudger as if Livingston itched to fill him fatally with #2 lead. "Who else would I mean, Nudger?"

  "Maybe David Collins. I found out some things about him."

  "Let's stay with Hollister."

  "Why not Collins?"

  Livingston said nothing, looked uncomfortable, waited. There was a new hard glint in his slanted little eyes. It suggested that here was a man who, if pushed, would push back hard. He was a tough cop, even though he looked like a conniving little wimp. Nudger knew it was time to get cooperative.

  "Hollister makes women disappear," he said.

  Livingston was unimpressed by this vague revelation. "He does magic? I thought he was a musician." His voice had taken on the same sharp flintiness as his eyes.

  "With a certain type of woman, he does magic," Nudger said. "They fall hard for him, have a passionate affair, then drop out of sight."

  "You're saying Hollister has something to do with their disappearances?" Livingston asked. A coplike question, to the point and phrased to suggest the answer.

  "There's nothing to indicate that," Nudger said. He decided to give Hollister the benefit of the doubt in this conversation with Livingston. After all, Nudger hadn't any real proof that the man had done anything the slightest bit illegal. "Maybe his women just get tired of being around all that ego," he said. "They might be surprised when they're caught in a love triangle: Hollister, the woman, and Hollister."

  Livingston seemed to decide not to probe deeper. He leaned back, hiding for a moment behind his vase of foliage. Nudger could see his pointy little ears through the green stems. Livingston was gauging the situation; at this juncture, he might not want to know too much about Willy Hol- lister's love life. After all, there were people who might ask him questions.

  "You're going to get your nose badly bent, poking it in the wrong places," Livingston said. "What were you doing in the Golden Oldens shop earlier today?"

  Nudger shrugged. "I like old goodies."

  "Goodies like Sandra Reckoner?"

  "She's not so old," Nudger said. "Not a worm hole in her."

  "Don't be so sure. I hear she gets turned on in the oddest ways by the oddest people." Livingston gave the sly, nasty smile of a pornographer or a censor.

  "Why are you warning
me again not to nose around?" Nudger asked. "Didn't we pretty much cover that subject in my hotel room?"

  "Not completely. I want to make sure you understand something, Nudger. There are certain kinds of situations where I can't help you."

  Nudger wasn't sure if he did understand. Was Livingston jerking strings for his own self-serving reasons, or was he actually at least obliquely concerned about Nudger's welfare? Was he the snide little bought cop he appeared to be, or was he something else, something harder to classify?

  "Even strong swimmers drown now and then," Livingston said. "They do it by getting in over their heads when there's no lifeguard around."

  Nudger wondered what was going on. Every cop he knew seemed to be speaking in metaphors all of a sudden. "You should meet my friend Hammersmith," he said.

  "Who's he?"

  "Oh, just a guy I know back in St. Louis."

  "Back in St. Louis is where you oughta be."

  "That seems to be the prevailing logic."

  Livingston stood up; it wasn't easy to catch behind that big desk. "Keep yourself out of trouble, Nudger. My men have better things to do than tail you around the city."

  Nudger got up out of the creamy velour chair, listening to his knees pop; he was getting old-like Billy Weep. No, he corrected himself, Billy wasn't getting older now. Nudger hadn't seen any point in telling Livingston about Weep's death. He looked out the window again at the world made gloomy by what went on inside Livingston's office, the way Livingston's world was clouded by what went on inside his head.

  "What are you staring at?" Livingston asked.

  "Nothing in particular," Nudger told him. "Nice suit. Wool?"

  Livingston said nothing; Nudger left the office in silence, closing the door behind him softly. Wool, Nudger decided. A fox in sheep's clothing, that was Livingston. What was going on in his cunning little mind?

  Out on the sidewalk, Nudger paused. His stomach was rumbling, threatening to make itself felt in ways unpleasant. He reached for his roll of spearmint-flavored antacid tablets.

  An explosion behind him made him jump and whirl.

  It was Chambers, popping his gum. The scent of Juicy Fruit wafted to Nudger.

  The detective grinned at him, holding the pale wad of gum between his front teeth so it was visible when he smiled, like a kid proving to his mother that he hasn't swallowed it. "Give you a lift back to your hotel?" he offered, motioning with his head toward where the blue-gray sedan that had brought Nudger to the station house was parked across the street.

  Nudger nodded. "Why not?"

  Chambers winced. "That's a terrible philosophy. Better to ask yourself why." Then he shrugged. "On the other hand, people who ask themselves 'Why not?' keep me in a job." Pop! went the gum.

  "They're both tough questions," Nudger said.

  He broke the seal on a fresh role of antacid tablets and he and Chambers walked across the street side by side. Juicy Fruit and Spearmint.

  XVII

  After Chambers had dropped him off at the Hotel Majestueux, Nudger was surprised to notice a slip of folded white paper in his message box behind the desk. He asked the towering desk clerk for it, unfolded it, and read:

  Mr. Nudger, I'm sorry I missed you. I'll try to contact you again as soon as possible. It's important that we talk. Marilyn Eeker

  Nudger examined the paper. It was cheap unlined notepaper, folded once and deeply creased as if a thumbnail had been run hard across it. The handwriting was in pale blue ink, concise and feminine, and at a slight downward angle to the top edge of the paper.

  "When was this delivered?" Nudger asked the desk clerk.

  "About an hour ago," the clerk said, jackknifing his long body downward over the desk to pencil figures into a ledger book. He was a busy man; taking time to talk with Nudger was obviously an imposition.

  "Did the woman say anything?" Nudger asked.

  Not looking up, the tall clerk said, "Just told me to please put this in Mr. Nudger's message box." He began applying pencil point to paper.

  "What did she look like?"

  "Oh, smallish-petite, I guess you'd say-blond, in her forties, kinda pretty. Seemed in a hurry."

  Nudger searched his mental file, couldn't imagine who the woman might be. He couldn't remember ever hearing the name Marilyn Eeker.

  The clerk scratched his gray head and began to struggle with a miniature calculator. Nudger left him in the hands of science and went up to his room.

  The New Orleans phone directory listed only one Eeker. Joseph Eeker. Nudger phoned his number, asked to speak to him, and was immediately connected. It was all so easy Nudger knew it wouldn't bear fruit.

  He was right. Joseph Eeker was seventy-nine years old and had never heard of Marilyn Eeker and didn't want to hear of her again. Nudger apologized for being such a bother and hung up. He would have to wait for Marilyn Eeker to come to him. He hoped she didn't represent someone he owed.

  His conversation with Livingston, and his time cooped up in the car with Chambers and his ominously silent partner, had made Nudger perspire. He washed his face with cold water, then put on a fresh shirt and went back downstairs and outside.

  He drove the red subcompact in the direction of Fat Jack's club, wondering why Livingston hadn't mentioned his entering and leaving Hollister's apartment. It could be that police surveillance had already been called off at that time and Livingston simply didn't know about Nudger's being at Hollister's. Livingston was speaking the truth when he'd said his men had better things to do than trail Nudger. The New Orleans police force was as overworked as any other police department. Or it could be that Livingston knew about Nudger's going to Hollister's and deliberately hadn't mentioned it, playing his cards close to his little fox vest. Another possibility was that Livingston's man had seen Nudger at Hollister's and assumed a conversation had occurred, and Livingston hadn't thought the visit worth mentioning.

  Nudger decided to quit worrying about Livingston. Trying to analyze the motives of a cop like that was the sort of thing that ate holes in stomachs. He didn't need that.

  He parked the car, then pushed in through the door of Fat Jack's, leaving the heat and brightness of outside for the cool dimness of the club.

  The bartender-not the young unflappable one, but an elderly gray guy with a polka-dot bow tie-told Nudger that Fat Jack was out. Nobody knew for sure when he'd be back; he might not return until the evening, when business started picking up, or he might have just strolled over to the Magnolia Blossom for a croissant and coffee and would be back any minute.

  Nudger sat at the end of the bar, nursing a beer he didn't really want, and waited. He watched the bartender, who had the air of a natty dresser despite the wrinkled white apron tied around his waist, get things ready behind the bar for the night. It was almost as if the long bar were a barricade, and he was making sure there was plenty of ammunition to deal with an imminent siege. He arranged bottles on the backbar so he could reach them easily, counted gleaming upside- down glasses as if they were artillery shells. It looked to Nudger like a boring job, nothing like sitting awake in a parked car all night waiting for a client's errant spouse to leave a motel room.

  Marty Sievers walked in from the back room. He stood for a while watching some of the early customers wander in and be shown to tables. He was wearing the same conservative brown suit he'd had on the first time Nudger saw him. Mr. Average; if they built an Everyman robot, it would look like Sievers. When he caught sight of Nudger, he walked over and stood next to him at the bar.

  "Looks like it's going to be a busy night," Nudger said.

  "It will be. Hollister makes for busy nights. In fact, we've had a busy month." The bartender brought him over a glass of what looked like pure club soda over ice. Maybe Perrier water. Sievers raised the glass in an amiable toast, smiling at Nudger, and sipped.

  "Do you happen to know Max Reckoner?" Nudger asked.

  "Sure, the guy who owns the antique shops. He's a regular. So's his wife Sandra, but she d
oesn't come in as often as Max."

  "I've heard Max does his hunting in here," Nudger said.

  "Hunting?"

  "Yeah. Max and Cupid."

  Sievers gave him a level look. "I don't talk about the customers, Nudger. It's bad business."

  "I could get my information from Fat Jack if you don't want to tell me."

  "Maybe you should do that."

  "It has to do with the welfare of the club."

  The cash-register bell sounded behind the bar. Or was it Sievers' heart?

  "There can't be any business, good or bad, if there's no business at all," Sievers said with perfect logic. If he hadn't been Green Beret, he'd have been Junior Achievement. "It's true that Max likes the young ones."

  "How does Sandra react to that?"

  Sievers took another sip of his unblemished drink and shrugged. "She knows about it, but what can she do if she doesn't want to leave the guy? My impression is she's just waiting around for him to get through middle-aged madness and settle back down."

  Middle-aged madness. Nudger wondered if he might be suffering from that. "Does Sandra have affairs of her own, to compensate?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Sievers said, a bit sharply. Nudger wondered if there had ever been any relationship between him and Sandra Reckoner. He decided not to ask Sievers about that; he wouldn't get an answer that meant anything, and Sievers would probably stop talking altogether.

  A busty redheaded waitress wearing a Fat Jack's T-shirt bounced by carrying an empty tray. Inspiration. "Has Max scored with any of the help here?" Nudger asked.

  "I agreed to tell you about the customers, not the employees," Sievers said.

  "You're going to make me travel the long route to the same destination," Nudger told him. "It could cost you a lot."

  "Maybe."

  "If you tell me, nobody will know where I got the information."

  Sievers ran his finger along the rim of his glass, listening to the high-pitched, faint whining sound, and thought about that. "Okay," he said finally. "You're supposed to be a confidential investigator."