Diamond Eyes (Alo Nudger Book 7) Read online

  Danny jingled a big ring of keys and let himself into the doughnut shop to get set up for tomorrow, when he’d reopen with fresh hits for cholesterol addicts.

  Nudger opened the door off to the side and trudged up the narrow stairwell to his office door, listening to the old wooden stairs creak. He liked the fact that the steps made noise; it announced visitors. Now and then they were clients, and Nudger had a chance to straighten his tie or get his feet off the desk before they came in, maybe pull some paper or a file folder in front of him and look industrious. There was only one chance to make a good first impression.

  The office air was stale and hot. As soon as he entered he crossed to the window and turned on the air conditioner. It hummed, gurgled, clinked and promised to do its best, but July in St. Louis was a challenge, usually a losing battle.

  He looked at the morning mail that he’d scooped up from the landing: a couple of bills, and a letter from his former wife, Eileen, no doubt demanding back alimony and threatening legal action. He wished he could pay her and get her off his back, but he barely made enough to survive, while she was earning a fortune in one of those home products pyramid sales companies. She was regional manager now, which meant she got a percentage of the earnings of every salesperson in her area. It also meant she had more free time to harass Nudger.

  He didn’t open any of the envelopes. Tossed them on a corner of the desk with some other unread mail.

  In one motion, he slumped in his squealing swivel chair behind the desk and punched Play on his answering machine.

  Beep! “This is Eileen, Nudger. If you know what’s—”

  Good God! He pressed Fast Forward.

  Beep! “I don’t talk to machines. Have your machine call my machine and they can talk about the business you lost.”

  Beep! “If you want to hear about a truly revolutionary breakthrough group life insurance plan for the self-employed call me, Jerry, at—”

  Enough! Nudger wasn’t interested in group life insurance. What were the odds of being killed in a group? Anyway, who would he name as beneficiary? Eileen? He shuddered. He didn’t like the idea of being worth more to her dead than alive. Her lawyer might be able to get him executed.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon at his secondhand IBM Selectric, typing reminders to people who owed him money. Once he thought he heard a creak on the stairs. Maybe a client. But nobody came through the door. Probably it had been the wind. A summer shower was blowing in from the west. Now and then a drop of rain pinged off the metal air conditioner.

  Within half an hour it was thundering and raining hard. Which did nothing positive for Nudger’s mood. He switched on the yellow-shaded desk lamp. That helped some, but the office was still gloomy, and the yellow-hued flesh on his hands and bare forearms suggested he had jaundice. As soon as the rain let up, he grabbed his ragged black umbrella and got out of there.

  That night, in his apartment on Sutton, he microwaved a frozen turkey dinner and ate it with a helping of two-day-old salad he’d brought home in a doggy bag from a restaurant. Then he settled down on the sofa in front of the TV to watch one of the local news teams and sat patiently through the introductory bad comedy.

  Guess what was the lead story. One of the talking hairdos was describing the airline tragedy, while behind him a tape of the burning plane and hopeless rescue efforts was shown over and over. Ninety-three people had been killed when an explosion near the wing tanks ignited jet fuel. Some of the survivors were on the critical list. When another local hairdo kept shoving a microphone into the face of a weeping relative of one of the victims, Nudger squeezed the remote and switched to national news on Channel 9, the MacNeil Lehrer Report.

  There, too, the subject was the destroyed plane. MacNeil was interviewing a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration, an FBI agent, and an expert on terrorism. The FAA man, a calm and neutral sort with gray hair and a gray suit, said the death toll would most likely climb higher. The FBI guy, obsessed with explanations, said the plane’s passenger list was being checked out, along with security measures at Kennedy in New York, the airport where the doomed flight had originated.

  “Aren’t bombs usually set with timers or barometric devices to explode when the airliner is at high altitude?” soberfaced MacNeil asked.

  “Indeed,” said the terrorist expert, who himself had anarchist’s eyes. “Perhaps this one malfunctioned.”

  “We’ll probably discover a great deal more about the bomb,” the FBI guy said. “Witnesses saw in which part of the plane it was detonated, and investigators at the scene have already recovered parts of it that survived the explosion.”

  Nudger felt his stomach twitch. He’d heard more than enough about the airline disaster. It was a sore area his mind recoiled from. Like avoiding remembering a nightmare. Christ, ninety-three people!

  “You’re all agreed, then,” MacNeil said, “that it was a bomb that destroyed the plane?”

  “It was a bomb,” said the man from the FAA.

  “It was a bomb,” said the FBI guy.

  The terrorist expert said, “There’s no doubt the plane was blown up by a bomb.”

  “Has any terrorist group—”

  just as Nudger pressed Mute, the phone jangled. He considered ignoring it, but it was persistent. On the fifth ring, he reached over and dragged it toward him by the cord. Clatter, clatter, ding, ding. He lifted the receiver.

  Danny was on the other end of the connection. He said, “Hear the news about that plane, Nudge? They say it was a bomb.”

  3

  The next morning, Nudger stopped at the Hardee’s on Manchester before driving to the office. He used the coupon from yesterday’s Post-Dispatch to get a bacon-and-egg biscuit for only seventy-nine cents, then carried that and a cup of coffee to a booth and settled in to gaze out the window at rush hour traffic while he ate.

  There was something mesmerizing about watching the stream of cars carrying people on their way to normal occupations. Nine-to-fivers leading largely uneventful and happy enough lives. If he’d been suitable for any other profession after being eased out of the police department because of his nervous stomach, he wouldn’t have become a private investigator. He wasn’t in it for the money, that was for sure. He knew he could, and should, start from scratch somewhere, learn to sell appliances or used cars, maybe. Eileen and her lawyer would like that. He’d have a salary to attach.

  He was surprised when police lieutenant Jack Hammersmith slid his bulk onto the orange bench seat across the table. Hammersmith’s protruding stomach was pressing against the table so that a button rested almost horizontally on the woodlook Formica. He put down his tray, on which were four cinnamon rolls, coffee, and orange juice, and said, “I called your apartment but got no answer. Checked down the street at your office and in Danny’s, but you weren’t there.”

  “How’d you know I was here?” Nudger asked. The scent of the cinnamon rolls was making him hungry for something sweet and damn the calories. Hammersmith the bad influence.

  “Coupons in yesterday’s paper. If you weren’t eating breakfast on the house at Danny’s, I knew where to look. You follow the bargains in biscuits.”

  Nudger nodded. “I didn’t feel like going face-to-face with a Dunker Delite this morning. Even a free one.”

  “That I understand. You look like hell. Rough time last night?”

  “Not much sleep,” Nudger said. “I’m having one of those lives. I was out at the airport to meet Danny yesterday. Saw what happened to that airliner. Don’t wanna see anything like it again ever.”

  “You spent time as a cop, Nudge. You oughta be used to that sorta thing.”

  “Never did get used to it. That’s why I’m not still a cop.”

  Hammersmith was grinning. Nudger had once saved his life, when they were partners in a two-man patrol car, and he’d never forgotten, never stopped being grateful. But he liked to goad Nudger, knew about his nervous stomach and liked to press. Ever since he’d made lieutena
nt and grown obese, he’d been sadistic.

  “You look me up for a reason?” Nudger asked. “Or did you just wanna break bread together?”

  “Little of each, Nudge. I thought you oughta know what I heard from somebody over at the Civil Courts Building. Eileen and her lawyer are planning to go after you again in a major way for back alimony. Also get the amount you pay each month increased.”

  “Nothing new there,” Nudger said. He thought about Eileen’s lawyer, Henry Mercato. Contemptible little bastard. He and Eileen might be sleeping together, mating like a couple of sharks in dark water.

  “Well, the fresh wrinkle is Mercato’s got somebody keeping an eye on Claudia. The angle’s gonna be you’re spending money on Claudia that should go to Eileen.”

  Nudger’s stomach throbbed with anger. This was really too much. He put down his bacon-and-egg biscuit on its crinkled wrapper. “A big date for Claudia and me is a ball game that includes a hot dog. Some of the time she pays.”

  Hammersmith grinned. “So whoever’s following you better like baseball and wieners.” He wolfed down a cinnamon roll as if it were a peanut, then dabbed delicately at his lips with his napkin. “I just figured you should know about it, in case you notice some guy hanging around the two of you.”

  Nudger sipped his coffee. “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Nothing, Nudge. You say you were there when that airliner went boom?”

  “Yeah. I was waiting to drive Danny home from flying out to visit his cousin in Phoenix. Explosion took out the window I was looking through.”

  “Traumatic for you, I guess.” There went another cinnamon roll. Two bites this time. As he chewed, Hammersmith’s smooth-shaven jowls waggled where they spilled over his blue shirt collar. Each year it got more difficult to remember the young, slim and handsome Hammersmith who’d ridden a patrol car and charmed and cajoled even the hardest addicts and prostitutes. “Least they got the bastard.”

  “Huh?”

  “You haven’t read the paper this morning?”

  “No. I got outa bed and came straight here. Didn’t even listen to the car radio.”

  “New York police were called when a suicide was discovered with his wrists slit in a New York hotel room. Checked in under a phony name. Smith, if you can believe it. No identification until they found a travel agency receipt in the room. He was booked on the flight that blew up. No ticket in the room, though. Airline records show he boarded, so he probably used the half-guilty passenger scam.”

  “Half-guilty passenger?”

  “Yeah. That’s when some innocent person’s led to think they’re carrying something illegal. Maybe liquor no duty’s been paid on. Maybe a small amount of drugs. Whoever bought the ticket pays them plenty to lug a suitcase or briefcase on a flight, and they don’t know they’re really carrying a bomb. None of them ever complain about being tricked, though. How terrorists work.”

  “And everyone would think the guy who bought the ticket boarded the plane and was dead.”

  “For a while, anyway. Until he had a chance to get outa the country to wherever international law would protect him.”

  “Was this dead guy in New York a terrorist?”

  “Doesn’t seem that way so far, but you know how it goes. Investigation of that kinda thing takes time. Anyway, the crash-site experts know the bomb went off under or near the seat he had reserved.”

  “And where somebody was sitting in his place, having used his ticket.”

  “Uh-huh. And there’s no way to identify what’s left of whoever was occupying the seat when the bomb exploded. The blast was too destructive.” The last two rolls were promptly devoured, along with the orange juice. Hammersmith sipped at the coffee then frowned and said, “How piss must taste.”

  “Bottom of the pot, maybe.”

  “I figured you were in here, so the sludge at the bottom must already be in your cup. Your fate, sorta, to get the bottom of the pot.”

  Nudger couldn’t disagree.

  Hammersmith’s bloated pink hands gathered foam cups and wadded paper napkins so they wouldn’t fall off his tray. Then he worked his bulk out of the booth and stood up. “See ya, Nudge. I gotta go fight crime. Enjoy the rest of your bargain breakfast.”

  Nudger watched him walk from the restaurant and cross the blacktop parking lot. Hammersmith moved with extraordinary grace for such a fat man. Glided like a ballroom dancer. He wedged himself behind the wheel of his unmarked Ford, started the engine, and drove from the lot to turn east on Manchester, heading for the Third District station and the war on crime.

  Nudger got up and walked over to where some newspapers supplied by the restaurant were jutting from a wooden rack on the wall. He thumbed through them until he found a frontpage section and carried it back to the booth. Sipping his coffee, he read about the airliner bomber.

  It was as Hammersmith had said. The dead man’s real name was Rupert Winslow. He’d been thirty-nine years old when he’d bled to death in the bathtub of his room at the Meridian Hotel in New York. No suicide note was found in the room. Authorities said that Winslow at this point didn’t seem to be affiliated with any terrorist group.

  Nudger shoved the paper aside. It was hard to imagine a man named Rupert Winslow being mixed up with Middle East terrorism; he should be using his time playing croquet or riding to hounds. But it could happen. Maybe the IRA was responsible, though blowing up airplanes, especially in the United States, didn’t seem to fit their style or motive. Nudger figured the authorities would discover Winslow had some kind of mental trouble in his past. Or maybe the bombing was the result of ice-cold calculation, an insurance murder, and he’d had second thoughts and a load of guilt that prompted him to commit suicide. Whatever. It wasn’t Nudger’s problem.

  Until he drove to his office and found the crying woman from the airport seated in the chair alongside his desk. She hadn’t switched on the air conditioner and was perspiring in the early heat.

  She wasn’t crying now.

  She looked scared.

  4

  She stood up when Nudger entered. Started to say something then changed her mind and clamped her lips together. She was, as he’d thought at the airport, an attractive woman when not weeping. Whipped cream complexion. An oval face with generous features. Pointed chin. Pouty lower lip that suggested volcanic passion. Blue eyes that were perhaps set too close together and gave her a rather intent expression. Or maybe it was fear lending her that look.

  She was wearing navy blue slacks and a silky gray blouse today. A silver neck chain that played with the light. Blue high-heeled shoes with leather buckles on the insteps. Expensive clothes. Stylish.

  Nudger decided he’d better ooze some charm her way, gave her the old sweet smile and said, “Sit back down, please.” He walked over and switched on the air conditioner. Click! Hmmm. Gurgle. “You shoulda done this,” he said. Cooling air stirred the hair on his arm. “No reason you had to sit there and bake.”

  Back in the chair, she tried a smile but it wavered and dissolved. “Not my office. Besides, I was told by the man downstairs in the doughnut shop you’d be here any minute.” She was clutching something white—the business card he’d handed her yesterday at the airport. She saw him staring at it. “When I left after the explosion, I just picked this up from where I’d laid it. I don’t know why. But I think maybe it must mean something, that I did that.”

  Nudger sat down behind his desk and watched the woman wince as his swivel chair squealed. He smiled again, swiveled without realizing it. Eeek! “You know my name.”

  The woman realized what he meant and said, “Oh, I’m Vanita Lane. When I got home yesterday, I saw what kinda card this was. I mean, your profession.”

  Nudger liked that. Not many people called what he did a profession. “And you decided you need my services?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re frightened.”

  “It shows?”

  “Sure does. Unless somebody snuck in here and converted that to a vi
brating chair.”

  She glanced down and saw how her hands were trembling. She folded them tightly in her lap, pale against the blue material, and tried to hold them still. Muscle ridged beneath the creamy flesh of her arms.

  Nudger said, “Yesterday at the airport you were crying.”

  “I would be today,” she told him, “only there’s a limit to how much a person can cry. And now, as you pointed out, I’m scared.”

  “Why? Why were you at the airport yesterday?”

  “Two questions.”

  “Yep. Calls for two answers.”

  She bowed her head, as if praying for the rare combination of strength and wisdom, then raised it and locked her apprehensive blue gaze on him. So intense. “I wanted to know if that plane would land okay.”

  “You suspected it might be blown up?”

  She nodded.

  Nudger’s stomach, as usual a beat ahead of his brain, did a couple of flips. Whoa! Federal crime. Ninety-three victims. This was getting heavy. Maybe dangerous.

  He said, “So why didn’t you notify the airline? Try to stop what happened?”

  “I couldn’t. And there was a good chance it wouldn’t happen. God, if I’d known for sure ...”

  “You’d have phoned TWA?”

  She gnawed on her nifty lower lip and looked past Nudger out the window. He heard a pigeon flapping around and cooing on the ledge. Christ, he hated pigeons! “I think so,” she said, “but who knows? I’ve gotta be honest, or there’d be no sense to my coming here. There was still something between me and Ropes.”

  “Ropes?”

  “Rupert Winslow.”

  “The Rupert Winslow found dead with his wrists slit in New York?”

  “Yeah. The people who knew him called him Ropes. A nickname because ... well, he had that reputation. Knew the ropes.”

  “Not all of them,” Nudger said.

  “Guess not.”

  “The authorities think he tricked someone into carrying the bomb on board the airliner.”

  “He did. In a way. But he didn’t really intend to kill all those people. He had to be more horrified over what happened than anyone.”