Thicker Than Blood (Alo Nudger Series) Read online

  She stepped back to let Nudger inside the apartment. She was wearing faded Levi’s, which were baggy on her angular figure, and a sleeveless red T-shirt with “Go Fish!” printed in washed-out black letters across the front. No shoes or socks. Her toenails and blunt fingernails were painted a matching red brighter than the T-shirt.

  “You like to play?” Nudger asked, staring at her chest.

  Her green eyes narrowed with surprise and suspicion. “I ain’t sure exactly how you mean that, Mr. Nudger.”

  He pointed to the T-shirt. “Fish. The card game. You play?”

  Her face softened with relief. “No. The truth is I don’t know how. I got this shirt at a garage sale for a quarter.” She suddenly seemed embarrassed. “Sit down, why doncha?”

  Nudger walked over to a sofa covered with a blue bedspread and glanced around. The place was cheaply furnished but clean and orderly: An old console TV in a corner, a low coffee table with cork coasters and a glass ashtray on it, an oval braided rug on the scarred and waxed hardwood floor. Shelves supported by stacks of bricks stood on one wall, holding an old aluminum-cased stereo with a record player on top. A dozen or so albums stood leaning on the bottom shelf. On the top shelf was a vase of plastic roses and a row of small stuffed animals. Bears, mostly.

  When he sat down on the sofa, Norva said, “Get you a lemonade?”

  “Sure. I could use one of those.”

  She went into what he assumed was the kitchen and clinked and dinged things around for a few minutes. The window shade that partially blocked sunlight made one side of the room dimmer than the other. Nudger sat listening to the fan in the front window hum and cluck about the heat. Its metal grille vibrated and rattled every ten seconds or so. The apartment wasn’t air conditioned, but it was comfortable. The fan was enough.

  Norva returned with a tall glass in each hand. She gave one to Nudger before sitting down opposite him in a wicker chair that had been enameled dark green.

  “You learn something?” she asked, settling her weight and making the chair creak.

  He sipped lemonade before answering. It was delicious, chilled with ice cubes and sweetened with real sugar, some of which lay in a residue at the bottom of the glass. The glasses had a pattern of plaid cows on them; they’d once contained cheese spread, but you wouldn’t know it now. “Actually I came here to learn something,” he said. He sipped again. Swallowed some pulp and a lemon seed but didn’t mind. “You know a black man about thirty, average size, good-looking, thin little mustache, gold chain-and-swastika earring in his left ear?”

  “I believe I’d remember him if we’d met, but I don’t. Who is he, anyways?”

  Nudger told her, watching her face grow serious and more haggard, somehow more attractive. Like one of those country-western singers who sold character lines as well as big boobs and high cheekbones as ideal womanhood. The kind of woman who would be great in bed and then wouldn’t mind going out and clearing some weeds.

  When he was done talking, she crossed her legs the way a man might, ankle to knee, and said, “Don’t what you just told me prove Dale Rand’s a swindler?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Does to me.”

  “So far the only incriminating thing I’ve seen him do is pull up short on an easy putt.”

  Norva chewed on her lower lip with her slightly protruding teeth, making Nudger wonder why that came across as sexy. Then her green eyes darkened and narrowed, crinkling the flesh around the corners. She said, “So!” As if accusing Nudger of something.

  “So?” Nudger asked.

  “So you gonna quit on me?” A different kind of “so” that time.

  “You mean just because somebody threatened to kill me?”

  She wiped at her eyes, though they appeared to be dry. “Men been quitting on me, doing me wrong all my life. Why should you be any different?”

  “Because you’re paying me.” Because my work is all I’ve got and what I am, he thought. Not giving up is all I have left of what I started out with, the only thing they can’t take away from me if I don’t let them. But he didn’t say it, because he doubted she’d understand such a concept. Women usually didn’t. Women had better sense.

  Norva’s eyes brightened and blood rushed to her face. The change in circulation somehow made her freckles much more noticeable. “Then you’re still gonna follow Rand?”

  “Still am.”

  She seemed barely able to restrain herself from leaping from her chair to give him a big hug. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to restrain herself. It would be nice to get something out of this other than a bullet.

  But then there was Claudia. And guilt.

  “Mr. Nudger,” Norva said, suddenly calmer, “I realize what I’m asking you to do. I mean, money ain’t everything, and I want you to be sure you wanna go on with this. If a man was to point a gun at me, I’d be a scared rabbit just like you.”

  “It isn’t that I’m scared,” he said, too quickly, feeling angry and embarrassed, wounded in the machismo. Scared rabbit? “I’m just trying to be logical. You hired me to do a job, so I should do it.”

  “Money don’t seem a logical reason to risk your life.”

  “Well, the truth is, I’m doing it for the love of a woman.

  Freckles came out like stars again, a vivid dusting against a ruddy sky. “Now, Mr. Nudger—”

  “My former wife, Eileen,” Nudger said, keeping the conversation in bounds.

  She cocked her head to the side and looked at him with an air of surprised discovery. “So you’re a romantic.”

  “Sometimes. If there’s nothing good on television.”

  “But you must still love Eileen a lot.”

  “Far from it. If I don’t come up with the back alimony I owe her, she’ll become twice as dangerous as the guy with the gun.”

  “That kinda talk don’t fool me.” Norva finished her lemonade and placed the glass on the edge of the oval rug, near her chair, so it wouldn’t leave a ring on the wood floor. She wiped her damp hand on her T-shirt and said, “Love’s one of the most powerful forces in the world.”

  Nudger said, “So’s hate.”

  She aimed her emerald eyes straight at him, like lovely lasers. “They can be exactly the same force, Mr. Nudger. Didn’t you know that?”

  He had known, actually. It was one of the things that complicated life and made it such a trial.

  CHAPTER 5

  “What kind of gun was it?” Hammersmith asked.

  Nudger said, “The kind that was pointed at the bridge of my nose.” He threw up his hands. “How should I know who manufactured it? All I saw was the muzzle. It looked as big as—”

  “I know, I know.”

  They were in Hammersmith’s office in the Third District station house on Tucker and Lynch. Hammersmith was Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith, who in another world in an earlier time had been Nudger’s partner in a two-man patrol car. This was when Nudger’s nervous stomach was just beginning to give him the idea that he was in the wrong occupation, and when the now-corpulent Hammersmith was still thin and handsome and could wheedle the most secret information out of charmed prostitutes and addicts.

  “The description you gave me,” Hammersmith said, “fits a kazillion guys in this city. If you knew what kinda gun he carried, that might narrow it down. That is, if he’s a well-known badass.”

  “If I had some mustard and some bread, I’d have a ham sandwich, if I had some ham,” Nudger said.

  “Sure, I get your point. But as it is, you could search through mug books for days and still not find this character, even if he does have a record.”

  Nudger couldn’t argue with that. Average-height black men with average builds and pencil-thin mustaches were all over the city. They were . . . well, average. “What about the earring?” he asked. “Can’t be a lot of people running around with swastikas dangling from their ears on gold chains.”

  “You wouldn’t think,” Hammersmith admitted. “But it can be removed. Mayb
e he’s wearing some other kinda earring now.”

  “Might it be some sort of identifying jewelry? I mean, maybe he’s a member of a gang.”

  “Possible but not likely. I know most of the gang colors and tattoos and whatever. But I’ll check on it. My guess is your guy was simply trying to make a fashion statement.”

  Nudger sat silently and chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  “Maybe you’ll see him again, Nudge,” Hammersmith suggested with straight face and sadistic humor.

  Nudger didn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.

  “My feeling,” Hammersmith said, “is that this guy wasn’t really going to kill you. If he had been, he wouldn’t have walked up and started a conversation. It was a scare tactic, that’s all.”

  “It worked well.” It annoyed Nudger that Hammersmith didn’t seem to take the incident seriously. He said, “What’s the story on Fred McMahon? Is he gonna get nailed for stock manipulation?”

  “Not exactly,” Hammersmith said. “There was no stock to manipulate. He sold clients over-the-counter stocks that didn’t exist, stocks too small to be listed in the newspaper. He even supplied them with phony stock certificates. Gave them phony quotes when they called his brokerage firm to see how they were doing. They were always doing well. McMahon didn’t want his clients to sell. The word is the prosecutor’s got a locked-in conviction. Plea bargaining’s probably already begun.”

  “Is there anything on Dale Rand?”

  “The guy you were following?”

  Nudger nodded.

  “I can check, Nudge. Get back to you.” Hammersmith leaned far back in his desk chair and meshed his hands behind his head. His smooth-shaven, pink jowls spread over his shirt collar like balloons bloated with water. “You’re gonna drop this case, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “I thought you were a coward.”

  “Poor and a coward.”

  “Is Eileen after you again for child-support payments?”

  “Alimony,” Nudger said testily. “We didn’t have children.”

  “Whatever.”

  “There’s an important distinction,” Nudger said.

  “Not if you don’t pay what you owe.” Hammersmith had always liked Eileen and considered the dissolution of the marriage to be Nudger’s fault. “I thought only rich guys paid alimony, Nudge.”

  “Guys pay it whose ex-wives have Henry Mercato for a lawyer.” Mercato and Eileen had stripped Nudger of all dignity and assets, and now they were partners in lust. That was Mercato. That was Eileen. Still, Hammersmith couldn’t see it. He liked Nudger’s present lady love, Claudia Bettencourt, even more than Eileen, or it would have been a problem. Before Nudger had met Claudia, Hammersmith had tried to maneuver him and Eileen back together. Big old matchmaker Hammersmith.

  “While I’m finding out about Rand,” Hammersmith said, “I advise you to stay away from him. That should help you avoid the man with the gun of indeterminate make.”

  “I’ll steer clear of Rand as much as possible,” Nudger said, standing up. “I think I know a way to do that.”

  Hammersmith was looking at him speculatively. As Nudger was leaving, he said, “Nudge, please don’t tell me what you got in mind.”

  “Not unless it’s a must.”

  Nudger made an appointment with the bug man. His name was Charlie Roache, but that wasn’t why he was called the bug man. He was an expert in planting listening devices, and finding those planted by others. Often he did this for illicit reasons. Sometimes it wasn’t as profitable as one might imagine. Now and then he did work for Nudger. The bug man had a sliding scale.

  As Nudger approached his booth in the Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Lindbergh, the bug man looked up and smiled. He was a wiry little guy about fifty, always moving, with ears that stuck out like shutters in a storm, and jet-black hair always cut unevenly and badly mussed, as if squirrels had been rooting in it. He constantly chewed on his writhing lower lip, as if trying to kill it and make it be still, and he had glittery little dark eyes that were slightly mad. He loved to take chances and not get caught.

  “Clams tonight,” he said, as Nudger slid into the booth to sit across from him.

  “Huh?”

  “Clams are the special tonight. You gonna get some? I already ordered.”

  Nudger told him he’d already eaten, which wasn’t true. His stomach was still roiling from looking into the barrel of the gun. It had looked as big as—

  “Ready to order?”

  He told the waitress who’d interrupted his thoughts just coffee and sat back and watched the bug man light a cigarette. They were in the No Smoking section. The bug man touched the cigarette to his lips, barely drew on it, then slipped it out of sight beneath the table. He squinted at Nudger, eyes like onyx. “You mentioned a job.”

  Nudger told him what was required.

  “I can do it,” the bug man said. He swallowed some smoke.

  The waitress arrived with coffee and clams and a glass of iced tea. After placing everything on the table, she sniffed the air, shook her head, and walked off.

  “There’s Rand, the wife, and the daughter,” Nudger said, “so there might be somebody in the house all the time.”

  “I can do it,” the bug man said again. “Everything you asked, I can do. I’ll call you.”

  The smell of the deep-fried clams was making Nudger nauseated, so he laid a dollar bill on the table to take care of the coffee, then got up and left.

  As he was climbing into the Granada out in the parking lot, the bug man glanced over at him through the window and waved with one hand, forking in a cluster of clams with the other. He must have extinguished the cigarette under the table, or maybe had it balanced on the vinyl seat so it wasn’t quite setting the booth on fire.

  Nudger waved back. He hadn’t even touched his coffee.

  It was a little past six, so he drove down Highway 44 to South St. Louis and parked outside Claudia’s apartment on Wilmington.

  Claudia was home from teaching summer-school classes at Harriet Beecher Stowe girls’ school out in a west county suburb. She’d already changed clothes and was wearing red shorts and a black blouse when she let Nudger in. She was slender, with long dark hair, lean, delicate features, and a perfectly straight nose that was maybe a little too long and gave her a look of nobility, like somebody in a medieval painting. She had beautiful legs, and was all in all a beautiful woman, but in a subtle way. The kind of woman who got more attractive with each glance, Nudger thought.

  After giving him a peck on the cheek, she walked toward the kitchen. “I’m making spaghetti,” she said. “Want some?”

  The spicy, garlicky smell was better than the clams. “Sure,” he said, and followed her into the kitchen to help. Not too closely, though. He loved to watch her walk.

  He got a can of Budweiser from the refrigerator, popped the tab, and stood leaning on the sink counter drinking it, watching her snap uncooked spaghetti into lengths of about six inches and drop them into a big pot of boiling water.

  “How were your students today?” he asked.

  “Feisty as hell.” She finished with the spaghetti and turned on the burner beneath a pot of sauce she must have made yesterday. “They don’t like diagraming sentences in the middle of summer. I don’t blame them. How was your day?”

  Nudger told her about the man with the gun, how he’d aimed it right between his eyes from only a few inches away.

  “It must have looked as big as a mine shaft,” Claudia said, her own eyes as wide as Nudger’s must have been looking at the gun.

  “Now that you mention it,” Nudger said, moving to the refrigerator to get out the wine he’d brought Claudia when they’d had dinner here two nights ago. He unscrewed the cap to let it breathe. Thinking, at least as big as a mine shaft.

  “That must have been scary as hell,” Claudia said, working at the sink and glancing over her shoulder.

  “A little bit scary.” He nonchalantly sidled over
and kissed the nape of her neck. This spaghetti business could wait, and at the price he’d paid, it wouldn’t matter how long the wine breathed, even if it hyperventilated. “I’ve got an idea.”

  But she didn’t share his idea. She handed him a spoon to stir the sauce.

  She’d feel different about him later, he thought, stirring. After he’d relaxed her with the wine. It might be cheap, but it had a pretty high alcohol content.

  Sly Nudger.

  CHAPTER 6

  The jangling phone next to Claudia’s bed pulled Nudger up from a deep sleep. He fought it, the way a fish fights the line. Finally he opened his eyes.

  The bedroom was bright and warm with soft morning light. He reached out a hand to prod Claudia to ask her to pick up the phone. It was on her side of the bed.

  His fingers found smooth, cool sheets.

  No Claudia.

  Nudger groaned and slid over to the other side of the mattress, groping for the phone. He dragged the plastic receiver to his ear, then mumbled a hello that sounded like someone strangling.

  “Nudger?”

  “Yeah. Who?”

  “Charlie Roache here. It’s done.”

  The bug man. “You. So soon?”

  “I told you Nudger, this was a simple enough job. I set up a voice-activated system with real-time indicator, so if you need—”

  “Wait a sec,” Nudger said, trying hard to wake up all the way.

  “Who’s on the phone?” Claudia lip synced, walking in from the bathroom. She was fully dressed in her navy-blue skirt, white blouse, white high heels. Crisp and attractive and ready to leave for work.

  “Bug man,” Nudger said.

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah?” said the bug man.

  “I was talking to someone else,” Nudger said into the phone. He wriggled his eyebrows at Claudia in a silent signal for her to put her questions on hold until he was off the phone. She smiled.