Dancer's Debt (Alo Nudger Book 5), page 1
Also by John Lutz
BUYER BEWARE
NIGHTLINES
THE RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES
RIDE THE LIGHTNING
DANCER’S DEBT
TIME EXPOSEURE
DIAMOND EYES
THICKER THAN BLOOD
DEATH BY JURY
Dancer's Debt
An Alo Nudger Mystery
John Lutz
DANCER’S DEBT
SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC
NAPLES, FLORIDA
2011
Copyright © 1988 by John Lutz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.
9781612321905
Table of Contents
Also by John Lutz
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Solution”
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
1
Nudger wished his armpits weren’t perspiring so heavily. That was the only thing not right about the situation. He cursed inwardly and regretted he hadn’t come up to his office from Danny’s Donuts earlier and switched on the window air conditioner, now gurgling away valiantly behind him in an effort to overtake the fierce St. Louis summer heat. He knew the window unit would win, but it would take time.
Other than the heat, and the crescents of dampness beneath Nudger’s arms, everything about the scene was on the mark. Five minutes after he’d sat down behind his desk and started to sort through his mail, he’d heard a floorboard creak on the landing outside. Then a knock on the door. He’d called, come in, and in she’d walked, pale and cool as vanilla ice cream. Like something right out of a detective novel.
She said her name was Helen Crane. She was of average height but regally erect. Her taut carriage, and her blond hair swept back and up, made her appear tall. Her skin was unmottled and smooth, her eyes slate gray and calm. Curves refused to be reduced to planes by her tailored blue skirt and blazer.
Nudger noticed that the blazer was frayed at the wrists, the pearls about her neck were obviously synthetic, and her dark blue high heels were probably of some material that had never been on any other animal. She knew how to dress, this one, but she had a budget that required polyester.
None of that mattered when she cast her measured, cool-fire glance about the office. She was something intensely real, yet the sort of women men build dreams around. Royalty with a K-mart wardrobe, and the cream of royalty at that.
“You are Mr. Nudger?”
“Constantly.”
“I want to hire you,” she said.
Ah, perfect! He invited her to sit in the chair in front of the desk, and he apologized for the heat in the office as she settled her graceful frame and crossed slender legs that were exquisite at least to the knees. The bone structure of her face was strong yet refined, wide and precisely symmetrical. Outside, in the sultry summer, an emergency vehicle siren rose plaintive and wavering in the distance, like Circe beckoning. It seemed to go with the face. With the rest of her.
“It doesn’t feel all that warm in here,” she said.
He said, “Somebody refer you to me, Miss Crane?”
She tilted her head to the side and gave him a look of quiet reappraisal, as if for the first time she’d realized there were larger, obviously more prosperous investigative agencies in the city. “I was told about some good work you did in New Orleans, Mr. Nudger. The person who told me wants to be anonymous.”
Nudger felt a little tingle of wariness at the nape of his neck. This was the sort of prospective client who often showed up in private detectives’ offices in books and movies, all right, but not in real life. Not in Nudger’s life. He hadn’t really expected her visit to pan out; any moment she’d start in on her Amway pitch.
“I don’t take just any job,” he said.
“I wouldn’t ask you to do something illegal.”
“What about dangerous? I don’t like danger.”
“Danger’s a matter of degree,” she said.
“So’s body temperature. I try not to let anything happen that’ll lower mine below the level that indicates life.”
“I don’t think there’s a great deal of risk involved,” she told him, “but I can’t guarantee it. On the other hand, this building might collapse and kill us both any minute.” She looked around. “Or any second. What I mean is, risk goes along with living on this planet, doesn’t it?”
“All too often,” Nudger said. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
She crossed her arms delicately, cupping her elbows in her hands, and settled back in her chair. “It’s Jake Dancer who’s in trouble.”
She said this as if Nudger knew who Jake Dancer was. As if everybody knew. “And he is? . . .”
“My lover.”
“Which oughta go far to balance out his bad luck.”
She smiled faintly, as if she were used to such compliments, maybe a little bored with them, but still felt obliged to acknowledge them. The responsibility of beauty.
“So what kind of trouble has found otherwise lucky Jake Dancer?” Nudger asked.
“I’m not sure—which is one of the reasons I came to you. Jake’s been horrendously upset about something lately. Really frightened, and he doesn’t sleep nights. He’s drinking more heavily than ever, and I’m sure he’s doing drugs.”
“You talked to him about it?”
“I’ve tried, but he won’t discuss it. I get the feeling it’s because he can’t. The very worst things in life are beyond talking about.”
“I might not be able to help him, if he doesn’t want me to butt in,” Nudger said.
“I don’t want him to know I hired you,” Helen Crane said. “I only want you to follow him, watch him, then tell me what it is that’s torturing him. He’s had enough trouble; he doesn’t need this, whatever it is. He sure as hell doesn’t.”
“What trouble has he had?” Nudger asked.
“Something happened to him in Vietnam. He never told me what. But it changed him. He came back the friendly, likable Jake who went overseas, but at the same time it’s like he was never able to recapture the rhythm in his life. He makes the rounds restlessly, drinks way too much.”
“Vietnam was years ago,” Nudger said.
She shrugged. “Time’s got a way of slipping cogs for some people.”
“You mentioned drugs.”
“He doesn’t have a habit, but he uses them.” She wriggled on the chair and sat straighter, as if there were a string attached to the top of her head, tugging her up. Charm-school posture, incongruous in the bargain clothes. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Jake, Mr. Nudger. He’s not one of those sullen vets who blame Vietnam for everything bad that’s happened to them. Everybody likes Jake Dancer—everybody. He doesn’t complain or ask for pity, but his pain’s so evident that people just want to help him. It’s like they need to help him because of something in themselves. Jake brings that out in people.”
“That why you’re trying to help him?”
“No, that’s only part of it. I love him. We love each other. But he won’t talk about what’s causing his agony. And it isn’t Vietnam; it’s St. Louis. Nothing in all the years since Vietnam ever made him jump with fright when he heard the phone.”
“Would you describe him as at all paranoid?” Nudger the psychiatrist.
“Oh, just the opposite,” Helen said. “Jake’s too trusting, too naive, in his special way. That’s why people tend to want to protect him. And they can sense he’d do anything for them.”
“How long have you known him?” Nudger asked.
“We dated each other in high school. Well, not dated, exactly. Ran in the same crowd. Then, after school, he was drafted. He came home on leave from Fort Leonard Wood before shipping out to Vietnam, and we became lovers. It’s stayed that way.”
“Do you regret it?” Nudger asked.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be here. Gotta expect some choppy water now and then.”
“But it sounds as if you’ve been through a typhoon and the weather forecast is more of the same.”
“Maybe. Could be a calm ocean bores me.”
“Hmm. Does Dancer have family here in town?”
“No. There was only his father, but he died three years ago. If there are any other relatives, they’re not close enough for Jake to have mentioned. It’s me he needs. But for the first time, he won’t let me help him.”
Nudger swiveled in his chair and stared out the dirt-smeared window at the building across the
street. The pigeons that were always perched on the ledge had made a mess there. Nudger hated pigeons. Defacing, lice-carrying vermin with wings. They didn’t even sing, like other birds. Instead they cooed insults.
“Will you help me to help Jake?” Helen Crane asked. “Will you, Mr. Nudger?”
Nudger wasn’t sure how to answer. He needed the money; office rent was due, and Eileen was closing in on him in her relentless quest for back alimony. But he was uneasy about taking this case. He sensed that a fellow could get hurt following Jake Dancer around town. Nudger’s need for money, his fascination with Helen Crane, tugged at his better judgment, causing him to lean toward saying yes, but not with quite enough angle to fall on the side of danger and necessity. He wasn’t ready to help Helen Crane.
Not quite.
“Mr. Nudger?”
“Do you like pigeons?” Nudger asked.
“Tell you the truth, no.”
That did it.
2
That evening at six-thirty, Nudger sat crammed in his parked Volkswagen on Osage Avenue in South St. Louis. In the outside rearview mirror he could see the entrance of the brick apartment building where Jake Dancer lived with Helen Crane.
It was an old, flat-roofed building with green trim that needed paint. Over the front door was a large stained-glass window that looked as if it belonged in a church. The small front yard had a grassless path worn across it diagonally, and a kid’s balloon-tired bike leaned into the shrubs near the entrance so that its handlebars were invisible. Osage was a long street with good and bad blocks. The apartment building wasn’t a bad place for this part of town, and Nudger figured the rent wasn’t much.
Helen had told Nudger that Dancer would sleep most of the day, then leave in the evening without telling her where he was going. He’d been doing that for the past week, she’d said. She’d tried following him once herself, but he’d seen her and there’d been an argument. Then Dancer had invited her to go drinking with him and she’d refused. Sounded like an up-and-down relationship to Nudger. Yo-yo love. He knew it well.
It was hot in the Volkswagen. He wished, not for the first time, that the little mechanized Beetle had an air conditioner. But not many twelve-year-old Volkswagens came so equipped. There were other things about the car he didn’t like. Oh, the dents and the faded red paint didn’t bother him. And he liked to think the lack of an adequate heater in the winter had made him hardier. But St. Louis was subject to at least one brutal heat wave every summer, and it was then that Nudger seemed to find himself in the sort of cases that required long hours sitting in the sun-heated, cramped little car and feeling like some sort of casserole.
Then there were the times when the Volkswagen refused to start and merely sputtered at him, as if it were cursing him in German. Nudger didn’t like that. Once it had almost cost him his life. “Götterdämmerung,” the VW seemed to have said. Nudger suspected it of war crimes.
Danny knew of a woman out in the country who’d bought a new car and was going to sell her nine-year-old Ford Granada. It was a bigger car; it was air-conditioned. Danny said it had enjoyed loving care and was in fine shape for its age. Nobody had ever said that about Nudger. He figured he might drive out and take a look at the Granada.
On the other hand, the car’s owner was one of Danny’s rare regular customers at the doughnut shop. Would a woman on a steady diet of Danny’s Dunker Delites treat her car better than her own anatomy?
Nudger squirmed around on the hard vinyl upholstery, checking the street behind him in the mirror and trying to get more comfortable. He could feel his shirt peeling away from where it was plastered with perspiration to the seat back. If he’d been smart, he would have brought a thermos bottle full of something cold to drink. The inside of his mouth felt as if he’d been snacking on chalk.
He peered up at the top floor, west unit—Helen Crane’s apartment—and saw that, though the end window was open, the drapes were still closed, swaying in the faint summer breeze. The windows that probably looked out from the living room were shut, and their venetian blind slats were angled for privacy. An air conditioner jutted from the center window and was still running; Nudger could see condensation dripping steadily from it onto the bricks below. It was probably cool in the front room of the old apartment.
Just as Nudger was about to rationalize the idea of hurriedly put-putting to Grand Avenue and getting a Diet Pepsi from one of the drive-through franchises, then quickly returning, a man fitting Dancer’s description emerged from the apartment building.
He sat straighter to improve his angle of vision in the mirror. The man reached the sidewalk, hitched up his pants, flipped away a cigarette, then lowered himself into a rusty blue Datsun—Helen Crane’s car.
As soon as he saw the tiny Datsun pull away from the curb, Nudger tried to start the Volkswagen. The miniature engine seemed to chuckle at him, as if it enjoyed keeping him in suspense as to whether it would turn over. The starter ground out messages of Teutonic disdain.
Then the engine rattled to life as if to say it was all a joke, and it clattered enthusiastically as Nudger made a nifty U-turn and dropped into traffic behind the Datsun. Old allies, a German car following a Japanese car driven by a veteran of a later war. The patchwork of history. At least Dancer was driving a car that might not be able to outrun the Volkswagen; they could have a low-speed chase not dangerous enough to require seatbelts.
Dancer drove to Grand Avenue and turned north, then aimed the little Datsun up the ramp to Highway 44 and drove east toward downtown. Nudger stayed well back in the outside lane, keeping the Datsun in sight and enjoying the air rushing through the Volks-wagen’s rolled-down windows and beating a drumlike rhythm in the closed back of the car.
Dancer got off the highway on Memorial Drive, then took Market west and wound north on side streets until he found a parking space near the Old Post Office.
He climbed out of the Datsun and casually slammed the door behind him as he set off walking along the sidewalk. He was dressed in gray slacks and a blue sport coat, no tie. A nice-looking guy, even from a distance.
Nudger drove past him and glanced over for a closer look. Dancer took long strides and swung his arms loosely, moving as if he’d never known worry. His wavy black hair was especially thick above his collar, giving the impression his head was tilted back so he could breathe in something sweet, though actually he was looking straight ahead. Nudger couldn’t make out Dancer’s expression, but he seemed reasonably alert, not as if he’d been drinking before leaving home. And he was treading a more or less straight line.
After finding a place to park the Volkswagen, Nudger cut back to the corner and fell into step about half a block behind Dancer. They walked at the same casual pace.
There were quite a few people on the downtown streets tonight. The Cardinals were in town, and a game with the Cubs was due to start in half an hour in nearby Busch Stadium. When that happened, the streets would be considerably emptier.
After about five minutes, Dancer adjusted his collar, buttoned his sport coat, and entered the Marriott Hotel. Nudger followed him into the plush lobby and watched him head for the lounge. The place was still full of Cubs fans wearing blue caps and jackets and behaving with jovial hostility as only Cubs fans behaved. One of them had what appeared to be a stuffed cardinal—the bird—dangling from a piece of string as if it had been throttled. The guy was dragging the thing across the floor so it bumped up and down while his buddies laughed. Sports in America.
Dancer would spend time and money in the teeming lounge, Nudger was sure. But he didn’t see any point in going in himself and drinking beer he didn’t want and listening to baseball arguments no one could win.
He sat in the lobby for a while, watching the blue-adorned fans from Chicago make fools of themselves, then he wandered back outside and up the street about half a block where he could stand and admire the night. To his right glowed the lights of the stadium. Ahead of him and to the left soared the graceful curve of the Arch, catching the rising moonlight on one gleaming side and looking like an ethereal silver ribbon hurled skyward in exuberance. Beyond the Arch, stars were beginning to glitter over East St. Louis, as if to cheer that depressed area with a free show of grandeur. There were times when Nudger wouldn’t trade this city, his city, for any other. There were other times he’d trade it for Detroit.
