Buyer beware

1

Summer was struggling hard at birth. Hail in artillery like salvos battered the metal roof and sides of my forty-foot house trailer, as it had, interspersed with heavy rain, for the past two hours.

As time passes, hail striking the surface of a house trailer seems to take on more of a metallic ring. I was becoming slightly shell-shocked and vowed again to myself to move into an apartment as soon as possible.

But even as I made my vow I knew I wouldn't move. Not many apartment managers let you run a business out of your place of residence, and I had written permission from Mel Hardin, owner of Trailer Haven, to combine home and office here. Not a prestigious address, maybe, but prestige doesn't cook into much of a meal.

The pace of the hail picked up, and I rose from the sofa, went into the dollhouse bathroom and washed down two aspirin with a glass of tepid water. On my return from the bathroom I noticed an indistinct damp spot on the gold shag carpet where it met the south wall of the trailer. The damned thing leaked! I would tell Hardin about that tomorrow.

Before sitting down again on the sofa, I reached out and turned up the volume on the portable TV so I could better understand the six o'clock news, that and sometimes the ten o'clock report being the only programs I watched on television besides an occasional sporting event. A wholesomely attractive girl was teasing viewers with the weather forecast just then, demonstrating with a pointer how a warm front moving in from the Southeast was causing all kinds of trouble. She seemed happy about it.

Her explanation did account for the hail, but not for the determined rasping of my door buzzer. I rose again from the sofa, almost afraid to let in somebody who was crazy enough to be outside in this kind of weather. Through the south window I saw horizontal fingers of lightning rend the sky over perfectly aligned trailer roofs and TV antennas, like something out of an updated Frankenstein movie.

The man standing beneath the metal awning that sheltered my trailer door fit right into the movie. He was moderately tall, hatless, dark-haired and full-bearded. His long black raincoat matched the black umbrella he held angled into the wind.

"Hey," he said, spoiling the theatrical effect, "you Mr. Nudger?"

I nodded, stepping back to let him inside, noticing the four- or five-year-old compact sedan he must have got out of parked near the rack of mailboxes that served this side of the graveled street.

He was about six feet tall, a shade over my height, and now that he was inside and his face wasn't contorted to the violent weather, I saw that he had even, pleasant features and straight-ahead brown eyes. His umbrella was still in good shape after protecting him from the hail, and he folded it carefully and leaned it against the wall by the door.

As I motioned him farther inside so he could sit down, I speculated on whether he was an insurance salesman, evangelist or client. He carried no briefcase, and he hadn't yet smiled. Could be a client. Maybe he was desperate, after trying all the other confidential investigators in the directory. Not much to choose from there. It's a precarious way to make a living. You need a specialty.

"I'm Gordon Clark," he said, "and I'm here on business."

Good. I liked the ones who got to the point. I took his wet raincoat and draped it over the wooden back of a chair. Beneath his coat he was wearing dark slacks and a light-tan leisure jacket, and there was a tight muscularity about the forward set of his shoulders. He sat down as if he'd been standing too long. He was troubled.

"You are Mr. Nudger, of Nudger Investigations, aren't you?"

"The same, Mr. Clark. Alo Nudger." I bent to shake hands with him and continued standing, slipping my hands into my pockets.

"Alo?"

"Short for Aloysious, long for Al, as I used to tell the ladies."

"Sure. I want to hire you."

"You must want to hire me badly to come out in this kind of weather."

"I don't let the weather interfere with what I have to do, Mr. Nudger."

I looked at him more closely. I had gauged him wrong. He was in his late twenties, and his dark beard, no longer matted with rivulets of rainwater, was precisely trimmed in the manner of a stylish up-and-comer rather than in the natural free-swinging style of youth. His jacket was slightly worn, but it appeared expensively tailored, though possibly for someone else.

"Did you choose my name from the telephone directory?"

He shook his head. "You were recommended by an acquaintance who was once involved in one of your cases-a Mrs. Gloria Fallering."

I sat on the sofa opposite Clark's chair. "I remember her-a four-year-old son. She should hate my guts." "She does. That's what recommended you to me." I had to laugh. The hail had stopped suddenly, and the TV I'd forgotten was on was blaring an important message about irregularity. I reached over and switched it off.

"You used to be Mr. Happy on television, didn't you?" Clark said.

"That was me," I admitted. "The clown cop who introduced safety cartoons for the kiddies." "It must have paid good, being Mr. Happy." "But it wasn't police work. I like kids, but three years of Mr. Happy was enough." The real reason I was no longer Mr. Happy was none of his concern. "So that's how you got into kidnapping." "More or less. Is that why you want to hire me?" "Yes." Clark crossed his arms and leaned back, setting himself to do some talking. "My wife, Joan, and I were married eight years ago…" "Begin at the end," I told him. Clark smiled for the first time, though not a smile to light up the room. "A little over a year ago we got our divorce. Irreconcilable differences. They say some couples can be better friends, if not lovers, after a divorce. That wasn't true in our case. Looking back on it, though, I guess Melissa was the one thing we really fought about." "Melissa?"

"Our seven-year-old daughter. At first Joan didn't seem to resent me using my visitation rights to see her, but about six months ago her attitude changed. I think there was another man."

"From before or after the divorce?" "After, I'm sure," Clark said without hesitation. "Do you know where your ex-wife and the child are now?" "I received reliable information that they're in Layton, Florida. Joan's near her father, Dale Carlon, president of Carlon Plastics."

"A very big corporation."

"Which is why I can't take the long and arduous route of retrieving Melissa through the courts. Carlon can hire top lawyers and pay off the right people so the matter is tangled up in litigation for years."

"I take it Melissa was not to be removed from the state without the court's permission."

Clark nodded.

"I can't do anything unless you get a court order mandating custody of the child to you. That gives you legal custody even though it's subject to appeal. I don't work without proof that you do have legal custody."

"Sure. I waited until my lawyer told me we had a court order before coming here. I understand the risks you'd be taking."

"I want to be positive you do. The FBI and most states don't recognize that a parent can steal his own child, but if I snatch Melissa and you don't have legal custody, I might wind up in prison for kidnapping."

"And with Carlon's lawyers on me, so might I." Clark's complexion paled and his dark beard appeared darker.

"I charge twenty-five hundred dollars plus expenses," I said, "five hundred in advance."

Clark agreed to that with a curt nod. A fusillade of hail swept his side of the trailer, but he didn't seem to hear. "There won't be any… trouble, will there?"

"Not if I can prevent it," I said, and I meant that. "Do you have Joan's address in Layton?"

"Certainly."

"And a photograph. Recent. And a photograph of Melissa."

"I can supply those, too."

"Then when you show up here with the court order, Mr. Clark, I go to work."

Clark smiled for the second time, making it a bit better than the first.

There was a lull in the storm as well as in our conversation and no reason not to take the opportunity to leave.

Clark stood and slipped into his black rain gear. He would need the umbrella again. Though the hail had stopped, a perfectly vertical light rain fell with a gray, foreboding steadiness.

"I should be back tomorrow or the day after with the court order," Clark said as he stepped down from the trailer's threshold and opened his umbrella.

I motioned for him to wait, ducked back inside for a moment and gave him one of my cards. "Give me a call, make sure I'm here."

"Good idea," he said, tucking the card into a side pocket of his raincoat. He turned and walked to his car with an unhurried pace, refusing to make any more concessions to mere rain.

I closed the metal door, went back to the sofa and sat down. Already I could feel the heavy pulsing in my stomach that I felt every time I took a new case. Clark had asked if there might be trouble. There might always be trouble in the taking of a child from its natural mother. I didn't allow myself to dwell on the kinds of trouble that were possible.

Once I accepted Clark's money, I was committed to deal with that trouble. And I needed Clark's money.