Nightlines

XIII

Agnes Boyington drove south on Kingshighway, then took Highway 44 downtown to 55 and exited on Memorial Drive. Gothic church towers glided past Nudger, piercing the sky in contrast to the soft stroke of the Arch's caressing curve. Agnes stayed on Memorial, passing Busch Stadium and the Arch, then cut over to Market and headed west. She made a right on Seventh Street, and found a place to park near Seventh on Chestnut. It was the only empty parking space on the block, maybe a slot reserved for the genteel, and she effortlessly maneuvered the haughty gray lady of a Cadillac into it.

Nudger drove half a block past Agnes, hoping she wouldn't see him, and pulled to the curb near a fire hydrant.

He watched her in his rearview mirror as she crossed Chestnut and entered one of the office buildings that lined the block. The Hammond Building. This was the area of downtown where many of the city's high-priced lawyers kept their offices. That made Nudger wonder. He got out of the Volkswagen, hoping it wouldn't be ticketed or towed away, and jogged across the street and into the Hammond Building.

The lobby, adorned with gray marble and cigarette butts, was almost deserted. Most of the offices were closed at this hour, and only one elevator was in service. Nudger watched the brass indicator arrow on the veined marble above the elevator doors. It slowed, wobbled, then rested on the six.

He crossed the lobby and checked the building directory. There were enough law firms in the place to stall a thousand cases a thousand years. On the sixth floor there were three law offices, an architectural firm, and several businesses of nondescript corporate name. Nudger considered taking the elevator up and finding a spot in the hall from which he could see Agnes Boyington emerge from whatever office she'd entered. However, not knowing which office she was in made that too risky an idea to carry out. Besides, it was altogether possible that whatever business she had here didn't concern him.

He left the lobby, trudged back across hot concrete to the Volkswagen, and sat waiting. From his car window he could see the silver, soaring curve of the Arch, towering above even the newer downtown buildings. The Gateway to the West and to McDonald's floating restaurant. The Arch was Nudger's favorite memorial. It was so nonfunctional. Its stainless steel, inspirational arc was the sole reason for its existence. If it wasn't a joy forever, a lot of time and money had been wasted. What was it doing here in this conservative midwestern city where commerce was king? Or maybe its creation was inevitable. Perhaps out of all this flat, staid sanity it had to spring like joyful madness, a glittering dream-reflecting ribbon unfurling skyward to an exquisitely graceful apogee and then rushing earthward, like life itself.

Nudger was still contemplating the Arch fifteen minutes later when Agnes Boyington left the Hammond Building and got back into her car. The Cadillac glided past him. He was sure that Agnes hadn't seen him, with the Volkswagen tucked as it was between a larger car and a van. He started the engine, waited until she'd reached the corner, then followed.

She didn't drive far, only to Tucker and Clark, where she parked in a visitors' slot in the lot of Police Headquarters. After locking the Caddy, she strode with vigor and purpose around to the front of the imposing gray building and up the wide steps. She still looked cool as frozen custard in her blue dress and white gloves, and she certainly moved like a much younger woman. Nudger watched the metronome sway of her flared hips until she disappeared through the main entrance. She wasn't quite as impressive a piece of architecture as the Arch, but then she was older.

Nudger didn't follow Agnes Boyington into Police Headquarters. And when she left half an hour later, he didn't follow her disdainful finned Cadillac.

Instead he got out of the Volkswagen and went inside the building.

The Headquarters building was also the Fourth District Station. Nudger recognized the desk sergeant, a thirtyish, dark-haired man named Mazzoli who was on desk duty because of a hip injury he'd suffered during a high-speed chase a few years ago. Mazzoli had been assigned to the Third, Hammersmith's district, at the time of the accident.

Nudger figured they were acquaintances if not friends. Mazzoli gazed flatly across the wide booking desk at him and seemed not to recognize him.

"Hey, Mo Mazzoli," Nudger said, smiling. "I knew you when you were in the Third. Remember me?"

"No," Mazzoli said. His cop's eyes stayed flat.

Well, he met a lot of people in his job. "I'm Nudger," Nudger said. "A friend of Lieutenant Hammersmith."

Ah, rank. The mention of lieutenanthood brought some amiability to Mazzoli's stern features. "Lieutenant Hammersmith's okay," he said.

"At select times," Nudger told him. "The woman who came in here a while ago, older, nice-looking…"

"Wearing gloves?"

"That's the one. What did she want?"

"I dunno. She wouldn't talk to me. She wanted to see someone with authority, she kept saying, so I sent her in to Lieutenant Springer."

"That's right," a sharp, clipped voice said behind Nudger, "he sent her in to me."

Nudger turned to see Lieutenant Leo Springer standing just outside his open office door. He was a tall, lean man with vivid dark features built around an oversized pockmarked nose. He looked as if someone with incredible strength had placed a hand on each side of his face and squeezed. Intensity gleamed in his close-set black eyes, and there was a permanent tenseness to his forward-tilted posture that gave the impression he'd be tireless at tennis. He wasn't one of Nudger's favorite people in the department. Or on planet earth.

"And I suppose what she wanted to see you about is a private matter," Nudger said.

Springer shot his underslung, shark's smile. He'd have looked great in Agnes Boyington's finned Cadillac. "Not at all," he said. "She wanted to see me about you. She'd just come from her lawyer. I was her second call."

"I know."

"Mrs. Boyington said you'd been following her," Springer said with an edge of triumph, like a real-life Columbo. "You just confirmed it."

Nudger's stomach fluttered. He felt himself getting angry. Springer could do that to him. "I haven't broken the law."

"That's always debatable," Springer said smoothly, verbally gliding around his prey like the ocean carnivore he resembled. "Mrs. Boyington said you're working for her daughter, and that the girl isn't thinking straight because of grief and shouldn't have hired you. You shouldn't have taken her on as a client. In effect, you're stealing her money. And it's a case you've got no business on anyway, a pending homicide. You've also been trying to convince Mrs. Boyington to pay you to drop the case on the sly while humoring the daughter and still collecting your fee. You tried to intimidate Mrs. Boyington; you implied threats. She has a handyman as a witness. Bunko, extortion, all sorts of laws apply here, Nudger."

"Then apply them!" Nudger snapped.

Springer stared at him with a contempt usually reserved for murderers set free on technicalities. "Unfortunately, I can't. Mrs. Boyington doesn't want to bring charges against you. She's too much of a lady. She only wants us to talk to you, so you'll leave her alone and she can have some peace of mind. You're here, being talked to. Leave this case alone. Leave her alone. If you bother Mrs. Boyington again, your investigator's license will be up for review, and before you can say 'Sam Spade,' you'll be toting a lunch bucket back and forth to work. If you can find work."

"Nice of you to listen to my side," Nudger said.

"You don't have a side, Nudger. You're just a guy in the way. Private investigators stir up the muck, is all. They create obstacles. Not that it isn't personal too, Nudger. I don't like you. You're a smart-ass. You've got smart ways and a smart mouth."

"You forgot smart dresser."

"No, I didn't. That jacket you're wearing's got so much synthetic fiber in it, the sun might melt it."

"How do you afford such high wool content on a lieutenant's salary, Springer?"

Springer's face revealed nothing, but his lean dark fingers flexed around a wood pencil he probably didn't even know he was holding, threatening to snap it. "I can possibly talk Mrs. Boyington into pressing charges," he said. "She's a woman who obviously has a deep respect for the law. She might go for the 'your responsibility as a citizen' approach." His strained voice hissed like the sibilant opening note of a teakettle. He was coming to a boil.

"You could talk her into nothing," Nudger told him, turning up the burner. "She only feeds when she's hungry."

Springer's eyes were like black laser beams. Nudger was winning this joust. "Get out, Nudger! You and your class of cop oughta live under rocks!"

"Class isn't sewn into your designer suits, Springer. I'm surprised someone wearing white gloves would even talk to you."

Nudger knew an exit line when he'd uttered one. So much in life was timing. He neatly about-faced and made for the door, paying no attention to the wooden pencil that bounced off the wall in front of him. Mazzoli, who had been listening to the confrontation, turned away from Springer and winked at Nudger without moving any other part of his face.

Nudger's stomach felt as if it were rolling in on itself, again and again, winching his body taut. He breathed deeply as he walked to his car, trying to exhale the tension he'd built up. He hated to get angry. And he knew that Agnes Boyington and not Springer was his real problem and the deep source of his rage. He would talk to Hammersmith about Springer, who was in Vice and had no business interfering with a homicide case.

By the time he drove from the parking lot, Nudger was calmer, but his metabolism still hadn't returned to normal. He went to Swensen's at Laclede's Landing and treated himself to a thick vanilla malted milk, sitting in a booth where he could see out the window and watch the tourists wandering about, the ritual of teenagers cruising in their highly glossed cars, the pretty girls gingerly probing and picking their way across the rough cobblestone street in their slender high heels. It was relaxing to watch the rest of humanity through a sheet of glass, separated from it, ignoring the sounds of the ice cream parlor and its other customers. It lent a sense of perspective.

Nudger sat sipping the criminally rich malted milk for almost an hour before paying and walking back to his car. The clawed creature in his stomach had retreated to wait for another day.

He'd finally cooled down, and so had the evening. The breeze swirling in through the car's open windows soothed him as he drove. He'd managed to put his conversation with Leo Springer in a time vault in his mind. He wouldn't think about it again until tomorrow morning.

As he was driving west on Walnut he heard a loud roar. He was near Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals must be playing a home ball game. And playing it right, judging by crowd reaction. Nudger wondered if someone had hit a home run. He wished he could hit some kind of home run in this life, just once. He'd even settle for a long triple.

Not until he was home in bed, about to drift into one of his frequent dreams of the sea, did he realize the roar of the stadium crowd had a surflike roll and rush to it that he'd heard recently somewhere else.

He was sure it was the mysterious sound in Claudia's phone.