Nightlines

XV

Nudger took up his position near the Twin Oaks Mall fountain and waited. Between twelve and twelve- thirty, he saw four blond men wearing dark slacks and beige sport jackets. All of them could be ruled out for one reason or another as Jenine's murderer, and none of them appeared to be waiting for someone.

It occurred to him that the description Jeanette had given him was exceptionally vague for the basis of a rendezvous of strangers. For the first time, he wondered if Jeanette was playing their game totally within the rules he'd laid down. She was a manipulator, like her mother, and might act out of some devious scheme of her own, or only for the satisfaction of control over other people. Nudger had met other compulsive manipulators. High-level corporate executives, politicians, and tournament chess players usually had that kind of streak in them.

And it ran like a broad, deep current in the Boyington women.

Nudger craned his neck and glanced up and down the mall. Other than a young salesclerk lethargically applying a squeegee to the display window of a shoe store, there wasn't a blond man in sight. Nudger let himself relax.

He found it restful sitting in the cool indoor mall, listening to the gentle splashing of the fountain and watching the shoppers walk past. There was a controlled, protective atmosphere in a large shopping mall. It was a practical place of constant temperature, where rain never fell but where flowers and ornamental trees flourished. Inside every store's wide entrance were people paid to be polite, and almost every facet of suburban life was catered to here. There were several restaurants, a bank branch, drugstores, dime stores, department stores, and specialty stores. Bookstores, hardware stores, and software stores. Card shops, food shops, and antique shoppes. Merchandise for everyone from birth through all the stages of life. Everything but a funeral parlor. Shopping malls wanted no truck with death.

Nudger's pelvis felt as if it were grafted onto the hard concrete bench he was sitting on. It was twelve-forty, and still no blond Jock. Jeanette had been stood up again; Nudger had waited long enough.

He got to his feet and dodged a pert young woman pushing a baby stroller, then joined the stream of shoppers walking toward the escalators. From a shop that seemed to sell only electric organs, an elaborate but repetitive beat was drifting into the vast mall. It sounded like someone playing drums that wheezed, but it was kind of catchy and Nudger noticed that most of the shoppers were unconsciously walking to its relentless jaunty rhythm.

Nudger stopped suddenly. A man walking behind him bumped him, mumbled a " 'Scuse me" and walked on, giving a little skip to recapture the beat.

Moving over against a display window, so he would no longer be an impediment in the flow of shoppers, Nudger stared across the mall.

There was Hugo Rumbo, standing next to a bullet- shaped trash receptacle, looking at Nudger with his dreamy half-smile and squeezing his rubber ball in perfect rhythm with the wheezing organ music. As Nudger watched, Rumbo slid the ball into his jacket pocket and drew out an orange. He held the orange over the trash container and smiled more broadly at Nudger as he slowly squeezed it, compressing it to juice and pulp that oozed from between his fingers to drop into the container. Then he wiped his fingers with a handkerchief very deliberatively, never looking away from Nudger. Here was an unmistakable message not of good cheer.

Nudger's stomach was tight, but he felt safe in the mall, surrounded by hundreds of people, standing right in front of B. Dalton. He walked across the red synthetic stone floor to where Hugo Rumbo towered motionless.

Rumbo hadn't expected that. His novocaine smile disappeared and he tried to look mean. He only managed ugly, but he managed that very well.

"I could show you how to peel one of those," Nudger offered.

Rumbo's little eyes darted around like blips on a video game, taking in the throng of shoppers. "You better watch out I don't peel you," he grunted.

"Did Agnes Boyington send you to follow me?" Nudger asked. He tried but couldn't imagine being peeled.

"Nobody sent me anyplace. This is a free society. I can go anywhere I want, and if it happens to be where you are, that's just too bad."

Nudger crossed his arms and looked up at Rumbo. "How long did it take you to memorize that?"

Rumbo crossed his own leg-sized arms and sneered. "You're pretty brave here, Nudger, with all these people around us."

"I'm not pretty brave anywhere," Nudger said. This conversation was stirring playground memories. "Tell Agnes she shouldn't have gone to the police and lied about me. And that you following me around isn't going to make me change my mind about her proposition."

Rumbo flexed his bulging biceps by way of a shrug. "I don't know nothin' about any of that stuff. You tell her whatever you want her to know."

"I already have. She doesn't seem willing to accept it. She's a headstrong woman, your employer. Or is she more than just your employer?"

Rumbo didn't respond to Nudger's probe. He got his rubber ball out of his pocket, looked for a moment as if he might ask Nudger to play catch, then hunched his powerful shoulders and began his rhythmic squeezing, working the red ball as if it were a tiny detached heart that he had to keep pumping.

"The kind of people who wear white gloves usually have flip sides," Nudger said. Silence. In, out, in, out went the ball. Talking to Rumbo was some chore. Nudger decided to be direct. "Do you sleep with Agnes Boyington?"

Rumbo stopped working the agonized ball. His glittering little eyes widened in shock as color rose on his bull neck. "That ain't a very nice thing to say, Nudger."

"I didn't say it, I asked it."

Now Rumbo was shuffling his huge feet in embarrassment. Like Agnes Boyington's, his was a puritanical heart, capable of limitless cruelty for a cause thought just. That really was the thing about the massive and ineffectual Rumbo that frightened Nudger.

"Same thing," Rumbo mumbled accusingly.

"Maybe so," Nudger conceded, still wondering if what he'd suggested happened to be true. The prospect was enough to make the imagination run riot. But Rumbo probably would have responded to the question the same way whatever his relationship with Agnes Boyington.

"I like you less every time I see you," Rumbo said, using bluff to regain his composure. "But that's okay."

"Why is it okay?"

" 'Cause eventually the time'll come when I'm gonna enjoy your company, Nudger, but you ain't gonna enjoy mine." Rumbo flipped the ball into the air, caught it one- handed, and walked ponderously away in the direction of Sears.

Nudger thought that, considering Hugo Rumbo's obviously limited mental capacity, his message had been succinctly put. No doubt he and Nudger shared a piece of the troubled future.

Trying not to think about that future in graphic detail, Nudger turned and resumed walking toward the parking lot.

Halfway there, he noticed that he was walking too fast and made himself slow down. He had places to go, but since Jock hadn't shown up and occupied his time, there was no need to hurry.

Fools didn't always rush in.