The right to sing the blues

XXXI

Hey, old sleuth, you gotta get over here," Fat Jack told Nudger on the phone.

Nudger had only been back in his hotel room for half an hour, had stopped his uncontrollable shaking only a few minutes ago. He was washing the dirt from his hands and arms after digging in Hollister's garden. His hands were still wet when he answered the phone; he wondered if anyone had ever been electrocuted this way. "Where's here?" he asked.

"My office at the club," Fat Jack said, as if Nudger were crazy for having to ask. "I just got a phone call from David Collins."

"What kind of call?"

"I better tell you in person."

"Okay, I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"Great. Hey, I got real problems, Nudger. Ultra-problems."

"You ain't seen nothin' yet," Nudger said.

"Huh?"

"Al Jolson used to say that before he laid the really big number on the crowd. Same way Ronald Reagan."

"I know. So what?"

"See you in half an hour," Nudger said, and hung up.

He stood for a moment, shirtless, staring down at the dark spots of water he'd dripped on the carpet. Then he went back in the bathroom, finished washing, and hurriedly toweled his hands dry. He felt like switching on the ceiling heat lamp in the tiny bathroom; despite the inability of the hotel's air conditioning to hold back the warmth of the day, he was getting chills. He put on a fresh shirt, shrugged into his wrinkled brown sport coat, and left for Fat Jack's. "I hung up on Collins just a few minutes before I phoned you," Fat Jack said. He was standing behind his desk, twitching around as if he were too nervous to sit down. It was warm in the office, too, but Nudger's chilliness had accompanied him there.

He waited, saying nothing. That seemed to make Fat Jack even more jittery. He was visibly miserable, a veritable Niagara of nervous perspiration. Ultra-miserable.

"Collins told me he got a phone call," Fat Jack said, "instructing him to come up with half a million in cash by tomorrow night, or Ineida starts being delivered in the mail piece by piece."

Nudger wasn't surprised. He knew where the phone call to Collins had originated.

Fat Jack grimaced with fear. It wouldn't let up; it was gnawing like rats on his insides. Nudger watched, fascinated. It was something to see, a huge man like Fat Jack being eaten alive inside-out. "Collins told me that if any part of Ineida turned up in the mail, a part of me would be cut off. He told me what part; it ain't gonna be what's missing from Ineida."

"It appears he scared you," Nudger observed.

Fat Jack raised his writhing eyebrows and looked dumbfounded. "Scared me? Hey, he terrified the livin' shit out of me, Nudger. Collins is a man who don't bluff; he means to do real harm to the friendly fat man. I mean, hey, I take him at his word."

Nudger walked around the office for a few seconds, almost preoccupied, like a boxer finding the area of the ring where he felt most comfortable. Near the desk corner, about five feet from Fat Jack, he stopped and stood facing the big man. For the first time he noticed that Fat Jack had too much of his lemon-scented cologne on today; it did nothing to hide the fear, only made the unmistakable sharp odor of desperation more acrid.

"When I was looking into Hollister's past," Nudger said, "I happened to discover something that seemed ordinary enough then, but now has gotten kind of interesting." He paused and watched the perspiration pour down Fat Jack's wide forehead.

"So I'm interested," Fat Jack said irritably. He reached behind him and slapped at the window air conditioner, as if to coax more cold air from it. There was no change in its gurgling hum.

"There's something about being a fat man," Nudger said, "a man as large as you. After a while he takes his size for granted, doesn't even think about it, accepts it as a normal fact of life. But other people don't. A really fat man is more memorable than he realizes, especially if he's called Fat Jack."

Fat Jack drew his head back into fleshy folds and shot a tortured, wary look at Nudger. "Hey, what are you talking toward, old sleuth?"

"You had a series of failed clubs in the cities where Willy Hollister played his music, and you were there at the times when Hollister's women disappeared."

"That ain't unusual, Nudger. Jazz is a tight little world." Fat Jack sat down slowly in his squeaking, protesting, undersized chair, swiveled slightly to the left, and glanced briefly upward as if seeking some written message on the ceiling. He found none. He swiveled back to face Nudger, making himself sit still.

"I said people remember you," Nudger told him. "And they remember you knowing Willy Hollister. But you told me you saw him for the first time when he came here to play in your club. And when I went to see Ineida for the first time, she knew my name. She bought the idea that I was a magazine writer; it fell right into place and it took her a while to get uncooperative. Then she assumed I was working for her father-as you knew she would."

Fat Jack stood halfway up, then decided he hadn't the energy for the total effort and sat back down in his groaning chair. "You missed a beat, Nudger. Are you saying I'm in on this kidnapping with Hollister? Hey, if that's true, why would I have hired you?"

"You needed someone like me to substantiate Hollister's involvement with Ineida, to find out about Hollister's missing women. It would help you to set him up."

"Hey, set him up for what?"

"You knew Hollister better than you pretended. You knew that he murdered those four women to add some insane, tragic dimension to his music-the sound that made him great. You knew what he had planned for Ineida."

"He didn't even know who she really was!" Fat Jack sputtered. Not a bad actor; so sincere.

"But you knew from the time you hired her that she was David Collins' daughter. You schemed from the beginning to use Hollister as the goat in your kidnapping plan."

Fat Jack wrinkled his forehead, raised pained eyes to Nudger. He looked genuinely hurt by this absurd accusation, disappointed by Nudger's inability to puzzle things out. "Christ, old sleuth! Where are you getting these wild ideas about the old fat man? Hollister is a killer-you said so yourself. I wouldn't want to get involved in any kind of a scam with him."

"He didn't know about the real scam," Nudger explained. "When you'd used me to make it clear that Hollister was the natural suspect, you kidnapped Ineida yourself and demanded the ransom, figuring Hollister's past and his disappearance would divert the law's attention away from you."

Fat Jack's wide face was a study in agitation, but it was relatively calm compared to what must have been going on inside his head. During the last few days he'd realized he'd bitten off too much to chew. His body was squirming uncontrollably, and the agony in his eyes was difficult to look into. He didn't want to ask the question, but he had to and he knew it. He had to hear the answer.

"If all this is true," he moaned, "where is Willy Hollister?"

"I did a little digging in his garden," Nudger said. "He's under his roses, where he thought Ineida was going to wind up, but where you had space for him reserved all along."

Time stopped, then took a couple of extra slow ticks, the way it does when something irrevocable happens. Fat Jack's head dropped. His suit suddenly seemed two sizes too large, as if a year of Weight Watchers had caught up with him all at once. As his body trembled, tears joined the sheen of perspiration glistening on his quivering cheeks. "How could you have figured it out?" he asked.

"When I found out the letters were missing, I suspected Collins' alter egos Frick and Frack, but that didn't make sense in light of further developments. Then I suspected Sandra Reckoner, but she didn't take the letters. Nobody else I knew of could have been in my hotel room. Nobody even knew the letters were there. Nobody but you. You stole them and had them delivered to David Collins to further implicate Hollister by making it appear that he and Ineida left New Orleans together. Then there's the fact that Ineida's three months pregnant."

"Huh? Pregnant?"

"If Hollister had taken her, he'd know about the pregnancy and would have used it for leverage. But it was never mentioned in the kidnapper's ransom demands."

"Ineida's got one in the oven? You sure?"

"One in the oven," Nudger confirmed. He'd never liked that expression. "Her mother told me. Collins' former wife. Marilyn Eeker."

Fat Jack said nothing for a long time. Then he said, in a very low voice, "Okay, I guess all that leaves me in deep shit."

"The deepest."

He raised his head slowly. His question was a plea for mercy: "What now, old sleuth?"

Nudger stepped forward and leaned down over the desk so he could look Fat Jack in the eye. "Where is Ineida?" he asked.

"She's still alive" was Fat Jack's only answer. Crushed as he was, he was still too wily to reveal his hole card. It was as if his fat were a kind of rubber, lending inexhaustible resilience to body and mind. Nudger couldn't help it; he found himself admiring such stamina in the face of relentless pressure.

"It's negotiation time," Nudger told him, "and we don't have very long to reach an agreement. I not only did a little digging in Hollister's garden, I did some refilling. It's a busy place, that garden. While we're sitting here talking, the police are digging in the dirt I replaced."

"You called the police?"

"I did. But right now, they expect to find Ineida. When they find Hollister, Livingston will begin to fit all the pieces together the way I did and get the same puzzle picture of you. It might take him a while, since he has less than I did to work with, but he'll do it."

Fat Jack nodded sadly, seeing the truth in that prognosis. Livingston was, if nothing else, a smart cop. "So what's your proposition?" Fat Jack asked.

"We both have a stake in Ineida getting back to home base safely," Nudger said. "You release her, and I keep quiet until tomorrow morning. That'll give you the advantage of a head start on the law. The police don't know who phoned them about the body in Hollister's garden, so I can stall them for at least that long without arousing suspicion."

Fat Jack didn't deliberate for more than a few seconds. He saw the only way out of the maze and intended taking it.

He nodded again, then stood up, supporting his ponderous weight with both hands on the desk. "What about money?" he whined. "Hey, I can't run far without money." He added with supreme logic, "That's what all this was about."

"I've got nothing to lend you," Nudger said. "Not even the fee I'm not going to get from you."

"All right," Fat Jack sighed. He was pure resignation now, whipped like a tub of butter. Despite himself, Nudger kept feeling some semblance of pity for him. Something so buoyant and enormous, both physically and in talent and accomplishment, was an awesome and pathetic spectacle crashed.

"I'm going to phone David Collins in one hour," Nudger told him. "If Ineida isn't there, I'll put down the receiver, pick it up again, and dial the number of the New Orleans Police Department."

"She'll be there," Fat Jack said. "Hey, I promise." He buttoned his suit coat, gathered momentum, and headed toward the door. He had some moves left; that was all he needed, some.

He was within a step of the office door when it opened.

Fat Jack reversed direction, as if he'd run to the end of his string and rebounded, taking two steps backward without turning.

Marty Sievers walked into the office. He nodded blandly to Fat Jack and Nudger, looking as if he had no idea that anything unusual was going on here. Nudger knew better. The cards were all up now; bluff time was over. Sievers must have been outside the door for a long time, eavesdropping.

"No one's leaving here for a while," Sievers said. He said it softly, but it was an unmistakable order to be unfailingly obeyed. A threat. It was effective, even though he wasn't carrying a weapon. He didn't need a weapon. He knew it. Fat Jack and Nudger knew it. That was enough.

"I guess I don't have anyplace to go right now," Nudger said.

Sievers smiled a handsome, glittering smile. Leading- man charm. Dazzling. Nudger had never seen him smile like that. It was unnerving.

"You might have someplace to go you never thought of," Sievers said, still in that same soft voice. "And in a hurry."