The right to sing the blues

IX

Jacqui James had lived in a six-family brick apartment building in a bad block of Alabama in south St. Louis.

The building's wood trim was blistered and cracked, parched for paint, and chunks of the facade up near the flat roof had crumbled away to leave irregular gaps. The top of the building reminded Nudger of a jaw with teeth missing.

Nudger checked the mailboxes in the littered, graffiti- profaned vestibule and saw that the manager lived in 2-D. He was pleased to see that the name was still Miss I. Gorman. He went up the stairs to the landing and knocked on the door.

Irma Gorman surprised Nudger. He'd expected an older woman. She looked no more than twenty-five, and was plump, blue-eyed, and attractive. The material of her blue blouse gaped, straining at the white buttons down her breast. Her designer jeans were tight everywhere, as if encasing her were a privilege they never wanted to give up.

"Miss Gorman?"

She nodded.

"Are you the Irma Gorman who was manager here four years ago, when Jacqui James was reported missing?"

For a moment the doll-like blue eyes were blank. Then they sharpened with remembrance and maybe wariness. "I'm the one who reported Miss James missing. Has she been found?"

"Not yet. Can I come in and ask you a few questions?"

"You a policeman?"

"Nope, private detective."

"Oh, yeah?" Irma Gorman said, brightening. She was going to tell him… and did: "I never met a real private detective."

"Disappointed?" Nudger asked.

She shrugged and stepped back to let him enter.

The decor of her apartment was early Sears with K-Mart accessories. Unlike the vestibule that she managed, it was clean and neatly arranged. There was a kind of homey quality to it that Nudger liked. Through a door he could see stacks of papers, some tagged keys, and a calculator on a Formica table. The trappings of apartment-managing biz.

"Please sit down, Mr.-?"

"Nudger." He sat on a stiff, plaid early American sofa that probably unfolded into a stiff, plaid bed.

"You want anything to drink?"

"No, thanks, just answers." Nudger leaned his head back against the thick roll of upholstery along the top of the sofa.

"Do you want me to tell you about Jacqui James' disappearance?"

"Mostly about Jacqui James herself," Nudger said.

Irma Gorman sat down in a small vinyl chair, putting added strain on her jeans, and compressed her cupid's-bow lips thoughtfully. She was round-faced, sweetly pretty, and in twenty years would be a dumpling of a woman and look like the sort of good-natured hausfrau who could make terrific strudel. She'd be just right for Germanic south St. Louis. "Jacqui only lived here about nine months, and she kinda kept to herself. Oh, she was nice enough and would chat if she ran into somebody in the hall, but mostly she was quiet. Not stuck up, but sort of above things. What you might call classy."

"Did she pay her rent on time?"

"Hardly ever. But that ain't unusual in this neighborhood, Mr. Nubber."

"Nudger. Did any of your other tenants ever complain about her?"

"Only about her playing her stereo too loud sometimes. But that ain't unusual in this neighborhood, or in any apartment building these days, either. She was a singer and she'd sing along with her records. Hard rock and jazz and all that. Even opera. I don't like any of it, myself."

Nudger smiled. "You look like the Mills Brothers type."

"Who're they?"

"Never mind. When did you notice Jacqui James was missing?"

"When the rent was three weeks late. I'd been up to her apartment a dozen times, knocking on her door, but I didn't get any answer. I phoned, too, thinking she might be watching out her peephole and avoiding me; tenants do that sometimes. She didn't answer her phone, neither. Finally I figured maybe she'd moved out on the sly, so I took my passkey and opened her door to see if the place was still furnished. It was. And I smelled something rotten and looked into the kitchen and seen her half-eaten dinner there on the table, only it had to be weeks old. There was roaches all over it, looking like a regular dark carpet that moved."

Nudger's stomach tilted and zoomed.

"So I figured I better call the police," Irma Gorman continued. "They came out and looked around, asked some questions, but they didn't seem all that interested. I waited another week, then had the owner's lawyer get me some eviction papers and had her furniture moved out so I could rent the apartment to somebody else."

"Where's her furniture?"

"Her boyfriend came and got it. Billy something."

"Not Willy?"

"Oh yeah, Willy."

"Was his last name Hollister?"

"I can't remember his last name, Mr. Nubber."

"Blond, good-looking man? Sort of thin?"

"That's him. He was some kinda musician. Him and some other men came out and loaded Jacqui's furniture into a rented truck and that was the last I seen of any of them. I was surprised to see you here, still interested in what mighta happened to her."

"Why?"

"Because I'm sure something bad happened to Jacqui, and she ain't coming back or gonna be heard from again. I watched Willy and his friends load the truck and seen what they put in. She left all her clothes in her apartment, and her big stereo that I heard cost over a thousand dollars. Nobody runs away and leaves stuff like that."

That was true enough, Nudger thought. And it was the sort of thing he'd come here to learn about.

"That stereo had four speakers and a digital clock and all kinds of gadgets that lit up and went around while it played. My older sister tried to buy it from that Willy guy, but he said no, he wouldn't sell."

"Did he seem confused or upset about Jacqui's disappearance?"

Irma Gorman cocked her head and thought back. "No, I can't say he seemed anything but normal, from what I saw of him. He probably figured like the police did, that Jacqui was the type to just up and leave. Leastways that's what the police said about her. But I don't think anybody'd do that right in the middle of supper and leave most everything they owned behind, not even somebody in show business, do you?"

"I do not," Nudger said. "Did Willy Hollister visit her often?"

"I can't say for sure; I don't spy. It seemed like he was around her place a lot, though, as I recall."

A squawk from the next room made Nudger jump. Then he realized the sound was made by a baby.

"That's okay, Mr. Nubber, it's little Eddie. 'Scuse me." Irma Gorman got up and hurried into the bedroom. The baby started to cry, then was immediately silent.

Irma's name on the mailbox read "Miss," and she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. None of Nudger's business.

When she returned from the bedroom she had her blouse open and was nursing an infant. "This here is my Eddie."

Nudger swallowed self-consciously and stared at the baby tugging on Irma Gorman's brown nipple. "Cute," he said, hoping Irma wouldn't notice his embarrassment. He'd been born at the wrong time and was still laboring under the inhibitions of most men over forty.

He stood up from the sofa. "I appreciate your help, Miss Gorman. Good-bye. And good-bye, er, Eddie."

"No trouble," Irma said, carrying the nursing baby across the room to see Nudger out. "And good luck."

"Good luck?"

"Sure. I hope you find Jacqui."

Nudger left without telling her he wasn't looking for her missing tenant. He and Irma Gorman shared the same opinion, that something bad had happened to Jacqui James and she wouldn't be seen again.

On the drive to Claudia's apartment, Nudger thought about little Eddie. Whatever the circumstances, a kid could do worse for a mother than Irma Gorman. "How was school today?" Nudger asked Claudia.

She had just entered the apartment and had plopped a blue loose-leaf notebook stuffed with dog-eared papers onto the table by the door. "School was just fine." She smiled at Nudger and walked over and kissed him lightly on the lips, bending down to reach him where he sat on the sofa. She was dressed in a prim-looking gray dress with a red bow at the neck and a red belt cinching the material tight around her slender waist. Red high-heeled shoes showed off her nicely curved, nyloned ankles. A red garter belt would really go great with that outfit, Nudger thought. The kids at Stowe High School had to think Ms. Bettencourt was their sexiest teacher.

Nudger considered grabbing her and pulling her down to sit on his lap, but she moved away too quickly and walked toward the kitchen. She knew him well enough to have become wily.

He looked back toward the local TV news he'd been watching. A polar bear at the zoo was pregnant; very rare.

Claudia returned a few minutes later with a glass of ice water for herself and Budweiser beer in a glass for Nudger. She handed him the glass and sat down beside him on the sofa.

"I'm going back to New Orleans tonight," Nudger said. He saw her body stiffen slightly, though he continued to watch TV. The news was running a feature; a stout little man in a grocer's apron was telling viewers the things they could do with rutabaga.

"Why so soon?"

"Business." He told her about Fat Jack McGee and Ineida Collins/Mann and Willy Hollister.

"Are you beginning to feel protective toward Miss Mann?" Claudia asked.

"As an uncle might."

Claudia took a sip of water and rested a cool, damp hand on Nudger's arm. "You know I appreciate what you've done," she said, "getting me the job at Stowe School-"

"I didn't get the job, you did," he interrupted.

She ignored him. "-making it possible for me to live with the pain after my marriage."

"Dr. Oliver's the guy to thank for that," Nudger said. The psychiatrist was helping her to cope with the guilt that clung to her, guilt laid on by her former husband, Ralph Ferris. Despicable Ralph.

Claudia smiled and aimed her dark eyes at Nudger. They were deeper than usual and clouded with tears. He didn't want her to cry. "Sure," she said "you weren't any help at all."

"You're not really worried about me getting involved with that girl Ineida, are you?" Nudger asked. He was embarrassed by her gratitude and wanted away from the subject of Nudger as savior.

"No."

He wasn't sure if he believed her. Or if he wanted to believe her.

"I know you, Nudger. If she were a bird with a broken wing, I'd worry. But she has wealth; she'll be able to fly."

"If she gets the chance."

Claudia sloshed the water around in her glass. The ice made faint clinking sounds. "Why don't you go back to New Orleans in the morning instead of tonight?"

Nudger knew he shouldn't delay going back; he'd been gone long enough as it was. Maybe long enough to allow Willy Hollister to make whatever move he had planned for Ineida. But he said, "I might be able to do that." On the news, a group of irate Webster Groves residents were complaining vociferously about a county plan to widen an old scenic street and cut down dozens of stately trees. Hammersmith lived out in Webster Groves, but as far as Nudger knew, cared nothing for trees.

"I can fix us dinner here," Claudia said, knowing the way to male hearts over forty, "and we can spend a quiet evening."

"Do you think it's unrealistic for a forty-three-year-old man to be embarrassed in the presence of a woman breastfeeding her infant?" Nudger asked.

Claudia cocked her head to the side and looked at him. "Yes."

"I think so, too. I wonder why I am."

"It's not unusual. And there might be a lot of reasons. Men your age were subject to youths when female organs were associated with the sex act and nothing else. You're part of the mammary generation, Nudger."

"Not Pepsi?"

"That, too."

"Then I'm sexually repressed?"

"Maybe." Claudia grinned. "Or maybe you're just jealous of the infant."

Nudger propped his stockinged feet up on the coffee table, took a sip of Budweiser, and thought about that.

"Jealous," he said at last.

Claudia's grin widened and her fingers inched toward the buttons on her dress. "No need for that," she said, moving closer. Nudger definitely would change that airline reservation.

From the corner of his eye he saw an old black-and- white photograph of a young Billy Weep on the TV screen, hugging his saxophone to him as if it were a woman and smiling whitely and broadly. A pretty blond anchorwoman who recited the news as if she were reading The Three Bears to children was telling about how a one-time well-known local jazz musician was found beaten to death in his Hodi- mont Avenue apartment.

Nudger changed his plans again.