John Lutz - The right to sing the blues

"Where did you get these?" he asked, holding out the stack of Ineida's love letters for Nudger to see.

Nudger thought about Collins' wine cellar, but not the wine. His eyes flicked to a heavy plank door that probably led to it. He still felt cooperative. "I took them from Willy Hollister's apartment," he said.

"You shouldn't be snooping around other people's apartments," Collins told him.

"Or hotel rooms."

Collins appeared puzzled for a moment, then smiled his Richard Widmark death's-head grin. "You got it wrong, Nudger, we didn't get these out of your room. Someone gave them to us."

"Who?"

"I don't know. They were mailed."

Nudger decided not to press. He didn't want Collins to press back harder, rock-against-Nudger-against-hard-place.

"How long have you had these?" Collins asked, hefting the stack of letters in his right hand as if he might decide to toss them away in disgust, out of sight, out of the equation of his life and his daughter's life. But he hadn't the power to do that, and it infuriated him.

"A few days."

"Did you show them to Fat Jack?"

"No." Nudger didn't mention that he'd told Fat Jack about Ineida and Hollister's impending elopement. He hoped Collins wouldn't ask about that. It would be client-protection time, and Nudger didn't know if he was up to it.

But Collins let the blame fall on the nearest target.

"Maybe Ineida wouldn't be gone if you had let me know about these letters. Or if you hadn't been hanging around asking questions, opening cans of worms." His upper lip curled nastily, slurring his words. He looked as if he'd encountered a foul odor.

"Listen," Nudger began to implore.

"You listen, you bastard! Somebody snatched my daughter. That means two things: First, I do everything and anything to get her back. Second, I do everything possible and then some to see that whoever took her lives long enough to regret it but not much longer."

"Call the police," Nudger said.

"Oh?" Collins began to pace back and forth. The yellow cat watched him without blinking, moving its head slowly left to right to left. "Is that an order, Nudger?"

"Advice. Despite what you read or see on TV, the best thing to do when someone is kidnapped is to get the police in on it. Then the FBI. They know their business."

"I don't want the law to know about this."

"Livingston knows."

Collins didn't answer. He didn't seem to think of Livingston as the law.

"I like your daughter," Nudger said. "I want to see her home safe, too."

"Good. That works out fine. It gives you double incentive."

"Incentive to do what?" But Nudger knew what Collins had in mind.

"You're a detective," Collins said. "You find out things. You're going to find out where Ineida is. You're going to get her back home, safe."

"That might not be something I can accomplish, no matter how hard I try."

"You'll wish it were. Because if, after a length of time I decide upon, Ineida isn't back here with you, you'll be back here by yourself. That will leave you with two stops to make: the wine cellar, and the bayou." He glanced somberly at Frick and Frack. "You'll look forward to the bayou, Nudger."

"You might be asking the impossible," Nudger said.

Black laser light glinted Collins' eyes. "Nothing's impossible where my daughter's concerned." The ice in his glass made a tiny clinking sound; his hand was trembling.

He abruptly held the glass in front of him cupped in both hands, and turned away.

Frick stood aside and Frack made a motion with his big arm, signaling Nudger to leave with them.

Nudger was ready. The chair hissed at him like a malevolent serpent as he stood up. Frick and Frack waited while he moved through the doorway ahead of them. He glanced back before their oversized forms blocked his view.

Collins was standing on the other side of the room, still half turned away from them, holding and stroking the yellow cat. Both of them wore expressions suggesting they were dreaming of mice.

Wise men purport to see a universality in all experience, a kind of connective tissue that exists throughout the universe so that no occurrence is independent of any other; there is, so they say, a reason for everything, and if one scrutinizes carefully enough, it is the same reason. These are wise men. Nudger was the kind of guy who was always trying mentally to recreate the day so he could figure out where he'd misplaced his car key, only to walk where he needed to go and then later find the key still in the ignition, where he'd forgotten it the night before. He often reflected that he wasn't cut out for his profession. But then how many people other than jockeys and bearded ladies were suited to their jobs?

And here he was, searching for the single connective reason in this universe of grits and graft that he'd stumbled into so willingly in order to pay next month's rent. To be able to find out what he didn't know, he needed to find out why he didn't know it. And the easiest way to do that was to get someone to tell him.

He had phoned Sandra Reckoner at several places, and finally located her where he should have looked to begin with, at her home number. She was just like ignition keys.

She agreed to meet him for lunch at The Instrumental, in the same block as her husband's flagship antique shop, the lounge where they had talked about sex and ill-kept secrets.

Though the place was crowded, she'd been able to get the table they'd sat at before. The same husky waitress was gliding like a Roller Derby queen among the tables; the same musical instruments were suspended from the ceiling and mounted on the walls. The thing that was different was that there was a piano player now, and a young blond girl sitting on the piano with a drink and cigarette balanced in the same hand, singing Helen Morgan style. She wasn't bad, Nudger decided, but she needed her own act. That could be said of so many people.

Sandra looked cool and faintly amused. Her makeup and the dim light took ten years off her elongated face, robbing it of character rather than improving her looks. She had on slacks and a brilliantly striped, loose-fitting silky blouse with black half-dollar-size buttons; only a tall woman could wear that outfit.

"Did you decide you owe me lunch?" she asked Nudger, as he sat down across the table from her. The glass before her was empty except for half-melted ice. She'd been there awhile waiting for him.

"I owe you more than that," he told her. "Or maybe we're more even than I'd thought." The girl on the piano moaned softly about lost love.

Sandra didn't ask him what he meant by that; she was a great believer in letting time do its work. Nudger would get around to what he wanted to say, and she'd still be there to listen.

The waitress suddenly hovered over their table, pencil poised. She was wearing perfume that smelled overpower- ingly of lilacs. Avon screaming.

"Can I getcha anything?" she asked.

"Anything? Probably not," Nudger told her. "Just food or drink."

Her bored-waitress expression didn't change. Wrong wavelength, wrong planet. More evidence that the universe was made up of random, disparate parts.

"I'm not hungry," Sandra said. "I'll just have another Scotch and water." She looked at Nudger. "Go ahead and order some lunch; I won't think you're impolite."

"What's good here?" Nudger asked the waitress.

"Roast-beef sandwiches."

"What else do you serve?"

She shook her head. "Just roast-beef sandwiches."

"Good," Nudger said. A painless and easy choice was refreshing. "I'll have one with ketchup, salt and pepper, no onions."

"They only come one way," the waitress said.

No choice at all was necessary. "Great!" He wasn't being sarcastic; he was obviously really pleased about the sandwiches' lack of variety.