John Lutz - The right to sing the blues

Nudger belched and said, " 'S'cuse me. "

"You want some more coffee, Nudge?"

Danny asked, pausing as he wiped down the stainless-steel counter with the grayish towel he usually kept tucked in his belt. He looked over at Nudger with his somber basset-hound eyes, concerned eyes. "Maybe it'd help to settle your stomach."

Maybe it would eat a hole through my entire digestive tract, Nudger thought. But he said, "No, thanks, Danny," and thumbed back the foil on a roll of antacid tablets. He popped one of the chalky white disks into his mouth and gazed down at what was left of his Danny's Dunker Delite before him on the counter.

He was eating breakfast at Danny's Donuts because Danny would let him postpone payment indefinitely. For this Nudger was grateful. But he had braved a Dunker Delite four mornings in a row now, and he was afraid that if this culinary daring continued, he'd begin to look like one of the formidable specials served at Danny's Donuts; he might become as round and polysaturated as a Dunker Delite, and not nearly so hard.

He lifted his foam cup to take a sip of Danny's horrendous coffee and wished the private-investigation business would pick up. Didn't sultry blondes in distress wander into PIs' offices anymore? Then talk a while, pout a while, flirt a while, and pay a generous retainer?

Of course, he might never find out unless he went upstairs to his office. Not much business of any kind was transpiring here at Danny's counter.

Nudger didn't feel like trudging upstairs to his bare desk, inanity-loaded answering machine, dusty file cabinets, and silent phone. It all reminded him of the overdue rent.

Danny knew why Nudger was breakfasting at the doughnut shop. "Things'll get better, Nudge," he said, expertly snapping the towel to flick a stubborn crumb off the counter. There was no one else in the place, and hadn't been since the last secretary from the building across the street had left with her grease-spotted box of a dozen glazed to-go. How Danny stayed in business was more of a mystery than Nudger could solve. "You know how it goes," Danny added. "Just when you think you're at the end of your rope, somehow you find a way to pull yourself up."

"Unless there's a noose at the end of the rope," Nudger said.

Danny ignored him and drew himself a large cup of coffee from the big steel urn. He had a frequent-user's immunity to the stuff. "Like last year, when our esteemed landlord was about to evict me," he said, leaning on the counter and testing the steaming coffee with his fingertip. "I really thought I was gonna have to toss in the towel, then along came the cream horns."

Nudger looked up from his coffee. "Cream horns?"

"Yeah, a thousand of 'em. This little gal who worked at the K-Mart up the street used to come down here every day and buy one of my cream horns for her lunch. She loved the things. Then I didn't see her for a while, and I heard she got engaged to some rich lawyer out in Ladue. Well, she wanted my cream horns served at her wedding reception. She came in here the week before the wedding and placed an order for a thousand cream horns. Saved my business."

"Something old, something blue," Nudger said.

"Huh?"

"Nothing, Danny." Nudger swiveled and stood up from his stool. His lower back ached from sitting too long slumped over. "I'll be upstairs waiting to hear from someone who needs a thousand cream horns traced."

"You never know, Nudge."

"It seems that way sometimes. See you later, Danny."

Carrying his half-cup of coffee, Nudger pushed out the door into the morning heat. He made a sharp U-turn and went through another door, right next to Danny's, that opened onto the narrow, steep stairway up to his office.

As he climbed the creaking stairs, he splashed coffee onto his thumb and cursed. He stooped to pick up the mail on the landing, unlocked his office door, went inside, and switched on the window air conditioner before he did anything else. It was nine-thirty in the morning and the office was hot enough to bake a potato; a typical July day in St. Louis, home of the Heat Alert.

He tossed the mail on the desk and sat down in his squealing swivel chair, braced for its shrill Good-Morneeeng. He shoved the foam coffee cup away in distaste. The cool draft from the humming, gurgling air conditioner danced between the spokes of his chair, over his damp shoulder blades.

While he waited to get cool, he regarded the pile of mail. Finally he picked it up from the desk and leafed through it.

There were no surprises, only offers to buy accident insurance, subscribe to magazines, tour lakeside property, enter the Reader's Digest $100,000 sweepstakes. Damn!-the electric bill. Nudger studied it and wondered how much electricity a secondhand IBM typewriter and a used window air conditioner actually consumed.

Whoops!

A white envelope Nudger hadn't noticed slipped out from between the insurance pitch and the offer of a free camera for touring Paradise Estates, flipped once in midair, and bounced off the toe of his shoe. Even through the shoe he could tell that it was heavy, and he could see that the address was handwritten and not typed or printed on a label. Maybe it was worth opening.

Nudger leaned forward in the squealing swivel chair and scooped up the envelope. It was plastered with stamps and had a New Orleans postmark. There was no return address. Nudger's office address was written in a bold yet flowery hand, dashed off with a thick felt-tipped blue pen. He hefted the envelope, leaned back, and tore open the sealed flap.

The envelope contained a round-trip airline ticket to New Orleans, first class, in Nudger's name. The flight left St. Louis at 11:05 the next morning.

Nudger dug in the envelope and came up with a folded note and a business card. The note was brief and written on plain white paper in the same flowery handwriting used on the envelope.

Nudger, my man,

I need the services of a private investigator. Let's talk in person as soon as you get into New Orleans. The Hotel Majestueux is holding a room in your name. Phone me when you arrive and we'll meet. This will be worth your while. If you hear me out and then disagree, fly again home. You have nothing to lose. I have everything to lose. Come talk to a worried man with money. Please. Fat Jack McGee

The card was engraved with a logo of a clarinet emitting a cartoon swirl of musical notes. It was also engraved with "Fat Jack McGee," a New Orleans address, and two phone numbers.

Fat Jack McGee. The clarinet.

Nudger knew about Fat Jack McGee, had several of his records cut in the sixties and early seventies in his jazz collection. Like many gifted jazz musicians, though not known to the general public, Fat Jack was one of the elite in the jazz world. He had played clarinet with his own band for years, then semi-retired to a jazz club he'd bought in New Orleans. While he still composed music for other musicians, some of them pop stars, he no longer recorded, and from what Nudger had read he performed for his paying customers only occasionally. All in all, his was an accomplished and lucrative career.

Nudger knew how Fat Jack had acquired money. He wondered how he'd acquired worry.

He also wondered if it was worth going to New Orleans to find out. Benedict and Schill, a couple of lawyers Nudger sometimes worked for, had promised to throw him some business at the end of their next ambulance chase. If Nudger left the city, he might miss that opportunity and waste several days in New Orleans while his rent rolled on. The Fat Jack McGee thing might already be solved or have evaporated by the time Nudger showed up. Or McGee could simply change his mind about hiring a private investigator. Benedict and Schill had come through before. Fat Jack McGee hadn't, except on long-playing albums.