He put down the pencil and stood up from the desk. This visit hadn't helped him much, only left a steadfastly reliable witness to swear that he'd been here under false pretenses, if the law ever forced the issue in court.
He decided to leave, yet a part of him wanted to stay. It was an eerie feeling, as if his subconscious were telling him something and recoiling from it at the same time.
From where he stood, one corner of the bedroom wasn't visible. He walked toward the open bedroom door. The bed protruded there; he couldn't see beyond it to the wall.
Slowly, he entered the bedroom and walked toward a point near the brass footboard from which he'd be able to see the other side of the bed. He'd never believed the hair on the back of anyone's neck actually rose, but his felt as if it were doing so now. He moved a few steps to the left, craned his neck cautiously, painfully, for a clear angle of vision.
The carpet on the other side of the bed lay flat and bare.
Nudger let out a long, hissing breath and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck in relief. He'd seen every corner of the apartment now; it was empty of any of the things he dreaded finding.
But when he turned to go he stopped and stood still, as if he'd walked into a wall of icy air. In the dresser mirror he could see the reflection of the hall and the sliding glass door, and beyond the door the sunny courtyard. The rosebushes Hollister had planted were still there, growing in a row alternating red roses with white.
But something was different about them. Now, at the end of the row, there were two white rosebushes in succession, then a red. Someone had dug up, then replanted the rosebushes, but had neglected to replant the two end bushes in the same order they had been in. Had reversed them.
Nudger went to the sliding glass door, unlocked it, and stepped outside. The lowering sun was warm as well as bright; some of the rosebuds on the bushes had bloomed and their petals seemed virginal and fragile in the gentle light.
In a crawl space beneath the sundeck, several garden tools were stored. Nudger rummaged around in the shadows, found Hollister's long-handled shovel, and carried it to the row of newly planted rosebushes.
He dug almost in a frenzy, feeling his arm and back muscles tighten and ache from the effort, afraid the sickening hollowness in his stomach would get out of control if he didn't work hard to keep his mind off it.
Nudger remembered a case Hammersmith had told him about back in St. Louis. A guy on the east side had murdered a woman he'd picked up in a bar, strangled her, and then buried her in the woods. He'd been seen with her in the bar, and it bothered him that when the body was found, he might be tied to the murder. It bothered him so much that after two weeks he'd gone back one night, dug up the decomposed body, and removed the head to make identification from dental records impossible. Hammersmith hadn't said what the killer had done with the head; Nudger hadn't asked and didn't want to know.
But it bothered Nudger that anyone could do that to a woman he'd buried two weeks before. And it puzzled him. What was it about people like that? What was missing in their minds or hearts? He knew he could never do what the man on the east side had done. Nudger would rather die in the electric chair than do that. Really.
He was damp all over with cold sweat. Emotion clawed at his features. He didn't want to uncover what he was sure lay beneath the loose earth. He kept digging
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.