The Right To Sing the Blues (12 page)

Hollister lived on Rue St. Francois, within a few blocks of Ineida. Their apartments were similar. Hollister’s was the end unit of a low, tan brick-and-stucco building that sat almost flush with the sidewalk. What yard there was had to be in the rear. Through the glossy-green low branches of a huge magnolia tree, Nudger saw some of the raw cedar fencing, weathered almost black, that sectioned off the back premises into private courtyards.

Hollister might be home, sleeping after his late-night gig at Fat Jack’s. Nudger rapped on the wooden door three times, then casually leaned toward it and listened, trying to blank out the street sounds from his mind.

He heard no sound from inside. He straightened and turned his head slightly, looking around; no one on the
street seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. After a few seconds’ wait, he idly gave the doorknob a twist.

It rotated all the way, giving a sharp click. The door opened about six inches on its own, because of weight and balance. Sort of an invitation. Nudger pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped quietly inside.

The apartment no doubt came furnished; it had that hodgepodge, multi-user look about it. The furniture was old but not too worn; some of it probably had antique value. Nudger thought the building’s owner and Max Reckoner ought to get together and strike a deal. There was a milky-white vase on a shelf, not so unlike the vase Nudger had admired in Reckoner’s office.

The floor in Hollister’s apartment was dull hardwood where it showed around the borders of a faded blue carpet. Muted sunlight caught the faint fuzziness of dust on the wood surface and on the fancy corner molding; Hollister wasn’t the best of housekeepers. From where Nudger stood he could see into the bedroom. The bed was unmade but empty.

The living room was dim. The wooden shutters on its windows were closed, allowing slanted light to filter in through narrow slits. Most of the illumination in the room came from the bedroom and a short hall that led to a bath
room, then to a small kitchen and sliding glass doors that opened to the courtyard.

Wondering if he was actually alone, Nudger glanced around nervously, called, “Mr. Hollister? Gallup Poll!”

No answer. Only buzzing silence. Fine.

Nudger walked around the living room for a few minutes, examining the contents of drawers, picking up some sealed mail that turned out to be an insurance pitch and a utility bill. He was still haunted by the worrisome knowledge that Hollister wasn’t the type to go away and leave his apartment unlocked. Especially not after his run-in with Sam Judman.

As he entered the bedroom, he heard a noise from outside the curtained window, which was open about four inches for ventilation. It was a dull thunking sound he thought he recognized. He went to the window, parted the breeze-swayed gauzy white curtains, and bent low to peer outside.

The window looked out on the courtyard. What Nudger saw confirmed his guess about the sound. It was made by a shovel knifing into soft earth. Willy Hollister was in the garden, digging. Nudger crouched low so he could see better, brushing a gossamer, caressing curtain away like a web from his face.

Hollister was planting rosebushes. They were young plants, but they already had red and white buds on them. Hollister had started on the left with the red roses and was alternating colors. He was planting half a dozen bushes and was working on the fifth plant, which lay with its roots wrapped in burlap beside the waiting, freshly dug hole.

Hollister was on both knees on the ground, using his hands to scoop some dirt back into the hole. He was carefully shaping a small dome over which to spread the soonto-be-exposed roots before adding more loose earth. He knew how to plant rosebushes, all right, and he was doing his best to ensure that these would live.

Nudger’s stomach went into a series of spasms as Hollister stood up and glanced at the apartment as if he’d sensed someone’s presence. The musician wiped one of the rolled-up sleeves of his tan shirt across his perspiring forehead. He must have been working hard for quite a while; he stood angled forward at the waist, like a man whose back ached. For a few seconds he seemed to debate about whether to return to the apartment. Then he absently massaged one of his corded forearms, picked up the long-handled shovel, and began digging the sixth and final hole.

Letting out a long, hissing breath, Nudger drew back from the open window and stood up straight. He’d go out by the front door now, then walk around to the courtyard and call Hollister’s name, as if he’d just arrived and gotten no answer at the front door and decided to check the courtyard. He wanted to talk to Hollister, to probe for the man’s own version of his past.

As Nudger was leaving the bedroom, he noticed a stack of pale blue envelopes on the dresser, beside a comb-andbrush set monogrammed with Hollister’s initials. The envelopes were held together by a fat rubber band. Nudger saw the Beulah Street address penned neatly in black ink in a corner of the top envelope.

Here was one of the nasty aspects of his work; ends justifying means, gain outweighing scruples. How much of himself did he lose each time he did something like this?

But he paused for only a few seconds before he picked up the envelopes and slipped them into his pocket. Then he left Hollister’s apartment the same way he’d entered.

There was no point in talking to Hollister now. It would be foolish to place himself in the apartment at the approximate time of the disappearance of the stack of letters written by Ineida Collins.

He walked up Rue St. Francois for several blocks, then took a cab to his hotel. Though the morning was still more muggy than hot, the cab’s air conditioner was on high and the interior was near freezing. The letters seemed to grow heavier in Nudger’s pocket, and to glow with a kind of warmth that gave no comfort.

X
V

udger had Room Service bring up a two-egg cheese omelet and a glass of milk. He sat at the desk in his hotel room with his early lunch, his customary meal that had a soothing effect on his nervous stomach, and ate slowly as he read Ineida Collins’ letters to Hollister. He understood now why they had felt warm inside his pocket. The love affair was, from Ineida’s point of view at least, as soaring and serious as such an affair can get. Nudger again felt cheapened by his crass invasion of Ineida’s privacy. These were thoughts meant to be shared by no other than writer and recipient, thoughts not meant to be tramped through by a middle-aged detective not under the spell of love.

On the other hand, he told himself, there was no way for him to know what the letters contained
until
he read them and determined that he shouldn’t have. Once he’d stolen the letters, he was caught up in logic in another context. This was again the sort of professional quandary he got himself into frequently but never got used to.

The last letter, the one with the latest postmark, was the
most revealing and made the tacky side of Nudger’s profes
sion seem almost worthwhile. Here was the nugget of pertinent, illuminating information he sought—a justification for his actions. Ineida Collins was planning to run away with Willy Hollister; he told her he loved her and that they would be married. Then, after the fact, they would return to New Orleans and inform friends and relatives of the blessed union. It all seemed so quaint, Nudger thought, and not very believable unless you happened to be twenty-two and love-struck and had lived Ineida Collins’ sheltered existence.

Ineida also referred in the last letter to something important she had to tell Hollister. Nudger could guess what that important bit of information was. That she was Ineida Collins and she was David Collins’ daughter and she was rich, and that she was oh so glad that Hollister hadn’t known about her until that moment. Because that meant he wanted her for her own true self alone. Ah, love! It made a PI’s business go round.

He refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and dropped it onto the desk.

Nudger tried to finish his omelet but couldn’t. It had become cool as he’d read the heated letters. He wasn’t really hungry anyway, and his stomach had reached a tolerable level of discomfort. He knew it was time to report to Fat Jack. After all, the man had hired him to uncover information, not to keep to himself.

Nudger slipped the rubber band back around the stack of letters, snapped it, and stood up. He considered having the letters placed in the hotel safe, but the security of any hotel safe was questionable. A paper napkin bearing the Hotel Majestueux’s gold fleur-de-lis logo lay next to his half-eaten omelet. He wrapped the envelopes in the napkin and dropped the bundle into the wastebasket by the desk.

The maid wasn’t due back in the room until tomorrow morning, and it was unlikely that anyone would think Nudger would throw away such important letters. And the sort of person who would bother to search a wastebasket would search everywhere else and find the letters anyway.

He placed the tray with his dishes on it in the hall outside his door, hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the knob, and left to see Fat Jack McGee.

On the sidewalk outside the hotel, he heard his name called. At first he thought it was the old doorman, but when Nudger turned, the doorman studiously looked away from him, his face blank and composed in a way that alerted Nudger.

A short, paunchy man in a rumpled brown suit approached Nudger from where he’d been waiting in the deep cool shadow of the building. He had unruly receding hair, a chubby, jowly face, and he was smiling a rigor-mortis sort of smile. Nudger wasn’t surprised when he flashed a shield. He said, still smiling, “I’m Sergeant Chambers, Mr. Nudger. How about you should follow me down to the district station house so Captain Livingston can have a chat with you?”

“How about you should give me a choice?” Nudger said.

Chambers shook his head no, then cocked it sharply to the side. He had gum in his mouth; he began to chew it slowly with a gum chewer’s peculiar insolence, not letting the effort interfere with his toothy smile. “Sorry, can’t do that.”

Nudger sighed. “Okay. I’m parked down the block.”

“I know.” Chambers popped his gum; it sounded like a gunshot. “My partner’s parked right behind your car.”

Nudger began to walk. Chambers fell into step beside and slightly behind him. The old doorman continued to be a nonperson, “See, Hear, and Speak No Evil” all rolled into one. In his very practical world, there was safety in anonymity. Right now, Nudger wished that philosophy were his own. If it were, he wouldn’t be on his way to the station house with rumpled, gum-popping Chambers to clash with officialdom.

If if’s were skiffs
, as his ex-wife Eileen used to tell him sternly,
we all would sailors be
. Nudger was never sure what she meant by that. He thought that might have been her way of trying to get him to join the Navy.

“Why does Livingston want to talk with me?” he asked, as they approached the parked cars.

Chambers shrugged. “I dunno. I guess you been making waves.” He touched Nudger’s arm lightly to stop him and held open the rear door of a gray-blue sedan. “We might as well all go in the squad car,” he said. “Be chummier. Save you gasoline.”

He got into the back of the car after Nudger and settled down heavily into the upholstery; he smelled like Juicy Fruit. The driver, a broad-shouldered man with a fuzzy reddish bald spot on the crown of his head, didn’t look back or say anything as he started the car and drove toward the station house.

XV
I

hambers ushered Nudger into Livingston’s office, then withdrew without saying anything; Nudger heard the loud pop of gum on the other side of the door just after it closed.

The first thing he noticed about Livingston’s office was that it was large. The wall behind the desk was mostly win
dows looking out over a depressed, gloomy section of New Orleans. Which puzzled Nudger for a moment, because it was a sunny day. Then he saw that the gloom was the result of a dirty film over the windows; it was all interior gloom.