in to Lieutenant Springer.'
'That's right,' a sharp, clipped voice said behind Nudger, 'he sent her in to me.'
Nudger turned to see Lieutenant Leo Springer standing just outside his open office door. He was a tall, lean man with vivid dark features built around an oversized pockmarked nose. He looked as if someone with incredible strength had placed a hand on each side of his face and squeezed. Intensity gleamed in his close-set black eyes, and there was a permanent tenseness to his forward-tilted posture that gave the impression he'd be tireless at tennis. He wasn't one of Nudger's favorite people in the department. Or on planet earth.
'And I suppose what she wanted to see you about is a private matter,' Nudger said.
Springer shot his underslung, shark's smile. He'd have looked great in Agnes Boyington's finned Cadillac. 'Not at all,' he said. 'She wanted to see me about you. She'd just come from her lawyer. I was her second call.'
'I know.'
'Mrs. Boyington said you'd been following her,' Springer said with an edge of triumph, like a real-life Columbo. 'You just confirmed it.'
Nudger's stomach fluttered. He felt himself getting angry. Springer could do that to him. 'I haven't broken the law.'
'That's always debatable,' Springer said smoothly, verbally gliding around his prey like the ocean carnivore he resembled. 'Mrs. Boyington said you're working for her daughter, and that the girl isn't thinking straight because of grief and shouldn't have hired you. You shouldn't have taken her on as a client. In effect, you're stealing her money. And it's a case you've got no business on anyway, a pending homicide. You've also been trying to convince Mrs. Boyington to pay you to drop the case on the sly while humoring the daughter and still collecting your fee. You tried to intimidate Mrs. Boyington; you implied threats. She has a handyman as a witness. Bunko, extortion, all sorts of laws apply here, Nudger.'
'Then apply them!' Nudger snapped.
Springer stared at him with a contempt usually reserved for murderers set free on technicalities. 'Unfortunately, I can't. Mrs. Boyington doesn't want to bring charges against you. She's too much of a lady. She only wants us to talk to you, so you'll leave her alone and she can have some peace of mind. You're here, being talked to. Leave this case alone. Leave her alone. If you bother Mrs. Boyington again, your investigator's license will be up for review, and before you can say 'Sam Spade,' you'll be toting a lunch bucket back and forth to work. If you can find work.'
'Nice of you to listen to my side,' Nudger said.
'You don't have a side, Nudger. You're just a guy in the way. Private investigators stir up the muck, is all. They create obstacles. Not that it isn't personal too, Nudger. I don't like you. You're a smart-ass. You've got smart ways and a smart mouth.'
'You forgot smart dresser.'
'No, I didn't. That jacket you're wearing's got so much synthetic fiber in it, the sun might melt it.'
'How do you afford such high wool content on a lieutenant's salary, Springer?'
Springer's face revealed nothing, but his lean dark fingers flexed around a wood pencil he probably didn't even know he was holding, threatening to snap it. 'I can possibly talk Mrs. Boyington into pressing charges,' he said. 'She's a woman who obviously has a deep respect for the law. She might go for the 'your responsibility as a citizen' approach.' His strained voice hissed like the sibilant opening note of a teakettle. He was coming to a boil.
'You could talk her into nothing,' Nudger told him, turning up the burner. 'She only feeds when she's hungry.'
Springer's eyes were like black laser beams. Nudger was winning this joust. 'Get out, Nudger! You and your class of cop oughta live under rocks!'
'Class isn't sewn into your designer suits, Springer. I'm surprised someone wearing white gloves would even talk to you.'
Nudger knew an exit line when he'd uttered one. So much in life was timing. He neatly about-faced and made for the door, paying no attention to the wooden pencil that bounced off the wall in front of him. Mazzoli, who had been listening to the confrontation, turned away from Springer and winked at Nudger without moving any other part of his face.
Nudger's stomach felt as if it were rolling in on itself, again and again, winching his body taut. He breathed deeply as he walked to his car, trying to exhale the tension he'd built up. He hated to get angry. And he knew that Agnes Boyington and not Springer was his real problem and the deep source of his rage. He would talk to Hammersmith about Springer, who was in Vice and had no business interfering with a homicide case.
By the time he drove from the parking lot, Nudger was calmer, but his metabolism still hadn't returned to normal. He went to Swensen's at Laclede's Landing and treated himself to a thick vanilla malted milk, sitting in a booth where he could see out the window and watch the tourists wandering about, the ritual of teenagers cruising in their highly glossed cars, the pretty girls gingerly probing and picking their way across the rough cobblestone street in their slender high heels. It was relaxing to watch the rest of humanity through a sheet of glass, separated from it, ignoring the sounds of the ice cream parlor and its other customers. It lent a sense of perspective.
Nudger sat sipping the criminally rich malted milk for almost an hour before paying and walking back to his car. The clawed creature in his stomach had retreated to wait for another day.
He'd finally cooled down, and so had the evening. The breeze swirling in through the car's open windows soothed him as he drove. He'd managed to put his conversation with Leo Springer in a time vault in his mind. He wouldn't think about it again until tomorrow morning.
As he was driving west on Walnut he heard a loud roar. He was near Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals must be playing a home ball game. And playing it right, judging by crowd reaction. Nudger wondered if someone had hit a home run. He wished he could hit some kind of home run in this life, just once. He'd even settle for a long triple.
Not until he was home in bed, about to drift into one of his frequent dreams of the sea, did he realize the roar of the stadium crowd had a surflike roll and rush to it that he'd heard recently somewhere else.
He was sure it was the mysterious sound in Claudia's phone.
XIV
Nudger hadn't slept well. He'd awakened twice during the night from dreams of walking on an empty beach, leaving a line of footprints just beyond the reach of crashing, hungry waves that were angrily devouring the wide slope of sand. There was no one in sight, not for miles up and down the coastline. A half-moon was so bright that it etched his black shadow in front of him, almost as if it were day rather than night. He was alone, never more alone, and gusting in from an indiscernible horizon were roiling dark clouds, dropping lower and lower, threatening to engulf and smother him when they reached the shore.
He tried not to think about last night's dreams as he sat eating an omelet and dry toast, grateful for the morning light cascading through the kitchen window, even though its glare worsened his dull headache. He seemed to be haunted by the same sorts of dreams, if not the same dreams. He was either by the sea, which might be in any of its varying moods, or he dreamed of falling from great heights. Sometimes the sea dreams were pleasant and reassuring. The dreams of falling always left him sweating and scared.
While he ate, he listened to an old Billie Holiday record from what was left of his jazz collection after last year's poverty-induced sale. That made him feel better. If he was down, Billie was lower; but something in her dulcet voice affirmed that it was possible to get up.
He left his dirty dishes in the sink, telling himself he'd wash them that evening. Sure. After switching off the stereo and replacing the record in its jacket, he draped his sport coat over his arm and left the apartment.
As he got out of his car and crossed the street to his office he was almost struck by a van with a thousand windows. Traffic was heavy on Manchester for this time of day. He reached the haven of the opposite sidewalk and squinted to see up the street. Cars were backed up beyond the traffic light, waiting to turn into the K-mart underground parking lot. There must have been coupons in the paper.
He trudged upstairs to his office, unlocked the door, and went inside. The place was hot, but he wasn't planning on being there long. There was no point in switching on the air conditioner. Listening to the traffic sounds
