hear. She would be all right; he would see to it. He wouldn't let her be devoured by her past. Or lose herself in the sad solace of the nightlines. He'd strengthen her with love and teach her the most valuable skill a person could possess in what the world had become; the Nudger specialty. He would teach her to survive.
The door swished open and Dr. Antonelli was in the room, flanked by two starched nurses. The attitude of the three of them was that of overworked, harried people making important rounds. Antonelli held a clipboard propped against his right hip, and the taller of the nurses was carrying a stethoscope, an instrument to measure blood pressure, and a gleaming many-tubed contraption Nudger didn't recognize. They were here on doctor business.
When Dr. Antonelli saw Nudger he beamed amiably.
'Ah, Mr. Nudger,' he said. 'You're looking better. And you brought flowers! How nice! Hello. Good-bye. Get out. Go away.'
Nudger went away, but not far. NIGHTLINES: A Word After by John Lutz
A
fter a false start or two, this is the novel that kicked off the Nudger series full blown and as I conceived it. Nudger is designed not so much as to be one of Chandler's white knights-slightly smarter and tougher than those around him, and a move ahead of others on the mean streets-as he is to be a client type who somehow found himself as the private detective in the book. He is hapless and star-crossed and often afraid, unsuited for his work yet in it because he is even less suited for other occupations. It is all he knows and he is trapped in his world and experience, and there is nothing to do but pop an antacid tablet to calm his nervous stomach, then forge ahead. His saving grace-and even at times nobility-is that he doesn't give up, at least for long. When crushed, which is often, he rein- flates. When humiliated, he gathers the damaged pieces of his ego, rebuilds, and carries on. He is the common man, enhanced, but not so much that he's unrecognizable.
Some years ago, a reviewer wrote that Nudger was closer to Charlie Chaplin than to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Astute reviewer. One of the reasons I named the character Nudger was to draw the difference between his methods and Mike Hammer's. Hammer hammers, Nudger nudges. Gently but persistently, persistently…
In Nightlines, he uncovers people much like himself- outsiders, nighthawks, who talk with each other after working hours on a little known phone company open line that is normally used by repairmen to check equipment. This was unique at the time it was written, in a society without email, Internet message boards or chat rooms, where a conference call was high tech. And when most, if not all, big cities had such phone lines that were discovered and used by a relative few of the general population late at night. For the most part, they were the late-shifters, the shiftless, loners and losers and the luckless. Nudger's people. Some of them were troubled, desperate, and in need of help. Nudger's clients.
They're still out there, of course, and it's only an illusion that they are separate from the rest of us, that they work no influence. That is what Nightlines attempts to explore. I hope the reader enjoyed exploring along with Nudger.
