As soon as he touched the napkin he knew something was wrong; it was lying flat, not the way he'd carefully arranged it to conceal the letters.
Blood was rushing to his head, making him dizzy, so he straightened, lifting the metal waste-basket as he did so and setting it on the desk. He stuck his hand in the wastebasket and probed around; still no letters. To be sure, he dumped the contents onto the desk.
The letters were gone.
'Damn her!' he said softly, but with enough vehemence to make his sides ache from the effort of abruptly expelled air.
At the knock on the door, he scooped the trash back into the wastebasket and set it on the floor. Then he hobbled over to the door and opened it, expecting to say hello to his breakfast.
But it wasn't Room Service at the door.
It was Ineida Mann.
XXIII
Not Ineida Collins, Ineida Mann. She'd shed her ingenue image for her visit with Nudger. She was wearing tight black leather slacks that laced up the fly, and a navy-blue blouse with an oversized collar. Her dark high heels made her seem six inches taller than the little girl who sang. She had on a spiked gold bracelet clasped tight around her wrist, and she was clutching a small leather purse in such a way that the long, thin strap dangled from her hand like a whip. Nudger thought she looked as if she'd been hanging around someplace taming lions.
'I want to talk to you,' she said, pitching her voice low, biting off the words hard. Everything about her was hard today except for her eyes. They tried, but had marshmallow centers.
Nudger stepped back and motioned for her to come in. She stalked into the room, then paused, noticing that he was walking with difficulty.
'What's wrong with your legs?' she asked.
'I had an accident. Sliding into third base.'
She looked at him strangely but didn't press with more questions. That she wasn't here about the letters was obvious; she wasn't clawing at Nudger or threatening a lawsuit. Or maybe she was working up to that. Actually she would approach him differently, Nudger knew, if she found out that he'd stolen and read her sometimes clinical love missives to Willy Hollister; he would hear from her not at all, or he would hear from her attorneys.
Standing just inside the door, she spread her feet wide and faced him squarely, establishing a beachhead that she might just expand into a full-scale invasion. 'Why are you investigating me?' she asked.
'I'm not,' Nudger told her, which seemed for this occasion close enough to the truth.
Her greenish eyes narrowed and managed to become tigerish. She'd practiced the expression; she was doing it consciously to demonstrate her anger. Nudger figured she was actually scared beneath all that bravado and makeup. 'You're asking questions about me,' she said. 'Coming around my apartment lying to me, sneaking around the club. Does my father have something to do with this?'
'Not exactly.'
'Do you know who he is?'
'Yes.' Nudger was getting tired of standing. He made his way painfully over to the blue armchair and eased back down into it. The old chair felt pretty good.
Ineida placed her fists on her hips and jutted out her smooth fighting chin. Nudger thought she might have a brighter future as an actress than as a singer. 'If my father didn't hire you to spy on me, who did?'
'I'm not spying on you, Ineida. And you enter into my job only in a way that could prove beneficial to you.'
'That's vague, Nudger. I didn't come here to listen to you be vague.'
'Sorry. I feel vague this morning.'
Standing in such a dramatic spread-legged fashion in those high heels must have gotten to her ankles. She stood up straighter and more naturally, her feet closer together so her weight bore down evenly and more comfortably on the thin spike heels.
'Why are you dressed that way?' Nudger asked.
'Dressed what way?'
'Like a dominatrix in a cheap whorehouse.'
She blinked at him; she didn't know what he meant. Women who whipped masochistic men for pay were beyond her experience and imagination. Her ignorance was inexcusable, she figured, so without answering she reached into her purse and tossed a fat white envelope into Nudger's lap.
'What's this?' Nudger asked, leaving the envelope alone. But he knew what it was, just not how much.
She told him. 'Twenty thousand dollars.'
He was impressed, and not nearly so altruistic and unswerving. Then, when he saw Ineida smile at him, he picked up the envelope and tossed it back to her. To his surprise, she caught it left handed with the ease of a major league first baseman and stood holding it.
The smile stayed, a confident curve above the arrogant chin. 'You don't believe me,' she said. 'Would you like to see the money? Count it?'
'No,' he told her, 'seeing all that money might break down my resolve. I'm not made of wood; mostly I'm papier- mache made from unpaid bills.'
'Then accept this.' She extended the envelope toward him but didn't toss it this time. 'Go back to where you came from and forget this job. But first, tell me who hired you. And why.'
'I can't do that, Ineida. Ethics.' He thought about her love letters he'd stolen, now missing from his possession, and his stomach twitched.
She saw that he was serious, then stopped smiling and replaced the bulging envelope in her purse. Nudger watched its fat white form disappear; absently he wiped his hand across his mouth. 'You really do have ethics,' she said, almost in amazement.
'Sure. You find them in unexpected places,' he told her, 'like lost buttons.' Probably she hadn't seen much in the way of ethics, being David Collins' daughter. 'Have you talked to your father about this?'
'No. What good would it do? If he did hire you, or knew who did, he'd just lie to me about it. He considers me too young to know certain things, still a child.'
'Where did you get the twenty thousand dollars?' Nudger asked.
'It's mine; I have money of my own.' She gazed curiously at Nudger. 'Are you working for my father and afraid to accept the money?'
'No.'
'If that's the situation, twenty thousand dollars can take you a long way from New Orleans.'
'Not that I'm working for him,' Nudger said, 'but if we got into a contest to see who could afford the most one-way tickets, he'd win.'
She knew Old Dad well enough not to argue with Nudger on that point. 'I don't like being watched over as if I'm a twelve-year-old,' she said.
'Most people don't. Especially twelve-year-olds. Does Willy Hollister know you came here?'
The chin was out again. 'Of course not! He doesn't know my family has money. No one in the jazz scene knows it, or knows my true identity.'
'They won't learn who you are from me,' Nudger told her.
'How did you find out who I am, if Daddy didn't tell you?'
'I learned from someone else. You're from New Orleans, Ineida; how long do you think you can sing in a club without someone recognizing you?'
'I've spent the last six years away from the city, and the kind of people in my old circles don't go to jazz clubs off Bourbon Street.' She smiled again with that unassailable blind confidence. 'And I don't look at all the way I used to, Nudger; I've grown up.'
'In some very obvious ways,' Nudger said, letting his gaze flick up and down her tightly clad body. She liked that, he could tell. Would she try to bribe him with something other than money?
