Nudger 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 profession 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-mor- tis 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 ifs 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.