"What kind of singer?"
"I never caught her act," Hammersmith said. "I'm no judge of talent anyway. But the report says she sang opera and blues. Humph!"
"Is there a photograph in the file?" Nudger asked.
Hammersmith nodded, turning the open file folder on the desk so Nudger could see inside.
Jacqui James looked young and fresh except for her eyes, which harbored a subtle sadness. Her black-and-white snapshot was slightly out of focus, and she stared out of the file folder at Nudger through a kind of haze, maybe the sun in the camera lens. There were trees and a small lake in the background. She was an ordinary-looking young woman, with a pretty, oval face. If she wasn't the Ineida Collins type, she was far from the opposite.
"Was she ever reported seen anywhere after the landlady said she was missing?" Nudger asked.
Hammersmith closed the file folder and shook his head. "No, this MP report is the last of Jacqui James in St. Louis as far as the police are concerned. And frankly, Nudge, she's not the sort of MP who's searched for around every corner. She was a known user and worked irregularly as an entertainer. Those people tend to be transient. Night people. It's not unusual for them to disappear with the morning light. Maybe she owed her supplier and couldn't come up with payment. Maybe she met a man. Maybe she just got up one morning with an itch to change the scenery around her." Hammersmith leaned back with his cigar and added to the considerable pollution in the tiny office. "Now, if you don't mind, Nudge, crime of a more recent nature needs tending."
Nudger stood up, finding the haze denser nearer the ceiling. It made his eyes water. He thanked Hammersmith for the information and started toward the door.
"Don't take chances around David Collins," Hammersmith cautioned from behind another billowing green cloud. "You're skating on thin ice over deep water. And your few friends who might pull you out and dry you off are here and not in New Orleans."
Sage advice, Nudger thought, even if offered in the wrong season. He nodded good-bye and left Hammersmith alone in air that only he could breathe.
As he walked across the station house's black-top parking lot, where his battered Volkswagen squatted patiently in a visitors' slot, Nudger thought about the long-gone Jacqui James. Hammersmith was right; she wasn't the sort of woman who would be searched for with any real effort. Not like Ineida Collins, who would be searched for with everything from bloodhounds to spy satellites. Of course, Willy Hollister didn't know that; to him, Ineida Collins was Ineida Mann, and probably didn't seem much different from Jacqui James, who was or had been the kind of independent, unfettered woman that Ineida only pretended to be. Jacqui James had been burned; Ineida Collins was still flitting experimentally around the alluring flame. It was a flame that might have claimed more than one victim. That still burned fiercely.
Nudger got into the sun-heated Volkswagen and drove to Jacqui James' last known address, wondering if he was the only person anywhere who still cared about what might have happened to her.
IX
Jacqui James had lived in a six-family brick apartment building in a bad block of Alabama in south St. Louis.
The building's wood trim was blistered and cracked, parched for paint, and chunks of the facade up near the flat roof had crumbled away to leave irregular gaps. The top of the building reminded Nudger of a jaw with teeth missing.
Nudger checked the mailboxes in the littered, graffiti- profaned vestibule and saw that the manager lived in 2-D. He was pleased to see that the name was still Miss I. Gorman. He went up the stairs to the landing and knocked on the door.
Irma Gorman surprised Nudger. He'd expected an older woman. She looked no more than twenty-five, and was plump, blue-eyed, and attractive. The material of her blue blouse gaped, straining at the white buttons down her breast. Her designer jeans were tight everywhere, as if encasing her were a privilege they never wanted to give up.
"Miss Gorman?"
She nodded.
"Are you the Irma Gorman who was manager here four years ago, when Jacqui James was reported missing?"
For a moment the doll-like blue eyes were blank. Then they sharpened with remembrance and maybe wariness. "I'm the one who reported Miss James missing. Has she been found?"
"Not yet. Can I come in and ask you a few questions?"
"You a policeman?"
"Nope, private detective."
"Oh, yeah?" Irma Gorman said, brightening. She was going to tell him… and did: "I never met a real private detective."
"Disappointed?" Nudger asked.
She shrugged and stepped back to let him enter.
The decor of her apartment was early Sears with K-Mart accessories. Unlike the vestibule that she managed, it was clean and neatly arranged. There was a kind of homey quality to it that Nudger liked. Through a door he could see stacks of papers, some tagged keys, and a calculator on a Formica table. The trappings of apartment-managing biz.
"Please sit down, Mr.-?"
"Nudger." He sat on a stiff, plaid early American sofa that probably unfolded into a stiff, plaid bed.
"You want anything to drink?"
"No, thanks, just answers." Nudger leaned his head back against the thick roll of upholstery along the top of the sofa.
"Do you want me to tell you about Jacqui James' disappearance?"
"Mostly about Jacqui James herself," Nudger said.
Irma Gorman sat down in a small vinyl chair, putting added strain on her jeans, and compressed her cupid's-bow lips thoughtfully. She was round-faced, sweetly pretty, and in twenty years would be a dumpling of a woman and look like the sort of good-natured hausfrau who could make terrific strudel. She'd be just right for Germanic south St. Louis. "Jacqui only lived here about nine months, and she kinda kept to herself. Oh, she was nice enough and would chat if she ran into somebody in the hall, but mostly she was quiet. Not stuck up, but sort of above things. What you might call classy."
"Did she pay her rent on time?"
"Hardly ever. But that ain't unusual in this neighborhood, Mr. Nubber."
"Nudger. Did any of your other tenants ever complain about her?"
"Only about her playing her stereo too loud sometimes. But that ain't unusual in this neighborhood, or in any apartment building these days, either. She was a singer and she'd sing along with her records. Hard rock and jazz and all that. Even opera. I don't like any of it, myself."
Nudger smiled. "You look like the Mills Brothers type."
"Who're they?"
"Never mind. When did you notice Jacqui James was missing?"
"When the rent was three weeks late. I'd been up to her apartment a dozen times, knocking on her door, but I didn't get any answer. I phoned, too, thinking she might be watching out her peephole and avoiding me; tenants do that sometimes. She didn't answer her phone, neither. Finally I figured maybe she'd moved out on the sly, so I took my passkey and opened her door to see if the place was still furnished. It was. And I smelled something rotten and looked into the kitchen and seen her half-eaten dinner there on the table, only it had to be weeks old. There was roaches all over it, looking like a regular dark carpet that moved."
Nudger's stomach tilted and zoomed.
"So I figured I better call the police," Irma Gorman continued. "They came out and looked around, asked some questions, but they didn't seem all that interested. I waited another week, then had the owner's lawyer get me some eviction papers and had her furniture moved out so I could rent the apartment to somebody else."
"Where's her furniture?"
"Her boyfriend came and got it. Billy something."
"Not Willy?"
"Oh yeah, Willy."
"Was his last name Hollister?"