Ride the Lightning (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  She stood aside as Nudger stepped up into the trailer and edged around her. She smelled like perfumed, soapy shampoo. It reminded him of how his former wife Eileen had smelled immediately after a shower. Still, he liked that scent.

  Nudger sat in the vinyl chair again, and she settled into a corner of the undersized sofa, as she had the first night he'd been here; these things took on a certain convention. There was a jelly-jar glass half full of a clear liquid on the small table by the sofa. Nudger picked up another scent now. Alcohol. High-proof gin.

  “I been drinking, Mr. Nudger,” Candy Ann admitted. “Not much. Just enough to ease my headache some, and my worry about Curtis.”

  “I'm not going to be able to offer much comfort,” Nudger told her. “I talked to the witnesses, and all of them stick to their stories.” He told her the details of the conversations.

  As she sat listening, she unwound the towel and began to rub her incredibly tangled wet blond hair, sending glistening clear water droplets flying. Her little-girl features were drawn into a pained and contemplative expression that made Nudger want to put his arm around her as a father might and pat her shoulder, assure her that everything would work out okay eventually, lie and lie and lie.

  What he said was, “It only takes two witnesses to convict, Candy Ann. In this case there are four. And they're all solid. None of them is at all in doubt about his or her identification of Curtis Colt as the killer.”

  Candy Ann continued rubbing the rough towel on her scalp violently, as if she were determined to buff her hair from her head. Or her worries from her mind.

  Nudger leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and looked squarely at her. “I have to be honest; it's time you should face the fact that Colt is guilty and you're wasting your money on my services.”

  She stopped rubbing her wet hair, gazed at him with her pale blue eyes from beneath the folds of the damp towel. “All them witnesses know what's going to happen to Curtis,” she said. “They'd never want to live with the notion they might have made a mistake, killed an innocent man, so they've got themselves convinced that they're positive it was Curtis they seen in that liquor store. They gotta be positive if they want to sleep at night.”

  “Your observation on human psychology is sound,” Nudger said, “but I don't think it will help us. The witnesses were just as certain at the trial. I took the time to read the court transcript; the jury had no choice but to find Colt guilty, and the evidence hasn't changed. Nothing has changed, Candy Ann. …”

  “That Randy Gantner, I think he'd just as soon see Curtis dead, knowing Curtis might do something even from prison to stop him from pestering me.”

  “Gantner pestered you?” Nudger sat back and felt warm vinyl attach itself to his perspiring back through his shirt. “How could he know where you live? How could he even know you exist?”

  Candy Ann lowered her eyes. “I told him, I'm afraid. It was before I hired you; I thought maybe I could talk to them witnesses myself, get them to see Curtis' innocence, his goodness. Gantner's the only one I seen. After him, I knew how hopeless it was for me and that I needed the help of an expert.” She looked up and smiled. “That's when I called you, Mr. Nudger.”

  “So Gantner found out where you lived.”

  “I ain't sure he knows where I live, but he came by the Right Steer a few times. He … made advances.”

  “That sounds like something out of the nineteenth century,” Nudger said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. What kind of advances?”

  “Improper.”

  “Oh, I'm sure. But was the implication that if you slept with him he might change his story about Curtis?”

  “No, he never came right out and said that.” She rubbed her nose vertically with the palm of her hand, as a child might, and looked pensive. “Tell you the truth, Mr. Nudger, though I shouldn't say it—if it would really save Curtis' life, I'd even sleep with that Gantner. Would in a minute.”

  “I don't think it would make much difference,” Nudger said. “And I don't think Curtis would approve.”

  “You're probably right about both those things.”

  Nudger shook his head slowly. “I'm sorry, but the evidence looks exactly the same as it did at the time of the trial.”

  Candy Ann drew her bare feet up off the floor and hugged her knees to her chest with both arms as if she were crazy about her legs. It was almost a gesture of unconscious, undeveloped sexuality, the sort of thing you might see in a ten-year-old. Her little-girl posture matched her little-girl faith in her lover's innocence. She believed the white knight must arrive at any moment and snatch handsome Curtis Colt from the electrical jaws of death. She believed hard, this child-woman. Nudger could almost hear his armor clank when he walked.

  She wanted him to believe just as hard. “I see you need to be convinced of Curtis' innocence,” she said wistfully. There was no doubt he'd forced her into some kind of a corner with his lack of faith and his disheartening report of unshakable witnesses. “If you come by here at midnight, Mr. Nudger, I'll convince you.”

  “Can't we make it earlier?” Nudger said. “My old car turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

  She smiled slowly, her slightly protruding teeth separating her lips. “I seen cars was lemons, Mr. Nudger, but never pumpkins.”

  “How do you intend to prove Colt's innocence?”

  “I can't say. You'll understand why later tonight.”

  “But why do we have to wait until midnight?”

  “Oh, you'll see.”

  Nudger looked at the waiflike creature curled in the corner of the sofa. He felt as if they were playing a childhood guessing game while Curtis Colt waited his turn in the electric chair. Nudger had never seen an execution; he'd heard it took longer than most people thought for the condemned to die. There were spasms, wisps of smoke, the scent of charred flesh.

  His stomach actually twitched. How did he ever get pulled into this case? How did he get pulled into this odd occupation? But he knew how. It had something to do with unpaid bills. And with other kinds of obligations. With not being able to walk away like a sane man. He'd be there at midnight.

  “Can't we do this now with twenty questions?” he asked, trying one more time to get to bed early tonight.

  Candy Ann shook her head. More drops of water flew, playing bright tricks with the lamplight. For a moment there was magic in the trailer. “No, Mr. Nudger. Sorry.”

  Nudger sighed and stood up, feeling as if he were about to bump his head on the low ceiling even though he was barely six feet tall. “All right, Candy Ann, we'll do it your way.”

  She smiled again, as if thanking him, as if he'd had a choice.

  “Make sure you're on time tonight, Mr. Nudger,” she called as he went out the door. “It's important.”

  Nudger wondered at the different worlds people lived in, while the real world had its way with them.

  He didn't notice the car following him as he turned the Volkswagen out of the trailer park.

  7

  Nudger drove to his office to wait for midnight. He checked his phone-answering machine again. Another call from Eileen, who demanded in her no-nonsense voice that he call her back as soon as possible. He reached for the phone, almost lifted the receiver, then slowly drew his hand back and settled down in his swivel chair, which gave a soft little squeal, as if assuring him he'd been wise not to call. He didn't feel like talking to Eileen right now. Ever again, actually.

  In the yellowish glow from his desk lamp, he leafed once more through his file on Curtis Colt, hoping he'd notice something he'd missed. But there was nothing pointing toward Colt's possible innocence. Probably because Colt was guilty.

  After half an hour, Nudger closed the file folder and abruptly shoved it away from him on the desk. There was frustration and quiet despair in the gesture. He wished Danny's Donuts was open downstairs; he could use someone to talk to. The Cardinals were still playing phenomenal baseball and had won five games in
a row now; Danny, who was an avid fan, would be happy to discuss baseball for the next few hours.

  Or it might not hurt to talk with Danny about Curtis Colt. Danny was a good sounding board and sometimes provided insight. He tended to think in terms of stereotypes, but once he saw someone like Colt as an individual, his soft heart took over. Danny was all for capital punishment, but if Jack the Ripper had been someone he knew, Danny would have figured those girls did something to provoke him.

  Curtis Colt was no mad-dog killer, nothing exceptional as criminals went; he was a garden-variety holdup man who had panicked and pulled the trigger when the job went sour. Or was he only that? There were disturbing reverberations around the shots he'd fired. Nudger decided he'd better learn more about Colt.

  The phone jangled, startling Nudger. The swivel chair cried out as he sat up straight. Eileen? For a moment his hand hesitated, then he lifted the receiver and held it tight to his ear, as if there were someone in the quiet office he didn't want to overhear the conversation.

  It wasn't Eileen on the line; it was Harold Benedict, of the law firm of Benedict and Schill, for whom Nudger sometimes did work. He said he'd been trying to contact Nudger all day.

  “Why didn't you leave a message, Harold?” Nudger asked.

  “You never answer your messages, Nudger. I don't know why you even have a recorder.”

  “I listen sometimes, I just don't call back. People who leave a message for you to call them back usually mean trouble. Besides, I don't like getting instructions from machines. But I'd have called you back because sometimes you pay me money.”

  “You're a throwback to the primeval days before microchips.”

  Nudger had no reply for that. Pointless to deny. Lawyers.

  Benedict told him a guy named Cal Smith had an insurance disability claim in for a back injury sustained on his job as a warehouse worker. The insurance company was a Benedict and Schill client, and Benedict didn't think Smith's back was really injured or that his client should pay the claim. A hard man was Benedict. And a devious one. He wanted Nudger to do some camera work.

  Nudger had done this sort of thing before for Benedict and Schill. He wrote Smith's address on his desk pad, then hung up the phone.

  Smith, he thought, sitting back in his chair. Maybe the most common name of all, the butt of low-comedy motel jokes. Nothing like the improbable Biff Archway. Nudger swallowed a bitter taste on the edges of his tongue. His stomach stirred like a cranky, disturbed beast. Was there really someone named Biff Archway?

  But he knew there was, and that the person so named wore ties that found their way into Claudia's bedroom.

  Nudger wondered what was the full given name of someone called Biff. He'd have to ask Claudia. And what would a Biff look like? Nudger had a good idea of that: a medium-height, chesty guy, with a firm jaw, clear eyes, and all-American charm. That was a Biff, all right. A regular guy John Wayne would have liked instantly.

  Anger—no, not anger, jealousy—flared for a moment, but he pushed it away to a far corner of his mind where it could fester quietly while he went about his business. Claudia was right, he knew. She and Nudger weren't married or engaged, so maybe this was to be expected. She'd been a bird with a broken wing when he met her. He'd helped to heal the wing, and now she could fly. And maybe she wanted to soar for a while. Maybe it was as simple as that: the blood talking. Or the hormones.

  Nudger peeled back the silver foil on a roll of antacid tablets and thumbed two of the chalky white disks onto his tongue. He chomped down on them hard, chewing loudly in the quiet, dimly lit office. The occasional whisper of traffic from the street below was the only reminder of an outside world.

  It occurred to Nudger that perhaps Dr. Oliver, Claudia's analyst, who had helped her to get over the scars of her marriage to Ralph, had advised her to see other men. Part of her therapy. Oliver would do that, and the hell with Nudger if he thought it would help Claudia.

  Or maybe this Biff Archway really was just a fellow teacher who'd been in the neighborhood and felt he should drop by to see a co-worker. Possibly he was a scrawny little wimp who loved only his mother. Little acne-pitted guy with an Oedipus complex. Could be. What the heck, give him crooked teeth and bad breath.

  Nudger realized he was squeezing the edge of the desk so hard that his hands ached. His nails were dead-white out near the very tips of his fingers.

  He loosened his grip and laughed out loud at himself. It was too loud and didn't sound like genuine laughter, but he told himself it should be genuine. He was acting like a paranoid adolescent jilted on the night of the prom.

  The hell with this, he thought. He would phone Claudia and apologize to her for his fit of juvenile jealousy. They would talk for a while, come to an understanding, and he'd feel better.

  He picked up the receiver again and tapped out her number.

  Claudia's phone rang ten times. She wasn't home.

  Nudger hung up. “Bullshit!” he said, loud enough to startle himself. He swallowed the jagged chunks of antacid tablet. They hurt his throat.

  “You shouldn't oughta curse.”

  The squat, ugly little man who was standing a few feet inside the door wasn't joking. Simple sincerity oozed from him. He must have moved with supernatural quiet; Nudger looked closely to make sure his visitor cast a shadow. He seemed simply to have appeared there like a genie from a too-small lamp that had kept him cramped and mashed down for centuries.

  He had a pushed-in, amiable face that was too large for his head but not large enough for his short, thick neck. The red Strohs Beer T-shirt he wore was stretched tight over bulging muscles and a bulging stomach paunch. If he'd been taller he'd have resembled one of those muscular, gone-to-fat pro wrestlers, but he was only about five feet four and merely looked pudgy and mildly dangerous; the Pillsbury Doughboy after weight training.

  Nudger tilted the shade on the desk lamp so he could see the man more clearly. There was something vaguely familar in the dark hair and eyes, the confident, defiant set of the jaw. And something disturbingly vacant about the cast of the thickened features.

  “I'm Lester Colt,” the man said with a flat, southwest Missouri twang. “Curtis Colt's my little brother.”

  8

  “How did you find out I was looking into your brother's case?” Nudger asked. “And how did you know I'd be in my office this late?”

  Lester Colt walked farther into the office, grinning and hooking his thumbs in the wide belt of his threadbare Levi's. The belt featured a saucer-sized buckle engraved with a tractor-trailer. The buckle looked cheap but handcrafted, a beautiful bit of throwaway artistry. “Didn't know what kinda business you was in till I saw the lettering on your door. As to how'd I know you was here, I followed you from Candy Ann's place. Stuck to you like fresh-chewed gum.” He seemed immensely proud of himself.

  “I didn't hear you come up the stairs,” Nudger said. The stairs, and the floorboards on the landing outside the door, squeaked loudly. Nudger liked them that way.

  Lester shrugged, still grinning. “I snuck up.”

  “Why?”

  “Wanted to see what kinda place I was in before I made myself known. I thought you was seeing Candy Ann on something other than business, Nudger. I see now I had you wrong, and her, too. She ain't as bad as I thought.”

  “You don't approve of Candy Ann?”

  “I don't know. Don't matter much, anyways. At least it won't after next Saturday. I do think she oughta let Curtis be resting in his grave afore she carries on with somebody else. That Curtis, even though he was youngest, he did a good job of taking care of me when we was kids. Beyond then, even. I guess I owe it to him to see his girlfriend is treating him with the respect he deserves, despite the fact he's in the state prison.”

  “I can assure you that she still loves Curtis,” Nudger said. “What were you doing out at Placid Grove Trailer Park?” But looking at the shy, guarded expression on Lester's broad face, Nudger knew what. Lester might not entirely approve of C
andy Ann Adams, but there was something about her that interested him.

  “Passing by, is all,” Lester said. “I thought I'd stop and talk to Candy Ann. Then I seen your car parked by her trailer, and I waited till you come out and wanted to find out who you was, so I drove behind you all the way into the city, then here.” Again the pleased grin, the ignorance that was bliss. “Bet you didn't know I was behind you, even.”

  True enough; Nudger had hardly glanced in his rearview mirror, had simply driven along with his mind on other matters, blissfully ignorant in his own fashion.

  He looked more closely at Lester, thinking of Ozark jug whiskey, kissin' kinfolk who didn't stop with kissing, and inbreeding that sometimes produced people like Lester Colt. Nudger figured Lester for the mentality of a cunning twelve-year-old.

  “Do you drive a truck for a living?” Nudger asked, motioning toward the trucker's belt buckle.

  Lester shook his head. “Naw, I ain't passed the chauffeur's-license test. But I will someday. I just load trucks now, is all.” He put out a leg awkwardly, as if balancing himself against wind at a great height, and angled his chunky body toward Nudger, cocking his head and staring at an odd angle with wary, bewildered eyes. “You think you can help Curtis?”

  Nudger silently cursed Candy Ann for raising false hope. “I doubt if I can help your brother, Lester. I'm simply going over the case again, on the off chance somebody overlooked something that might make a difference.”

  Lester nodded slowly. “I guess that oughta be done for Curtis. Candy Ann hire you?”

  Nudger nodded.

  Lester grinned again, his opinion of his would-have-been sister-in-law raised considerably. “You let me know if you hear anything new about Curtis,” he said.

  “Sure. Where can I get in touch with you?”

  “I ain't got a phone, but I'm at Commerce Freightlines' warehouse down on Hall Street most days. On the loading dock.”