Ride the Lightning (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  The dull pain in Nudger's side was causing his stomach to act up. He slid open the flat middle desk drawer and got out a roll of antacid tablets, popped two of the white disks into his mouth, and chewed.

  “Bad stomach?” Siberling asked.

  Nudger nodded. “Tension makes it turn mean.” He put the tablets away and closed the drawer. “I want to talk with Curtis Colt,” he said, “as soon as possible.”

  Siberling scratched his baby-fat, dimpled chin. “I'm not sure—”

  “That you can get me in to see him?” Nudger interrupted. “Or that you will?”

  “Ease up,” Siberling said. “Chew another one of those white tablets. I'm Colt's lawyer. I can see him anytime he agrees to see me. And I can send you as my representative.”

  “And will you?”

  “I didn't say I wouldn't. But I don't want you to give Colt false hope. He's probably adjusted to the idea of the execution by now; he might cling to whatever you tell him and be worse off after your visit. He's been nailed tight for this one, Nudger; he's going to die and you shouldn't tell him otherwise.”

  “I won't.”

  “Who hired you?” Siberling asked.

  “Colt's fiancée.”

  He rolled his eyes. “And she told you Colt was in bed balling her the night of the murder?”

  “No, but she had someone who was with Colt at the time of the killing talk to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Colt's accomplice. They were miles away, in North County casing a service station, when the liquor-store holdup occurred.”

  “So you've got the word of a fiancée, and the word of a felon. You call that promising? And where the fuck were these people during the trial? I could have used them—not that it would have helped much.”

  “The accomplice is still at large,” Nudger said. “I don't know where. He would have had to incriminate himself if he'd testified, risked the chair along with Curtis. And Curtis wouldn't let the fiancée testify, didn't want the police to know about her.”

  Siberling made a spreading, helpless gesture with his manicured hands. A glittering gold pinky ring winked out the message that he didn't come cheap; this Legal Aid service was strictly temporary and Colt had been defended by one of the best. “Colt might have had the right idea; the police would have bugged the shit out of her if they'd known about her. And I told you Colt was the noble type, just the sort to clam up to protect his lady love.” Siberling did some more pacing, theatrically, as if a jury might be watching. “I'll try to get you an interview with Curtis,” he said.

  Nudger thanked him, and Siberling started toward the door and Kelly and his tennis match. Probably indoor tennis, considering the heat.

  “I got the impression you were a difficult man to see,” Nudger said. “What made you take the time to come here?”

  The nasty little man turned at the door and smiled an absolutely angelic smile. “You want to hear me say it, don't you?”

  “I need to hear somebody other than my client and a career holdup man say it,” Nudger told him.

  “Okay,” Siberling said, “I actually think Colt is innocent. Don't ask me for sound reasons; if I had any, I'd have brought them up in court. A good lawyer senses almost as much as he can prove, Nudger. When it comes to push and shove, life and death, instinct is king over reason. And all my instincts tell me Colt shot nobody.”

  Nudger didn't say anything.

  “Better get your locks fixed,” Siberling cautioned as he went out the door.

  For a long time Nudger sat silently at his desk. He wasn't sure if he really liked what Siberling had just said about the Colt trial. It even crossed his mind that Siberling might in some way be using him, might have known that simply coming here would shift a critical balance.

  The fiancée thought Colt was innocent and the state was going to give the wrong man the ride on the lightning. The petty holdup man thought the same thing. The lawyer was of the same mind.

  Now Nudger agreed with them.

  He wondered how they would all feel Saturday. And if he should expect another violent visit from the big man who could dish it out so well he probably never had to take it. Nudger thought about how it would feel to have all of his ribs cracked. How it would be when it was happening, and then later.

  Pain wasn't for him. He picked up the phone and punched out the number of the locksmith down the street.

  14

  Siberling had moved fast. He phoned Nudger the night of their conversation in Nudger's office and told him the interview with Curtis Colt had been arranged.

  Nudger was up early the next morning and on the road to Jefferson City. It took him a little over two hours to drive there, first on Highway 70, then south on 54, through the flat, green, and baking heartland of summertime Missouri.

  It wasn't the most scenic route in the state. Farmland and open fields flanked the highway for miles, broken only by distant, lonely houses and outbuildings, cedar-post fences, grazing livestock, and sometimes equally placed rolls of hay, like huge pillows of shredded-wheat cereal, distributed by mechanized bailers.

  Nudger didn't bother stopping for breakfast or to freshen up when he reached Jefferson City; he drove straight to the ancient and oppressive penitentiary.

  The Missouri State Penitentiary was said to contain one of the worst death rows in the country, infested with roaches and flies, plagued by inadequate plumbing and unsuitable medical facilities. After an inmate had served enough time there, the waiting became the revenge and the punishment, and the execution the escape.

  The room they left Nudger in was pale green, darker green around the lower half. It was divided by a wall containing a bank of phones. Before each phone was a thick window crisscrossed with wire mesh between the layers of glass. On the other side of this glass were corresponding phones, black, without dials, buffed and scarred and with a dull patina caused by perspiration and long use.

  There were no other visitors at this hour. Nudger was alone as he sat before one of the phones and waited. On the metal counter below the phone he saw the usual graffiti—names, phone numbers, occasional profanity, obscure symbols—done in pencil or ink. Over it all someone had used lipstick to draw a perfectly shaped heart. There was nothing written inside the heart, as if whoever had drawn it loved someone but wasn't sure who—or maybe simply wanted to love someone. Nudger touched the tip of the heart with his finger, rubbed, examined his fingertip. It was unstained; the heart was indelible.

  Through the glass he saw a door open on the other side of the room. A heavyset uniformed guard entered and moved off to the side. The dividing wall and the glass were so thick that no sound from over there reached Nudger's ears. He saw but didn't hear Curtis Colt enter the room, followed by another armed guard. It was like watching a silent movie.

  Colt appeared even smaller than Nudger had imagined him. He was wearing drab prison clothes, and he carried himself stiffly, with a suggestion of disorientation, as if he'd just been awakened from a sound sleep. His dark, down-turned mustache looked the same as in his photographs. His hair was shorter but unevenly shorn, making him appear younger. He seemed at ease as the other guard locked the door, moved to the side opposite his counterpart, and took up a stolid, silent position, waiting for the interview to be over so they could lead Colt back to his cell. All routine.

  Colt glanced along the rows of phones and windows, saw Nudger, and moved toward the chair and phone on the other side of the window. When he got close, he squinted hard through the glass, as if fixing Nudger's face in his mind.

  Nudger studied Colt as he sat down. There was no longer much defiance in his carriage or manner. At the same time there was no sign of submission. It was as Siberling had said; the impression Colt gave was that the material world was a transient condition beneath his concern. Some truth to that, considering Colt's projected brief future.

  Nudger also saw the quiet dignity Siberling had mentioned. Sometimes impending death lent people a sort of solemn nobility, the calm
ness and insight gained by the acceptance of mortality. But then Colt apparently had possessed that before his death sentence.

  Both men lifted the phones' receivers before them at the same time; the black earpiece was hard and cool against Nudger's ear. The phone gave off the impersonal chemical scent of plastic.

  “Siberling didn't tell me what you want,” Colt said. His voice was calm; it flaunted the Ozark twang that brother Welborne had worked so hard to eliminate. “Said who you was, what it was about, but not what you want.”

  “I'm going over the old ground in your case,” Nudger said into the phone, watching Colt react to his words on the other side of the thick glass. It was as if Colt were halfway dead already, at a sad way station where he might still communicate awkwardly with the living, but didn't really want to. “I'm talking to the eyewitnesses, trying to see how they could be mistaken about placing you at the scene of the liquor-store robbery and killing.”

  Colt gave Nudger a level look through the window. His lips moved, right there a few feet in front of Nudger, but Nudger heard only the electronic simulation of his voice in the phone. “Why you doing that?”

  “Candy Ann hired me to help you.”

  There was a pause. Then Nudger saw Colt's lips move again, seemed to hear the word half a second out of synchronization. “Who?”

  Colt hadn't understood. “Candy Ann Adams.”

  “I don't know any Candy Ann Adams.”

  Nudger felt the air go out of him. He settled down farther into his hard chair in surprise, needing contact with something solid, real. This he hadn't expected.

  “Your fiancee,” he said numbly.

  “I ain't got no fiancee,” Colt said quietly. Too quietly.

  “I know what really happened,” Nudger said, pressing on. “Candy Ann arranged for Tom to talk with me. He told me the two of you were in North County, laying the groundwork for a service-station stickup, at the time of the liquor-store killing.”

  “And you believe that?” There was a touch of incredulity in Colt's voice.

  Nudger nodded.

  “Sorry,” Colt said, “I don't know any Tom. The stickup and shooting went down just like them witnesses said in court. I did wrong, and I'm man enough to take my punishment, no matter what it is.”

  “I think you're innocent,” Nudger persisted. “Candy Ann thinks so too. And so does Siberling.”

  “My lawyer's paid to think I'm innocent,” Colt said logically. “Candy Ann is somebody I don't know. If you think I'm innocent, Nudger, and you're trying to do something about it, believe me, you're pissing into the wind. I'm guilty, man. It's settled. I'm settled.”

  “Don't be crazy. You've got to take what chance you have.”

  Colt smiled thin enough to cut paper. “I'm all out of chances. Don't feel sorry for me; the food ain't bad here, and a guy don't have to worry about putting on weight.” Brave talk, only half-sincere, holding back reality.

  Nudger felt frustration growing in him, digging claws into his stomach. “Is that what's bothering you? You don't want anybody feeling sorry for you because it's bad for your tough-guy image? This isn't a beer commercial or an old Cagney movie. My God, man, you're on Death Row! It's time to give yourself any opportunity, no matter how long the odds.”

  A flush of anger crossed Colt's face, then was gone. “You don't think I know I'm on Death Row? Listen …” But he let his voice trail off, as if reconsidering what he was about to say, deciding against it.

  “I know where I am, Nudger,” was all he said calmly into the phone. Another expression came and went almost instantly on his dark features. It startled Nudger; for a moment he thought Colt might begin to cry. But his composure was back as quickly as it had slipped and revealed the terror behind it. The emptiness. He needed somebody just then. Desperately.

  He said softly, “How is she?”

  “All right,” Nudger told him. “Concerned about you. That's why she hired me.”

  “Lucky in love, unlucky in crime,” Colt said with a tilted grin. “That's me.”

  “Right both times,” Nudger said. He watched Colt through the glass, letting him think about Candy Ann.

  Nudger's stomach began to bother him more now. It growled, letting him know that this conversation with Colt represented stress. He absently fed himself a couple of antacid tablets, chomped and swallowed.

  After a minute he said, “Curtis, I think you should give them Tom. It will mean prison for both of you. But this way it's death for you and freedom for him. Freedom until he gets collared for some other job. He smells like a loser. Think about it. Don't let some half-ass code of honor put you in the electric chair.”

  “I don't know any Tom,” Colt said. “And there ain't no honor among us thieves, and surely none among us murderers. Ask any of the guards here.”

  “You didn't know any Candy Ann, either.”

  Colt stood up. There was time left in the fifteen minutes they'd been granted for the interview, but he was about finished talking. “I don't know any Tom,” he repeated.

  And he probably really couldn't tell the police where to look for him, Nudger thought. Tom knew the score and the moves, and he had the fear in him. He'd find a deep hole and cover himself, make himself virtually impossible to find until after Saturday.

  “Tell Candy Ann to forget about me,” Colt said in a voice as hard as his carved features. “Tell her I'm already dead and to quit poking around in my ashes. I'm dead, and Saturday I'll sit down and then I'll lay down, and she'll know I'm dead then the way I know it now.”

  He hung up the phone and didn't look at Nudger as he turned and walked to the door. He paused, standing loosely, his hands at his sides.

  One of the guards unlocked the door, swung it open, and they escorted him out. The guards didn't look at Nudger, either. He was just another visitor from the world on the other side of the glass. Unimportant. Didn't really belong.

  That was fine with Nudger. He got out of there.

  15

  The drive back to St. Louis was during late morning and early afternoon, when the sun was higher and hotter. The Volkswagen didn't have air-conditioning, and Nudger drove with the windows open, his hands slippery with sweat on the steering wheel, the air pressure from the wind pounding like a drum in the back of the car.

  He stopped once, for lunch, at a roadside diner, a place of sun-faded curtains, Formica, and dead flies on the window ledge by his booth. The waitress said she couldn't serve omelets after ten o'clock, so Nudger had a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. His stomach objected, not only to the spicy ham but to the entire distressing day, and five miles down the highway he was chain-chewing antacid tablets.

  When he reached the city he drove directly to his apartment, then phoned Danny to see if anyone had been by his office. No one had. He then called Kalas Construction and was told that Randy Gantner was on vacation as of last Monday and wouldn't be back to work until next week. Nudger said he was Gantner's brother from out of town and he had to get in touch with Randy as soon as possible. The girl on the phone said she was instructed not to give out employee's addresses or phone numbers under any circumstances. Sorry, there were no exceptions. She didn't sound sorry, just disinterested.

  Nudger replaced the receiver and looked up Gantner's address in the phone directory. He wasn't a detective for nothing.

  A shower, a cold beer, and a half hour later Nudger was ringing Randy Gantner's doorbell.

  Gantner lived in Bridgeton at the Fox and Hounds apartment complex, an adult singles development of low, tan-brick, modern units built in a U-shape around a swimming pool. Nudger figured Gantner was home. A blue Toyota pickup truck he remembered from the Interstate 70 construction site was parked in front of Gantner's apartment. There was an empty rack for a shotgun in the truck's back window, and several empty beer cans and a broken shovel lay in the rusted metal bed.

  The Fox and Hounds was near Lambert International Airport, below the flight pattern. As Nudger stood waiting for Gantner to come to
the door, a red-trimmed TWA jetliner roared over low enough for him to glimpse the passengers inside the row of windows. The blast of sound was so great that the water in the pool seemed to shimmer. The three bikini-clad tenants lounging near the diving board didn't look up.

  “… want?” Gantner was saying.

  The door had opened and Nudger hadn't heard it. He hadn't seen it because his gaze had snagged on a tall blonde sunbathing on her stomach with her bikini strap unfastened so she wouldn't have a pale stripe across her back.

  “I need to talk with you again about Curtis Colt,” Nudger said.

  Gantner had recently showered, or maybe come in from the pool. His reddish hair was glistening wet and combed straight back. He was wearing white slacks, beaded leather Mexican sandals, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt that laced rather than buttoned up the front. It was laced only halfway, to reveal the hair on his chest and a gold chain from which dangled what appeared to be a large gleaming tooth from some sort of animal. The neckwear went well with the gold stud in his left earlobe. He thought he was trendy, didn't know he looked like a pirate lost in time.

  He seemed annoyed, but he shrugged and then stepped back to admit Nudger.

  The apartment was small and garishly furnished. Above a vinyl modern sofa hung a mass-produced oil painting of an old three-masted sailing ship forging ahead in the throes of a furious storm on a luminous sea. Paint-by-numbers on a heroic scale. A poster of a cat about to flush itself down a toilet bowl hung on the opposite wall, above the legend “You think your day was rough?” Below the poster was a bookcase that held an expensive set of stereo components. MTV was playing on the big color TV, Mick Jagger strutting his stuff while his voice blasted from the two large speakers on either side of the bookcase. Nudger hadn't heard the music outside because of the aircraft noise.

  Gantner ambled over and switched off the TV, a middle-aged adolescent in his Fox and Hounds lair. What the hell, Jagger was a few years older than he was.

  “Have you thought any more about the liquor-store shooting?” Nudger asked in the sudden, silent absence of Jagger and the Stones.