by John Lutz
“Don't get testy, Nudger. Anyway, Claudia does care a great deal for you. I know; I spent hours with her in analysis.”
“Then why Biff Archway?”
“You might have put your finger on it a moment ago. She's wondering about her own feelings. Maybe it's a sign her wounds from the past, from her marriage to Ralph, finally are healing. She feels strong enough now to be with other men, but she needs to verify that to herself.”
“Why aren't I ‘other men’?” Nudger asked.
“You're too familiar. Too available, sympathetic, and reliable.” Oliver smiled now and shook his head. “You should clean up your act, Nudger.”
“You're a wiseass for a psychiatrist,” Nudger said.
“Doubtless I am. But I'm glad you came to me.”
“Why? You said this was all a sign that Claudia was traveling toward full recovery.”
“I'm glad for you that you came,” Oliver said. “Because maybe I can put your mind at ease. What Claudia's going through probably is positive, something she needs to do to affirm herself. When it's run its course, she'll most likely return to you. That's not a professional promise, only my imperfect personal prediction. Dear Abby stuff. An opinion from a friend who's seen this pattern before.”
“I only know I hate Biff Archway, and I never met him.”
“That's natural,” Oliver said cheerfully.
“So are warts,” Nudger said, “but they're damned hard to get rid of.” He thanked Oliver and stood up, started to leave, then paused. “There's someone else I'd like to ask you about, if you've got the time.”
“I don't have it, but I'll listen. Psychiatrists always take time to listen about people's friends. They often turn out to be our clients. The people, not the friends.”
“You won't get a client out of this either way,” Nudger said. “My friend is someone I'm concerned with professionally. Curtis Colt.”
“Colt? The man on Death Row?”
“Yes. I talked to him yesterday. He's resigned to dying Saturday. He doesn't want help, says he's guilty.”
Oliver fingered the scab on his chin again. “Not so unusual. He's made his peace with himself. He's ready to do penance.”
“Only he isn't guilty. I'm sure of it.”
Oliver placed his hands on the desk, studied them. “Is he your client?”
“No. My client is someone close to him.” Nudger told him about Candy Ann Adams, about Tom and Lester, about Welborne Colt and his billiard-ball theory of predestination.
“Tell me everything you can remember about your visit with Curtis Colt,” Oliver said.
Nudger did, while Oliver sat picking at his scab again, causing it to bleed by the time Nudger was finished.
“Colt seems to feel that this execution was scheduled from the time of his birth,” Nudger said. “That society has it in for him, rather than vice versa.”
“At the same time,” Oliver said, “his behavior isn't really consistent with that of someone who feels resignation in the clutches of a power with which he can't cope. From what you say, he's accepted the fact of the execution, yet he still displays a calm air of defiance.”
“More one of detachment.”
“But not a dispirited detachment.”
“No,” Nudger said. “He acts more like a prisoner of war ready to meet the firing squad as a patriotic gesture.”
“Interesting analogy,” Oliver said. “I wish I had the time, and the authority, to find out more.”
“Colt's the one without the time,” Nudger said.
Oliver nodded agreement. “If you need to talk to me again about Claudia,” he said, “you know how to reach me, here or at my other number.”
Nudger thanked Oliver again and left.
Out on the sidewalk, the sun was much brighter, hotter. The simmering heat wave was going to continue, but right now Nudger didn't mind. He was always glad to leave Malcolm Bliss. It occurred to him that sometimes he had the feeling it was the pocket and he was a billiard ball.
When he got near his office, he saw a Maple wood police car parked up the street toward the Kmart store. A rusty pickup truck was nowhere in sight. Good.
Nudger exchanged car keys with Danny in the doughnut shop.
“Any sign of our violent friends?” he asked.
“Nope,” Danny said. “And a police car's been back and forth by here real slow a few times.”
Nudger told him about the protection Hammersmith had arranged. Not an army of guards, but the best that could be done under the circumstances of short manpower and divided jurisdiction. The St. Louis metropolitan area, with its scores of small municipalities with their separate city governments and police and fire departments, was a puzzle board of official responsibility.
“Call me on the phone if you see the truck again,” Nudger said.
Danny nodded and handed him a wrapped Dunker Delite and a large cup of coffee. “Want the morning paper, Nudge?” he asked. “I already read it.”
“Sure.”
Danny straightened the newspaper as much as possible where it was spread out on the counter, smoothing it and arranging it in order. “Cards won another,” he said. “Six in a row now.” He folded the crinkled paper in half and handed it over. Newspapers were never quite the same after the first time.
“Thanks, Danny,” Nudger said. “For more than breakfast and the paper.”
“Nothing,” Danny said. “You picked me up from time to time.” He snatched his towel from his belt and began wiping down the gleaming counter, working hard on imaginary smudges.
Nudger went upstairs, got his mail from the landing, and switched on the air conditioner.
He sat down behind his desk and examined the mail in the light blasting through the slanted Venetian blinds. A couple of ads, a survey form, and an envelope from Eileen. Nothing yet from Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. What was the delay? He tossed all of the mail unopened into the wastebasket.
Then he punched “rewind” and “play” on his phone-answering machine.
One message, in a chillingly familiar voice: “You didn't pay no mind to what I told you, Nudger. No mind whatsoever. Start ig-fuckin'-noring that matter we talked about in your office or I'll wring out your balls like an old dishrag. Leave it a-fuckin'-lone, or else. I can be lots more convincing. Fact is, I'd purely love to be.”
He reached out a shaky hand and switched off the answering machine. The big guy really liked to mangle things, even the language. He sure sounded like somebody who enjoyed his work.
Nudger stood up and looked out the window at a sharp angle, his forehead pressed against the wooden frame. The Maplewood police car was still parked up the street.
He sat back down, ignored the Dunker Delite, and downed half the cup of coffee. For warmth, not taste. Warmth meant life, and he had the terrible suspicion that he might be heading for a place downtown where the beds had drains and the people were refrigerated.
Such imagination, his stomach growled. Please, no more coffee.
He picked up the phone and called Candy Ann at home.
She was going in early to work at the Right Steer, she said, but she could talk with Nudger during her eleven o'clock break, after the Buckaroo Breakfast Special crowd had thinned out.
Nudger told her he'd be there with spurs on and hung up. He wasn't going to heed the warning of the voice on his answering machine. He didn't know if that was because he was hard to convince, or if he was simply being stupid in a lost cause.
His stomach knew.
19
Nudger and Candy Ann sat hunched toward each other like conspirators in a back booth at the Right Steer. Most of the morning's customers had eaten their fill of ranch-style eggs, steak, and potatoes. The Buckaroo Breakfast Special.
This was the lull between the breakfast and lunch crowds. A few of the other waitresses in their yellow-and-brown cowgirl outfits sat in back booths, looking exhausted and waiting for life to return to tired legs. Not an easy job, riding herd on customers a
t the Right Steer.
“You look worn out,” Nudger told Candy Ann. Her gaunt country-girl face seemed drawn by gravity; her pale blue eyes gazed out with something like sad bewilderment from beneath heavy lids.
“I didn't sleep much last night, Mr. Nudger. Ain't slept except in fits and starts since Curtis was sentenced.” She held her mug of coffee in both hands, sipped from it, then set it on the table exactly halfway between the two of them, as if it were some sort of magic potion that would ensure good news. “Have you made any headway, Mr. Nudger?”
“No. I'm sorry.”
Her thin shoulders lifted momentarily beneath the yellow-fringed blouse; there was a ketchup stain near her name tag, above her left breast. “I am, too. Only I ain't in the least sorry I hired you. People gotta do what they can, don't you think?”
“Some people,” Nudger said. He watched a pimply teenage boy balance two huge bags of hamburger buns over his head and dance and weave among the tables to the grill area behind the serving counter. Something sizzled loudly; the place was beginning to fill with that burned-beef smell that didn't agree with Nudger. “I think there's only one thing left to do,” he said.
Candy Ann took another sip of magic coffee, then waited with her eyes closed, as if hoping the Curtis-saving spell had worked this time.
“You have to give them Tom,” Nudger told her.
She looked down into the steaming cup, then away from it at the table. “I can't. You don't realize what-all you're asking me to do. It wouldn't be right for me to let Tom down like that. We got an agreement. Besides, I couldn't snitch on him even if I wanted. I don't know where he is.” She raised her head and stared at him, a simple cowgirl trapped in the modern, complicated world and about to cry. “I mean that, Mr. Nudger.”
“Then you can tell the authorities about Tom. Officially. He'll still be at large and as safe as he is now. I think you and I should both make official statements.”
“How could we do that?”
“I'll contact Curtis' lawyer and see if we can give depositions. Written sworn testimony. You'll state under oath that Tom exists and that you heard him say that he and Curtis were nowhere near the murder scene the night of the shooting. I'll describe my conversation with Tom. Maybe Siberling can do something with that.”
“You really think it might help?”
“No, but it's what we have to do because it's all that's left. And there's a danger for you. The appeal will be a matter of record; the news media will know about it, and Tom might learn that you told the authorities about him. He might try to harm you, to get even.”
She thought about that, gnawing her lower lip with her protruding, even teeth. “He might,” she agreed. “Curtis told me about some things Tom done. Neither him nor Curtis showed any charitable feelings toward squealers. But with Tom, he seemed to kinda like getting even, according to Curtis.”
“I'm only suggesting,” Nudger said.
She looked squarely at him. “We'll do it,” she said firmly. “When's the best time?”
“I'll try to set it up with Siberling this evening. My understanding is that it's customary for a condemned man to make a final appeal for clemency just before the execution. Maybe in this instance we can make it carry a little weight.”
Candy Ann reached over and squeezed Nudger's hand, her own hand still warm from gripping the coffee cup. “Thanks for this, Mr. Nudger.”
“Don't thank me,” he said tiredly. “The odds are against us. You do understand that?”
She smiled. “Where I come from, most of us are used to long odds. Things often tend to work out for the best.”
“You're too optimistic,” Nudger told her.
But nothing he could say would knock the smile from that incongruously sexy, American-Gothic face. Blue-sky and waving-wheat faith. People like this had probably homesteaded the West. Nudger understood why the Indians hadn't had a chance.
She smiled wider. “You was the one brought up the idea,” she reminded him.
Nudger returned to his office to set things up with Siberling. It was hot, still, and very quiet there. Before he could call the fire-breathing little lawyer at Elbert and Stein, the phone jangled, startling him.
He grabbed the receiver to silence the phone as quickly as possible and give his nervous system a break, then identified himself.
“Hammersmith, Nudge. I thought you might want to know about that license-plate number you gave me this morning.”
Hammersmith waited. He loved to dangle information like a prize, make people work for it. Like a kid playing “I Know Something You Don't Know.”
“Who owns the truck?” Nudger asked.
“Who knows?” Hammersmith said. He liked to disappoint from time to time, too. It made the times when he did deliver all the more impressive. “The license number won't help you. The plates were stolen from a landscaping company truck out in Richmond Heights, a new Dodge. The rusty job you saw was either stolen or was maybe a junker that's already back in the pile or crushed and on its way to be melted down to make shinier junk in Detroit. Our friends on the other side of the law have been getting their vehicles that way for short-term use. Runners from junkyards, with trash bodies but good engines. ‘Junkyard dogs,’ some of the blue uniforms have been calling them. Lot of these cars and trucks are from across the river in Illinois, damn near impossible to trace because they don't exist anymore by the time somebody comes around to the scrap pile asking questions.”
Nudger hadn't expected much from the license number. Still, he felt almost bitterly disappointed. “Thanks for trying, Jack.”
“That's what my wife says.”
“Pressures of the job,” Nudger told him.
Hammersmith mumbled something unintelligible but no doubt insulting around his cigar, then hung up before Nudger could reply. Another of his favorite games.
Nudger didn't put down the receiver. He depressed the cradle button and punched out the Elbert and Stein number.
Doreen the receptionist was cooperative this time. He had no trouble getting through to Siberling.
Siberling agreed that one last hopeless try to save Colt was in order. A condemned man's attorney had a professional obligation to go to the wire with him, especially if he felt he was innocent. He told Nudger to bring Candy Ann to his office that evening and he'd arrange for witnesses and a stenographer for depositions. The final appeal, with their statements, could be submitted to the governor's office tomorrow, Friday. The day before Colt's execution.
As soon as he hung up on Siberling, the phone rang again. Busy, busy.
It was Edna Fine. She wanted to talk again, to change her story about the robbery and murder. She'd been giving it a lot of thought, she said, not sleeping well since their conversation, and she felt that she had to do this.
Nudger said he'd meet her at her apartment as soon as possible.
As he shrugged into his wrinkled brown sport jacket, he realized he felt better than he had in days. The game might be swinging in his direction at last. Who could say? This was one of those rare and brief periods in his life when he felt a benevolent, fateful wind at his back.
After leaving his office, Nudger ducked into Danny's Donuts, told Danny he might be back late that afternoon, and asked for a Dunker Delite to munch on as he drove. He felt good, all right.
And what Edna Fine had to say might make him feel even better.
He and Candy Ann. Optimists.
20
She hadn't been dead long when Nudger got there.
He saw from the top of the stairs that the door to Edna Fine's apartment was open a few inches, and a heavy dread fell through him, making him walk slower, as if his feet were mired in mud.
When he reached the door he stood motionless in the hall and listened for a moment. The only noise from inside the apartment was a soft and rhythmic sighing sound.
His stomach growled and told him to move one direction or the other. He was in or he was out.
He pushed open the door
and stepped inside.
Immediately his gaze fixed on the body. It had been mutilated horribly, beaten, twisted. One of the limbs had been wrenched off by terrible force and lay on the floor near the corner of the sofa.
On the other comer sat Edna Fine. The sound Nudger had heard was her soft and regular sobbing. She held Artemas close to her with almost maternal protection, refusing to look again at the abused corpse of Matilda. Artemas turned his feline head and stared obliquely at Nudger, as if bored by the carnage around him, untouched by Matilda's death. Matilda's yellowish fur was all over the room. A small tuft of it was snagged in the side of Edna Fine's hair, near her ear. Nudger decided not to tell her about it.
What he said was, “Excuse me,” and found his way to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet bowl.
After a few minutes he straightened, flushed the toilet, then stood at the washbasin and ran cold water over his wrists. Then he rinsed out his mouth, washed his pallid face, and returned to the living room.
He swallowed several times and tried to ignore the unique and unmistakable odor of fresh blood. He wished he could open a window, but he remembered that they were sealed shut. Breathing shallowly but regularly, he waited for his stomach to adjust and be still.
Edna Fine hadn't moved.
“I was only down in the laundry room about fifteen minutes,” she said. “When I came back upstairs, I found … this.” She looked at the walls, the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but at the mutilated body of her pet on the floor.
“Was your door locked?”
“Yes. I mean, I'm not sure. I think so.”
Nudger walked over and examined the door. There were faint scratches on the doorjamb around the latch, as if the lock might have been slipped by plastic or a thin strip of metal. It wouldn't have taken much effort or expertise to get past the apartment's mass-produced and ineffectual lock.
He returned to Edna Fine and rested a hand on her bony shoulder. Was she trembling, or was the unsteadiness in his hand? Nudger always felt helpless, awkward, in the presence of grief. And the intensity of this grief was almost like that of a mother who had lost a child.
