Ride the Lightning (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  “And not a hound known for the quality of mercy,” Nudger said.

  The door opened and Candy Ann came back into the room. She seemed relieved, as if now that she'd signed her name to something, she'd taken a positive step that might lead to Curtis Colt's survival.

  “That Miss Doreen wants you to sign your statement,” she said to Nudger.

  She stepped back out into the hall, as if she didn't want to be alone with Siberling. Maybe she was more observant than she seemed. Siberling followed her.

  While she and Siberling watched, Nudger read over his statement and signed it. The witnesses' signatures were already affixed. Doreen was the notary public. She used a bulky silver seal to notarize the signatures, then signed her own name. There. All proper and official.

  “I'd suggest we have a drink and talk,” Siberling said, tapping the edges of the papers in line, “but I'm going to be working late on this tonight.” He touched Candy Ann's slender shoulder with a confident lightness and familiarity, as if she were rare and delicate and only he knew how to handle her. “You just try not to worry, you hear?” Why, he was a little bit country himself, with his libido stirred by Candy Ann.

  She nodded, absorbing the sympathy like a sponge with sex appeal. Doreen and Nudger looked silently at each other. Doreen wasn't the airhead Siberling thought, if he really did think that.

  “Time for us to head for the barn,” Nudger said amiably, with just a trace of a drawl, and guided Candy Ann from the office.

  As the door swung closed behind them, he heard Siberling say softly to Doreen, “Barn?”

  Nudger thought of going back and telling the little lawyer “heading for the barn” was just an expression, country slang for going home. Then he decided to let Siberling live with his imagination.

  It wasn't quite dark outside, and it was still hot. A sunset raged like low fire between the buildings to the west. To the east, dusk was settling over the city like lowering, heavy soot from thousands of chimneys. Traffic was thin on Central now, and about every other car had its lights on. The late workers were on their way home from their offices. When the stores closed in a few hours, Clayton would be almost deserted.

  “Do you want that drink?” Nudger offered, when he and Candy Ann had gotten in the Volkswagen. “Don't be ashamed if you need it. What you just did wasn't easy.”

  She hesitated, then aimed those doll's blue eyes at him and nodded.

  “I need it,” she said.

  22

  They'd stopped at the bar of a Hunan restaurant on Brentwood and each had two drinks. Nudger drank beer. Candy Ann sipped at tall Tom Collinses and finished them off with deceptive ease.

  At first she'd been silent, pensive. But by the second drink she became talkative. She talked about Curtis Colt and nothing else. Nudger got tired of her trying to wheedle some sort of affirmation out of him that there really was a way to save Curtis from Saturday's appointment with high-voltage death. It hurt him to look into the blue agony of her wide eyes; he wished he could help her, help Curtis Colt, but he couldn't.

  When he drove her home and was parked in front of her trailer, she asked if he wanted to come in for another drink. From a more worldly woman Nudger would have suspected the invitation was a come-on, but Candy Ann might only have served him lemonade, maybe with gin in it, and more talk about Curtis.

  He declined politely, waited until she was safely inside with a light on, then put the VW into gear and drove down Tranquillity Lane and out of the trailer park.

  The night was finally cool. He drove fast with the windows down, listening to the rhythmic boom of air pressure in the back of the car and to some B. B. King blues on the radio.

  All that electric-guitar-backed energy blaring from the speaker made Nudger realize he was tired.

  Fifteen minutes after he'd let himself into his apartment on Sutton, the phone rang.

  It was Harold Benedict. “Nudger,” he said, “I need to talk to you about that insurance job.”

  “Calvin Smith? He of the bad back?”

  “That's the one.”

  “Weren't the photographs okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. It's something else. Something altogether different. There might be another hitch in denying the claim.”

  Benedict sounded not quite himself. “What do you mean?” Nudger asked. “It seemed locked up to me. The guy did everything but an Olympic gymnastic routine right there in his driveway, and you've got it all in graphic detail, in living, incriminating color.”

  “It isn't the photographs, Nudger. We need to meet and talk about this case. I'm near your place now.”

  Nudger looked around his unkempt apartment. It needed vacuuming. Needed shoveling. Then he considered how the office looked. He said, “Why don't you come on over?”

  “No,” Benedict said hastily. “Better if we meet somewhere. I'm at the Steak ‘n’ Shake restaurant on Manchester. The one in Maplewood. Can you meet me here?”

  “In fifteen minutes,” Nudger said, and hung up.

  Steak ‘n’ Shake had been on Manchester in Maplewood for as long as Nudger could remember. It was part of a chain that years ago had specialized in curb service to teenagers, a place where they could show off their cars while attractive waitresses in unisex black-and-white uniforms glided over with trays of hamburgers and french fries, then retreated to their station, full well knowing they were being inspected by the customers. Tradition had fallen, and now the restaurant catered to an older crowd and no longer offered curb service.

  When Nudger entered through the glass double doors, he saw Benedict seated at a back booth. There were about a dozen other customers scattered around the place, most of them at the counter up front. It was a diverse bunch. There were two bearded bikers in leather jackets at the counter, a young couple with a baby in a front booth, two elderly well-dressed women in another booth, not far from three thirtyish guys quaffing Cokes and wearing service-station shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Over in a corner some teenagers were chewing with their mouths open and giggling. Benedict, short, balding, wearing a white shirt and striped tie, rounded out the group nicely. Or did Nudger round it out, the fortyish guy in the rumpled sport jacket and a day's dusting of whiskers?

  Benedict was having chili mac and a Coke. When he peered up at Nudger over the dark rims of his thick glasses, he stopped chewing, swallowed, and stood up halfway. His white paper napkin slid from his lap onto the floor, but he didn't seem to notice. A slight breeze caught it and wrapped it around his ankle, so lightly that he didn't feel it.

  They shook hands and Nudger sat down across the table from him.

  “This is good stuff,” Benedict commented, settling back down and motioning toward the chili mac. He took another generous forkful.

  A waitress who walked as if she had an ingrown toenail limped over to the table, and Nudger ordered a vanilla milk shake.

  Sore foot or not, it didn't take her long to fill his order. When the shake had arrived, Nudger ate the cherry off the top and asked Benedict what was the problem with the Calvin Smith insurance case.

  “Nothing,” Benedict said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He took a sip of Coke. “That's not really what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Nudger felt a vague uneasiness. He looked out the window, across the street, at a used-car lot that was closed and dark. The dull headlights of the front row of cars stared back dispassionately at him. A few of the chrome grilles were smiling.

  “I didn't want to tell you the truth when I called,” Benedict said, “because your phone might be tapped.”

  “Why would anyone want to tap my phone?” Nudger asked, remembering some of his recent conversations with Claudia. Nobody's business, those. Then he remembered that Edna Fine's phone had been tapped.

  “I've heard rumors that concern you,” Benedict told him, putting down his fork. “You're trying to muck up the works in the Curtis Colt execution.”

  “That's no rumor,” Nudger said. “It's a fact, and n
o secret.”

  Benedict waved a smooth hand. A diamond ring picked up the overhead fluorescent light and glinted. “No, no. What I've heard—and don't repeat me—is that someone high in state government is displeased by your enthusiastic pursuit of clemency for Colt.”

  Nudger sat back, his fingertips caressing the cold curve of the milk-shake glass. The coolness from the damp glass seemed to run up his arm and throughout his body.

  “Scott Scalla?” he said.

  Benedict shrugged. “I don't know. More likely someone in his administration whose political wagon is hitched to Scalla's rising star.” He forked in more chili mac. “Politics, Nudger, make more difference in people's lives than they imagine.”

  “Someone's been trying to warn me off the case in very physical terms,” Nudger said, “completely ignoring Roberts' Rules of Order.”

  Benedict nodded. “I know.”

  “The governor,” Nudger said, shaking his head, “the governor of Missouri wouldn't hire muscle.”

  “Probably not,” Benedict said wryly, “considering he has the Highway Patrol at his disposal. The thing is, if you do manage to come up with something that delays the execution, that will look bad for Scalla, because Curtis Colt is his project. And if they do go ahead and execute Colt on schedule, and then it turns out you've found evidence of his innocence, that's catastrophic for Scalla. He will have personally railroaded an innocent man to his death in order to get elected. There aren't a lot of repeat votes in that.”

  “But what if Colt really is innocent?”

  “At this point,” Benedict said, “that's almost irrelevant to anyone other than Colt.”

  “And my client,” Nudger pointed out.

  “Yes,” Benedict agreed sadly, “your client.”

  Nudger sucked milk shake up through his straw and thought about what Benedict had told him. If it was true, Nudger had gone beyond stirring up hornet nests and had antagonized a den of bears. That was scary. On the other hand, some pieces here didn't quite fit.

  “I think one or more of the witnesses is trying to scare me off the case,” he said. “One of them, a guy named Gantner, was seen with the strong-arm type who kicked me around my office.”

  “Isn't Gantner the witness who works for Kalas Construction?”

  Nudger nodded.

  “Kalas Construction does a lot of state highway work, Nudger.” Benedict raised his eyebrows above the dark frames of his glasses.

  So there it was, a possible connection between Scalla and Gantner. Possible.

  “I want to stress,” Benedict said, “that what I've told you is only rumor. A friend of a friend in Jefferson City passed it on. Maybe it's the sort of story that would naturally grow out of the fact that Scalla is so eager to see Colt burn. I don't know. I thought you should be told, though. It might put things in a different light for you.” He wielded his fork quickly and nimbly and finished off his chili mac.

  A different light. Maybe that was the idea. Maybe someone had deliberately started the rumor to scare Nudger away from the Colt case. They would know they could get the story of the state's displeasure to Nudger through Benedict. Nudger did work for Benedict; they were friends of a sort. If someone in Jefferson City wanted to get something like this to Nudger's ear, Benedict would be the perfect conduit.

  “Possibly you're being used,” Nudger said.

  Benedict finished his Coke, making a rattling, slurping noise with the straw. He knew what Nudger meant. “I've thought of that. You could be right. On the other hand, I felt it my duty as a business associate—well, as a friend—to tell you what I heard. It might be true, like anything else in this world.”

  “Anything else?” the waitress asked, startling Nudger. She was standing just behind his left shoulder, leaning close.

  “Nothing, thanks,” Nudger said. Benedict shook his head no and smiled at her. She left their check on the table and limped away.

  Nudger knew Benedict had taken a risk for him. “I appreciate your telling me this,” he said. “You are a friend. A good one.”

  Benedict looked momentarily embarrassed. He was used to being accused of maliciousness, deviousness, irrelevance, incompetence, and ambulance chasing; compliments were rare in his line of work. Possibly he didn't like them, maybe even considered them an indication of weakness.

  As Benedict reached for the check, Nudger snatched it out from beneath his hand. Benedict, back in character, didn't object.

  He and Hammersmith were eating well off Nudger lately.

  On the drive back to his apartment, Nudger found himself glancing into his rearview mirror. A large car with a weak, yellowish right headlight stayed close behind him for a while, but continued down Manchester when he made a right turn on Sutton.

  What Benedict had said bothered Nudger, about how whether Colt was innocent now mattered only to Colt. It wasn't quite true, but it was true enough to be disturbing. It seemed that justice itself had become irrelevant. Only Candy Ann, Siberling, and Nudger wanted Colt to be innocent.

  Nothing else Benedict had said might be true. Possibly it was all rumor, and not even deliberately begun. It might be only coincidence that Randy Gantner worked for a construction company that did state highway work. And not such a coincidence at that; how many big construction companies, or large Missouri companies in whatever business, didn't somewhere along the line do work directly or indirectly for the state?

  Still, when Nudger got home, he examined his phone as he had Edna Fine's. He found nothing, but that didn't mean the line wasn't tapped. Or that the apartment wasn't bugged. There were too many spy and pry gizmos in this world for comfort.

  He spent an hour carefully searching the apartment for bugs. Benedict's assumption that his phone might be tapped had gotten to him, fanned his frustration and anger.

  The going was slow. Nudger wished he had some electronic sweeping equipment to make things easier. Maybe he'd lighten up on his next alimony payment to Eileen and see what Radio Shack had to offer.

  Behind the sofa, he found a huge brown spider that threw a strong scare into him.

  But that was the only bug he found.

  23

  In the morning, Nudger read a news account in the Post-Dispatch revealing that a “surprise witness” had submitted a statement in the Curtis Colt case. The article went on to explain that Colt's alleged fiancée had known of his whereabouts the night of the murder but had remained silent during the trial for personal reasons. Now she had second thoughts and was trying to save Colt's life. The prosecuting attorney was quoted as saying that this sort of thing wasn't unusual in capital-offense cases; the woman's story, apparently corroborated by a private detective she'd hired, would be dealt with in due legal course.

  Nudger set the folded paper down on Danny's counter and snorted in disgust. He knew what “due legal course” meant: Curtis Colt would be executed on time tomorrow morning.

  Danny rang up a sale of glazed-to-go for one of the office workers from across the street, then drifted over and brought Nudger's coffee back up to the cup's brim. He gazed at Nudger with his sad hound eyes.

  “It ain't going good?” Danny asked.

  “Not good at all.” Nudger bit into his free doughnut, remembering not to grimace in front of sensitive Danny. He wondered what use the office girls across the street had found for the glazed-to-go they bought faithfully every weekday morning. The doughnuts were too greasy for paperweights, though they were plenty heavy enough for their size. Maybe they used them to play some sort of field hockey in the ladies' room.

  “Maybe Colt really is guilty,” Danny offered.

  “I don't think he is, Danny. And I guess that's the real problem. I started out on this case going through the routine, earning my fee. Then somehow I became a believer.”

  “You wouldn't believe without reason, Nudge. What about this Candy Ann woman in the paper, what she says?”

  “She's telling the truth,” Nudger said. “Even her lawyer thinks so. Genuinely thinks so.”r />
  Danny looked thoughtful and wiped his hands on the grayish towel tucked in his belt. “I wonder if the prosecutor really thinks Colt's innocent, too.”

  Nudger had wondered that himself. “Has anyone else been around looking for me?” he asked.

  Danny shook his head. “Not lately, Nudge.”

  “You going to be baking this morning?”

  “Nope. I'm overstocked now, especially with jelly doughnuts.”

  “Keep an eye on the street,” Nudger said, “and let me know if anyone starts up to my office.”

  “Sure. You expecting somebody you don't want to see?”

  Nudger thought about that. He was expecting too many people he didn't want to see. That was what his job, his life, had come down to. He sure wished he knew some sort of trade other than the twisted one he worked.

  “Probably anybody who'd come by this morning, I'd be better off being warned,” he said.

  Carrying his coffee, the folded paper, and the weighty uneaten part of his Dunker Delite, he left the doughnut shop and trudged upstairs to his office.

  While he was waiting for the window unit to cool the place down, he went in and stood before the basin in the half bath and splashed cold water onto his face. He dried with a rough towel almost as gray as Danny's, then walked to the window and looked down at Manchester Avenue. Nobody was parked across the street, and only the usual number of pedestrians strolled along the sidewalks.

  He sat at his desk and went through his mail, ignoring his answering machine. But the phone wouldn't leave him alone. It jangled and Nudger snatched it up, thinking it might be Danny warning him someone was on the stairs.

  It was Candy Ann.

  “A buncha reporters came out to the Right Steer and wouldn't let me work,” she said. “The boss told me go ahead and take the day off, but when I went home more of them was outside the trailer waiting for me. They even had a little TV camera.”

  “You tell them anything?”

  “No. Mr. Siberling told me not to talk to the press without him there.”