Ride the lightning an-4

by John Lutz

  “I’ve got some frozen spaghetti,” she said, switching on the dining room air conditioner so it would blow into the kitchen.

  Nudger knew enough to give up. For now. “That stuff in the little plastic bags you drop into boiling water?”

  She didn’t answer. He heard her clattering around in the kitchen. A piece of flatware hit the floor, bounced; water ran.

  By the time he’d finished his beer and was done reading about the ballgame, she had two plates of spaghetti, some cloverleaf rolls, Parmesan cheese, and two glasses of red wine on the dining room table. Nudger was glad to see there was no garlic bread.

  He sat down across from her at the table. “Did you see the girls this weekend?” The girls were Nora and Joan, her young daughters by her marriage to despicable Ralph Ferris.

  Claudia nodded, striking viciously at the spaghetti with her fork. The Ralph effect. He wasn’t surprised when she said, “I saw Ralph, too.”

  “How is he?”

  “The same. A deceiving bastard.”

  Nudger was glad to hear her speak so about Ralph. She used to speak derogatorily about him only infrequently. She’d thought everything that had gone wrong with their marriage, with their children, had been her fault. Ralph had helped her to think that, helped her down into hell. Which was why Ralph was indeed a deceiving bastard.

  Nudger sipped wine, smiled. Ralph was also a fool. Claudia was a woman you could talk to, but one who didn’t press for answers or explanations. And Nudger seldom delved into her life where she’d made it plain she didn’t want him. Such mutual respect and trust was rare in a relationship where there was good sex.

  “What do you think of Curtis Colt?” Nudger said.

  Claudia swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti, washed it down with Gallo wine. “The guy who shot that old couple in a supermarket holdup?”

  “Liquor store,” Nudger corrected. “My job is to prove he’s innocent.”

  “I thought his legal counsel had tried taking care of all that in court, and Colt was found guilty and sentenced to death.”

  “That’s the way it is, I’m afraid. His fiancee hired me to talk to the witnesses who testified against him, uncover enough doubt to stave off his execution in the electric chair.”

  “Which execution is?���”

  “Saturday.”

  “Sounds as if you’re tilting at a windmill. The kind that generates electricity.”

  “Cruel analogy, teacher.”

  She smiled at him as she buttered a roll. “Were you looking for encouragement?”

  “Nope. Objectivity.”

  “That’s what you got,” she said. “Sorry.”

  When they were finished eating, he carried the dishes into the kitchen while she loaded the dishwasher. Claudia was very efficient in the kitchen. He noticed the gutted plastic cooking bags in the trash.

  “I’ve got to talk to more of the eyewitnesses when they get home from work,” he said.

  “Uh-hm,” she said.

  “That means I’ll be busy tonight.”

  “Ah,” she said, pretending to have just gotten his drift.

  She turned the dishwasher on fast load and walked with him into the bedroom. The air conditioner was already humming away in there; she must have switched it on earlier, while she was preparing supper. The wiliness of women. The malleability of afternoons.

  The bed was unmade, and the closet door was hanging half open. Nudger kept a change of clothes at Claudia’s, and he saw his two ties-one blue-striped, one brown-hanging on the hook in side the door. Only there were three ties on the hook; his two had been joined by a solid-red tie. He remembered the cigarette butt in the living room ashtray.

  “Whose tie?” he asked casually. “A present for me?”

  “Tie?” Claudia finished unbuttoning her dress and stepped out of it. “Oh, that belongs to Biff. He forgot it and I stuck it there.” “Biff?”

  “Biff Archway. He teaches physical education out at Stowe School. He was here last night.”

  “And took off his tie? What else did he take off?” Nudger realized he was only half joking; there was an edge in his voice that surprised him.

  Claudia paused in unhooking her bra, bent sharply forward at the waist, and stared at him with her elbows back and out, as if she were an elegant bird that had just touched down in the bedroom. “Nudger���” There was a dark warning in her eyes.

  He got undressed silently, slowly, waiting for the bedroom to cool. The window unit seemed to be doing an exceptionally efficient job.

  Well, maybe Claudia was right to caution him. He admitted to himself that he’d demonstrated unreasonable jealousy over practically nothing. Made a prime ass of himself, not for the first time. Okay, he’d messed up; the heat and the wine might have had something to do with it.

  Still, that red tie, slung luridly over his own���

  When he got into bed beside Claudia, she was nude on top of the covers. Her body was pale and slim, her hip bones prominent. She had teacup-sized, pointed breasts, and lean but shapely dancer’s legs, though she had never danced. Nudger felt the increasing tightness in his throat, the warm stirring at the core of him. He stroked her shoulder, said, “Biff Archway?”

  Claudia sighed loudly. More of a hiss, really. “Biff was in the neighborhood and dropped by to see me.”

  “And took off his tie.”

  “Nudger, you and I aren’t married. We’re not engaged. I don’t wear your class ring, like the girls wear boys’ rings at Stowe School, with adhesive tape wrapped around them so they fit. That’s very possessive.”

  “Possessive? Sure. I thought we had an understanding. A commitment.”

  She smiled at him, then propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over and kissed him. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his arm. Her long dark hair brushed the side of his neck, tickled. “We do have an understanding,” she assured him.

  “Did this Archway make advances?”

  “Advances?” She fell back with her head on the pillow and stared straight up at the ceiling.

  “You know. Advances���”

  “Jesus, Nudger! Sometimes I think you live in the nineteenth century. No, he didn’t make advances toward me; he came in here walking backward, and then he kind of sidled out.”

  “That’s not a serious answer.”

  She turned her head and looked at him, a bit sadly, he thought. “Seriously, I’m not going to answer you. You shouldn’t have asked.”

  Nudger started to get out of bed. When he sat up he felt her hands on his shoulder, fingers clawing into his flesh, drawing him back. He sat for a long moment on the edge of the mattress, feeling her grip loosen.

  Maybe he was making too much of all this. Maybe this Archway guy really did just happen to be in the neighborhood and dropped by, and it was hot so he removed his tie and it found its way into Claudia’s bedroom. On top of Nudger’s ties. Maybe. Nudger wondered if he should check the drawer where he kept his underwear.

  He settled back down on the bed, amused at his own unreasonableness. Green-eyed fool Nudger.

  Claudia wrapped her arms around him as he pulled the length of her lean body against him. The naked heat of her felt good in the cool room. They kissed, and he ran his fingertips ever so lightly over her erect nipples. She tossed her head and snuggled even closer against him.

  Things were all right again.

  Better than all right.

  “So I’m a jealous middle-aged guy,” Nudger said, after about ten minutes. “We get that way when we see the dark at the end of the tunnel.”

  She laughed softly, and he kissed her forehead and shifted so his body was poised above hers. The bed creaked, then was quiet, as if waiting.

  “What else does this Archway teach out at the school?” Nudger asked.

  “Physio-social analysis and adaptability.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sex education.”

  Nudger rolled heavily to the side, said, “D
amn!”

  VI

  Edna Fine lived in the Hallmont Apartments, directly across the street from Olson’s Liquor Emporium. Hers was a one-bedroom unit facing the street, and on the day of the murder she’d heard shots and looked out her window in time to see a man flee from the store, climb into a dark green car that was waiting for him at the curb, and fire a shot back from the speeding car as it left the scene. She’d told her story to the police, made her identification, given her deposition for the prosecution, and thought the affair was ended.

  But here was Nudger, sitting across from her in her living room, asking questions. Pesky Nudger.

  He smiled at Edna Fine and thought that she looked more like a middle-aged spinster than anyone he’d known. She was tall and unattractively angular, with a tiny pinched face, graying hair, and an austere look about her that suggested teetotaling, no sex except once during leap years, and stern morality in all matters. She wore rimless round glasses and had on a plain black dress suitable for funerals. A jury would sense that she might be bending over too far backward in her effort to smite evil, and might hear her testimony with some dubiousness if they saw her. The prosecutor knew what he was doing when he’d taken her deposition and merely had her sworn testimony read into the record, so she wouldn’t actually appear in court. Colt’s lawyer, a guy named Siberling, hadn’t cross-examined her. Nudger would have to talk with Siberling.

  Edna Fine’s small, antiseptic apartment’s furniture fit her appearance; it was dull, stiff, and unadorned. Nudger shifted uncomfortably on the wood-trimmed, straight-backed sofa and said, “Did you get a good look at the suspect’s face, Miss Fine?”

  “You mean Curtis Colt?”

  Nudger nodded.

  Edna Fine smiled.

  Wait a minute. It changed her entire appearance, gave her surprising warmth. The pinched face widened, and crow’s feet added humanity to the close-set blue eyes. Nudger liked her better. A jury might have, too; maybe the prosecutor had missed a good bet after all. And maybe Siberling had done some pre-trial investigation and was wise not to have put her on the stand.

  She said, “Don’t think I’m so cocksure of my identification that you have to humor me as if I’m some kind of tight-assed old maid.”

  Nudger was constantly amazed by how appearances could deceive. The world was made up of distorting mirrors, things were the opposite of what they seemed. “Then you’re not sure?”

  “I’m as sure as it says in my deposition. I went to the window after hearing shots, looked out, and saw this skinny little man carrying a gun run from the store and get into a car that drove away with him.”

  “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Four, plus one when the car sped toward the corner. I knew they were shots immediately; I spent three years as a nurse in Southeast Asia and I recognize gunfire.”

  “And did you see the man’s face?”

  She sat down with an exaggerated, incongruous primness on a dainty chair facing the sofa and nodded. “Got a glimpse. What I saw mostly, though, was the top of his head. Mass of wavy dark brown or black hair. Parted in the middle, I think. He was a slender little bastard, but sort of wiry, strong-looking. Remember, though, I had to take all this in within about four seconds.”

  “But you picked Curtis Colt out of a police lineup.”

  She shrugged. “When I saw him standing there, it just hit me that he was the man. You want a drink, Mr. Nudger?”

  “No, thanks.” A scrawny yellow cat strutted into the room, angled over, and rubbed against Nudger’s leg. Nudger was mildly surprised; the apartment smelled nothing like cat; it had in fact a faint lilac scent.

  Edna Fine clucked her tongue at the cat and patted a hand on her bony thigh. The cat took two smooth leaps and was curled in her lap. “Matilda’s hungry,” she said.

  Nudger wasn’t surprised that the cat’s name was Matilda. It was exactly the sort of name a lonely spinster would choose for a pet. At least that was consistent with his initial impression of Edna Fine, with the face and mannerisms she’d worn when she greeted him. “What did you see after the car drove away?” he asked.

  “Just before it turned the corner, I saw Colt’s arm come out the window and he fired a shot behind him.” She twisted her body awkwardly to the left to mimic the action. Then she began absently stroking Matilda. “After that, I noticed a woman on the sidewalk just up the street from the liquor store. She was walking an ugly little brown dog on a leash. Langeneckert turned out to be her name-the woman’s, not the dog’s. Then two men came out of the store and looked up the street this way, in the direction the car had gone, and one of them ran back inside. That’s when I turned away from the window and dialed nine-eleven for the police.”

  “Did anyone shout or say anything?”

  “I think Mrs. Langeneckert yelled something as the car drove away, but I can’t be sure. This apartment’s almost soundproof. It’s air-conditioned; the front windows don’t even open.”

  Another cat, this one a big black-and-white tom with a pointy face, sauntered into the room, rubbed against Edna Fine’s ankle, then stretched out at her feet.

  “This is Artemas,” she said. “He’s part Abyssinian.”

  “Are there any others?” Nudger asked, wondering if Artemas was an Abyssinian name as well as Greek.

  “Only Artemas and Matilda.” She spoke of her pets as if they were her children-the old-maid characteristic of misplaced maternal affection. Or maybe she simply loved animals.

  “Did you go downstairs after you called the police?” Nudger asked.

  “No, I went back to the window and watched everything from there. A small crowd had gathered by that time. Within a few minutes the police and an ambulance arrived.”

  Nudger got up and walked across soft carpet to the living room window overlooking Gravois Avenue. It afforded an uncluttered view of the liquor store.

  Olson’s Liquor Emporium had a narrow front with two small display windows, but the building was long, with several high, grilled windows running along the side that Nudger could see. There were some red-lettered sale posters in the display windows, and a CLOSED sign was hanging crookedly in the window of the door. A man in a pale suit walked past the front of the store, got into a parked car, and drove away. Nudger had barely been able to make out his features.

  The street was four lanes here, so the angle wasn’t bad, but the distance was farther than Nudger had assumed. Edna Fine had the longest view of all the eyewitnesses, yet she seemed the one most likely to give an accurate account.

  Nudger turned from his view of the dusk-shadowed street. “Is there any doubt in your mind that the man you saw was Colt?”

  “Not much, Mr. Nudger.”

  “But some.”

  “There’s a particle of doubt in my mind about almost everything. But I guess I’d give my deposition the same way today. Lawyers have a way of putting questions, don’t they?”

  “They do,” Nudger agreed. “That’s how innocent people get convicted sometimes.”

  “Sometimes, Mr. Nudger, but not this time. I don’t believe in capital punishment; I’ve seen how any kind of killing usually begets more killing. But I still think Curtis Colt’s guilty. And the law is���”

  “The law,” Nudger finished for her.

  She nodded sternly, and magically the earthy reasonableness that made her likable disappeared. She became a self-righteous, worn woman who was sending a young man for a ride on the lightning. What a Jekyll and Hyde witness she would have made on the stand. “That’s right, Mr. Nudger. And the law must have its due.” She dumped Matilda onto the floor and stood up, tall, wise justice in a black dress. So unlike her other self. Her real self?

  Matilda dejectedly left the room, then Artemas stretched, switched his tail, and followed.

  Nudger knew it was time for him to leave, too. He drove out to where Candy Ann Adams worked as a waitress at the Right Steer Steakhouse on Watson Road.

  After pushing through plastic swingi
ng doors manufactured to resemble Western saloon doors, he made his way through a modern glass door, then along a narrow railed area where customers were lined up and herded past the desserts, drinks, and cashier, and then were set out to graze at the salad bar in the middle of the Old West decor.

  The manager, a young guy wearing a cheap straw ten-gallon hat and a cowboy shirt with “Trail Boss” embroidered over the pocket, told Nudger that Candy Ann had left just fifteen minutes ago because she wasn’t feeling well. Nudger thanked him kindly, wishing he had a ten-gallon hat of his own to tip.

  Leaving the warmth and slightly nauseating burned-steak smell of the Right Steer, he drove to Placid Grove Trailer Park.

  The lights were burning in Candy Ann’s trailer. Nudger pulled the Volkswagen up close to the metal wall near her door and turned off the sputtering engine. A lacy curtain parted in one of the windows.

  She was standing holding the trailer door open when he unfolded up out of the car.

  “C’mon in, Mr. Nudger. You learn anything?”

  “Nothing you’ll want to hear,” he told her.

  The light from the trailer’s interior shone through her thin discount-store skirt, silhouetting her slender legs. Apparently she’d just finished washing her hair; there was a blue towel wound turban-style on her head. The top-heavy bulk of the wrapped towel made her body appear even thinner and somehow sensually awkward.

  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.