Ride the lightning an-4

by John Lutz

  “Where can I locate Welborne?”

  “He’s a big-shot lawyer in Clayton someplace. I ain’t even got his phone number; he won’t give it to me.” Anger shadowed Lester’s beefy features. “Welborne coulda tried to help Curtis, but he didn’t. That Siberling guy had to take the case.”

  “Were you at Curtis’ trial?” Nudger asked.

  “Sure I was. Every day. Even missed work. It was them witnesses did Curtis in.”

  “Do you think they were telling the truth?”

  Lester frowned. “A person can think they’re telling the truth and not be.”

  Lester was right about that, Nudger thought. It was what caused a lot of life’s problems. “I’ll find Welborne and talk to him,” he said.

  “If he’ll talk to you,” Lester repeated, and drifted out the door.

  Nudger didn’t hear him light-foot it down the stairs, but the street door opened and clattered shut again. A draft stirred around Nudger’s ankles.

  There was no Welborne Colt in the phone directory. Sliding the Rolodex over to him, Nudger looked up Harold Benedict’s home number and used a pencil to peck it out on the phone. Benedict’s office was in Clayton, as were many law offices. If Welborne Colt practiced law from a Clayton office, Benedict might know him. Lawyers were thick as��� well, thieves.

  Benedict was home, and he had heard of Welborne Colt. He promised to get an address and phone number for Nudger by morning.

  Nudger thanked him and replaced the receiver.

  He felt his forehead; it was damp. The office seemed to be getting warmer, smaller. His stomach stirred and growled, reminding him that he’d had an early supper. He was more weak than hungry, but he knew he should get some food in the old machine. His night, pulsing with dark promise, might just be beginning.

  He locked the office behind him, then left to treat himself to two White Castle hamburgers and a glass of milk before show-and-tell with Candy Ann Adams.

  It was eleven-thirty by the time he topped the rise of the acceleration lane and drove fast with the windows open out the interstate toward Placid Grove Trailer Park. Static and soft blues were floating from the radio and whirling on the wind and he could still taste the hamburgers. Damned onions. Nudger belched. In the rearview mirror the lighted city sank like a luminous dream, drawing down with it the receding red taillights of cars that passed him going the opposite direction. The taillights looked like streamers of bright tracer bullets gracefully surrendering to gravity.

  He glanced at his watch. He’d be early, but that was okay. There was something about an appointment at midnight that prompted punctuality.

  IX

  At five minutes to midnight Nudger was sitting at the tiny table in Candy Ann’s kitchenette. Across from him sat a thin, nervous man who might have been in his twenties, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt despite the heat, and wearing sunglasses with silver mirror lenses. Nudger didn’t figure the glasses were to protect the man’s eyes from the sickly glare of the fluorescent light fixture set in the trailer’s ceiling.

  Candy Ann introduced the man as “Tom, but that ain’t his real name,” and said he was Curtis Colt’s accomplice and the driver of the getaway car on the night of the murder. He had to wait until midnight to come so he’d be sure he wouldn’t be seen.

  It was all enough to make Nudger perk up his ears. He sat quietly at the little table, looking into the mirrored glasses. He was aware of a thousand crickets screaming like tortured souls outside, Candy Ann’s deep and regular breathing inside. Then she moved back away from where she was standing close by his right shoulder, and he could hear his own breathing as he waited to listen to what Tom had to say.

  It was no surprise. “Me and Curtis was nowhere near the liquor store when them folks got shot!” Tom said vehemently, so forcefully that fine spittle flew across the table and coolly flecked Nudger’s forearm.

  Obviously the sunglasses were so Nudger couldn’t effectively identify Tom if it came to a showdown in court. Tom had lank, dark brown hair that fell to below his shoulders, and when he moved his arm Nudger caught sight of something blue and red, like a faded nasty wound, on his briefly exposed wrist. But it wasn’t a wound; it was a tattoo. Which explained the long-sleeved shirt worn in the sultry throes of summer.

  “You can understand why Tom couldn’t come forth and testify for Curtis in court,” Candy Ann said.

  Nudger said he could understand that. Tom would have had to incriminate himself. No fool, Tom.

  “We was up on Parker Road, way on the other side of town,” Tom said, “casing another service station, when that liquorstore killing went down. Heck, we never held up nothing but service stations. They was our specialty.”

  Which was true, Nudger had to admit. Colt had done a prison stretch for armed robbery after sticking up service stations. And all the other robberies he’d been tied to this time around were of service stations. The liquor store was definitely a departure in his MO, one not noted as such in court during Curtis Colt’s rush to judgment.

  “I’m looking at your hair,” Nudger said.

  “Huh? What about my hair?” Tom leaned his thin body back away from the table.

  “It’s in your favor. Your hair didn’t grow that long in the time since the liquorstore killing. The witnesses described the getaway-car driver as having shorter, curlier hair, like Colt’s, and a mustache.”

  “Tell you the truth,” Tom said miserably, “me and Curtis was kinda the same type. So to confuse any witnesses, in case we got caught, I’d tuck up my long hair and wear a wig that looked like Curtis’ hair. Lots of people seen us like that. I burned the wig soon as Curtis got arrested. My mustache was real, like Curtis’. I shaved it off a month ago. We did look alike at a glance; sorta like brothers. So my long hair ain’t in my favor at all.”

  Nudger bought that explanation; it wasn’t uncommon for a team of holdup men to play tricks to confuse witnesses and the police. Too many lawyers had gotten into the game. The robbers, like the cops, were taking the advice of their attorneys and thinking about a potential trial even before the crime was committed. Nudger wondered if, in this pragmatic society, crime would someday become respectable because of all the jobs it created.

  Nudger looked at Tom. “Is there any way you can prove you were across town at the time of the murder?” he asked, staring at the two miniature Nudgers gazing back at him from the mirror lenses.

  “There’s just my word,” Tom said, rather haughtily.

  Nudger didn’t bother telling him what that was worth when it came to checking the momentum of the wheels of justice; why antagonize him?

  “I just want you to believe Curtis is innocent,” Tom said with desperation. “Because he is! And so am I!”

  And Nudger understood why Tom was here, taking the risk. If Colt was guilty of murder, Tom was guilty of being an accessory to the crime. Once Curtis Colt had ridden the lightning, Tom would have looming over him the possibility of an almost certain life sentence, and perhaps even his own ride, if he was ever caught. It wasn’t necessary actually to squeeze the trigger to be convicted of murder.

  “I need for you to try extra hard to prove Curtis is innocent,” Tom said. “I’m asking you please not to give up on this case.” His thin lips quivered, as if current were already singing through them. He was near tears; he’d thought he was a big boy, but now he was scared. He might be only in his early twenties behind those disguising lenses, really just a frightened kid trapped by time and circumstance. Nudger felt sorry for him; he should have felt sorrier for the old man and woman who’d been shot, but Tom was here, in front of him and looking into the black abyss. Every crime created its multitude of victims.

  “Are you giving Candy Ann the money to pay me?” Nudger asked.

  “Some of it, yeah.” Tom sniffed and wiped his bony wrist across his nose, touched a finger up inside the mirror lenses as if scratching an itch. “From what Curtis and me stole. And I gave Curtis’ share to Candy Ann, too. Me and her are fif
ty-fifty on this.”

  Dirty money, Nudger thought. Dirty job. Probably a hopeless job. Still, if Curtis Colt happened to be innocent, trying to prove it against the clock was a job that needed to be done. It would be a particularly tough job, considering the political climate; the powers-that-be wanted to send someone out via high voltage, and Curtis Colt was all but strapped in the chair for the final ride.

  “Okay,” Nudger said, “I’ll stay on the case.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said. His narrow hand crept impulsively across the table and squeezed Nudger’s arm in gratitude, like the tentative hand of a lover. Tom had the sallow look of an addict; Nudger wondered if the long-sleeved shirt was to hide needle tracks as well as the tattoo.

  Tom pushed away from the table and stood up, bravado in his exaggerated actions. The play he was starring in was good for at least another act; he was the desperado man of action again. These guys were all alike. He stood poised like a macho movie star about to spring into action on the “Late Show,” a young Burt Lancaster but without the muscles and in ill health.

  “Stay here with Candy Ann for ten minutes while I make myself scarce,” he said. Not a bad line. Where was Denise Darcel? “I gotta know I wasn’t followed. You understand it ain’t that I don’t trust you; a man in my position has gotta be sure, is all.”

  “I understand. Go.”

  Tom gave a spooked smile, like a wary animal sprung from a trap, and slipped out the door. Nudger heard his running footfalls on the gravel outside the trailer. Nudger was forty-three years old and ten pounds overweight; lean and speedy Tom needed a ten-minute head start like Sinatra needed singing lessons.

  After a few minutes, the crickets began screaming again outside, a shrill expression of everybody’s desperation. Tom had gotten clear, but he would never really be free.

  “Is Tom a user?” Nudger asked Candy Ann.

  “Sometimes. But my Curtis never touched no dope.”

  “You know I have to tell the police about this conversation, don’t you?”

  Candy Ann nodded. “That’s why we arranged it this way. They won’t be any closer to Tom than before.”

  “They might want to talk to you, Candy Ann.”

  She shrugged her thin shoulders. “It don’t matter. I don’t know where Tom is, nor even his real name nor how to get in touch with him. And he’s got no reason to get in touch with me. He’ll find out all he needs to know about Curtis by reading the papers.”

  “Do you know that Lester Colt followed me when I left here earlier this evening?”

  “Lester? Curtis’ brother?”

  “That’s the Lester.”

  “He’s harmless, but he ain’t quite right in the head. Ain’t been since he was born, I been told. He’s Curtis’ big brother, but he’s always been more like a little brother. What was he doing around here?”

  “My impression is he’s smitten with you and wanted to see you.”

  “Me? Lester has a crush on me?” Her eyes opened so wide, the whites were visible all around the blue irises. She seemed astounded.

  “And he has fierce loyalty for Curtis. He thinks you shouldn’t see any other men while Curtis is alive, or until a respectable time has passed if they do execute Curtis.”

  “Curtis took good care of Lester when they was kids,” Candy Ann said. “Looked out for him. Lester ain’t bright, but he’s smart enough to remember that. Down deep, Curtis is a decent man, Mr. Nudger. The most decent I ever met.”

  Nudger stood up. “I thought you should know about Lester’s feelings, and about the fact that the police might want some of your time.”

  “I can handle both those problems, Mr. Nudger.” There was coy confidence in her little-girl smile. Undoubtedly she’d been the one who’d worked out the details of his conversation with Tom in such a way that Tom remained safe from the law. And her method was effective; there was no way to wring Tom’s whereabouts out of her, or even prove the midnight conversation had taken place.

  “You have a surprisingly devious mind,” Nudger told her, “considering that you look like Barbie Doll’s country kid cousin.”

  Candy Ann smiled wider, surprised and pleased. Looking at her made Nudger think of misty pastures and buttermilk biscuits and fields of bright sunflowers. And even with that she managed to stir a raw carnal yearning. She was one of those rare women with a direct line to the male libido. Possibly it made little difference what she looked like; something in her sent out arousing vibrations.

  “Do you think I’m attractive, Mr. Nudger?” She asked it as if she really didn’t know the answer.

  “Yeah. And painfully young.”

  For just a moment Nudger almost thought of Curtis Colt as a lucky man. Then he looked at his watch, saw that his ten minutes were about up, and said good-bye. He felt old, old���

  If the Barbie Doll had a kid cousin, the Ken Doll probably had one somewhere, too. And time was something you couldn’t deny. Ask Curtis Colt.

  X

  Nudger was up early the next morning, sitting in the Volkswagen on Page Boulevard with his camera, a cup of lukewarm coffee, and breakfast. The camera was a 35-millimeter Minolta equipped with an 80-200-millimeter zoom lens. Breakfast was an Egg McMuffin.

  From where he was parked, he could see the run-down neighborhood in the next block, the back and side of Calvin Smith’s small, white-frame subdivision house. Smith was the warehouseman Benedict was sure was perpetrating an insurance fraud. There were some lawn chairs on a makeshift brick patio, a black kettle barbecue pit, and a rusty ‘68 Buick up on blocks in the backyard. In the carport sat Smith’s ten-year-old Chevy. The guy looked almost as broke as Nudger; for a moment Nudger considered driving away and letting him collect his insurance settlement for his injured back. Even if he didn’t have an injured back.

  Nudger finished his Egg McMuffin, brushed butter and crumbs from his fingers, and sipped his coffee. Rush-hour motorists stared at him curiously as they drove past on their way to work. It was a matter of time before a cop would happen along, stop, and demand to know what Nudger was doing parked here. Long, dubiously accepted explanations would ensue, maybe a phone call to Benedict and Schill. It might take most of the morning to sort things out.

  Even where Nudger sat, with all the traffic noise, he heard the door in the next block slam, like a gunshot signaling the start of an event. The Smith family was up and moving; the game had begun. He put down his coffee, spilling most of it on the rubber floor mat, and picked up the camera.

  Just as Harold Benedict had predicted, Calvin Smith’s wife was leaving for her job with a vending-machine company. Calvin, a big, tousle-haired man wearing work pants and a white T-shirt with somebody’s photograph-it looked like Bruce Springsteen’s-emblazoned on the chest, lumbered after her out onto the carport and bent to kiss her good-bye.

  The side door slammed again, and a five-or six-year-old boy came bounding out of the house like a joyous puppy sensing space to romp. The wife, a heavyset woman in white slacks she should have known better than to wear, got into the car and started the engine.

  Calvin seemed to move okay for a guy with a bad back; he walked around the car and leaned on the window frame, talking to his wife. Nudger got a shot of that, twisted the lens, and zoomed in tighter.

  Calvin stepped away and the wife swiveled her head and began backing the car out of the driveway.

  Just then the kid started to gallop around the rear of the moving car to return to the house. Calvin Smith took several catlike strides, stooped low, and scooped the boy up out of real or imagined harm. The camera clicked and the winder whirred three times, freezing the surprising suppleness and grace of the big man, recording the death of an insurance claim; poverty in motion.

  After a sudden stop and some head-shaking, Mrs. Smith backed the rest of the way into the street and drove away. Calvin, carrying the boy easily under one arm, walked to the patio and tossed a clear plastic cover over the barbecue pit, slid some aluminum lawn chairs back against the house, t
hen went inside. The camera followed him all the way, dooming his insurance claim for sure, maybe laying some legal problems on him if Benedict and Schill wanted to get nasty. And they could get nasty.

  Nudger would have the photographs developed by afternoon and get the prints to Harold Benedict. A job well done; easy money for a change. But Nudger drove away not feeling good about it.

  After dropping the film off at the lab, he cut over Shrewsbury to Highway 44 and headed east, toward downtown and the Third District station house. Time to share. “It doesn’t wash with me,” Hammersmith said from behind his desk, puffing angrily on his cigar. Angrily because it did wash a little bit; he didn’t like the possibility, however remote, of sending an innocent man to his death. That was every good homicide cop’s nightmare, the thing that would render the hunter not so unlike the hunted. “This Tom character is just trying to keep himself clear of a murder charge.”

  “You could read it that way,” Nudger admitted.

  “You could be an illiterate and you’d have to read it that way,” Hammersmith said. “In any language.”

  Nudger thought the language would make no difference to an illiterate, but he kept quiet.

  “It would help if you gave us a better description of Tom,” Hammersmith said gruffly, as if Nudger were to blame for Curtis Colt’s accomplice still walking around free.

  “I gave you what I could,” Nudger said. “Tom didn’t give me much to pass on. He’s streetwise and scared and knows what’s at stake.”

  Hammersmith nodded, his fit of pique past. But the glint of weary frustration remained in his eyes. He inhaled deeply on the cigar, blew a noxious cloud of greenish smoke. Pollution personified.

  “You going to question Candy Ann?” Nudger asked.