Ride the Lightning (19 page)

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.

XXII
I

n the morning, Nudger read a news account in the
Post-Dispatch
revealing that a “surprise witness” had sub
mitted 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 rou
tine, 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.”

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.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in a room at the Ramada Inn out by the airport. Mr. Siberling came by my place and read a statement to the reporters, then he drove me out here without anybody knowing where we was going. So I’d be let alone.”

“Are you all right?” Nudger asked.

There was a pause. A muffled roar, as if from a jet aircraft flying directly overhead, came over the phone. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Is Siberling there?”

“No, he said he couldn’t be. He’s still working on the appeal for a stay of execution, he said. He left me here about half an hour ago. It’s room Two-twenty.”

“Stay there; don’t go out except to eat,” Nudger told her. That should be safe; there hadn’t been time for a photograph of Candy Ann to appear in the papers, and probably she wouldn’t be on TV until the evening news. “If anybody from the media does question you, just tell them no comment and go back to your room.”

“Okay, Mr. Nudger. It’s number Two-twenty.”

“You told me that.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I.”

“I’ll check in with you from time to time today to make sure you’re all right,” he said.

She thanked him, staying on the line and forcing him to hang up first. He wondered if Scott Scalla knew there was a woman who’d gladly sit on Curtis Colt’s lap in the electric chair. Would the governor understand that? He wasn’t sure he understood it himself.

The media began showing up intermittently at Nudger’s office. He no-commented a feature writer from the
Post
, and did the same to a reporter who phoned from the
Globe
. When the
West County Journal
called, Nudger knew the media might not give up for a while. He sympathized with the news folks. They had their job to do; he just didn’t like being their job.

To assuage his conscience, he phoned Ron Elz, a columnist at the
Globe
, and gave him the story, but on the condition it wouldn’t appear until the Sunday column. He could trust Elz, who had a high regard for the truth and would print it straight. He was somebody Scalla couldn’t get to, if the governor’s office actually was involved in trying to intimidate Nudger.

When the
St. Louis Voyeur
, a local tabloid scandal sheet, called, Nudger decided it was time to get out of the office and away from leading questions.

He accomplished this by driving around town and trying to talk to the witnesses again, really making a pest of himself.

Edna Fine was still afraid and grieving over the death of Matilda; Nudger saw that talking to her was hopeless and painful and left her alone. Sanders wasn’t home, and according to his boss at Recap City, he was off work and away on vacation. No one else was available to talk with Nudger. He even tried Randy Gantner’s apartment at the Fox and Hounds, but he was told by an emaciated blonde at the pool that Gantner hadn’t been home for several days and was probably out of town.

Finally Nudger had a late lunch and drove to the Ramada Inn to see how Candy Ann was holding up.

She was alone in 220, looking as if she might have been crying, yet she seemed calm. The room was one of the cheaper ones, but she thought it was palatial. And the soda machine was right down the hall. Free ice and everything.

Nudger brought her some hamburgers from a nearby Hardee’s. She devoured them as if she hadn’t eaten for years and had just been reminded there was such a thing as food. Then they sat and drank Classic Cokes from the machine. She laced her Cokes with gin. Nudger thought that was a good idea. He listened while she talked about Curtis Colt, and how life had been where she was raised in northwestern Arkansas: rough, nothing like the Waltons’ life in reruns on TV. “Rocks,” she said. “Arkansas soil don’t grow no crop better than rocks. It’s a hardscrabble way to live, Mr.

Nudger.” A way to live that Curtis Colt had rescued her from, and now she was trying to rescue him in return and not doing so well.

It was almost evening when she sat back in her chair and started to doze off. She snored softly and delicately; even that generated sex appeal. He shook her gently and told her he was going.

“There isn’t anything more we can do now,” he said. “You might as well rest here.”

She nodded, staring up at him with wide but sleepy blue eyes. Doll’s eyes. A doll in trouble in real life.

“You want me to stay longer?” he asked.

“No,” she murmured, “Mr. Siberling’s coming here this evening to hope with me.”

He would be, Nudger thought. But Candy Ann would be okay. Siberling would lie to her far more plausibly than Nudger could.

Nudger left her sleeping in the chair. Walking quietly, he locked the door carefully behind him.

Watching Candy Ann eat had made him hungry. He stopped for an early supper of Chicken McNuggets and french fries, then drove by his apartment to make sure no one from the news media was lurking about with pen and pad or recorder.

There was no one in sight. Once he managed to get inside, he closed the draperies, opened a can of beer, and settled back to watch a televised Cardinals-Mets game.

By the third inning the score was six to nothing, Cardinals, on their way to winning their seventh game in a row, and Nudger couldn’t sit still any longer. His mind was on too many things other than the ball game. He was with Candy Ann in that tiny room at the Ramada Inn. He was with frightened Tom wherever Tom was. And he was with Curtis Colt in his cell on Death Row, waiting for morning and nine o’clock and high voltage.

Nudger knew whom he wanted to be with in reality. He switched off the TV and phoned Claudia.

When she answered, he didn’t speak. He was afraid that if he did she’d find some reason for him not to come to her apartment.

He needed her presence, to see and touch her; he’d had enough of disembodied voices on the phone and people half removed from the world or distracted by grief. He didn’t want to be alone tonight. Not through the dark hours of waiting. Siberling had told him there wouldn’t be an outcome to the final appeal for Curtis Colt’s life until morning. After a long, long night for a lot of people.

He hung up the phone and chewed a couple of antacid tablets, even though his stomach felt okay at the moment. Nights had always provided the toughest hours of Nudger’s life, both professionally and personally. Crimes of madness and impulse were committed during the long summer days, but here in the simmering city on the Big Muddy, the calculating and the deadly waited for the comparative coolness of nightfall.

His stomach growled softly, as if to say thanks for the precaution. He flicked the rolled-up tinfoil from the antacid tablets into the wastebasket, then he hurried downstairs to where his car was parked behind the building.

XXI
V

laudia’s south St. Louis neighbors were passing the summer evening in their usual fashion. The men were outside mowing already mowed lawns or cleaning their cars, while the wives were inside cleaning ovens or going around baseboards with knife points to get all the dirt out. Scrubby Dutch, the predominantly German Catholics and Lutherans in this part of town were often called. It was a traditional, conservative area, maybe the character and backbone of the city, where everyone got along with every
one else as long as nobody marched out of step.

An old gray-haired guy wearing shorts and a sleeveless white undershirt leaned down to buff his Buick’s hubcaps and glanced over at Nudger, then looked away. Somebody had the ball game tuned too loud on his radio. Jack Buck and Mike Shannon, the sports announcers whose voices permeated St. Louis summers, were shouting about a great play while the crowd roared.