by John Lutz
“Nothing to think about,” Gantner said, standing with his hands in the pockets of his white slacks, “except that in just a few days justice is gonna be done.”
“It won't be justice if Colt's innocent.”
“There isn't any chance of that, Nudger. I sat in that courtroom. I know.”
There was a splashing sound from outside; someone had used the diving board. Nudger looked out the wide picture window and saw that the blond sunbather and her companions hadn't moved.
“Somethin', ain't it?” Gantner said, grinning. He absently scratched his bare chest above the animal tooth.
“Something,” Nudger agreed.
“Pussy heaven here. This place cost plenty in rent, but it's worth it. Score, score, score.”
“Only once a month,” Nudger said.
Gantner scowled like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. “What's only once a month?”
“The rent,” Nudger said quickly. “I meant the rent.”
“The blonde's an airline stewardess,” Gantner said. “Place is full of 'em. They're damn near automatic lays.”
The Flight Attendants' Union would have disagreed with Gantner, but Nudger decided to let him fantasize. He imagined Candy Ann walking in here to talk to Gantner, the fly seeking the spider. The spider probably couldn't believe his luck.
“Candy Ann Adams tells me you've been to see her where she works,” Nudger said.
Gantner studied him, sized him up, seemed to turn slightly hostile. “So what? You got a claim on that?”
“Curtis Colt does.”
Gantner laughed. It was an ugly laugh that revealed silver fillings toward the back of his perfectly even white teeth. “Colt ain't got a claim on anything except his reservation in the hot seat Saturday. A woman like Candy Ann has gotta go on living. I'm just the guy to help her do that.”
“She came to you for help.”
“And I'd like to help her. My way.”
“I think you should know Curtis has a brother,” Nudger said.
“He's fond of Candy Ann, and he's mentally slow and simple, maybe dangerous when it comes to Curtis' woman.”
“Am I supposed to be scared?”
“You're supposed to be warned.”
“What if Candy Ann wants me to come around?” Gantner said, smiling lewdly. “After all, she's the one who approached me. Maybe she ain't ready to be a nun and has her personal needs.”
“You'd be smart to stay away from her,” Nudger said.
Gantner laughed again. He glanced out through the wide window at the tanned female flesh around the pool. “Don't worry,” he said. “Candy Ann ain't all that ripe yet, and there's plenty of good hunting in this part of the woods. The brother can have her.”
“You don't say that as if you mean it,” Nudger told him.
Gantner motioned with a beefy arm and hand. “Look out there at the pool and you'll see why I mean what I say.”
Nudger didn't look outside. He knew he was wasting his time, but he said anyway, “Think about Curtis Colt, and if anything new occurs to you, give me a call.”
“Sure, you can count on it,” Gantner said, telling Nudger what he wanted to hear but laying on the irony. Mocking bastard.
Nudger went to the door and paused. “Don't wear yourself out on your vacation,” he said.
“Why not? That's what vacations are for.”
“Are you going to travel anywhere? Disney World? The Truman Library?”
Gantner shook his head slowly, his thin lips almost smiling. “Nope, I'm gonna stay around town.” His eyes darted in the direction of a loud splash and then back. “Do my special kind of relaxing right here.”
“Good. Maybe we can talk again if something comes up about Curtis Colt.”
“That ain't at all likely,” Gantner said. “It's a shame they don't televise executions. You think they will someday?”
“Someday soon, probably,” Nudger said, and opened the door, catching the sharp scent of chlorine from the pool. He went out into the bright, hot afternoon.
As he walked back to his car he saw that the blond stewardess had refastened her bikini strap and rolled onto her back. She was wearing oversized dark sunglasses and a bored expression. Nudger doubted she'd ever been inside Gantner's apartment.
Nudger drove to his office, thinking that Candy Ann was right about how the nearer the execution date loomed, the harder the witnesses would cling to their stories. They needed to be right about what they'd seen, or they themselves would be guilty of taking the life of an innocent man. Even in the face of the compelling new evidence Nudger hoped for, it might be impossible to get the witnesses to change their stories, to admit that they might have been mistaken as they mimicked their god and dictated premature death.
Not only was Gantner not going to reconsider what he'd seen the night of the murder, he was unmistakably enjoying Curtis Colt's predicament. There were undertones to Gantner's enjoyment that bothered Nudger; the expression on the construction worker's face when he talked about Colt's execution was reminiscent of the faces of children from Nudger's past as they bent studiously to watch a colony of ants slowly devour a writhing caterpillar. What they seemed to enjoy most about the caterpillar's struggle was that there was no doubt about the outcome, probably not even in the caterpillar.
Maybe that was something Colt understood. Though he'd been on the other side of the city from the holdup and murder, that didn't seem to make much difference to him. He had no doubt of the outcome of his life. Like most career criminals, Colt had a soured and cynical view of society. That he hadn't committed this particular crime wouldn't seem to make much difference, not if the cards were marked against him from the day he was born. Sooner or later he had to play a hand and lose everything. The game, his life, was fixed. He was sitting in his cell, certain now, as he had been from the beginning, that he was doomed to be society's victim. Now he was stubbornly refusing to plead, to beg. He wanted to withhold from his antagonists the one thing they were never able to take from him: his dignity.
Nudger called Iris Langeneckert and she refused to talk with him again. She said she had nothing to add, and that she was still certain of her story. Then she told Nudger she would pray for Curtis Colt's soul. Nudger believed her; she was one witness who wasn't taking the consequences of her testimony lightly.
Edna Fine agreed to see Nudger. He drove to her apartment building and parked across the street on Gravois, just down the block from the liquor store that had been the scene of the murder.
It was early evening now and had cooled down to the low eighties. In the west Nudger could see bursts of illumination flashing along the horizon. Chain lightning, it was called, an electrical disturbance that had nothing to do with rain and wasn't accompanied by thunder. It was often visible in the dry, warm evenings of long midwestern heat waves.
Nudger was crossing the street toward Edna Fine's apartment when he saw the blue Toyota pickup. It pulled away from the curb down the block, heading toward him.
Then it braked, made a slow U-turn, and drove away in the opposite direction, west toward the lightning. It hadn't gotten near enough for Nudger to get a clear view of the driver.
When Edna Fine answered his knock she was wearing a dark bathrobe that seemed oddly judicial. Or maybe that was just Nudger's warped perspective. Her hair was mussed and she was holding a long tortoiseshell comb. There were several strands of hair caught in the comb.
“I'm getting dressed to go out,” she explained. “An appointment I forgot about. I'm rather in a hurry, Mr. Nudger.”
“I won't keep you,” Nudger said. “Did Randy Gantner just leave here?”
“Who?” She puckered her old-maid lips in puzzlement.
“Gantner. He's another of the witnesses in the Curtis Colt trial.”
She nodded sternly. “Yes, now I remember the name. No, he hasn't been here. Not ever.”
“All right,” Nudger said, flashing the old sweet smile. “Can I have five minutes of your time?”
And she didn't change her story. Even Edna Fine seemed to be clinging to her version of the facts for comfort as Saturday drew nearer.
Nudger left her with her cats in her lilac-scented apartment and sat for a while across the street in the parked Volkswagen. He was reasonably sure it was Gantner's truck that he'd seen make the U-turn and drive away. But what was Gantner doing here? He had no reason to watch Edna Fine's apartment. And he hadn't gone inside. Or had he? Maybe for some reason Edna Fine was lying about not seeing Gantner. Or maybe Gantner had come to talk with her and hadn't had a chance before Nudger drove up and parked across the street from her apartment.
Another possibility gnawed. The prospect of some sort of collusion among the witnesses. Another development, however vague, that pointed to Colt's innocence.
Nudger clenched his fists in frustration. His stomach rumbled. Sometimes it seemed that he was the only one in his world who didn't realize what was going on. No one would tell him because they had other interests, other directions. He was the only one swimming against the current, stroking desperately to reach a destination nobody else cared about. Sometimes, most of the time, his life was lonely.
He started the car. Then he swallowed his frustration and not a little bit of pride and drove toward Claudia's. Some things he had to share, or they might eventually destroy him. He could share them with Claudia.
Their relationship might be frayed right now, but it would hold. She'd understand. When Nudger needed to talk, she always listened. Always.
He geared down the Volkswagen to take a sweeping curve in the road, then picked up speed, heading east. Behind him the mocking lightning danced wildly in the vast darkening sky.
16
Claudia was home. Nudger saw a light in her front windows as he parked across the street from her apartment on Wilmington.
Though dusk had crept into the city, it was still bright enough for some of her neighbors to be out mowing the small lawns in front of their squared-off brick houses or apartment buildings, or to be ritualistically polishing their cars. That was how they wiled away their time in this part of town. There was a Germanic sense of order that ran deep here. South St. Louisans had been known to cut down majestic trees for no reason other than that they didn't want leaves littering their lawns.
It had been one of Nudger's rougher days. He was tired, and he took the two flights of wooden stairs up to Claudia's apartment slowly. He was a bit surprised at the effort the climb required. Each year his legs seemed to weigh more.
The stairwell was still hot from the afternoon, and the open window on the landing did nothing to dispel the heated air or to lessen the mingled cooking smells that seemed to be common to old apartment buildings.
When finally he stood in front of Claudia's door and had his fist drawn back to knock, the door suddenly swung open.
Claudia was dressed to go out. She was wearing her plain navy-blue dress, high-heeled shoes, and a double string of pearls around her neck. Unpretentious. Elegant. He liked her dressed like that. Her eyes widened wildly for an instant, then she stepped back gracefully and smiled.
But too late. He knew.
She'd been expecting someone else.
Nudger walked into the apartment and looked around. There were tracks of roughed-up nap on the carpet from the vacuum sweeper, and everything was exactly in place. Even the magazines on the coffee table were fanned out precisely like a hand of cards, the way they were in a doctor's waiting room in the morning, before the patients messed them up. Nudger hadn't seen Claudia's apartment this neat since right after she'd moved in.
“Were you planning to bring him back here after dinner?” he asked.
“Not dinner,” she said, “a concert in the park.” She was defying him now, angry. And building on her anger. What right had Nudger to barge into her home and interrogate her, she was thinking, and she was close to saying it.
“Biff Archway?” Nudger asked.
She didn't answer, letting him know with her silence that, whomever she was going out with, it was none of his business. This was her apartment, her life. Her own.
“I thought we were honest with each other,” Nudger said. He felt his stomach knotting up, twisting, twisting.
Claudia slapped her hands lightly against her thighs. She was tense, drawn tight, not liking what was going on here any more than Nudger liked it. An ugly scene getting uglier. Only she hadn't forced a confrontation; he had.
“You knew about Biff,” she told him.
Nudger looked glumly at her, nodded. True enough.
Claudia swallowed, then breathed out hard through her nose. “Look, Nudger, I'm going to ask you for something. It's something that isn't going to be easy for you; I realize that.”
He waited, then finally asked, “What is it?”
“Understanding,” Claudia said simply.
Nudger gave her a to-hell-with-it shrug he didn't feel. “I'll make an effort.”
“I do love you,” Claudia said. “Or I think I do. Which is why I'm being honest with you. I don't talk about Ralph or the girls much … about what happened. But I still think about it too much.”
Nudger understood that. Thinking about Ralph just a little was thinking about him too much.
“You helped me when I needed it,” Claudia said. “I'm grateful, and I'd be lying if I said that had nothing to do with why I'm fond of you.”
“If you're fond of me, why go out with Biff Archway?”
She moved closer, her dark eyes pleading with him to see her point of view. Her lips twitched nervously before she spoke. “After my marriage to Ralph, even though I love you, I feel that to fully regain my identity, my wholeness, I need to see other men. I've felt that way for quite a while, but I didn't say anything about it.” She flexed her long-nailed fingers, eventually working them into tight, pale fists.
He stared at her. “What is this? Kick Nudger therapy? Did Doctor Oliver put you up to this?”
“It was my decision.”
“Well, I don't agree with it.”
A few seconds passed. Something bright seemed to go out of her. She seemed to have made some decision about Nudger, to have withdrawn to a place behind some barrier in her mind where he couldn't hurt her. Then she shrugged as if to say the hell with what he thought. She seemed to mean it.
“We had what the books and talk shows call a relationship,” Nudger pointed out.
“We still do. Only it's changed somewhat.”
“Like the atomic bomb changed Hiroshima somewhat.”
She stepped over to stand next to him, rested a hand on his shoulder. He could feel a vibration running through her fingers. She was wearing his favorite perfume. Biff's, too? “Don't feel that way, please!” she said softly. She wanted to come out from where Nudger had forced her.
He moved away from her hand and walked toward the door.
She let her arm fall limp. “Nudger!”
“You wouldn't want me here when Biff arrives,” he said.
“I asked for understanding,” she told him, as if she were disappointed in him.
“Can't give it to you,” he said. “I'm feeling too sorry for myself.”
“Damn you!” she said, turning unexpectedly angry. “Don't you lay a load of guilt on me! Not you, too!”
“Maybe Ralph—”
“What?” she interrupted, furious and afraid. She stood waiting for him to finish what he'd begun to say, close to tears, close to something else. Scary.
“Forget it,” Nudger said, and went out the door.
His heart was pumping and his stomach was churning. He didn't feel at all tired going down the stairs.
He sensed that Claudia had followed him out into the hall and was standing above at the railing, watching him leave. That she might shout something after him.<
br />
But when he turned at the bottom of the stairs to look up at her, she wasn't there.
17
Nudger didn't feel like going home to his empty apartment and trying to tune out the silence. He didn't want to find out how sorry for himself he could feel.
His side was aching, throbbing with his heartbeat. First he'd been kicked around physically, then he'd taken his licks mentally. Some life. Maybe the TV evangelists were right and he was involved in some sort of celestial test. Maybe boils and locusts were next.
Women were certainly one of his life's tribulations.
No, not women generally. Claudia. She was primarily his woman trouble of the moment. It wasn't wise to generalize about people. About anything. Thinking that way could lead in wrong directions, and to more problems.
Eileen, for instance. Eileen was a problem and a wrong direction in Nudger's life. But she was hardly similar to Claudia.
Eileen was a problem from which he longed to escape, Claudia one he longed to solve. But he sensed that any solution was beyond him for now, and possibly forever. Maybe it had to be that way. Fate. Fate was always jerking around people who loved each other. Fate had a sense of humor that wasn't very nice.
Nudger chewed antacid tablets and drove around the city for a while, down South Grand with it's odd assortment of little shops and struggling businesses, along side streets lined with solid brick flats and houses lived in by solid German families, then west on Chippewa, past the array of cars and people at Ted Drewes' frozen custard stand, along Resurrection Cemetery with its neat rows of flower-decorated graves. Traffic was heavy despite the late hour, and some of the cars had their hoods unlatched the first few inches to prevent boiling radiators in the relentless heat. Summer in the Gateway City. Sizzle, sizzle.
Nudger listened to the Cardinals game on the car radio. The Cards were winning ten to nothing in the fourth inning. He was glad somebody was having a good night; he knew he wasn't. If only the Cardinals' luck would rub off on him and he could win five in a row of something. Anything.