by John Lutz
“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.
24
Claudia'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 everyone 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.
As Nudger entered the building and climbed the stairs to Claudia's apartment, the nattering of the radio outside faded from his consciousness.
At Claudia's door, he cocked his head to the side and stood still, listening.
A violent thumping sound was coming from inside the apartment, and there were faint voices. And music. Something heavy was striking the floor regularly, hard enough for Nudger to pick up vibrations out in the hall.
He slowly rotated the doorknob and pushed in on the door. There was no give; it was locked. He fished his key from his pocket, inserted it in t
he lock, and twisted. Then he quietly opened the door a few inches and peered inside.
The first thing he saw was a husky, perspiring man standing with his fists on his hips. He was wearing only sweat-stained red jogging shorts, and he was staring down at the floor, at something out of Nudger's line of sight, grinning with handsome animal savagery. Nudger edged the door open an inch wider and saw the bare feet and legs of a woman lying on the carpet.
He threw the door full open and stepped inside, hearing the knob crack a chunk of plaster out of the wall.
“Nudger!” Claudia said.
Bare arms and legs flailed and she scrambled to her feet. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt lettered STOWE SCHOOL across the chest. She was breathing hard.
The man continued to stand hands-on-hips, jut-jawed, and healthy enough to die of rosy cheeks. He was staring inquisitively at Nudger.
Claudia raked her fingers straight back through her tangled dark hair, moved to the stereo, and switched off the soft-porn rock number that was throbbing through the speakers.
Silence now. Heavy. Nudger experienced a falling sensation.
“We were doing aerobics,” Claudia said. There was a bead of perspiration on the very tip of her nose. “This is Biff Archway. Biff, this is—”
“Aerobics?” Nudger interrupted.
“Sure,” Archway said. “Aerobic exercises.” He glanced over at Claudia's rapidly rising and falling chest. “Great for the heart and lungs.”
Archway looked almost exactly as Nudger had imagined: medium height with a weight lifter's tapered body, clean-featured and aggressively handsome in the way of a college football hero grown to middle age and taking the best care of himself. Just a hell of a guy. Nudger noticed the living room had about it a musky smell of stale perspiration, like the bedroom after he and Claudia had made love.
“Claudia and I know each other from Stowe School,” Archway said amiably.
Nudger nodded. “I know. You teach sex education out there. Isn't that the sort of thing that requires research?”
Archway looked again at Claudia, as if for some sort of signal to let him know how to treat this unwelcome intruder. Beyond him Nudger saw Claudia's clothes, including her panties and bra, laid out neatly on the sofa.
“Did the two of you change clothes in here?” he asked.
“I did,” Claudia said. “Biff changed in the bedroom.” She'd regained her composure and was giving Nudger her dark cautioning look. He was angering and embarrassing her. “Try to keep from making an ass of yourself,” she told him.
“Too late for that,” Nudger said. He knew that was true.
“Listen, sport,” Archway said, stepping toward Nudger.
“Out!” Nudger said sharply, gripping him firmly by the arm. “Time for everyone named Biff to leave.”
Archway didn't budge. Nudger was surprised by the hardness of the upper arm he was trying to clamp his fingers around.
“Don't!” Claudia warned. “Biff has a brown belt in karate, Nudger. Please, take it easy!”
Easy, hell! Nudger thought. He hunkered down and tried to push Archway toward the door. Archway shifted his weight subtly and Nudger stumbled a few feet beyond him, grasping empty air as he caught his balance. So the guy knew judo too, apparently.
“I suggest that you should be the one to leave,” Archway said calmly.
Nudger charged him, swung with a looping right hand, found himself upside down in the air, then on his back on the floor.
All so sudden.
“Time for Nudger to leave,” Archway said.
“Don't hurt him, Biff!” Claudia pleaded.
That got Nudger furious. He was on his feet again, moving in on Archway in a crouch. He shot out a straight left jab. Archway somehow grabbed his wrist, yanked, and Nudger found himself on the other side of the room.
“I'm finding it harder and harder not to hurt this jerk,” Archway said. He assumed a distinctly Oriental fighting stance; even his features suddenly appeared Oriental.
Nudger went at him again. Archway shouted something that sounded like “Hii-yah!”
Nudger saw him shift his body sideways, then drop low and extend a hip. Archway had a hand beneath Nudger's arm, against his side, and Nudger was in the air, again about to land hard on his back. His injured rib seemed to catch fire and he drew in a breath that was almost a harsh scream. A lamp that must have been teetering on the edge of a table finally fell and dangled half on the floor by its stretched cord.
Something seemed to have snapped at the base of Nudger's spine this flight.
“Hey, you got some kind of bandage wrapped around you,” Archway said, as if annoyed that he'd been tricked into not playing fair. “You better take it easy, sport.”
Nudger got up slowly, a fist doubled behind him and pressed to the small of his back. He limped to the door, pain jolting through him with each step.
“Nudger!” Claudia called.
But Nudger was into the hall, on his way down the stairs. Archway was saying something he couldn't understand. Didn't want to hear, anyway.
Claudia again: “Damn you, Nudger, come back here!”
He could still hear her calling to him as he pushed through the vestibule door and lurched across the street to his car. Some of the neighbors stopped polishing and mowing to look.
He drove a few blocks down the street, then pulled to the curb. His side and back had almost stopped hurting. Now his hands were trembling; he was too upset to drive farther. He sat in the parked Volkswagen, glad that it was darker and people couldn't see the rage and humiliation that he knew were distorting his features.
This was one of the few times he wished he owned a gun. He knew that any other weapon against Archway would probably be useless, or turned against him. But a gun, death from ten feet away with the twitch of a finger on the trigger, almost as impersonal as fate, that was different. So very different. Thunder and deadly destiny. Archway could do nothing against that.
Nudger imagined the two of them, Archway and Claudia, turning their heads, surprised to see him again as he burst into the apartment. He could see their startled expressions, the fear in Archway's wide eyes when he saw the gun in Nudger's hand. Maybe he'd beg. Crawl. Maybe the bastard—
Nudger shook himself. “Jesus! …” he whispered harshly. What was he thinking? What was he considering?
And he was glad he didn't own a gun. He might have killed Archway.
He actually might have.
He wiped his hand over his perspiring face. There was no real difference between him and Curtis Colt, he realized. No difference.
A teenage boy and girl strolled past on the sidewalk, walking with difficulty because their arms were around each other, and stared at Nudger.'
He felt sick. He started the engine and drove home.
25
When he got back to his apartment, Nudger stretched out on the sofa with the light out and worked at feeling sorry for himself.
It was even less difficult than he'd anticipated. Things had been piling up lately, bearing down on him. He thought about calling Candy Ann at the Ramada Inn, but Siberling might be there. A phone call was a bad idea, anyway, he decided. He knew he was in no condition to cheer up anyone. Right now, he was probably the last person who should talk to Candy Ann.
He lay thinking of how he might have handled Archway if only he'd thought to tackle the man and drag him down, wrestle with him, maybe even put some of those TV wrestling holds on him, the Bavarian Claw, or the Neutron Spinal Twist, not give him a chance to do his dancing act where the finale was Nudger soaring through the air. But he knew, really, that the younger and more powerful Archway would probably have subdued him in a wrestling match easily, and maybe even more painfully. The wholesome bastard probably ran ten miles a day. Probably lifted weights. Probably ate weights. Claudia could really pick them.
Claudia … He veered his mind away from Claudia, away from that kind of agony. He tried to think about Curtis Colt, a man with troubles that
made Nudger's seem trivial. But that wasn't much help. He, Nudger, was Nudger, and Colt was Colt and so not of as much concern. Suffering was a solitary exercise. That was how wars and executions worked.
Around midnight, Nudger's side and back stopped throbbing. He rolled onto his left side, managed to work his body into a reasonably comfortable position, and finally fell asleep.
In the morning, he limped into the bathroom and showered. The steam and the stinging hot water relieved him of some of his stiffness. Gradually increasing the temperature of the water, he stayed in the stifling shower stall until he could barely breathe and had to get out. The outer bathroom, which was probably over ninety degrees, felt refreshingly cool in contrast as Nudger stepped over the edge of the tub.
He toweled dry slowly, and was walking okay by the time he'd finished dressing.
It was eight-thirty, half an hour away from Curtis Colt's execution. Nudger got Mr. Coffee going, then went into the living room and called Candy Ann at the Ramada Inn. He thought about what Harold Benedict had said about the apartment phone possibly being tapped, but he didn't give a damn. Not at the moment.
Siberling answered the phone in Room 220. Nudger couldn't help wondering if the Napoleonic little lawyer had spent the night there, found himself a Josephine. He mentally kicked himself for thinking that way, blaming it on his painful experience of last night at Claudia's.
“Where's Candy Ann?” he asked.
“She's working at the Right Steer,” Siberling said. “The media aren't covering the place now, or her trailer. They figure she's in hiding, and they know the story, as far as she's concerned, is going to end very soon. There'll be plenty of time to aggravate her later for in-depth interviews, if anybody's still interested.”
“Is the story going to end?” Nudger asked.
“Scalla has half an hour to change his mind,” Siberling said, “but he isn't going to. He's an eye-for-an-eye kind of fella. Curtis is as good as gone.”
“Did you tell Candy Ann that?”
“No, I advised her to treat today as she would any other, to have faith that it was just another stage in the climb to Curtis Colt's eventual retrial. She's better off thinking that way and working, keeping busy, instead of sitting around suffering like Curtis.”