Ride the lightning

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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, then 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.

"Sure, but it won't do any good. She's probably telling you straight. Tom would figure we'd talk to her; he wouldn't let her know how to find him. And she wouldn't want to know where he was. If she's Curtis Colt's girl, she knows the rules and would probably drive a polygraph operator to distraction with nothing but the useless truth."

"You could stake out her trailer."

"Do you think Candy Ann and this Tom might be lovers?"

"No."

Hammersmith gazed down at his smoldering cigar and shook his head. "Then they'll probably never see each other again. And if they do, it might not be for months, even years. Watching her trailer would be a complete waste of manpower, and that's a commodity the taxpayers have left me short of."

Nudger knew Hammersmith was right. The St. Louis Police Department, like the police of most major cities, had an oversupply of crime and an undersupply of men. "What can you tell me about Colt's lawyer?" he asked.

"Charles Siberling. A young guy from Legal Aid. But don't get any ideas about Colt getting the shaft because of inadequate counsel. This Siberling is young, but he's smart and part shark, making a reputation in this town. Quite the cocky little bastard; he's even been known to show up his partners, who aren't regarded as fools."

"He's with a law firm?"

"Uh-huh. Elbert and Stein, over in the Pennwright Building in lawyer-glutted Clayton. His Legal Aid work is done on the side; Elbert wants him to get courtroom experience before he does something really important like defend some big shot's tax write-off."

"You seem to know a lot about Siberling," Nudger said.

Hammersmith deliberately blew smoke in Nudger's direction; Nudger thought he saw a mosquito go down. "He's the kind of lawyer who's going to be a pain in the ass for a long time. Shaw is the top criminal lawyer in this town now; Siberling figures to be the next in line. I feel confident in making that prediction, despite his youth and inexperience. He's got star quality and an instinct for sniffing out weakness."

"He wasn't much help to Curtis Colt."

"Which oughta tell you something, Nudge."

The smoke was getting to be too much to bear. Nudger knew his sport coat would reek of it until the dry cleaner down the street from his office gave out coupons again. He stood up to go.

"What are you going to do now?" Hammersmith asked.

"I'll talk to the witnesses again. I'll go see Siberling. I'll read the court transcript again. And I'd like to talk with Curtis Colt."

"They usually don't allow visitors on Death Row, Nudge, only temporary boarders."

"This case is an exception," Nudger said. "Will you try to arrange it?"

"Siberling would be the guy to do that; he's still Colt's lawyer."

"You were in charge of the investigation, and you have connections a young lawyer hasn't heard about. I'll ask Siberling, but I'd like to be able to tell him you're working on it, too."

Hammersmith chewed thoughtfully on his cigar, making the end of the thing a soggy greenish mess. Since he'd been the officer in charge of the investigation, he was the one who'd nailed Curtis Colt. That carried an obligation, a responsiblity. For a cop like Hammersmith, that responsibility could turn into a cross that would weigh him down for the rest of his career, that he might eventually bend under.

Years ago, Hammersmith and Nudger had known a police lieutenant named Billy Abraham who had sent an innocent woman to prison. The woman had hanged herself a week before someone else confessed to her crime. She had left a sealed note to Abraham that only he had read. Two days later Abraham had eaten his gun-cop talk for placing the barrel of his Police Special in his mouth and blowing off the top of his head. A messy as well as sudden way to find peace.

Nudger and Hammersmith looked at each other, thinking of Abraham.

"Tell Siberling nothing about me," Hammersmith said. "But I'll see what I can do. For you, Nudge, not for that little prick Siberling."

"For Curtis Colt."

"No," Hammersmith said. "Colt's guilty. And he's already got one foot in the next world; high voltage is going to goose him the rest of the way out of this one."

Nudger didn't argue with Hammersmith; the lieutenant was probably right. Needed to be right about Colt's guilt.

"I'll phone you soon," Hammersmith said, "let you know."

Nudger thanked Hammersmith, left the office, and walked down the hall into the clear, breathable air of the booking area. Ellis the desk sergeant let him use the wall phone usually reserved for suspects.

Nudger stood wearily before the grimy wall's display of desperately scrawled phone numbers of lawyers, relatives, and bondsmen, the graffiti of fear.

He used the dog-eared directory, dialed, and made an appointment to see Charles Siberling.