Ride the lightning

XIV

Siberling had moved fast. He phoned Nudger the night of their conversation in Nudger's office and told him the interview with Curtis Colt had been arranged.

Nudger was up early the next morning and on the road to Jefferson City. It took him a little over two hours to drive there, first on Highway 70, then south on 54, through the flat, green, and baking heartland of summertime Missouri.

It wasn't the most scenic route in the state. Farmland and open fields flanked the highway for miles, broken only by distant, lonely houses and outbuildings, cedar-post fences, grazing livestock, and sometimes equally placed rolls of hay, like huge pillows of shredded-wheat cereal, distributed by mechanized bailers.

Nudger didn't bother stopping for breakfast or to freshen up when he reached Jefferson City; he drove straight to the ancient and oppressive penitentiary.

The Missouri State Penitentiary was said to contain one of the worst death rows in the country, infested with roaches and flies, plagued by inadequate plumbing and unsuitable medical facilities. After an inmate had served enough time there, the waiting became the revenge and the punishment, and the execution the escape.

The room they left Nudger in was pale green, darker green around the lower half. It was divided by a wall containing a bank of phones. Before each phone was a thick window crisscrossed with wire mesh between the layers of glass. On the other side of this glass were corresponding phones, black, without dials, buffed and scarred and with a dull patina caused by perspiration and long use.

There were no other visitors at this hour. Nudger was alone as he sat before one of the phones and waited. On the metal counter below the phone he saw the usual graffiti- names, phone numbers, occasional profanity, obscure symbols-done in pencil or ink. Over it all someone had used lipstick to draw a perfectly shaped heart. There was nothing written inside the heart, as if whoever had drawn it loved someone but wasn't sure who-or maybe simply wanted to love someone. Nudger touched the tip of the heart with his finger, rubbed, examined his fingertip. It was unstained; the heart was indelible.

Through the glass he saw a door open on the other side of the room. A heavyset uniformed guard entered and moved off to the side. The dividing wall and the glass were so thick that no sound from over there reached Nudger's ears. He saw but didn't hear Curtis Colt enter the room, followed by another armed guard. It was like watching a silent movie.

Colt appeared even smaller than Nudger had imagined him. He was wearing drab prison clothes, and he carried himself stiffly, with a suggestion of disorientation, as if he'd just been awakened from a sound sleep. His dark, down- turned mustache looked the same as in his photographs. His hair was shorter but unevenly shorn, making him appear younger. He seemed at ease as the other guard locked the door, moved to the side opposite his counterpart, and took up a stolid, silent position, waiting for the interview to be over so they could lead Colt back to his cell. All routine.

Colt glanced along the rows of phones and windows, saw Nudger, and moved toward the chair and phone on the other side of the window. When he got close, he squinted hard through the glass, as if fixing Nudger's face in his mind.

Nudger studied Colt as he sat down. There was no longer much defiance in his carriage or manner. At the same time there was no sign of submission. It was as Siberling had said; the impression Colt gave was that the material world was a transient condition beneath his concern. Some truth to that, considering Colt's projected brief future.

Nudger also saw the quiet dignity Siberling had mentioned. Sometimes impending death lent people a sort of solemn nobility, the calmness and insight gained by the acceptance of mortality. But then Colt apparently had possessed that before his death sentence.

Both men lifted the phones' receivers before them at the same time; the black earpiece was hard and cool against Nudger's ear. The phone gave off the impersonal chemical scent of plastic.

"Siberling didn't tell me what you want," Colt said. His voice was calm; it flaunted the Ozark twang that brother Welborne had worked so hard to eliminate. "Said who you was, what it was about, but not what you want."

"I'm going over the old ground in your case," Nudger said into the phone, watching Colt react to his words on the other side of the thick glass. It was as if Colt were halfway dead already, at a sad way station where he might still communicate awkwardly with the living, but didn't really want to. "I'm talking to the eyewitnesses, trying to see how they could be mistaken about placing you at the scene of the liquor-store robbery and killing."

Colt gave Nudger a level look through the window. His lips moved, right there a few feet in front of Nudger, but Nudger heard only the electronic simulation of his voice in the phone. "Why you doing that?"

"Candy Ann hired me to help you."

There was a pause. Then Nudger saw Colt's lips move again, seemed to hear the word half a second out of synchronization. "Who?"

Colt hadn't understood. "Candy Ann Adams."

"I don't know any Candy Ann Adams."

Nudger felt the air go out of him. He settled down farther into his hard chair in surprise, needing contact with something solid, real. This he hadn't expected.

"Your fiancee," he said numbly.

"I ain't got no fiancee," Colt said quietly. Too quietly.

"I know what really happened," Nudger said, pressing on. "Candy Ann arranged for Tom to talk with me. He told me the two of you were in North County, laying the groundwork for a service-station stickup, at the time of the liquor- store killing."

"And you believe that?" There was a touch of incredulity in Colt's voice.

Nudger nodded.

"Sorry," Colt said, "I don't know any Tom. The stickup and shooting went down just like them witnesses said in court. I did wrong, and I'm man enough to take my punishment, no matter what it is."

"I think you're innocent," Nudger persisted. "Candy Ann thinks so too. And so does Siberling."

"My lawyer's paid to think I'm innocent," Colt said logically. "Candy Ann is somebody I don't know. If you think I'm innocent, Nudger, and you're trying to do something about it, believe me, you're pissing into the wind. I'm guilty, man. It's settled. I'm settled."

"Don't be crazy. You've got to take what chance you have."

Colt smiled thin enough to cut paper. "I'm all out of chances. Don't feel sorry for me; the food ain't bad here, and a guy don't have to worry about putting on weight." Brave talk, only half-sincere, holding back reality.

Nudger felt frustration growing in him, digging claws into his stomach. "Is that what's bothering you? You don't want anybody feeling sorry for you because it's bad for your tough-guy image? This isn't a beer commercial or an old Cagney movie. My God, man, you're on Death Row! It's time to give yourself any opportunity, no matter how long the odds."

A flush of anger crossed Colt's face, then was gone. "You don't think I know I'm on Death Row? Listen…" But he let his voice trail off, as if reconsidering what he was about to say, deciding against it.

"I know where I am, Nudger," was all he said calmly into the phone. Another expression came and went almost instantly on his dark features. It startled Nudger; for a moment he thought Colt might begin to cry. But his composure was back as quickly as it had slipped and revealed the terror behind it. The emptiness. He needed somebody just then. Desperately.

He said softly, "How is she?"

"All right," Nudger told him. "Concerned about you. That's why she hired me."

"Lucky in love, unlucky in crime," Colt said with a tilted grin. "That's me."

"Right both times," Nudger said. He watched Colt through the glass, letting him think about Candy Ann.

Nudger's stomach began to bother him more now. It growled, letting him know that this conversation with Colt represented stress. He absently fed himself a couple of antacid tablets, chomped and swallowed.

After a minute he said, "Curtis, I think you should give them Tom. It will mean prison for both of you. But this way it's death for you and freedom for him. Freedom until he gets collared for some other job. He smells like a loser. Think about it. Don't let some half-ass code of honor put you in the electric chair."

"I don't know any Tom," Colt said. "And there ain't no honor among us thieves, and surely none among us murderers. Ask any of the guards here."

"You didn't know any Candy Ann, either."

Colt stood up. There was time left in the fifteen minutes they'd been granted for the interview, but he was about finished talking. "I don't know any Tom," he repeated.

And he probably really couldn't tell the police where to look for him, Nudger thought. Tom knew the score and the moves, and he had the fear in him. He'd find a deep hole and cover himself, make himself virtually impossible to find until after Saturday.

"Tell Candy Ann to forget about me," Colt said in a voice as hard as his carved features. "Tell her I'm already dead and to quit poking around in my ashes. I'm dead, and Saturday I'll sit down and then I'll lay down, and she'll know I'm dead then the way I know it now."

He hung up the phone and didn't look at Nudger as he turned and walked to the door. He paused, standing loosely, his hands at his sides.

One of the guards unlocked the door, swung it open, and they escorted him out. The guards didn't look at Nudger, either. He was just another visitor from the world on the other side of the glass. Unimportant. Didn't really belong.

That was fine with Nudger. He got out of there.