Ride the lightning

XV

The drive back to St. Louis was during late morning and early afternoon, when the sun was higher and hotter. The Volkswagen didn't have air-conditioning, and Nudger drove with the windows open, his hands slippery with sweat on the steering wheel, the air pressure from the wind pounding like a drum in the back of the car.

He stopped once, for lunch, at a roadside diner, a place of sun-faded curtains, Formica, and dead flies on the window ledge by his booth. The waitress said she couldn't serve omelets after ten o'clock, so Nudger had a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. His stomach objected, not only to the spicy ham but to the entire distressing day, and five miles down the highway he was chain-chewing antacid tablets.

When he reached the city he drove directly to his apartment, then phoned Danny to see if anyone had been by his office. No one had. He then called Kalas Construction and was told that Randy Gantner was on vacation as of last Monday and wouldn't be back to work until next week. Nudger said he was Gantner's brother from out of town and he had to get in touch with Randy as soon as possible. The girl on the phone said she was instructed not to give out employee's addresses or phone numbers under any circumstances. Sorry, there were no exceptions. She didn't sound sorry, just disinterested.

Nudger replaced the receiver and looked up Gantner's address in the phone directory. He wasn't a detective for nothing.

A shower, a cold beer, and a half hour later Nudger was ringing Randy Gantner's doorbell.

Gantner lived in Bridgeton at the Fox and Hounds apartment complex, an adult singles development of low, tan-brick, modern units built in a U-shape around a swimming pool. Nudger figured Gantner was home. A blue Toyota pickup truck he remembered from the Interstate 70 construction site was parked in front of Gantner's apartment. There was an empty rack for a shotgun in the truck's back window, and several empty beer cans and a broken shovel lay in the rusted metal bed.

The Fox and Hounds was near Lambert International Airport, below the flight pattern. As Nudger stood waiting for Gantner to come to the door, a red-trimmed TWA jetliner roared over low enough for him to glimpse the passengers inside the row of windows. The blast of sound was so great that the water in the pool seemed to shimmer. The three bikini-clad tenants lounging near the diving board didn't look up.

"… want?" Gantner was saying.

The door had opened and Nudger hadn't heard it. He hadn't seen it because his gaze had snagged on a tall blonde sunbathing on her stomach with her bikini strap unfastened so she wouldn't have a pale stripe across her back.

"I need to talk with you again about Curtis Colt," Nudger said.

Gantner had recently showered, or maybe come in from the pool. His reddish hair was glistening wet and combed straight back. He was wearing white slacks, beaded leather Mexican sandals, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt that laced rather than buttoned up the front. It was laced only halfway, to reveal the hair on his chest and a gold chain from which dangled what appeared to be a large gleaming tooth from some sort of animal. The neckwear went well with the gold stud in his left earlobe. He thought he was trendy, didn't know he looked like a pirate lost in time.

He seemed annoyed, but he shrugged and then stepped back to admit Nudger.

The apartment was small and garishly furnished. Above a vinyl modern sofa hung a mass-produced oil painting of an old three-masted sailing ship forging ahead in the throes of a furious storm on a luminous sea. Paint-by-numbers on a heroic scale. A poster of a cat about to flush itself down a toilet bowl hung on the opposite wall, above the legend "You think your day was rough?" Below the poster was a bookcase that held an expensive set of stereo components. MTV was playing on the big color TV, Mick Jagger strutting his stuff while his voice blasted from the two large speakers on either side of the bookcase. Nudger hadn't heard the music outside because of the aircraft noise.

Gantner ambled over and switched off the TV, a middle- aged adolescent in his Fox and Hounds lair. What the hell, Jagger was a few years older than he was.

"Have you thought any more about the liquor-store shooting?" Nudger asked in the sudden, silent absence of Jagger and the Stones.

"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 Gant- ner'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?"

"Of course. Five minutes. I can give you that. But I must warn you, Mr. Nudger, I haven't thought of anything new, and I really can't change my story about the night of the murder. Not in good conscience."

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.