Ride the lightning

XVII

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.

Finally he decided to go to his office and examine his mail, see if he'd won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

Relieved to have a sense of direction, however brief and insignificant, he stepped down on the Volkswagen's accelerator and wished other drivers would get out of his way.

When he pulled to the curb in front of his office, a set of headlights swerved in behind him, then brightened as the car parked with its nose to the back bumper of the Volkswagen. Nudger looked in his rearview mirror. Too bright to see anything; like a damned Steven Spielberg movie. He winced from the glare. Whoever was back there didn't turn the car's headlights off, and left the engine running.

Nudger thought about driving away, but maybe there was no need for that. It could be that the car behind him was a police cruiser, and he was about to get a ticket for a burned-out taillight or a faulty muffler. The old Volkswagen provided a wide range of targets for a nit-picking cop.

Then a chill hit him. Maybe whoever was behind him wasn't a cop. Maybe it was-

"Hi, Nudge."

Danny. Whew!

He had walked up beside Nudger on the street side. Now he moved over where Nudger could see him better, stooping slightly on creaky legs so Nudger wouldn't have to crane his neck to stare up at him.

"I seen you turn onto Manchester," Danny said. "I been trying to get in touch with you since late this afternoon. Called at Claudia's, but she said you'd left over an hour ago."

Nudger got out of the car, leaned against the warm metal in the bright wash of the headlights, and listened to the idling engine in Danny's Plymouth tick-tick-tick. Heat was rolling out from beneath the Volkswagen, finding its way up Nudger's pant legs and making him uncomfortable. He shifted position but it didn't help.

"That guy that beat you up was back around here today," Danny said. "Him and somebody else."

Nudger felt another thrust of fear. "Did you see him go up to the office?"

"Nope. Both him and the other guy just sat in a rusty old red pickup truck across the street. The big guy was behind the wheel. They sat there for over an hour, talking and looking up at your office window now and then. Twice they drove away, then came back within half an hour or so and parked over there again."

"You said there were two of them. What did the other one look like?"

Danny stepped closer to the car as a bus passed. The bus was moving slowly, heading for downtown, hissing and belching diesel fumes. A black woman in a window seat stared down at Nudger and Danny from behind the glass as if she were touring another world and they aroused her curiosity.

"The other guy was big, too," Danny said. "Hard to tell next to the driver, but I'd guess around six feet, and built plenty stocky. He had red hair and a real deep suntan. Oh, yeah, I can't be sure, but it looked like he was wearing an earring. He turned his head for a moment and the setting sun caught it, made it glint gold."

Randy Gantner. Nudger knew what it meant if Gantner was connected with the strong-arm who'd beaten him. The beating had nothing to do with Cal Smith's phony insurance claim that Benedict wanted investigated. It was impossible now to doubt: Nudger had been methodically bruised in an attempt to persuade him to drop the Curtis Colt case.

Now someone seemed to have decided he needed another round of unfriendly persuasion.

"Something else, Nudge," Danny said. "I drove by your apartment about an hour ago to see if you were there. I didn't see your car parked where you usually leave it, so I knew you weren't home, but I did see the rusty pickup with the two guys in it. They were parked half a block up from your building where they could keep an eye on the entrance."

Nudger's stomach moved; he swallowed a bitter taste that had formed under his tongue. So Gantner and the big man knew where he lived and were serious about finding him tonight. Showdown time. Nudger would make an equally serious effort to avoid that confrontation.

"Thanks, Danny," he said. "I'll sleep in the office tonight; they won't figure I'd come here this late."

"Is there a reason you don't want to phone the law, Nudge?"

Nudger absently massaged his stomach. "I don't know what the law could do. I can't prove anything I'd tell them about the beating. And it's legal to ride around and park here and there in a pickup truck."

Danny dug into his right pants pocket and pulled out a crinkled piece of white paper, a scrap torn from a doughnut sack. He handed the sweat-damp, abused paper to Nudger. "This is the truck's license-plate number."

"Thanks," Nudger said, doubting the worth of the number. The truck probably had stolen plates, or was itself stolen. Otherwise Gantner and the big man would have obscured the plate's numbers. "I'll give it to Hammersmith in the morning."

"You want me to hang around here with you?" Danny offered.

"I don't see any reason for that," Nudger said. "They probably won't come back here this late, and if they do, the light will be off in the office. Will you leave your car parked there and drive mine home tonight? We can switch again in the morning."

"Sure. Good idea, Nudge. That way they'll figure you never showed up here."

Nudger wished he shared Danny's certainty about that. About a lot of things.

"I got a thirty-eight revolver in the doughnut shop, Nudge. Want to borrow it?"

"No. If I used it, somebody might shoot back at me."

Danny reached through the Plymouth's rolled-down window, switched off the engine and headlights, and they exchanged car keys.

Nudger watched the clattering Volkswagen bounce down Manchester and turn the corner, bucking like a one- man horse with a strange rider. Then he went upstairs to his office.

There was enough artificial light from outside for him to see well enough. He left the blinds raised as they had been since morning and tried to stay away from the window. He did switch the air conditioner on low; it protruded high over the narrow gangway, and he figured its hum wouldn't be loud enough to alert anyone down on the street.

After setting the new dead-bolt lock on the door, he crammed a chair under the knob at an angle. Then he picked up the cracked beer stein he kept pencils in and set it delicately on the chair. If anyone tried to get in, the stein would fall and wake Nudger, and maybe he'd have enough time to phone for help or get out the window and scamper down the fire escape.

He dragged the folding cot out of the closet, set it up, and stretched out on it in his underwear, his pants and shoes nearby where he could quickly wrestle into them. It wouldn't be the first time he'd gotten dressed in panic; he'd acquired a certain expertise at it.

An hour passed before he managed to fall asleep. Then he skimmed the surface of wakefulness, hearing faint sounds, thinking about too much too rapidly, caught between dreams and reality. Curtis Colt and Candy Ann and Gantner and his overgrown friend were caught there with him. Gantner was wearing a pirate outfit with a huge gold earring and was about to swat Nudger with a shovel. The big man stood in the background with his muscle-caked arms crossed, Mr. Clean fashion, grinning his wicked grin. A blond nurse was arguing with a doctor over whether some X rays showed a broken rib or a broken heart. Either way, it was serious. Claudia was there somewhere, too. Only Nudger couldn't quite make out what she was doing, or with whom.

In the morning, nothing was any clearer. Nudger awoke blinded by slanted sunlight, his mouth and his mind full of fuzz. Danny wouldn't arrive to open the doughnut shop until eight o'clock. It was seven-thirty now, and a prudent time for Nudger to leave the office. Gantner and his massive friend might assume he kept early hours.

He called the Third District. Hammersmith was still on the day shift, but he wasn't due in this morning until about nine. The privileges of rank.

Driving Danny's Plymouth, Nudger finally found Hammersmith enjoying those privileges and a huge breakfast at the Webster Grill near his home. Hammersmith seemed surprised to see Nudger walk in the door and motioned for him to sit in the opposite seat of his booth.

"Had breakfast, Nudge?"

"Not yet." Nudger surveyed Hammersmith's plate. Four eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, jellied toast. There were enough calories there to heat a house. Hammersmith hadn't achieved his bulk without trying. Nudger wondered if it was the wear and tear of the job. Some cops drank. Some beat their wives or kicked their dogs. Hammersmith ate.

"Great fare here," Hammersmith said, motioning with his fork and assuming the air of a gourmet.

A young waitress with pinned-back blond hair came over to the booth and Nudger ordered coffee with cream. "Put it on my check," Hammersmith told her.

Nudger wondered if he'd have said that if the order had been for more than coffee. Hammersmith was notorious for dodging restaurant checks. Dining out was a game for him. Now he probably figured Nudger owed him lunch.

Hammersmith forked potatoes into his mouth and shook his head, chewed, swallowed. "Just coffee, huh? No wonder your stomach rumbles like a capped volcano." He downed half of his own coffee. His sharp blue eyes took in the traffic outside on Big Bend, the Plymouth parked at a meter across the street. "How come you're driving Danny's car? Yours in the shop again?"

"I've been in the shop," Nudger said. "A mountain with arms and legs was waiting for me in my office Monday and gave me a beating."

Hammersmith nodded toward Nudger. "That how you got the unflattering marks on your face?"

"It is. But the guy was a pro; he did most of his work on my body. Very efficient work."

Hammersmith paused in lifting a piece of toast. Some of the strawberry jelly slipped off and dropped onto his plate near the eggs. "I noticed you were walking kinda stiff. Much damage?"

"A cracked rib maybe. And bruises inside and out."

"Know who the guy was?"

"No."

Hammersmith shook his head. "Even if you did, unless you had proof, witnesses, there wouldn't be much we could do. Have a word with the guy, maybe, throw a scare into him."

"He'd probably scare whoever you sent to talk to him," Nudger said, thinking that eyewitnesses or the lack of them were causing him a lot of trouble lately. "The real reason I wanted to tell you about this was because of who might have aimed him at me."

Nudger told Hammersmith about the big man trying to warn him off a case, about noticing Randy Gantner's truck near Edna Fine's apartment, about Danny seeing the oversized assailant with Gantner yesterday.

Hammersmith didn't like hearing any of it. He ate slowly while Nudger talked, as if he were chewing something that might contain a hidden sharp bone.

"It has to be the Curtis Colt case the strong-arm guy was warning me about," Nudger said.

"So it seems, Nudge."

Nudger reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Danny had given him. He smoothed it out and handed it across the table to Hammersmith. "Danny got the truck's license number when it was parked across the street from my office. I doubt if it will mean much, but it's worth running an owner check on it."

Hammersmith folded the scrap of paper carefully and slid it into his pocket. His usually smooth, evenly florid complexion was mottled, and there were white lines at the corners of his thin lips. "You want protection, Nudge?"

"Sure. Whatever can be spared." He knew that couldn't be much, and his office and apartment weren't actually within city limits.

"I'll call the Maplewood police; they'll have their cars keep an eye on your building, watch for an old pickup truck with this plate number. And a St. Louis Second District car can swing by there now and then; you're only a few blocks outside the Second. I'll pass the word."

The waitress brought Nudger's coffee, set it on the table, then carefully laid the check in a damp spot near Hammersmith.

"Who's trying to scare me away and why?" Nudger asked. "What are they worried about?"

Hammersmith put down his fork. "The Colt case is closed, Nudge. Finished business." But there wasn't much certainty in his voice. The acid of doubt had begun its work.

"I wish for you that were true," Nudger said.

"You talked to Colt in Jeff City," Hammersmith said. "What did you get out of him?"

"He said he was guilty. He seemed sincere."

"The little bastard," Hammersmith said. Nudger didn't know quite what he meant by that, didn't ask.

"Siberling thinks Colt's innocent," Nudger said.

"What would you expect? Siberling is his lawyer."

"And a game one. He's not just talking; he still believes in his client. Really believes."

Hammersmith sipped his coffee and stared out the window at heavy traffic on Big Bend. A tractor-trailer had turned the corner at the post office at a bad angle and was causing a backup at the Stop sign. A bald man in a shiny red Corvette convertible raced his engine. A driver up the block leaned on his horn. Two skinny teenage girls who'd been crossing the street giggled and pretended to direct traffic. Nothing moved.

Hammersmith said, "Christ!" about the traffic or about Curtis Colt.

"You're not eating," Nudger said.

Hammersmith didn't look at him. "I'm not hungry anymore."

Nudger reached over and got a strip of bacon from Hammersmith's plate, ate it, then lifted the check from the puddle of water.

"My treat," he said. He stood up.

Hammersmith nodded, still staring out at the sunbaked street beyond the comfortable dimness of the restaurant, wrestling with a doubt that came too late.

Nudger patted him on the shoulder and left.

Outside, reason had prevailed. Or maybe it had been the threat of imminent violence from harried drivers late for work. The truck that had caused all the traffic problems was half a block away.

Things were moving again. Too fast.