Ride the lightning

XVIII

Nudger got into Danny's Plymouth, twisted the ignition key, and joined the traffic on Big Bend. He didn't feel like going to his office; better to give Hammersmith time to get to the Third and phone the Maple- wood police about protection. He made a right turn off Big Bend onto Shrewsbury, got onto Highway 44, and drove east into the still low, brilliant sun.

Even the lowered visor didn't do much to block the sunlight. Nudger squinted along for a few miles, then exited onto Eighteenth Street, made his way over to Grattan, and found a parking spot across the street from Malcolm Bliss Hospital.

Malcolm Bliss was a state mental hospital, the one where St. Louis police took the violently insane directly from crime scenes. He had taken a few people there himself years ago as a patrol-car cop. A tunnel connected this hospital with the larger state mental hospital on Arsenal, and if the violent needed confinement and treatment of long duration, they were taken through the tunnel to a world most of us only glimpse in dark imagination. During her marriage to Ralph, right after the death of their youngest child, Claudia had gone through that tunnel.

Nudger entered the hospital and went to the point of her departure and return, the office of Dr. Edwin Oliver.

A nurse had told Oliver Nudger was on his way. The office door was open and Oliver was standing up behind his desk when Nudger knocked perfunctorily on the doorjamb and stepped inside. On the desk were a telephone, some stacks of file folders, a coffee mug on a glass coaster, and a twisted- wire sculpture of a man and a woman dancing. The sculpture looked as if it had been fashioned from a coat hanger, and there was a desperate sort of abandon to it; Nudger wondered if it was the work of one of Oliver's patients.

"Good to see you again, Mr. Nudger." Oliver offered his hand to shake. He was fortyish, large and in good shape, with leprechaun features that suited neither his size nor his profession.

Nudger shook the strong dry hand and sat down in a chair in front of the desk. He noticed that Oliver's small, sparse office was painted exactly the same color as the room in which he'd talked with Colt at the state prison. Maybe the state had gotten an incredible buy on green paint. Or maybe Scott Scalla owned stock in a paint company.

"Is this about Claudia?" Oliver asked. He and Nudger had saved her life two years ago. They both had an interest in her, Oliver professional, Nudger personal.

"It is," Nudger said. "Has she been to see you lately?"

"Not for six months, since our regular sessions ended. Is she all right?"

"I think so," Nudger said, "but I'm not sure."

He told Oliver about Claudia and Biff Archway. Oliver listened patiently, his pointy features intense, like a sage creature from Irish folklore. Even his ears were pointed. Occasionally he absently touched a small scab on his smooth chin where he'd nicked himself shaving.

"Did you come here for Claudia or for yourself?" he asked, smiling faintly.

"Send me a bill and you'll find out," Nudger said. He was annoyed by the question. Oliver sensed it and stopped smiling, then put his serious expression back on. He'd urged Nudger to come to him whenever anything extraordinary was going on with Claudia, hadn't he?

He sat silently behind his desk for a while as if he were alone, looking thoughtful and inching this way and that in his swivel chair. Nudger had closed the door when he came in; on the other side of it now were shuffling footsteps in the hall, voices arguing, fading. Someone kept asking, "Why in the hell didn't you? Why didn't you?…"

"If she told you she needed to see other men," Oliver said finally, "why don't you believe her?"

"I do believe her," Nudger said. "That's what bothers me."

Oliver stared at him. "And something else?"

Nudger nodded. "I find myself wondering if she's going to come back to me. If she ever really loved me, or if she was simply grateful because I helped save her life, got her back into teaching."

"Maybe she found herself wondering the same things," Oliver said, bending over backward to make Nudger feel better.

"Apparently so. I didn't need you to tell me that."

"Don't get testy, Nudger. Anyway, Claudia does care a great deal for you. I know; I spent hours with her in analysis."

"Then why Biff Archway?"

"You might have put your finger on it a moment ago. She's wondering about her own feelings. Maybe it's a sign her wounds from the past, from her marriage to Ralph, finally are healing. She feels strong enough now to be with other men, but she needs to verify that to herself."

"Why aren't I 'other men'?" Nudger asked.

"You're too familiar. Too available, sympathetic, and reliable." Oliver smiled now and shook his head. "You should clean up your act, Nudger."

"You're a wiseass for a psychiatrist," Nudger said.

"Doubtless I am. But I'm glad you came to me."

"Why? You said this was all a sign that Claudia was traveling toward full recovery."

"I'm glad for you that you came," Oliver said. "Because maybe I can put your mind at ease. What Claudia's going through probably is positive, something she needs to do to affirm herself. When it's run its course, she'll most likely return to you. That's not a professional promise, only my imperfect personal prediction. Dear Abby stuff. An opinion from a friend who's seen this pattern before."

"I only know I hate Biff Archway, and I never met him."

"That's natural," Oliver said cheerfully.

"So are warts," Nudger said, "but they're damned hard to get rid of." He thanked Oliver and stood up, started to leave, then paused. "There's someone else I'd like to ask you about, if you've got the time."

"I don't have it, but I'll listen. Psychiatrists always take time to listen about people's friends. They often turn out to be our clients. The people, not the friends."

"You won't get a client out of this either way," Nudger said. "My friend is someone I'm concerned with professionally. Curtis Colt."

"Colt? The man on Death Row?"

"Yes. I talked to him yesterday. He's resigned to dying Saturday. He doesn't want help, says he's guilty."

Oliver fingered the scab on his chin again. "Not so unusual. He's made his peace with himself. He's ready to do penance."

"Only he isn't guilty. I'm sure of it."

Oliver placed his hands on the desk, studied them. "Is he your client?"

"No. My client is someone close to him." Nudger told him about Candy Ann Adams, about Tom and Lester, about Welborne Colt and his billiard-ball theory of predestination.

"Tell me everything you can remember about your visit with Curtis Colt," Oliver said.

Nudger did, while Oliver sat picking at his scab again, causing it to bleed by the time Nudger was finished.

"Colt seems to feel that this execution was scheduled from the time of his birth," Nudger said. "That society has it in for him, rather than vice versa."

"At the same time," Oliver said, "his behavior isn't really consistent with that of someone who feels resignation in the clutches of a power with which he can't cope. From what you say, he's accepted the fact of the execution, yet he still displays a calm air of defiance."

"More one of detachment."

"But not a dispirited detachment."

"No," Nudger said. "He acts more like a prisoner of war ready to meet the firing squad as a patriotic gesture."

"Interesting analogy," Oliver said. "I wish I had the time, and the authority, to find out more."

"Colt's the one without the time," Nudger said.

Oliver nodded agreement. "If you need to talk to me again about Claudia," he said, "you know how to reach me, here or at my other number."

Nudger thanked Oliver again and left.

Out on the sidewalk, the sun was much brighter, hotter. The simmering heat wave was going to continue, but right now Nudger didn't mind. He was always glad to leave Malcolm Bliss. It occurred to him that sometimes he had the feeling it was the pocket and he was a billiard ball. When he got near his office, he saw a Maplewood police car parked up the street toward the Kmart store. A rusty pickup truck was nowhere in sight. Good.

Nudger exchanged car keys with Danny in the doughnut shop.

"Any sign of our violent friends?" he asked.

"Nope," Danny said. "And a police car's been back and forth by here real slow a few times."

Nudger told him about the protection Hammersmith had arranged. Not an army of guards, but the best that could be done under the circumstances of short manpower and divided jurisdiction. The St. Louis metropolitan area, with its scores of small municipalities with their separate city governments and police and fire departments, was a puzzle board of official responsibility.

"Call me on the phone if you see the truck again," Nudger said.

Danny nodded and handed him a wrapped Dunker Delite and a large cup of coffee. "Want the morning paper, Nudge?" he asked. "I already read it."

"Sure."

Danny straightened the newspaper as much as possible where it was spread out on the counter, smoothing it and arranging it in order. "Cards won another," he said. "Six in a row now." He folded the crinkled paper in half and handed it over. Newspapers were never quite the same after the first time.

"Thanks, Danny," Nudger said. "For more than breakfast and the paper."

"Nothing," Danny said. "You picked me up from time to time." He snatched his towel from his belt and began wiping down the gleaming counter, working hard on imaginary smudges.

Nudger went upstairs, got his mail from the landing, and switched on the air conditioner.

He sat down behind his desk and examined the mail in the light blasting through the slanted venetian blinds. A couple of ads, a survey form, and an envelope from Eileen. Nothing yet from Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. What was the delay? He tossed all of the mail unopened into the wastebasket.

Then he punched "rewind" and "play" on his phone- answering machine.

One message, in a chillingly familiar voice: "You didn't pay no mind to what I told you, Nudger. No mind whatsoever. Start ig-fuckin'-noring that matter we talked about in your office or I'll wring out your balls like an old dishrag. Leave it a-fuckin'-lone, or else. I can be lots more convincing. Fact is, I'd purely love to be."

He reached out a shaky hand and switched off the answering machine. The big guy really liked to mangle things, even the language. He sure sounded like somebody who enjoyed his work.

Nudger stood up and looked out the window at a sharp angle, his forehead pressed against the wooden frame. The Maplewood police car was still parked up the street.

He sat back down, ignored the Dunker Delite, and downed half the cup of coffee. For warmth, not taste. Warmth meant life, and he had the terrible suspicion that he might be heading for a place downtown where the beds had drains and the people were refrigerated.

Such imagination, his stomach growled. Please, no more coffee.

He picked up the phone and called Candy Ann at home.

She was going in early to work at the Right Steer, she said, but she could talk with Nudger during her eleven o'clock break, after the Buckaroo Breakfast Special crowd had thinned out.

Nudger told her he'd be there with spurs on and hung up. He wasn't going to heed the warning of the voice on his answering machine. He didn't know if that was because he was hard to convince, or if he was simply being stupid in a lost cause.

His stomach knew.