Ride the lightning

V

After leaving Hammersmith, Nudger located and phoned Gantner's drinking buddy, Roy Sanders, at a tire-retreading plant out in Westport where Sanders worked. Sanders was working overtime, as Gantner had been yesterday. Busy, busy. Industry was thriving. Sanders agreed to talk with Nudger during his lunch break, which was in about fifteen minutes.

Nudger got to Westport, a business and warehouse complex in West County, in twenty minutes, and found Sanders sitting with four other men in the employee's lounge of Roll-On Recap City.

The lounge was a long, narrow room, painted workplace green and lined with colorful vending machines that seemed to sell everything from sandwiches to birth-control devices. There were a lot of potted plants suspended from the ceiling in front of the window at the far end, spilling lush viny greenness almost to the floor. On the windowsill sat opened boxes of plant food and a mist-sprayer.

Sanders, a tall, Lincolnesque man with dark smudges on his bare arms, carefully placed his cheese sandwich on a white paper napkin and shook hands with Nudger. Everyone at the table was dressed in a workshirt and dark-stained jeans and was wearing a similarly soiled blue work apron. Picking up his coffee and sandwich, Sanders led Nudger to a table near the end of the long room, where they could talk privately.

"You want a cup of coffee?" he asked Nudger, before they sat down at the gray Formica table.

Nudger said no thanks, and they sat. Neither man said anything while a tall, redheaded woman in a business suit stalked into the lounge, deposited coins in a soup machine near the table, then cursed mightily because the machine hadn't freed the little captive soup can from its glass cell but had kept the proffered ransom. The woman kicked the machine softly but precisely with the pointed toe of a high- heeled shoe, as if aiming for its groin, before moving down the lounge to another bank of machines that might prove more amiable.

Nudger went through the routine he'd pursued with Gantner. The answers were the same. Sanders and Gantner had been in the rear of the store, heard shots, saw the old man on the floor, the old woman staggering around with a bullet wound in her head. Saw her fall, saw Curtis Colt run from the store, gun in hand, and get into a dark green car that screeched away. Sanders had only caught a glimpse of the car as it sped past the display window, and said he didn't hear the shot Colt had allegedly fired from the speeding car.

"Did you get a good look at Colt's face?" Nudger asked, knowing Sanders had testified in court that he had.

Sanders took a big bite of his cheese sandwich, chewing with his mouth open. His melancholy eyes were thoughtful. "Pretty good." For a moment Nudger thought he was commenting on the sandwich, then realized Sanders was talking about the look he'd gotten at Colt. "All this takes a lot of time to tell, but it happened fast, only a couple of seconds. I got as good a look at him as I could have in that short a time."

Nudger shoved the lakeside photo across the table for Sanders to look at again, the one where Colt was holding a beer can high in a defiant toast. "And you're sure this is the man?"

Sanders gulped coffee, wiped his mouth as he stared down at the snapshot. "I don't know that from this photo. You tell me it's Colt, I believe you. I am sure the man I saw in the police lineup, the guy I saw in court, was the one that was in the liquor store with the gun. The one that blasted the old guy and his wife."

"But it's the same man."

Sanders shrugged. "Hell, you know photos. You take my picture, I look handsome."

Nudger doubted that, but he nodded and put the snapshot back into his pocket. "Did you see the getaway-car driver?"

"Got a glance, is all. Guy with long darkish hair, leaning over the steering wheel like he was trying to coax more speed outa the car."

"Colt had dark hair, wavy and almost shoulder-length."

Sanders grinned. "I know where you're going with that one, Nudger. Colt's lawyer tried it in court. Tricky little bastard; I gotta give him that. Full of more twists and turns than a double-jointed break dancer. But he couldn't shake me. It was Colt I saw in that liquor store. No doubt whatsoever here. Curtis Colt."

"How do you feel about capital punishment, Mr. Sanders?"

"I believe in it. Human life's the most precious thing there is; you take somebody's and you oughta die for it. And Colt took somebody's life."

"But you didn't recognize him positively in the photograph."

"He wasn't in a photograph when he was in the liquor store."

That was a good point, Nudger conceded, looking at Sanders and thinking that with a wart on his cheek the man really would look like Lincoln.

Sanders shot a glance at his watch. "I gotta get back and grade some tires or I get docked; we're slaves here."

"I suspect someday you'll do something about that," Nudger said.

Sanders looked around furtively and lowered his voice. "You mean the union?"

"Exactly," Nudger said, and thanked him for giving up part of his lunch break and left.

As he drove from Roll-On Recap City's parking lot and turned onto Dorsett Road, Nudger realized that being in the presence of all that glassed-in food had made him hungry. Claudia Bettencourt would be at a faculty meeting today until one o'clock. Nudger phoned her at Stowe High School and asked if she wanted to meet him for lunch. She said sure, at her apartment. Good girl.

Though he was in West County, he was still closer to Claudia's south St. Louis apartment than she was, so he got there first and let himself in with his key.

It was an old, spacious apartment on Wilmington, high- ceilinged and with steam-radiator heat. There was no central air-conditioning. The place was stuffy, with a faint scent of cooking gas mingled with the trapped summer heat. Nudger walked to the window air conditioner in the living room and switched it on. He stood for a moment in its humming, gurgling coolness, turning so the chilled draft dried his shirt where it was stuck to his back. The draperies at the opposite window caught the gentle movement of air and began swaying in slow rhythm like dreamy dance partners.

Claudia had lived in the apartment long enough for it to have taken on a settled appearance. The furniture, some of it new and financed through her job teaching at Stowe School, had adapted to its surroundings and seemed to have grown where it sat on the worn blue carpet. There was a clear glass ashtray with a compressed and bent cigarette butt in it on the coffee table and a stack of outdated newspapers on the floor alongside the sofa. Claudia didn't smoke; Nudger wondered who had snubbed out a cigarette here.

He walked into the kitchen. It was still too warm in there. He got a Budweiser out of the refrigerator, then returned to the cooler living room before popping the tab on the beer can. No need for a glass. He sat in a corner of the sofa where he could feel cool movement of air, found that morning's Post on top of the stack of papers, and checked the front section.

There was a photograph of Scott Scalla grinning while cutting a ribbon in front of a new factory in St. Charles. There was a piece about a county cop who had broken under strain and shot himself and his wife, and next to that a three-column article was advising people how to stay cool in the smothering grip of the present heat wave. There was nothing on Curtis Colt. He was old news and would be until a few days before his execution, when the media would get interested in whether he'd make a last-minute confession or order strawberries and pickles for his final meal. Murderers sure weren't like the rest of us; it was fun and more than a little scary to peek into their minds.

Nudger sighed, sipped beer, and turned to the sports page to read about the Cardinals' fourth straight victory. They'd won last night in extra innings. There was a photograph of Tommy Herr doing his muscular ballet over second base as he pivoted gracefully for the double play. Nudger thought Herr might be even smoother than Scott Scalla.

Claudia opened the door, pivoted neatly herself, and unloaded an armload of books and folders onto the table in the hall.

"Homework," she said, grinning at Nudger. "It's a little- known fact that teachers have more homework than their students. All this stuff has to be graded." She was teaching summer school this year, a heavy schedule.

She looked great, wearing a simple navy-blue dress that set off her long dark hair and brown eyes. Her waist appeared especially slim in the sashed dress; her lean features were perfect except for a narrow nose that some might have found too long but that Nudger thought gave her a noble look and conveyed a subtle but volatile sexiness. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and Nudger liked to behold, then to hold.

He waited like a patient cobra until she got near enough, then pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her. She was heavy for her leanness, solid and strong. She returned the kiss, using her tongue.

"There are different kinds of homework," Nudger pointed out. "Some on subjects more interesting than the English you teach."

She climbed off his lap and primly straightened her dress. "It's the afternoon."

He glanced at the light streaming through the window and nodded. Afternoon, all right. A sex act might change all that, throw all the time zones out of whack.

"I've got some frozen spaghetti," she said, switching on the dining room air conditioner so it would blow into the kitchen.

Nudger knew enough to give up. For now. "That stuff in the little plastic bags you drop into boiling water?"

She didn't answer. He heard her clattering around in the kitchen. A piece of flatware hit the floor, bounced; water ran.

By the time he'd finished his beer and was done reading about the ballgame, she had two plates of spaghetti, some cloverleaf rolls, Parmesan cheese, and two glasses of red wine on the dining room table. Nudger was glad to see there was no garlic bread.

He sat down across from her at the table. "Did you see the girls this weekend?" The girls were Nora and Joan, her young daughters by her marriage to despicable Ralph Ferris.

Claudia nodded, striking viciously at the spaghetti with her fork. The Ralph effect. He wasn't surprised when she said, "I saw Ralph, too."

"How is he?"

"The same. A deceiving bastard."

Nudger was glad to hear her speak so about Ralph. She used to speak derogatorily about him only infrequently. She'd thought everything that had gone wrong with their marriage, with their children, had been her fault. Ralph had helped her to think that, helped her down into hell. Which was why Ralph was indeed a deceiving bastard.

Nudger sipped wine, smiled. Ralph was also a fool. Claudia was a woman you could talk to, but one who didn't press for answers or explanations. And Nudger seldom delved into her life where she'd made it plain she didn't want him. Such mutual respect and trust was rare in a relationship where there was good sex.

"What do you think of Curtis Colt?" Nudger said.

Claudia swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti, washed it down with Gallo wine. "The guy who shot that old couple in a supermarket holdup?"

"Liquor store," Nudger corrected. "My job is to prove he's innocent."

"I thought his legal counsel had tried taking care of all that in court, and Colt was found guilty and sentenced to death."

"That's the way it is, I'm afraid. His fiancee hired me to talk to the witnesses who testified against him, uncover enough doubt to stave off his execution in the electric chair."

"Which execution is?…"

"Saturday."

"Sounds as if you're tilting at a windmill. The kind that generates electricity."

"Cruel analogy, teacher."

She smiled at him as she buttered a roll. "Were you looking for encouragement?"

"Nope. Objectivity."

"That's what you got," she said. "Sorry."

When they were finished eating, he carried the dishes into the kitchen while she loaded the dishwasher. Claudia was very efficient in the kitchen. He noticed the gutted plastic cooking bags in the trash.

"I've got to talk to more of the eyewitnesses when they get home from work," he said.

"Uh-hm," she said.

"That means I'll be busy tonight."

"Ah," she said, pretending to have just gotten his drift.

She turned the dishwasher on fast load and walked with him into the bedroom. The air conditioner was already humming away in there; she must have switched it on earlier, while she was preparing supper. The wiliness of women. The malleability of afternoons.

The bed was unmade, and the closet door was hanging half open. Nudger kept a change of clothes at Claudia's, and he saw his two ties-one blue-striped, one brown-hanging on the hook in side the door. Only there were three ties on the hook; his two had been joined by a solid-red tie. He remembered the cigarette butt in the living room ashtray.

"Whose tie?" he asked casually. "A present for me?"

"Tie?" Claudia finished unbuttoning her dress and stepped out of it. "Oh, that belongs to Biff. He forgot it and I stuck it there." "Biff?"

"Biff Archway. He teaches physical education out at Stowe School. He was here last night."

"And took off his tie? What else did he take off?" Nudger realized he was only half joking; there was an edge in his voice that surprised him.

Claudia paused in unhooking her bra, bent sharply forward at the waist, and stared at him with her elbows back and out, as if she were an elegant bird that had just touched down in the bedroom. "Nudger…" There was a dark warning in her eyes.

He got undressed silently, slowly, waiting for the bedroom to cool. The window unit seemed to be doing an exceptionally efficient job.

Well, maybe Claudia was right to caution him. He admitted to himself that he'd demonstrated unreasonable jealousy over practically nothing. Made a prime ass of himself, not for the first time. Okay, he'd messed up; the heat and the wine might have had something to do with it.

Still, that red tie, slung luridly over his own…

When he got into bed beside Claudia, she was nude on top of the covers. Her body was pale and slim, her hip bones prominent. She had teacup-sized, pointed breasts, and lean but shapely dancer's legs, though she had never danced. Nudger felt the increasing tightness in his throat, the warm stirring at the core of him. He stroked her shoulder, said, "Biff Archway?"

Claudia sighed loudly. More of a hiss, really. "Biff was in the neighborhood and dropped by to see me."

"And took off his tie."

"Nudger, you and I aren't married. We're not engaged. I don't wear your class ring, like the girls wear boys' rings at Stowe School, with adhesive tape wrapped around them so they fit. That's very possessive."

"Possessive? Sure. I thought we had an understanding. A commitment."

She smiled at him, then propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over and kissed him. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his arm. Her long dark hair brushed the side of his neck, tickled. "We do have an understanding," she assured him.

"Did this Archway make advances?"

"Advances?" She fell back with her head on the pillow and stared straight up at the ceiling.

"You know. Advances…"

"Jesus, Nudger! Sometimes I think you live in the nineteenth century. No, he didn't make advances toward me; he came in here walking backward, and then he kind of sidled out."

"That's not a serious answer."

She turned her head and looked at him, a bit sadly, he thought. "Seriously, I'm not going to answer you. You shouldn't have asked."

Nudger started to get out of bed. When he sat up he felt her hands on his shoulder, fingers clawing into his flesh, drawing him back. He sat for a long moment on the edge of the mattress, feeling her grip loosen.

Maybe he was making too much of all this. Maybe this Archway guy really did just happen to be in the neighborhood and dropped by, and it was hot so he removed his tie and it found its way into Claudia's bedroom. On top of Nudger's ties. Maybe. Nudger wondered if he should check the drawer where he kept his underwear.

He settled back down on the bed, amused at his own unreasonableness. Green-eyed fool Nudger.

Claudia wrapped her arms around him as he pulled the length of her lean body against him. The naked heat of her felt good in the cool room. They kissed, and he ran his fingertips ever so lightly over her erect nipples. She tossed her head and snuggled even closer against him.

Things were all right again.

Better than all right.

"So I'm a jealous middle-aged guy," Nudger said, after about ten minutes. "We get that way when we see the dark at the end of the tunnel."

She laughed softly, and he kissed her forehead and shifted so his body was poised above hers. The bed creaked, then was quiet, as if waiting.

"What else does this Archway teach out at the school?" Nudger asked.

"Physio-social analysis and adaptability."

"What's that?"

"Sex education."

Nudger rolled heavily to the side, said, "Damn!"