Ride the Lightning (11 page)

As he left the office, he heard Welborne in his businesslike pseudo-British accent crisply instructing the receptionist to check the files for this brief or that. Legalese, flowing fast and furious.

Nudger figured the receptionist was in for it today.

XII
I

udger had forgotten about the broken lock on his office door. As soon as he entered he knew he wasn’t alone; there’s something about an occupied room, a slight rise in temperature maybe, or sounds that the con
scious mind is unaware of but that register in the subconscious. But as soon as he looked to his left, all of those primal sensors were unnecessary.

A chubby little man wearing pleated slacks and a blue polo shirt was leaning with one arm on the file cabinet. Next to him stood the kind of abnormally skinny but shapely older woman usually glimpsed only in diet-food commercials. She had close-cropped, raggedy blond hair and was wearing an oversized sweatshirt with “Nike” lettered on it, pink shorts, jogging shoes, and was clutching a small, crinkly Gucci purse. She smelled of perspiration and expensive perfume.
Nouveau
jock.

“The guy in the doughnut shop told us it was all right to wait here,” the man said. “I’m Charles Siberling. This is my friend Kelly Cole.” He paused to kiss her on the cheek, as if
that were his way of introducing her to people. “We were on our way somewhere, but I thought I’d drop by to see you first.”

Nudger introduced himself, shook hands with both par
ties, and sat down behind his desk. The swivel chair squealed its hello. Nudger sighed too loudly, as if it felt good to be off his feet. Blond Kelly studied him, then carefully surveyed his humble environs. She returned her attention to Nudger.

“You’ve hurt your face,” she said. Somehow she made it sound like an insult, as if all ugliness were permanent, deserved, and excluded one from the better things in life.

Siberling ignored Nudger’s face. “Doreen told me you were trying to get in touch.”

“Doreen?” Nudger asked.

“The receptionist at Elbert and Stein. She’s an airhead; don’t judge the firm by Doreen.” He moved over and stood in the mottled stream of brightness from the dirt-streaked window.

Nudger was surprised by how young he looked. His face was sixteen, his eyes about fifty. Average it out and you’d probably have his true age. Blond Kelly appeared to be a well-kept half a century and displayed a certain brand of West End or Ladue snobbery in every line and gesture. The veininess and stretch marks beneath the tan of her legs were like the creases in old folding money. These two people didn’t seem to belong with each other; it was as if a computer dating service had decided to play a joke.

“I understand you’re interested in the Curtis Colt case,” Siberling said. Something flared in the wise eyes, eager points of light, like sharp and brilliant objects glimmering in murky depths. Themselves like the eyes of something dangerous.

“That’s right. I’ve been talking to the witnesses, doing some deeper digging.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been hired to try to establish enough doubt of Colt’s guilt to have the execution stayed.”

Siberling laughed and shook his head. He had pudgy features and a halo of sandy, curly hair; no one looked less like a cutthroat lawyer. “That’s crazy. Colt’s exhausted virtually all appeals. Nothing can save him.”

“Would the state execute him even if irrefutable proof were put forth that he was innocent?”

Siberling thought about that and laughed again, this time with a bit more humor. “No. Politically it would be impossible, even though legally the execution should be carried out as scheduled. And the state doesn’t want to kill an innocent man, Nudger. Especially one who might not stay in his grave.”

Nudger leaned back in his squealing chair. The motion brought a jolt of pain around his damaged rib. The pain angled all the way up to his armpit. He sat forward slowly. “Eeeeasy,” the chair said, like a concerned old pal. Nudger said, “It’s possible Curtis Colt was in another part of town when the shooting occurred.”

Kelly looked bored, then whispered to Siberling, loud enough for Nudger to hear. “We’d better get going if we’re going to get a court.”

“Are you a lawyer, too?” Nudger asked her.

She wasn’t one for puns. “I mean
tennis
court,” she said seriously, almost angrily.

“You have to
prove
the possible in a court of law,” Siberling said. “I already busted my gut trying to do that for Curtis Colt.”

Nudger wondered what a sharp and fiery young guy like Siberling was doing with Kelly. “Love,” he muttered.

“That’s a zero score in tennis,” Kelly observed. Maybe she
was
a punster.

“I can’t prove it,” Nudger told Siberling.

Kelly looked confused. “I’m going downstairs to wait,” she said. “The doughnut shop’s air-conditioned, anyway.”

“Oh, sorry,” Nudger said, and reached back and switched on the window unit behind the desk.

But even as it began its comforting hum, Kelly was heading for the door and a lower, cooler clime.

“Try a Dunker Delite,” Nudger advised her.

Siberling grinned. “She’s an odd piece. Married to a judge. I put up with her because she gives good head.”

“Reason enough, I guess,” Nudger said, trying to figure out Siberling, remembering what Hammersmith had said about the young lawyer being such an aggravation, about how he could sense and exploit weakness.

“You’re thinking I’m an asshole, Nudger, and maybe you’re right. In fact, you are right; I’m nasty. Maybe because of that I’m also a hell of a lawyer; I fight for my clients. And not just the clients who can pay. I fought hard for Curtis Colt, but there was nothing to use on a jury. The prosecution held every card, and Colt himself wouldn’t cooperate. He sat there dummied up as if he hadn’t a chance of getting convicted. The proceedings might have been happening on another planet, for all he seemed to care.”

“Why would he be like that?”

Siberling shrugged. “It’s not unusual. Maybe he was in mild shock; getting arrested and tried for murder is traumatic. I never really got close enough to him to find out what made him so goddamned stoic.” Pacing slowly, the young lawyer shook his head. “Yet there was something about him. Maybe it was his stoicism I came to admire. The bastard had a kind of yokel nobility about him, as if he were above everything going on around him in court, people deciding minor matters such as whether he was going to die. You can’t help but kind of admire somebody who spits in the law’s eye with calm and quiet style.”

“I thought lawyers had respect for the law.”

“Hah! I respect people, Nudger. And after that I respect the coin of the realm.”

“You’ve got them in the right order,” Nudger said.

Siberling grinned. “Yeah, but I get them mixed up sometimes.”

The dull pain in Nudger’s side was causing his stomach to act up. He slid open the flat middle desk drawer and got out a roll of antacid tablets, popped two of the white disks into his mouth, and chewed.

“Bad stomach?” Siberling asked.

Nudger nodded. “Tension makes it turn mean.” He put the tablets away and closed the drawer. “I want to talk with Curtis Colt,” he said, “as soon as possible.”

Siberling scratched his baby-fat, dimpled chin. “I’m not sure—”

“That you can get me in to see him?” Nudger interrupted. “Or that you will?”

“Ease up,” Siberling said. “Chew another one of those white tablets. I’m Colt’s lawyer. I can see him anytime he agrees to see me. And I can send you as my representative.”

“And will you?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. But I don’t want you to give Colt false hope. He’s probably adjusted to the idea of the execution by now; he might cling to whatever you tell him and be worse off after your visit. He’s been nailed tight for this one, Nudger; he’s going to die and you shouldn’t tell

him otherwise.”

“I won’t.”

“Who hired you?” Siberling asked.

“Colt’s fiancée.”

He rolled his eyes. “And she told you Colt was in bed balling her the night of the murder?”

“No, but she had someone who was with Colt at the time of the killing talk to me.”

“Who?”

“Colt’s accomplice. They were miles away, in North County casing a service station, when the liquor-store holdup occurred.”

“So you’ve got the word of a fiancée, and the word of a felon. You call that promising? And where the fuck were these people during the trial? I could have used them—not that it would have helped much.”

“The accomplice is still at large,” Nudger said. “I don’t know where. He would have had to incriminate himself if he’d testified, risked the chair along with Curtis. And Curtis wouldn’t let the fiancée testify, didn’t want the police to know about her.”

Siberling made a spreading, helpless gesture with his manicured hands. A glittering gold pinky ring winked out the message that he didn’t come cheap; this Legal Aid service was strictly temporary and Colt had been defended by one of the best. “Colt might have had the right idea; the police would have bugged the shit out of her if they’d known about her. And I told you Colt was the noble type, just the sort to clam up to protect his lady love.” Siberling did some more pacing, theatrically, as if a jury might be watching. “I’ll try to get you an interview with Curtis,” he said.

Nudger thanked him, and Siberling started toward the door and Kelly and his tennis match. Probably indoor tennis, considering the heat.

“I got the impression you were a difficult man to see,” Nudger said. “What made you take the time to come here?”

The nasty little man turned at the door and smiled an absolutely angelic smile. “You want to hear me say it, don’t you?”

“I need to hear somebody other than my client and a career holdup man say it,” Nudger told him.

“Okay,” Siberling said, “I actually think Colt is innocent. Don’t ask me for sound reasons; if I had any, I’d have brought them up in court. A good lawyer senses almost as much as he can prove, Nudger. When it comes to push and shove, life and death, instinct is king over reason. And all my instincts tell me Colt shot nobody.”

Nudger didn’t say anything.

“Better get your locks fixed,” Siberling cautioned as he went out the door.

For a long time Nudger sat silently at his desk. He wasn’t sure if he really liked what Siberling had just said about the Colt trial. It even crossed his mind that Siberling might in some way be using him, might have known that simply coming here would shift a critical balance.

The fiancée thought Colt was innocent and the state was going to give the wrong man the ride on the lightning. The petty holdup man thought the same thing. The lawyer was of the same mind.

Now Nudger agreed with them.

He wondered how they would all feel Saturday. And if he should expect another violent visit from the big man who could dish it out so well he probably never had to take it. Nudger thought about how it would feel to have all of his ribs cracked. How it would be when it was happening, and then later.

Pain wasn’t for him. He picked up the phone and punched out the number of the locksmith down the street.

XI
V

iberling 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, dis
tributed 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.