Lester didn't like the idea of either of his brothers finding female companionship.
'Where can I locate Welborne?'
'He's a big-shot lawyer in Clayton someplace. I ain't even got his phone number; he won't give it to me.' Anger shadowed Lester's beefy features. 'Welborne coulda tried to help Curtis, but he didn't. That Siberling guy had to take the case.'
'Were you at Curtis' trial?' Nudger asked.
'Sure I was. Every day. Even missed work. It was them witnesses did Curtis in.'
'Do you think they were telling the truth?'
Lester frowned. 'A person can think they're telling the truth and not be.'
Lester was right about that, Nudger thought. It was what caused a lot of life's problems. 'I'll find Welborne and talk to him,' he said.
'If he'll talk to you,' Lester repeated, and drifted out the door.
Nudger didn't hear him light-foot it down the stairs, but the street door opened and clattered shut again. A draft stirred around Nudger's ankles.
There was no Welborne Colt in the phone directory. Sliding the Rolodex over to him, Nudger looked up Harold Benedict's home number and used a pencil to peck it out on the phone. Benedict's office was in Clayton, as were many law offices. If Welborne Colt practiced law from a Clayton office, Benedict might know him. Lawyers were thick as… well, thieves.
Benedict was home, and he had heard of Welborne Colt. He promised to get an address and phone number for Nudger by morning.
Nudger thanked him and replaced the receiver.
He felt his forehead; it was damp. The office seemed to be getting warmer, smaller. His stomach stirred and growled, reminding him that he'd had an early supper. He was more weak than hungry, but he knew he should get some food in the old machine. His night, pulsing with dark promise, might just be beginning.
He locked the office behind him, then left to treat himself to two White Castle hamburgers and a glass of milk before show-and-tell with Candy Ann Adams.
It was eleven-thirty by the time he topped the rise of the acceleration lane and drove fast with the windows open out the interstate toward Placid Grove Trailer Park. Static and soft blues were floating from the radio and whirling on the wind and he could still taste the hamburgers. Damned onions. Nudger belched. In the rearview mirror the lighted city sank like a luminous dream, drawing down with it the receding red taillights of cars that passed him going the opposite direction. The taillights looked like streamers of bright tracer bullets gracefully surrendering to gravity.
He glanced at his watch. He'd be early, but that was okay. There was something about an appointment at midnight that prompted punctuality.
IX
At five minutes to midnight Nudger was sitting at the tiny table in Candy Ann's kitchenette. Across from him sat a thin, nervous man who might have been in his twenties, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt despite the heat, and wearing sunglasses with silver mirror lenses. Nudger didn't figure the glasses were to protect the man's eyes from the sickly glare of the fluorescent light fixture set in the trailer's ceiling.
Candy Ann introduced the man as 'Tom, but that ain't his real name,' and said he was Curtis Colt's accomplice and the driver of the getaway car on the night of the murder. He had to wait until midnight to come so he'd be sure he wouldn't be seen.
It was all enough to make Nudger perk up his ears. He sat quietly at the little table, looking into the mirrored glasses. He was aware of a thousand crickets screaming like tortured souls outside, Candy Ann's deep and regular breathing inside. Then she moved back away from where she was standing close by his right shoulder, and he could hear his own breathing as he waited to listen to what Tom had to say.
It was no surprise. 'Me and Curtis was nowhere near the liquor store when them folks got shot!' Tom said vehemently, so forcefully that fine spittle flew across the table and coolly flecked Nudger's forearm.
Obviously the sunglasses were so Nudger couldn't effectively identify Tom if it came to a showdown in court. Tom had lank, dark brown hair that fell to below his shoulders, and when he moved his arm Nudger caught sight of something blue and red, like a faded nasty wound, on his briefly exposed wrist. But it wasn't a wound; it was a tattoo. Which explained the long-sleeved shirt worn in the sultry throes of summer.
'You can understand why Tom couldn't come forth and testify for Curtis in court,' Candy Ann said.
Nudger said he could understand that. Tom would have had to incriminate himself. No fool, Tom.
'We was up on Parker Road, way on the other side of town,' Tom said, 'casing another service station, when that liquor-store killing went down. Heck, we never held up nothing but service stations. They was our specialty.'
Which was true, Nudger had to admit. Colt had done a prison stretch for armed robbery after sticking up service stations. And all the other robberies he'd been tied to this time around were of service stations. The liquor store was definitely a departure in his MO, one not noted as such in court during Curtis Colt's rush to judgment.
'I'm looking at your hair,' Nudger said.
'Huh? What about my hair?' Tom leaned his thin body back away from the table.
'It's in your favor. Your hair didn't grow that long in the time since the liquor-store killing. The witnesses described the getaway-car driver as having shorter, curlier hair, like Colt's, and a mustache.'
'Tell you the truth,' Tom said miserably, 'me and Curtis was kinda the same type. So to confuse any witnesses, in case we got caught, I'd tuck up my long hair and wear a wig that looked like Curtis' hair. Lots of people seen us like that. I burned the wig soon as Curtis got arrested. My mustache was real, like Curtis'. I shaved it off a month ago. We did look alike at a glance; sorta like brothers. So my long hair ain't in my favor at all.'
Nudger bought that explanation; it wasn't uncommon for a team of holdup men to play tricks to confuse witnesses and the police. Too many lawyers had gotten into the game. The robbers, like the cops, were taking the advice of their attorneys and thinking about a potential trial even before the crime was committed. Nudger wondered if, in this pragmatic society, crime would someday become respectable because of all the jobs it created.
Nudger looked at Tom. 'Is there any way you can prove you were across town at the time of the murder?' he asked, staring at the two miniature Nudgers gazing back at him from the mirror lenses.
'There's just my word,' Tom said, rather haughtily.
Nudger didn't bother telling him what that was worth when it came to checking the momentum of the wheels of justice; why antagonize him?
'I just want you to believe Curtis is innocent,' Tom said with desperation. 'Because he is! And so am I!'
And Nudger understood why Tom was here, taking the risk. If Colt was guilty of murder, Tom was guilty of being an accessory to the crime. Once Curtis Colt had ridden the lightning, Tom would have looming over him the possibility of an almost certain life sentence, and perhaps even his own ride, if he was ever caught. It wasn't necessary actually to squeeze the trigger to be convicted of murder.
'I need for you to try extra hard to prove Curtis is innocent,' Tom said. 'I'm asking you please not to give up on this case.' His thin lips quivered, as if current were already singing through them. He was near tears; he'd thought he was a big boy, but now he was scared. He might be only in his early twenties behind those disguising lenses, really just a frightened kid trapped by time and circumstance. Nudger felt sorry for him; he should have felt sorrier for the old man and woman who'd been shot, but Tom was here, in front of him and looking into the black abyss. Every crime created its multitude of victims.
'Are you giving Candy Ann the money to pay me?' Nudger asked.
'Some of it, yeah.' Tom sniffed and wiped his bony wrist across his nose, touched a finger up inside the mirror lenses as if scratching an itch. 'From what Curtis and me stole. And I gave Curtis' share to Candy Ann, too. Me and her are fifty-fifty on this.'
Dirty money, Nudger thought. Dirty job. Probably a hopeless job. Still, if Curtis Colt happened to be innocent,
