almost instantly on his dark features. It startled Nudger; for a moment he thought Colt might begin to cry. But his composure was back as quickly as it had slipped and revealed the terror behind it. The emptiness. He needed somebody just then. Desperately.
He said softly, 'How is she?'
'All right,' Nudger told him. 'Concerned about you. That's why she hired me.'
'Lucky in love, unlucky in crime,' Colt said with a tilted grin. 'That's me.'
'Right both times,' Nudger said. He watched Colt through the glass, letting him think about Candy Ann.
Nudger's stomach began to bother him more now. It growled, letting him know that this conversation with Colt represented stress. He absently fed himself a couple of antacid tablets, chomped and swallowed.
After a minute he said, 'Curtis, I think you should give them Tom. It will mean prison for both of you. But this way it's death for you and freedom for him. Freedom until he gets collared for some other job. He smells like a loser. Think about it. Don't let some half-ass code of honor put you in the electric chair.'
'I don't know any Tom,' Colt said. 'And there ain't no honor among us thieves, and surely none among us murderers. Ask any of the guards here.'
'You didn't know any Candy Ann, either.'
Colt stood up. There was time left in the fifteen minutes they'd been granted for the interview, but he was about finished talking. 'I don't know any Tom,' he repeated.
And he probably really couldn't tell the police where to look for him, Nudger thought. Tom knew the score and the moves, and he had the fear in him. He'd find a deep hole and cover himself, make himself virtually impossible to find until after Saturday.
'Tell Candy Ann to forget about me,' Colt said in a voice as hard as his carved features. 'Tell her I'm already dead and to quit poking around in my ashes. I'm dead, and Saturday I'll sit down and then I'll lay down, and she'll know I'm dead then the way I know it now.'
He hung up the phone and didn't look at Nudger as he turned and walked to the door. He paused, standing loosely, his hands at his sides.
One of the guards unlocked the door, swung it open, and they escorted him out. The guards didn't look at Nudger, either. He was just another visitor from the world on the other side of the glass. Unimportant. Didn't really belong.
That was fine with Nudger. He got out of there.
XV
The drive back to St. Louis was during late morning and early afternoon, when the sun was higher and hotter. The Volkswagen didn't have air-conditioning, and Nudger drove with the windows open, his hands slippery with sweat on the steering wheel, the air pressure from the wind pounding like a drum in the back of the car.
He stopped once, for lunch, at a roadside diner, a place of sun-faded curtains, Formica, and dead flies on the window ledge by his booth. The waitress said she couldn't serve omelets after ten o'clock, so Nudger had a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. His stomach objected, not only to the spicy ham but to the entire distressing day, and five miles down the highway he was chain-chewing antacid tablets.
When he reached the city he drove directly to his apartment, then phoned Danny to see if anyone had been by his office. No one had. He then called Kalas Construction and was told that Randy Gantner was on vacation as of last Monday and wouldn't be back to work until next week. Nudger said he was Gantner's brother from out of town and he had to get in touch with Randy as soon as possible. The girl on the phone said she was instructed not to give out employee's addresses or phone numbers under any circumstances. Sorry, there were no exceptions. She didn't sound sorry, just disinterested.
Nudger replaced the receiver and looked up Gantner's address in the phone directory. He wasn't a detective for nothing.
A shower, a cold beer, and a half hour later Nudger was ringing Randy Gantner's doorbell.
Gantner lived in Bridgeton at the Fox and Hounds apartment complex, an adult singles development of low, tan-brick, modern units built in a U-shape around a swimming pool. Nudger figured Gantner was home. A blue Toyota pickup truck he remembered from the Interstate 70 construction site was parked in front of Gantner's apartment. There was an empty rack for a shotgun in the truck's back window, and several empty beer cans and a broken shovel lay in the rusted metal bed.
The Fox and Hounds was near Lambert International Airport, below the flight pattern. As Nudger stood waiting for Gantner to come to the door, a red-trimmed TWA jetliner roared over low enough for him to glimpse the passengers inside the row of windows. The blast of sound was so great that the water in the pool seemed to shimmer. The three bikini-clad tenants lounging near the diving board didn't look up.
'… want?' Gantner was saying.
The door had opened and Nudger hadn't heard it. He hadn't seen it because his gaze had snagged on a tall blonde sunbathing on her stomach with her bikini strap unfastened so she wouldn't have a pale stripe across her back.
'I need to talk with you again about Curtis Colt,' Nudger said.
Gantner had recently showered, or maybe come in from the pool. His reddish hair was glistening wet and combed straight back. He was wearing white slacks, beaded leather Mexican sandals, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt that laced rather than buttoned up the front. It was laced only halfway, to reveal the hair on his chest and a gold chain from which dangled what appeared to be a large gleaming tooth from some sort of animal. The neckwear went well with the gold stud in his left earlobe. He thought he was trendy, didn't know he looked like a pirate lost in time.
He seemed annoyed, but he shrugged and then stepped back to admit Nudger.
The apartment was small and garishly furnished. Above a vinyl modern sofa hung a mass-produced oil painting of an old three-masted sailing ship forging ahead in the throes of a furious storm on a luminous sea. Paint- by-numbers on a heroic scale. A poster of a cat about to flush itself down a toilet bowl hung on the opposite wall, above the legend 'You think your day was rough?' Below the poster was a bookcase that held an expensive set of stereo components. MTV was playing on the big color TV, Mick Jagger strutting his stuff while his voice blasted from the two large speakers on either side of the bookcase. Nudger hadn't heard the music outside because of the aircraft noise.
Gantner ambled over and switched off the TV, a middle- aged adolescent in his Fox and Hounds lair. What the hell, Jagger was a few years older than he was.
'Have you thought any more about the liquor-store shooting?' Nudger asked in the sudden, silent absence of Jagger and the Stones.
'Nothing to think about,' Gantner said, standing with his hands in the pockets of his white slacks, 'except that in just a few days justice is gonna be done.'
'It won't be justice if Colt's innocent.'
'There isn't any chance of that, Nudger. I sat in that courtroom. I know.'
There was a splashing sound from outside; someone had used the diving board. Nudger looked out the wide picture window and saw that the blond sunbather and her companions hadn't moved.
'Somethin', ain't it?' Gantner said, grinning. He absently scratched his bare chest above the animal tooth.
'Something,' Nudger agreed.
'Pussy heaven here. This place cost plenty in rent, but it's worth it. Score, score, score.'
'Only once a month,' Nudger said.
Gantner scowled like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. 'What's only once a month?'
'The rent,' Nudger said quickly. 'I meant the rent.'
'The blonde's an airline stewardess,' Gantner said. 'Place is full of 'em. They're damn near automatic lays.'
The Flight Attendants' Union would have disagreed with Gantner, but Nudger decided to let him fantasize. He imagined Candy Ann walking in here to talk to Gantner, the fly seeking the spider. The spider probably couldn't
