Only Nudger couldn't quite make out what she was doing, or with whom.
In the morning, nothing was any clearer. Nudger awoke blinded by slanted sunlight, his mouth and his mind full of fuzz. Danny wouldn't arrive to open the doughnut shop until eight o'clock. It was seven-thirty now, and a prudent time for Nudger to leave the office. Gantner and his massive friend might assume he kept early hours.
He called the Third District. Hammersmith was still on the day shift, but he wasn't due in this morning until about nine. The privileges of rank.
Driving Danny's Plymouth, Nudger finally found Hammersmith enjoying those privileges and a huge breakfast at the Webster Grill near his home. Hammersmith seemed surprised to see Nudger walk in the door and motioned for him to sit in the opposite seat of his booth.
'Had breakfast, Nudge?'
'Not yet.' Nudger surveyed Hammersmith's plate. Four eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, jellied toast. There were enough calories there to heat a house. Hammersmith hadn't achieved his bulk without trying. Nudger wondered if it was the wear and tear of the job. Some cops drank. Some beat their wives or kicked their dogs. Hammersmith ate.
'Great fare here,' Hammersmith said, motioning with his fork and assuming the air of a gourmet.
A young waitress with pinned-back blond hair came over to the booth and Nudger ordered coffee with cream. 'Put it on my check,' Hammersmith told her.
Nudger wondered if he'd have said that if the order had been for more than coffee. Hammersmith was notorious for dodging restaurant checks. Dining out was a game for him. Now he probably figured Nudger owed him lunch.
Hammersmith forked potatoes into his mouth and shook his head, chewed, swallowed. 'Just coffee, huh? No wonder your stomach rumbles like a capped volcano.' He downed half of his own coffee. His sharp blue eyes took in the traffic outside on Big Bend, the Plymouth parked at a meter across the street. 'How come you're driving Danny's car? Yours in the shop again?'
'I've been in the shop,' Nudger said. 'A mountain with arms and legs was waiting for me in my office Monday and gave me a beating.'
Hammersmith nodded toward Nudger. 'That how you got the unflattering marks on your face?'
'It is. But the guy was a pro; he did most of his work on my body. Very efficient work.'
Hammersmith paused in lifting a piece of toast. Some of the strawberry jelly slipped off and dropped onto his plate near the eggs. 'I noticed you were walking kinda stiff. Much damage?'
'A cracked rib maybe. And bruises inside and out.'
'Know who the guy was?'
'No.'
Hammersmith shook his head. 'Even if you did, unless you had proof, witnesses, there wouldn't be much we could do. Have a word with the guy, maybe, throw a scare into him.'
'He'd probably scare whoever you sent to talk to him,' Nudger said, thinking that eyewitnesses or the lack of them were causing him a lot of trouble lately. 'The real reason I wanted to tell you about this was because of who might have aimed him at me.'
Nudger told Hammersmith about the big man trying to warn him off a case, about noticing Randy Gantner's truck near Edna Fine's apartment, about Danny seeing the oversized assailant with Gantner yesterday.
Hammersmith didn't like hearing any of it. He ate slowly while Nudger talked, as if he were chewing something that might contain a hidden sharp bone.
'It has to be the Curtis Colt case the strong-arm guy was warning me about,' Nudger said.
'So it seems, Nudge.'
Nudger reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Danny had given him. He smoothed it out and handed it across the table to Hammersmith. 'Danny got the truck's license number when it was parked across the street from my office. I doubt if it will mean much, but it's worth running an owner check on it.'
Hammersmith folded the scrap of paper carefully and slid it into his pocket. His usually smooth, evenly florid complexion was mottled, and there were white lines at the corners of his thin lips. 'You want protection, Nudge?'
'Sure. Whatever can be spared.' He knew that couldn't be much, and his office and apartment weren't actually within city limits.
'I'll call the Maplewood police; they'll have their cars keep an eye on your building, watch for an old pickup truck with this plate number. And a St. Louis Second District car can swing by there now and then; you're only a few blocks outside the Second. I'll pass the word.'
The waitress brought Nudger's coffee, set it on the table, then carefully laid the check in a damp spot near Hammersmith.
'Who's trying to scare me away and why?' Nudger asked. 'What are they worried about?'
Hammersmith put down his fork. 'The Colt case is closed, Nudge. Finished business.' But there wasn't much certainty in his voice. The acid of doubt had begun its work.
'I wish for you that were true,' Nudger said.
'You talked to Colt in Jeff City,' Hammersmith said. 'What did you get out of him?'
'He said he was guilty. He seemed sincere.'
'The little bastard,' Hammersmith said. Nudger didn't know quite what he meant by that, didn't ask.
'Siberling thinks Colt's innocent,' Nudger said.
'What would you expect? Siberling is his lawyer.'
'And a game one. He's not just talking; he still believes in his client. Really believes.'
Hammersmith sipped his coffee and stared out the window at heavy traffic on Big Bend. A tractor-trailer had turned the corner at the post office at a bad angle and was causing a backup at the Stop sign. A bald man in a shiny red Corvette convertible raced his engine. A driver up the block leaned on his horn. Two skinny teenage girls who'd been crossing the street giggled and pretended to direct traffic. Nothing moved.
Hammersmith said, 'Christ!' about the traffic or about Curtis Colt.
'You're not eating,' Nudger said.
Hammersmith didn't look at him. 'I'm not hungry anymore.'
Nudger reached over and got a strip of bacon from Hammersmith's plate, ate it, then lifted the check from the puddle of water.
'My treat,' he said. He stood up.
Hammersmith nodded, still staring out at the sunbaked street beyond the comfortable dimness of the restaurant, wrestling with a doubt that came too late.
Nudger patted him on the shoulder and left.
Outside, reason had prevailed. Or maybe it had been the threat of imminent violence from harried drivers late for work. The truck that had caused all the traffic problems was half a block away.
Things were moving again. Too fast.
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
