John Lutz - Ride the lightning

Nudger was out of breath. Middle-aged guy rolling around on the carpet. Whew! Out of shape. Not Biff.

She shoved him off her and he fell to the side, laughing. They were both laughing, but Claudia was holding her ear, not laughing as hard as he was.

She sat cross-legged next to him. After a while, she bent down and kissed him gently on the forehead.

"Stay with me tonight," she said.

"Under our new agreement?"

She nodded, smiling down at him.

He rolled over onto his hands and knees, caught his breath, and managed to get to his feet. His side was aching but he didn't care.

"Can't stay," he said. "Not tonight."

She stood up gracefully and brushed the wrinkles out of her dress. She wanted to ask him where he was going, but she wouldn't.

"I'll try to come back later. That is, if you aren't going to be with Archway. I've still got my key; it's just been stabbing me in the hip."

"I told you, I don't plan to see Biff again. What about you? Do you plan on seeing Candy Ann Adams anymore?"

Nudger nodded, tucking in his shirt. "I'm going to see her tonight," he said. "Business."

Claudia didn't comment on that, but it was obvious that she disapproved. She pulled a bobby pin from the side of her hair and clamped it in her teeth, rearranged a few errant strands, then replaced it. All very quickly and smoothly. Elegantly. The deftness of women with bobby pins always amazed him.

He said, "Mostly business, anyway."

He went out in a hurry and closed the door behind him, leaving Claudia alone to get used to their new arrangement.

As he was walking toward the stairs, he thought he heard something break inside the apartment, but he wasn't sure.

The neighbors remembered him from last time. The ones who'd been mowing then were polishing now, the ones who'd been polishing were mowing. They stopped working for a moment to stare. The last time they'd seen him he was walking doubled over like a guy who'd just been shot everywhere that wasn't fatal. He wondered how much they knew about him and Claudia. And about Claudia and Biff Archway. He stared back and they resumed their tidy tasks with fresh diligence.

Nudger started the Volkswagen and pulled away from the curb to the racketing of a dozen power mowers, on his way to the Right Steer Steakhouse.

Halfway down the block, an ancient, gray-haired guy buffing a vintage station wagon grinned wolfishly and gave him a jaunty salute.

Nudger waited in the hot Volkswagen outside the Right Steer for almost an hour past Candy Ann's quitting time. She hadn't emerged from work, and the cab that usually materialized to drive her home never appeared. The sun was low now, burning in through the car's rear window and gaining intensity in a fishbowl effect, like a magnifying glass used to start a fire. Nudger was the tinder.

Rather than burst into flame, he wiped his sleeve over his forehead, got out of the car, and trudged across the parking lot to the restaurant's entrance. The lot's blacktop, still holding the maximum heat of the day, adhered to his shoes and made slight sucking noises with each step.

He pushed through the Wild West, louvered swinging doors, then shoved open the pneumatic double-pane glass door, and stood just inside the blissfully air-conditioned Right Steer. Two elderly women, one of them with a cane, edged around him, studied the large wooden menu pegged to the wall, then moved toward the serving counter, where a yellow-uniformed cowgirl waited to take their orders and shoo them along toward the cash register like doggies toward the corral.

Nudger gazed over a wood partition at the crowded restaurant and the waitresses bustling about delivering steaks, refilling glasses, or wiping down tables. He didn't see Candy Ann.

When a young blond waitress drifted near to refill coffee mugs, Nudger leaned over the partition.

"Jodi," he said, noticing her name branded onto her uniform blouse, "is Candy Ann Adams still here?"

Jodi stopped and smiled at him, as if she were about to tell him that she was his waitress and if he needed anything just let her know and she'd be glad to serve him. But she said, "Candy Ann? She left a couple of hours ago. Had to pick up her car before someplace closed. Leastways, that's what she said." He caught a tone of resentment in her voice, as if Candy Ann's absence might be the reason all the other waitresses had to hustle around at double speed.

Nudger thanked her and walked back outside to cross the sticky parking lot to the Volkswagen.

He drove to Placid Grove Trailer Park, watching the miles tick away on the odometer. Four and a half miles exactly.

He saw no sign of anyone's presence in Candy Ann's trailer, no car parked nearby; only a gray squirrel that scurried across the trailer roof, then did a precarious tightrope act on the telephone-service wire and made for a nearby tree.

Vehicles were parked so that there was no place Nudger could wait in his car inside the trailer park without possibly arousing suspicion, so he drove back to Watson Road. He found a spot in the shade of some tall sycamores, then pulled the Volkswagen onto the shoulder where he could see the park entrance. After switching off the engine, he reached over and opened the passenger-side door to reap a little more breeze. The car's interior was hot to the touch.

Then he did what he spent too much time doing in this odd occupation that had chosen him. What he did in hotel lobbies, parking lots, bars, empty apartments, phone booths, and places too varied to classify.

He waited. It was dark when she finally arrived. Nudger caught a glimpse of her gaunt profile as she turned her car in beneath the arched "Placid Grove" sign.

He started the Volkswagen and followed, keeping her car's bright red taillights in sight until they seemed to draw close together and disappeared as she made a right turn onto Tranquillity Lane in her final leg toward home.

He pulled to the side of the street and waited, giving her plenty of time to get inside, before he put the Volkswagen in gear and parked a short distance beyond her trailer.

As he walked up Tranquillity Lane in the dark, it seemed that the crickets were screaming with insane volume and intensity, the way they'd screamed the night he'd talked to Tom. Or maybe that was because the rest of the trailer park was so quiet; it was still too hot for anyone to be outside without good reason. Fireflies winked among the trailers, sending mysterious luminous signals, the only visible signs of life or motion.

Candy Ann's car, an old but glossy yellow Ford, was nosed in close to her trailer. On his way to the door, Nudger paused and scratched the hood with a key. Even in the dim light he could see that beneath the new yellow paint the car's color was dark green or black. He bent down and looked at the license plate. The number began with an L.

The crickets stopped screaming then, suddenly.

It took a few seconds for the silence to register with Nudger.

He was straightening up when one of the shadows in the corner of his vision suddenly gained substance and rushed at him.

Nudger started to yell in alarm, but he was hit hard in the side, momentarily knocking the breath from him and causing his injured rib to flare with pain.

He was on the ground. A large man loomed over him, leg drawn back to kick. Nudger rolled to his left, felt a shoe graze his hip. He scrambled to his feet, and a glancing blow scraped his neck and almost knocked him down.

The man rushed him again. This time Nudger sidestepped and drove a fist into the big man's stomach, heard a grunt more of irritation than of pain or breathlessness. Wow! The guy's midsection was hard enough to have hurt Nudger's fist. He was fit as a commando, wearing a dark long-sleeved shirt, with what looked like a knit ski mask pulled down to conceal his features.