John Lutz - Ride the lightning

Hot night for that, Nudger thought inanely, as the man grabbed the front of his shirt. Buttons shot like popped corn into the shadows.

Nudger tried to shove his assailant away, but the man barked a short half-grunt, half-scream and hacked down with the edge of his hand at Nudger's neck. The blow missed and glanced off his shoulder, struck the yellow hood of the car. Had to leave dents in both places.

Then the big man was up tight against him, using his weight, bending Nudger backward over the hood. He grabbed Nudger's hair and began beating his head on the smooth metal. More dents. It was making a hell of a racket, but probably not enough to arouse the neighbors and bring help. Or maybe it only seemed loud to Nudger. Pain exploded between his ears with each impact.

When the back of Nudger's head bounced particularly hard off the car, something must have jarred loose beneath the hood. The horn abruptly blared and kept howling.

The man straightened, glaring down like a specter through the ski mask's eyeholes, and Nudger recognized him.

He took a final swipe, breezing a fist past Nudger's face, then wheeled and ran into the darkness. He moved fast for his size.

Nudger heard his footsteps on the gravel road long after he lost sight of him.

Nudger stood up straight and gingerly traced the back of his head with his fingertips, then studied the fingers in the moonlight. There was no blood. Thank God the Ford didn't have a hood ornament.

He walked around to the driver's-side door and pulled the hood latch. Then he raised the hood, located the horn wires, and yanked them loose.

The blaring horn suddenly was silent.

"… Fucking quiet!" a man's voice yelled from the trailer across the street.

"It's okay now!" Nudger called back. "All fixed!" His head felt as if it were still bouncing off the hood. Only the cardboardlike thinness and pliability of the metal had saved him from serious injury. Thank you, Detroit.

He straightened his clothes, noticing that his pants were ripped at the knee. He knew he'd been lucky. The blaring horn had alerted the neighbors and saved him; his powerful attacker hadn't had time to inflict much damage.

"Who's out there?" a wavering voice called. "What's going on?"

Nudger turned and saw Candy Ann poised in the doorway of her trailer, her hand still on the knob so she could duck back inside and lock out the bogeyman if necessary.

"Me, Nudger," Nudger said, out of breath. "I'm what's going on." He waited for the ground to stop tilting, then moved into the light. A dull pain caromed around inside his skull.

"Then come on in," she said.

Candy Ann stood watching him walk toward the door. When their eyes locked, she tried a smile, but she couldn't quite manage her facial muscles, as if they'd become rigid and uncoordinated. In the yellow glare of reflected light streaming from the trailer, she appeared much older. The little-girl country look had deserted her; now she was an emaciated, grief-eroded woman, a country Barbie Doll whose features some evil child had lined with dark crayon. The shaded crescents beneath her eyes deprived them of their innocence. She was holding a glass that had once been a jelly jar. In it were two fingers of a clear liquid. Behind her on the table was a crumpled brown paper bag and a bottle of gin. The bottle was almost full, but it was obvious to Nudger when he caught a whiff of her breath that Candy Ann had been drinking before she arrived home.

"This is a surprise and a pleasure," she managed to say, still not smiling, trying a mannered country charm that fell far from the mark. "What in the world happened out there?"

"Someone was hanging around your car," Nudger said. "Maybe a hubcap thief. I scared him away."

She stood peering down at him from the top of the three steps into the trailer, still with her hand on the doorknob. Her thin body shifted uneasily, as if a strong wind were snatching at it.

He might be the bogeyman after all.

"I figured it out," Nudger told her.

Now she did smile, but it was fleeting, a sickly greenish shadow crossing her taut features. "You're a man of powerful persistence, Mr. Nudger. You surely don't know when to turn loose."

She stepped back and he followed her into the trailer. It was warm in there; something was wrong with the air conditioner.

"Hot as hell, ain't it," Candy Ann commented. Nudger thought that was apropos.

He found himself sitting across from her at the tiny Formica table, just as he and Tom had sat facing each other eleven days ago. She offered him a drink. He declined. She downed the contents of the jelly-jar glass and clumsily poured herself more gin, spilling some of it on the table. It was cheap gin but hundred proof, possibly strong enough to eat through the Formica.

"Now, what's this you've got figured out, Mr. Nudger?" There was something fearful and plaintive in the way she asked. She didn't want to, but she had to hear him say it. Had to share it.

"It's over four miles to the Right Steer Steakhouse," Nudger told her. "The waitresses there make little more than minimum wage, and there's no tipping, so cab fare to and from work has to take a big bite out of your salary, almost make a job there not worthwhile. But then you seem to go everywhere by cab. When I saw you leave Curtis' funeral in one, I realized that."

"Well, sure. My car's been in the shop."

"Your neighbors say it's been gone for months."

"I loaned it to a friend. She drove it a while, then she run it off the road into some trees and smashed it all up. I didn't have no collison insurance, so it took me some time to get it fixed. It was up on blocks where I had it towed. That's where it's been all this time, in the shop."

"I figured it might be," Nudger said, "after I found the money and wig."

She bowed her head slightly and took a fortifying sip of gin. "Money? Wig?"

"In the cardboard box above the ceiling panel in your bathroom."

"You been snooping, Mr. Nudger." There was more resignation than outrage in her voice.

"You're sort of skinny, but not a short girl," Nudger went on. "With a dark curly wig and a fake mustache, dressed similarly and sitting in a car, you'd resemble Curtis Colt enough to fool a dozen eyewitnesses who just caught a glimpse of you. It was a smart precaution for the two of you to take."

Candy Ann looked astounded. "Are you saying I was driving the getaway car at that liquor-store holdup?"

"Maybe. Then maybe you hired someone to play Tom and convince me he was Colt's accomplice and that they were far away from the murder scene when the trigger was pulled. I talked to some of your neighbors; they told me your car was a dark green Ford sedan. You were keeping the car hidden since the police had a partial description of it, then you had it painted yellow so you could begin driving it again."

Candy Ann ran the tip of her tongue along the edges of her protruding teeth. She thought for a moment before speaking.

"You're partway right. It's true that Curtis and Tom used my car for their holdups. That wig, it belongs to Tom."

"I doubt if Tom ever met Curtis. He's somebody you paid in stolen money or drugs to sit where you're sitting now and lie to me. And remember, he said he burned the wig after Curtis was arrested."

"If I was driving that getaway car, Mr. Nudger, and knew for sure Curtis was guilty, why would I have hired a private investigator to try to find a hole in the eyewitnesses' stories?"

"That bothered me for a while," Nudger said, "until I realized you weren't interested in clearing Curtis. What you were really worried about was Curtis Colt talking in prison. You didn't want those witnesses' stories changed, you wanted them substantiated-set in concrete so the witnesses wouldn't change their statements even if Colt talked. And you wanted the police to learn about not-his-right name Tom, to avert possible suspicion from you."