"Why would he be like that?"
Siberling shrugged. "It's not unusual. Maybe he was in mild shock; getting arrested and tried for murder is traumatic. I never really got close enough to him to find out what made him so goddamned stoic." Pacing slowly, the young lawyer shook his head. "Yet there was something about him. Maybe it was his stoicism I came to admire. The bastard had a kind of yokel nobility about him, as if he were above everything going on around him in court, people deciding minor matters such as whether he was going to die. You can't help but kind of admire somebody who spits in the law's eye with calm and quiet style."
"I thought lawyers had respect for the law."
"Hah! I respect people, Nudger. And after that I respect the coin of the realm."
"You've got them in the right order," Nudger said.
Siberling grinned. "Yeah, but I get them mixed up sometimes."
The dull pain in Nudger's side was causing his stomach to act up. He slid open the flat middle desk drawer and got out a roll of antacid tablets, popped two of the white disks into his mouth, and chewed.
"Bad stomach?" Siberling asked.
Nudger nodded. "Tension makes it turn mean." He put the tablets away and closed the drawer. "I want to talk with Curtis Colt," he said, "as soon as possible."
Siberling scratched his baby-fat, dimpled chin. "I'm not sure-"
"That you can get me in to see him?" Nudger interrupted. "Or that you will?"
"Ease up," Siberling said. "Chew another one of those white tablets. I'm Colt's lawyer. I can see him anytime he agrees to see me. And I can send you as my representative."
"And will you?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't. But I don't want you to give Colt false hope. He's probably adjusted to the idea of the execution by now; he might cling to whatever you tell him and be worse off after your visit. He's been nailed tight for this one, Nudger; he's going to die and you shouldn't tell him otherwise."
"I won't."
"Who hired you?" Siberling asked.
"Colt's fiancee."
He rolled his eyes. "And she told you Colt was in bed balling her the night of the murder?"
"No, but she had someone who was with Colt at the time of the killing talk to me."
"Who?"
"Colt's accomplice. They were miles away, in North County casing a service station, when the liquor-store holdup occurred."
"So you've got the word of a fiancee, and the word of a felon. You call that promising? And where the fuck were these people during the trial? I could have used them-not that it would have helped much."
"The accomplice is still at large," Nudger said. "I don't know where. He would have had to incriminate himself if he'd testified, risked the chair along with Curtis. And Curtis wouldn't let the fiancee testify, didn't want the police to know about her."
Siberling made a spreading, helpless gesture with his manicured hands. A glittering gold pinky ring winked out the message that he didn't come cheap; this Legal Aid service was strictly temporary and Colt had been defended by one of the best. "Colt might have had the right idea; the police would have bugged the shit out of her if they'd known about her. And I told you Colt was the noble type, just the sort to clam up to protect his lady love." Siberling did some more pacing, theatrically, as if a jury might be watching. "I'll try to get you an interview with Curtis," he said.
Nudger thanked him, and Siberling started toward the door and Kelly and his tennis match. Probably indoor tennis, considering the heat.
"I got the impression you were a difficult man to see," Nudger said. "What made you take the time to come here?"
The nasty little man turned at the door and smiled an absolutely angelic smile. "You want to hear me say it, don't you?"
"I need to hear somebody other than my client and a career holdup man say it," Nudger told him.
"Okay," Siberling said, "I actually think Colt is innocent. Don't ask me for sound reasons; if I had any, I'd have brought them up in court. A good lawyer senses almost as much as he can prove, Nudger. When it comes to push and shove, life and death, instinct is king over reason. And all my instincts tell me Colt shot nobody."
Nudger didn't say anything.
"Better get your locks fixed," Siberling cautioned as he went out the door.
For a long time Nudger sat silently at his desk. He wasn't sure if he really liked what Siberling had just said about the Colt trial. It even crossed his mind that Siberling might in some way be using him, might have known that simply coming here would shift a critical balance.
The fiancee thought Colt was innocent and the state was going to give the wrong man the ride on the lightning. The petty holdup man thought the same thing. The lawyer was of the same mind.
Now Nudger agreed with them.
He wondered how they would all feel Saturday. And if he should expect another violent visit from the big man who could dish it out so well he probably never had to take it. Nudger thought about how it would feel to have all of his ribs cracked. How it would be when it was happening, and then later.
Pain wasn't for him. He picked up the phone and punched out the number of the locksmith down the street.
XIV
Siberling had moved fast. He phoned Nudger the night of their conversation in Nudger's office and told him the interview with Curtis Colt had been arranged.
Nudger was up early the next morning and on the road to Jefferson City. It took him a little over two hours to drive there, first on Highway 70, then south on 54, through the flat, green, and baking heartland of summertime Missouri.
It wasn't the most scenic route in the state. Farmland and open fields flanked the highway for miles, broken only by distant, lonely houses and outbuildings, cedar-post fences, grazing livestock, and sometimes equally placed rolls of hay, like huge pillows of shredded-wheat cereal, distributed by mechanized bailers.
Nudger didn't bother stopping for breakfast or to freshen up when he reached Jefferson City; he drove straight to the ancient and oppressive penitentiary.
The Missouri State Penitentiary was said to contain one of the worst death rows in the country, infested with roaches and flies, plagued by inadequate plumbing and unsuitable medical facilities. After an inmate had served enough time there, the waiting became the revenge and the punishment, and the execution the escape.
The room they left Nudger in was pale green, darker green around the lower half. It was divided by a wall containing a bank of phones. Before each phone was a thick window crisscrossed with wire mesh between the layers of glass. On the other side of this glass were corresponding phones, black, without dials, buffed and scarred and with a dull patina caused by perspiration and long use.
There were no other visitors at this hour. Nudger was alone as he sat before one of the phones and waited. On the metal counter below the phone he saw the usual graffiti- names, phone numbers, occasional profanity, obscure symbols-done in pencil or ink. Over it all someone had used lipstick to draw a perfectly shaped heart. There was nothing written inside the heart, as if whoever had drawn it loved someone but wasn't sure who-or maybe simply wanted to love someone. Nudger touched the tip of the heart with his finger, rubbed, examined his fingertip. It was unstained; the heart was indelible.
Through the glass he saw a door open on the other side of the room. A heavyset uniformed guard entered and moved off to the side. The dividing wall and the glass were so thick that no sound from over there reached Nudger's ears. He saw but didn't hear Curtis Colt enter the room, followed by another armed guard. It was like watching a silent movie.