Nightlines by John Lutz Page B

stayed with him, hovering near like the angel of death. Those old cars sure had personalities.
    The people in the cars passing Nudger didn’t glance at him; they were totally unaware of their near-proximity to such acute fear. It gave Nudger a helpless, lonely feeling. The worst thing about any kind of real suffering was that it was a solitary exercise.
    He didn’t feel the grip of that fear begin to loosen until he exited on Twelfth Street, drove several blocks, and turned into the blacktop parking lot behind the Third District Station. He pulled the Volkswagen into a slot near the brick building, turned off the engine, and leaned back in his sticky vinyl seat in relief.
    Then he glanced into the side mirror and fear lanced through his bowels like a shaft of ice, stunning him.
    Incredible! Nudger had been followed before and successfully used this ploy to find sanctuary. But not this time. The hulking Buick had followed him right into the police department’s parking lot.
    It lurched to a stop close behind him and sat blocking the Volkswagen in its parking slot, its prehistoric giant engine rumbling with throaty, ominous power.
    The rusty door on the driver’s side swung open. A man got out and stood up straight. He was wearing a bright yellow, billed cap with CATERPILLAR lettered in black across the front. “Caterpillar” was a brand of bulldozers and other earth-moving and heavy equipment. The man looked like heavy equipment, himself. He was tall, wide, and ugly.
    VII I
    udger reluctantly got out of his car and stood wait ing for the big man who had emerged like Prometheus from the Buick. There was no doubt that this was the man Danny had described, the man who had waited for Nudger across the street from the doughnut shop. He was several inches over six feet tall, with a bull neck that strained his shirt collar and merged with wide sloping shoulders. He had an often-broken nose, and a brow built up by scar tissue from inept cornermen who didn’t know how to treat cuts. His lantern jaw suggested he’d been a boxer who could take a punch and absorb much punishment, and who had paid in blood for his dubious ability to continue standing. He bunched his shoulders and slowly advanced on Nudger with ponderous and obvious malevolence.
    When he was about ten feet away, he smiled with bad teeth. Even with good teeth, it wouldn’t have been a smile to thaw cold hearts.
    “Nudger,” he said, “you an’ me are gonna have an unfriendly little chat.”
    Nudger glanced around desperately at the dozens of empty cars baking in the sun. This was the lot where most of the on-duty cops left their private cars. Near the far exit were a couple of parked cruisers, representing the only city vehicles. There wasn’t a uniform in sight. Nudger’s stomach felt as if it were searching for a way out as frantically as he was. It emitted a growl that sounded something like “Please!” He gulped back the bitter bile of fear as he saw the huge man’s powerful gnarled fingers flexing and unflexing around a defenseless red rubber ball.
    “They say that’s great for strengthening the forearms,” Nudger said, pointing to the tortured, misshapen ball. He thought that if a ball could scream, this one would be howling.
    “What they say is true,” the man said. His stained, crooked smile turned absolutely nasty.
    Nudger’s gaze fixed for a hopeful few seconds on the double doors of the building’s rear exit. He prayed that a dozen blue uniforms would pour out on their way to lunch or anywhere else. Wasn’t this about the time for a shift change? Maybe the entire day shift would suddenly emerge, streaming toward their cars. Maybe the cavalry would charge right onto the parking lot. Custer, Lieutenant Reno, the Johns Payne and Wayne. All of them, riding hell-for-leather, maybe singing.
    It hadn’t happened yet, except on screen. And Nudger knew he hadn’t paid admission or tuned in the television Late Show. He was on his own.
    “This is