This Train E-Book

James Grady

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

All aboard. It's a countdown to murder... This Train races us through America's heartland, carrying secrets. There is treasure in the cargo car, along with an invisible puppeteer. There is a coder named Nora, Mugzy, the yippy dog, and Ross, the too-curious poet. On This Train there is a silver madman, a targeted banker, and crises of conscience. This Train harbours the 'perfect' couple's conspiracies, the chaos of being a teenager, and parenthood alongside the wows of being nine. There is a widow and a wannabe, and the sleaziest billionaire. On This Train, there is the suicide ticket, the bomb, sex, love, and loneliness. The heist. Revenge. Redemption. This Train is a ticking clock, roaring through forty-seven fictional hours of non-stop suspense and action.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FORTHIS TRAIN

‘The term “master storyteller” is bandied about quite often these days, but in the case of James Grady it isn’t just a marketing phrase. This Train confirms what most readers have known for decades. James Grady is a writer who is always at the top of his game. A nail biting thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seats. Not to be missed’ – SA Cosby,NYTbestselling author ofBlacktop Wasteland

‘A cinematic thriller racing through the heartland of our American now – Stephen Hunter, Pulitzer Prize-winner

‘Brilliant! A novel of soaring imagination, This Train delivers a kaleidoscope of riveting characters and roller coasters of hurtling plots. The book’s non-stop pages redefine crime fiction, and author Grady captivates us further by telling the story in a voice that is so rich, resonant and poetic that it veritably sings. Bravo!’ – Jeffery Deaver, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master

‘Writing with the rhythm of a rushing train, James Grady delivers a story you won’t see coming, crowded with characters you get to know very well very fast. If ever a book paralleled the experience it depicts, This Train is that book’ – SJ Rozan, best-selling author ofFamily Business

‘This Train reads like a runaway locomotive with a one-track mind. James Grady delivers this masterful thriller at full throttle’ – Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire novels

‘James Grady is a long-established master of the thriller, and he proves it here. Grab your hat, and don’t let the strong wind of suspense blow it off. Highly recommended’ – Joe R Lansdale, winner of 11 Bram Stoker awards

‘The author of Six Days of the Condor brings his keen eye for character detail and plot construction to this. Shifting points of view, unanswered questions, and tantalizing hints of truths yet to be revealed make this an absolutely compelling read. Best of all, Grady delivers one hell of an ending’ –Booklist

‘Grady is a master storyteller. Allow me to crib a line from the old gospel tune by way of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Woody Guthrie, and Bruce Springsteen: This Train is bound for glory. It’s a pure gem’ – William Boyle, author ofShoot the Moonlight Out

For all of us on this train…

‘Meet me in a land of hopesand dreams…’

– Bruce Springsteen

1

Nora kept her head down as she hurried up the stairs into Seattle’s train station that chilly spring Thursday afternoon. She angled away from the main entrance’s glass doors toward a brown steel slab Service Door. All that any sentinel looking down from the station’s brick watchtower might notice was hernight-before’shome-chopped short and dyed chocolate-cherry hair.

She wore an unzipped burgundy leather jacket. A black purse/belt-pack. Black slacks. Savvy shoes. Pulled a clunking roller bag behind her.

Her cellphone unlocked the Service Entrance’s brown steel slab.

An AuthorizedUse Only sign was bolted to the inside of that steel door that slammed shut behind her as she stepped into the station’s vast main lobby. She surged to that particular square of the black & white tiled chessboard floor.

A dozen strangers to her went about their business across those black & white tiles inside that pale-walled ballroom. Sunlight streamed into the huge lobby through the far wall’s glass portals to the waiting tracks.

Nora filled her cellphone screen with the station’s security cameras’ Live Feed showing her the same reality as her eyes.

The black square where she stood was a blind spot for the cameras. She tap-tap-tapped her cell.

Blink and the seen in her screen became not what she saw with her eyes.

Yes, it was the same giant ballroom of Seattle’s train station lobby. And yes, there were people hustling their lives over the chessboard tiles –

– but what the cameras now played and logged was yesterday’s scene.

Nora roller-bagged her way to a lonely blue & red US Post Office mailbox standing against a wall. Opened her purse/belt-pack.

That black purse held all her not-much cash. A charger. Pills. Six condoms. Red and pink lipstick. Deodorant, toothbrush, TSA-tiny toothpaste tube. Musk perfume. Black hairbrush – a round, grooved-handle cylinder of rubber bristles that couldn’t brush blood-black hair back to the way things used to be.

She pulled out a new thin maroon wallet.

Slid out her Washington State driver’s license.

She never liked that picture. Her natural Marilyn Monroe hair flowed fine, but her face strained in her usual ‘Official Picture’ expression.

She filled the wallet’s slot with the driver’s license she’d made last night after she’d scissor-slaughtered and dyed her blonde hair to chocolate-cherry. The picture on that fake ID showed a dead-eyed face above a name that wasn’t hers.

Nora put her real license in a stamped envelope addressed to who she used to be in the studio loft apartment where vertical windows beyond the three desktop screens in front of her chair revealed real horizons where she wasn’t.

She licked the envelope.

Lost herself in the taste.

Opened the lonely mailbox’s slot.

Released the envelope of the true her into its darkness.

From behind her came a cellphone camera’s Click!

She whirled –

– saw a pubescent peach fuzz boy with thick glasses lower his cellphone from taking her picture dropping the envelope into the lonely mailbox.

Only the two of them stood in that deserted section of the station.

‘Wow!’ said the just-made-teenager. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do that! Like, you actually for real mailed an old-timey letter!’

‘Here’s for real,’ said Nora in her husky voice. ‘We delete that picture and I’ll let you take a more ‘wow’ one right now.’

The kid named Luc shrugged OK.

Nora let go of her bags.

Shed her burgundy leather jacket.

Mesmerized Luc held his cellphone between them. His back was to the pale stone wall. Her back was to the station’s distant and distracted shuffling crowd.

Nora jerked her blue sweater up and over her face.

Cool air brushed the uncovered flesh of her front.

She heard Luc’s cellphone Click!

Let her sweater drop. Lifted the cellphone from jaw-dropped Luc’s hands.

Nora worked the algorithms of his unlocked cellphone.

‘One image gone and then really gone, but you got your for real,’ she said. Put the cellphone back in Luc’s hands. ‘BTW, it won’t take pictures for two days.’

She left him mind-blown against the wall by the lonely mailbox.

Slid into her burgundy leather jacket. Grabbed her roller bag.

Rolled all she had through the vast castle toward a sign that reserved wooden benches for Premium Passengers with Roomette Suites, Bedroom Suites and Superliner Bedrooms. A second sign pointed to a corral of yellow plastic chairs designated for Coach Passengers.

Nora sat on an empty wooden bench.

She still had time to run.

BAM!

A street door slammed open back by where she’d come from.

The ever-louder slap slap slap of sandals on the black and white tiles made him easy to track as he closed in on her. His gold and maroon monk robes showed no dots from the rain. He’d shaved his head to a smooth skull.

The monk marched straight to where Nora sat and in Iowa American said: ‘Do you know the gate for the four-oh-four train from San Francisco? I want to be sure my son sees me when he gets off.’

‘Ahh… I don’t think he’ll miss you in the crowd.’

‘I would think there’d be better signage.’

Nora blinked.

‘I mean,’ said this 21st century official monk, ‘I look around, and do I see proper, clear, definitive directions? No I don’t, do I?’

The man in gold and maroon robes sandal-slapped away with all his I’s.

Out of nowhere came a middle-aged man wearing a gray jacket, khaki work pants, a denim shirt. He pulled a duct-taped roller bag. Strapped across his chest hung an army surplus messenger bag.

The messenger bag man headed toward the corral of yellow plastic chairs.

Looked down at his ticket as if he couldn’t believe what he bought.

Rolled his duct-taped suitcase to the Premium bench opposite Nora.

His messenger bag bonked the bench.

He jerked!

Froze in horror.

But the young woman across from him acted like she hadn’t heard a thing.

Nobody ever notices, he thought as he sat down. Now, finally, that’s good.

‘Yip!’

Never-married Constance, a stout mature lady in traveling clothes from her parents’ dignified era before the Beatles, cradled that yipper rat dog in the crook of her arm as she marched into the Premium waiting area, paused in the black & white tiles valley between the facing-each-other wooden benches.

‘Yip! Yip!’

‘Mugzy!’ scolded she who carried him. ‘Mind your manners! I’m sure she’s a perfectly respectable young woman.’

Constance and Mugzy gave Nora their backs and butts.

Constance saw a mature man clutching a messenger bag sitting on that bench. But even with his flecked gray hair, he was more than a decade away from that magic moment when The Government declared you ‘old’ and mailed you a red-white-&-blue Medicare card to prove it. No, that does not mean one is old!

Constance sighed. Messenger bag man was younger – OK, a lot younger than her. She eyed his shabby clothes. Still settled on his bench across from the woman Mugzy had doubts about. Constance sat close enough to not discourage Mr Messenger Bag and far enough away to be safe from his indifference.

Mugzy growled at four more two-legged beasts marching his way.

The 15-year-old daughter led her rolling suitcases family. Her eyes saw only more strangers who wouldn’t understand. Who couldn’t possibly know what she was going through. Her purse of secrets rode strapped across her chest like an outlaw’s bandolier of bullets.

Striding behind the teenage daughter came the family’s mom. Ebony hair swayed on her shoulders. The mom kept her eyes locked on her walking away daughter. Strained to see where she was going.

Trudging behind Mom came her 10-year-old son pulling his suitcase while bent over with the weight of his backpack. He raised his gaze off this castle’s black & white floor tiles to search for the answer to the obvious question:

Are there monsters here?

Dad marched behind his family. Rear guard but facing What’s Really Out There. Like he should. Like every Marine – any Marine – would. Ready to do what had to be done. Trustworthy. Loyal. Semper fi.

Semper fi fucked, he thought even as he hated himself for ever thinking that even though that ever was now.

His daughter marched them to the Premium passengers’ wooden bench where a cherry black haired woman twice her age sat on the far end. His daughter dove into her cellphone as she plopped near that edgy woman. Dad made sure his son who tended to drift off to dreamland –

Not, no NOT on to some ‘spectrum,’ Dad told himself.

– his boy sat down just like he should.

And their mom…

Their mom. His wife. The high school teacher. The ebony haired beauty. She settled on the wooden bench beside her screen-mesmerized daughter.

Just one minute, thought Mom. Please give me just one minute.

One minute without me having to think about – worry about – all the ifs.

Nora.

The messenger bag man.

Constance and Mugzy.

That family of four.

They were the first to arrive in the Premium seating section that gray Thursday April afternoon, but by 4 o’clock, a flood of travelers filled the rope-controlled corral of plastic yellow chairs designated for Coach passengers.

There were men. Husbands. Fathers. Brothers. That man in the rain. All sons of someone. All trying not to be lost.

There were women. Moms. Aunts. Sisters. The blurred face in a passing car. All daughters of those days. All striving to be who they were.

There were children. A boy clutching a stuffed monkey. A girl playing with Superhero action figures tied into a mega-millions Hollywood franchise.

There were people burned by a lot of sun. Pale clerks and techs. Cubicle and counter and warehouse workers. A ride-share driver. They breathed, they bled, they bred, they dead. They sold stuff, they bought stuff, they did stuff. They were people who had jobs and people whose jobs had them. There’s a flash of lonely. A look of fear. A laugh in the crowd. A cough. A babble of octaves. There’s silent sad and humming happy. And everywhere there’s the tingle of Let’s go!

Knifing through all that came a werewolf.

Silver hair. Cheyenne-worthy cheekbones on pale skin. Burning blue eyes. The werewolf wore a scruffy black leather jacket over a black hoodie, faded black jeans. His roller bag looked like nothing special.

As he rolled his way into the benches, Constance felt her heart twitter even though he looked like the no-no kind. She felt certain he also carried a Not-old! card of red-white-&-blue. He claimed the end of the bench to her right. Sat.

Mugzy nuzzled his snout out of sight in her arms.

And just as Constance was trying to figure out some casual greeting to send him with a prim but friendly smile, the silver-haired stranger spoke.

Not to her. Constance felt like he saw her only because The Everything of this the train station filled his steel blue eyes. Constance heard him softly say:

‘And thus, we are here.’

What does that mean? thought Constance.

She pulled into herself like she did when she heard something in church or coming out of the TV that she didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.

Mugzy nuzzled deeper into her hiding embrace. Silenced his yips.

Constance glanced back toward the silver stranger who wasn’t like the Main Street gentleman she’d hoped for or even a no-no. He was an oh-oh. Though she would of course speak to him if the rules of politeness so dictated.

Now he settled on her bench. Let his smile wait for what was coming. What came was Brian Keller.

Bank president Brian Keller.

In his beloved golden cashmere coat.

Behind him trudged ‘the little woman.’

She wore a prim pantsuit proper for her place in small town American life, dark ruby lipstick with none of the heat from the shade of red in Nora’s purse.

Brian sighed and silently cursed himself for being too good of a guy, too good of a husband. Letting the wife talk him into this.

And so now here he is, but there’s some old biddy with one of those damn yippy dogs hoarding up the middle of the bench, the only bench to sit on because – Don’t look! – there’s a whole family of them sitting over there.

‘I thought this was the Premium section,’ he muttered to his wife.

Brian nodded to the bench beside the old lady with that yippy dog, told his wife: ‘You sit there.’

She did.

Brian claimed the space between her and some guy hugging a shabby bag.

Wished he wasn’t here. Wished he hadn’t come. Today was Thursday. Chamber of Commerce luncheon day. Sitting down and standing up with all the right people. Pledging liberty and justice for all. Getting the low down and the down low. Not stuck on a wooden bench across from a family of them.

Black people, he thought. Or whatever we have to call them these days.

A whole family: dad, mom, daughter, son.

Sitting on the same Premium bench as some funky red hair woman who probably thought she was too good to walk in his wife’s shoes.

Nora looked away from the cashmere coated banker.

Saw arriving icons of who she once thought she should be.

They were the Makes Sense couple of Nora’s Millennial generation.

The woman kept her head up like she was still the Prom Princess and Student Body President who went on to Ivy League Phi Beta wow and Power Resume with a brilliant future. Sunlit auburn hair floated on her shoulders.

Her name was Terri.

Her white knight hunk strode beside her. Had smart eyes and a welcoming smile, wore just the right clothes. Had nature-built muscles from backpacking mountainous woods and whale watching off Oregon cliffs. Had a handsome face that got hmms from women whenever he arrived in a bar to meet Terri.

His name was Erik.

Erik sat on the bench next to the Black teenage girl.

Smiled straight ahead with a patience that gave no hint of The Countdown.

Terri slumped next to a cherry-haired woman her age.

Saw no bloody answers written on this train station’s white stone walls.

Everyone in Premium wowed when they saw who next joined their group.

The new arrival paraded like a retired Baltimore stripper.

Witnesses could almost hear a sultry saxophone play wah-wah-WHA, wha wha-wha whaa as what Nora’s nana would have called ‘a big girl’ hip-swaying and chest-trembling clomped between the Premium benches, a strong neon pink nails right hand clutching an old-fashioned paper train ticket for Della Storm.

Slathers of pink makeup and matching lipstick conspired to hide Della’s truths. Flowered hairspray made a cloud around her swirl of shiny black hair. A purple feather boa looped like its namesake constrictor around Della’s neck.

Mugzy snapped his teeth at that purple snake.

That sent Della to a seat at the end of the bench beside the Black family.

Everyone was careful not to stare.

Well, except for the silver werewolf.

Mugzy growled at who he next saw striding into his herd.

The new arrival reminded Nora of a second-tier Hollywood star whose name she couldn’t remember. Hair dyed the color of hay brushed to cover baldness. Handsome jowly face that surgically defied late middle age. Beady eyes making sure everybody saw him and how good he looked in his tycoon’s suit.

That Hollywood clone sat on the bench by Constance. Her hand wrapped around Mugzy’s muzzle so he wouldn’t be rude to this obvious gentleman.

Hollywood paid no mind to Constance’s smiles or Mugzy’s trembles.

Let his eyes lick the two 30-something women sitting across from him.

Would have licked the teenage girl, but there sat her dad.

Plus, down that road he wasn’t fool enough to go. Not these days.

Across from where Hollywood sat, of all the passengers, only the 10-year-old boy in the Black family noticed banker Brian’s wife slip something into the pocket of her husband’s golden cashmere coat.

Husband and bank president Brian didn’t realize what she’d done.

No self-betraying smile escaped her ruby’d lips.

Then came Ross.

Last, actually.

Last came Ross.

Ross bummed a lift to the train station from Upstairs Amanda who believed she could always beat the clock.

Upstairs Amanda owned the Seattle townhouse where Ross rented the basement apartment, bonus cash for her because the marijuana dispensary she managed paid just fine, thank you very much everybody who’d gotten the commerce and cool of cannabis out of the local crime books.

Upstairs Amanda’s tattoo-sleeved arms wrestled her car as they careened to the train station through this city with a science fiction skyline of construction cranes and looming skyscrapers for cyber tech corporate giants.

They drove under a bridge. Passed tents of tattered cloth and plastic sheeting pressed up against the concrete. Could be a woman, could be a man pushed an overflowing shopping cart. A rags-swaddled, sister-brother duo huddled against the Apple store’s brick wall. Out there in the rain, a thin man standing on the center line of this major road held a hand-lettered sign – HELP.

As Ross’s ride whooshed him where he had to go, he felt the familiar firm flatness tucked against his spine and wondered again if he should use a holster.

Upstairs Amanda slammed on the brakes. Her tires slid/stopped on the wet street in front of the train station with what she called ‘plenty of time to spare.’

Ross bent down to lift his computer bag off the car floor by his feet.

When he turned to say thanks, she said: ‘Open your mouth.’

He did.

She popped in a lemon drop.

‘Is that…?’

‘Hundred percent,’ she said as the officially cool did back then.

Tucked a cellophane envelope in his maroon shirt’s pocket.

‘Later da-zzz-es,’ she said. ‘Maybe it will help you pull your triggers.’ Reflexes brushed Ross’s hand over the black leather jacket above his spine.

‘And remember,’ said Amanda. ‘You wanted this gig.’

‘No,’ said Ross. ‘I needed this gig.’

He hurried into the station with a lemony clicking in his mouth. Ran through the crowd as fast as politeness and his bouncing roller bag, side-slapping slung computer bag and what was tucked in his belt allowed. Ran past a corral of fellow passengers milling amidst yellow plastic seats to the Premium benches.

Flashed: Everybody wants to go somewhere.

Starts now, he thought. This is the gig you got.

Ross unzipped his rain jacket that hung low over his maroon shirt and faded black jeans. Pulled out his cellphone, held that device in front of his face –

– turned the phone horizontal to peer through its viewfinder.

Tapped the red button for VIDEO.

Ross moved like movie directors Soderbergh, Scorsese and Tarantino. Sydney Pollack and Patty Jenkins. Wes Anderson, Howard Hawks, Francois Truffaut, Alan Rudolph or any of the other great ones he’d watched for the wow and to absorb how to see. Ross sidestepped like Bruce Lee. Tried to keep his shot level. Curved around the Premium benches. Caught the faces of everyone there.

Whether or not they cared.

Ross slid his view screen/lens past those with whom he’d travel, a slow 180-degree pan to film where they all were supposed to go.

His screen showed the pale ivory wall of the train station.

A museum display about the Nez Pierce.

Glass-paned double doors for the gate to the gray afternoon outside.

A man clutching a machinegun.

2

Machinegun Man stepped further inside the train station.

Blue jumpsuit. Helmet. Ballistic vest. Machinegun.

SWAT, thought Ross. Special Weapons And Tactics. A government gunner.

‘What are you doing?’ barked a second SWAT warrior marching toward Ross. This gunner wore a blue cap with a communication headset, no machinegun but a holstered pistol strapped to his right leg: a SWAT boss.

Ross lowered his phone. Kept his smile. Kept recording.

‘Being me. What are you doing?’

‘Any particular reason you’re filming?’ The SWAT boss had a face of stone.

‘I didn’t think I needed one.’

Oh-oh, thought Ross as he felt himself rise on a lemony cloud.

The SWAT boss marched close enough to grab Ross –

– stopped as cellphone fans stirred on the Premium benches.

A second SWAT machinegunner joined her comrade at the exit to the platform. A third paced back and forth at a different door.

Hurrying toward Ross and the SWAT boss came a hefty Amtrak stationmaster wearing a gold-braided blue cap and a straining white shirt.

The stationmaster reached Ross: ‘Everything’s OK! These guys, they’re –’

‘Routine,’ intoned the SWAT boss, his eyes drilling Ross. ‘Training.’

‘Yeah,’ said the stationmaster. ‘Sure. It’s always something.’

A firm male voice called out from behind Ross: ‘Officer?’

The father from the family of four.

Standing tall, no sweat beading his black skin.

Ignoring everyone except the SWAT boss: ‘Is this area secure?’

The SWAT boss wore neither a name patch nor a rank insignia. He insisted his crew call him ‘LT’

SWAT boss LT felt himself almost answer: ‘Yes sir.’

LT’s eyes flicked to a suddenly here silver-haired civilian.

‘Wahaaan!’

A plaintive cry.

Three heartbeats, then louder came: ‘Whaaan!’

The ding-ding-ding of charging bells…

… WHAM!

A shining blur whooshed into the station. Rumbling steel. Screeching metal. A hiss of steam. A shimmering shudder of metallic light settled outside at the depot platform. Two levels tall and nine cars long. Rows of windows like translucent scales ran the length of the cars parked by the depot platform. Blue and orange corporate stripes lined the skin of this steel-wheeled silver dragon.

A loudspeaker boomed:

‘Amtrak train 779, the Empire Builder, has arrived. We apologize for a slight delay before boarding. Please remain inside the station.’

SWAT boss LT gave a Watch it! glare to this nosey trio of passengers. Stalked to the guarded gate for the arriving train and through it to gone.

The stationmaster sighed. Raised placating hands to those three passengers. Lumbered to the check-in lectern in front of that gate leading to the rumbling, hissing, hungry beast.

In the Premium benches, banker Brian couldn’t stand it anymore.

Brian harrumphed to his feet, shook himself to set his cashmere coat on his shoulders, stalked over to the action like the VIP he knew himself to be.

Wouldn’t look at the Black guy even though he’d been the one talking to the boss cop. Saw the merciless eyes of the silver-haired guy.

Ah, no, thought Brian.

That left the cellphone stud to get Brian’s demand: ‘What’s going on?’

Ross. The father. The silver werewolf.

They’d all seen Brian not talk to a Black man.

Ross’s smile came slow and sly: ‘Consider the question.’

The silver werewolf and the Black father shared a look.

‘What?’ said Brian.

‘Exactly.’

‘What – No! Oh no, don’t you fucking do it! Don’t you twist me up with words! Just tell me right now: What the hell was going on with those cops?’

‘Oh,’ said Ross.

Smiled: ‘Routine.’

Brian blinked.

The silver-haired guy said: ‘It’s always something.’

The Black guy just stood there. Saying nothing. Doing nothing.

Brian stared at these three obvious citizens of Crazytown.

‘This country,’ muttered Brian: ‘What the hell is it coming to?’

He marched back to the shuffling crowd at the Premium benches.

The silver werewolf in the black hoodie said: ‘Good to know that he cares.’

Said to the Black father: ‘My guess, birds on your shoulders, Sir.’

‘Maybe after the next rotation,’ said the father, who let them hear nothing in his tone. Nothing.

Whoa, thought Ross. They’re talking about military rank. ‘Birds’ meant ‘colonel,’ one rank down from general. Or at least lieutenant colonel.

My dad might have spotted that the father was military, thought Ross. But then, he grew up when any American male might have ended up in uniform. What uniform? Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines? Each one makes it in different scenes. And the birds haven’t come yet, so the Black father ranks as… a major.

The werewolf said: ‘Do you see any insignias or badges or agency letters on the SWAT? Amtrak Police? Seattle Police? ATF? FBI? Homeland Security?’

He shook his silver head: ‘Maybe all that doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe now it’s all just gonna shoot you on down.’

‘Your attention, please! Amtrak train 779, the Empire Builder, now ready for boarding. Have your tickets out and ready. All aboard!’

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The stationmaster at the ticket kiosk beckoned all ticket holders. His white shirt held a brass nametag stamped WAYNE FABER – not that anybody shuffling toward him cared about his name: Wasn’t he only what he did for their train?

The older guy flowed back to get his luggage in the Premium benches.

Ross headed to where his bags waited.

The Black major’s wife gestured from the Premium seating for him to stay put. Wait for the kids and her to come to him rather than trying to push his way through the crowd to get back to them and help with the luggage.

Banker Brian bulldozed his way back to his wife: ‘Got everything?’ She said yes.

He spun his fawn-colored cashmere coat in a half circle of force that knocked the man with the messenger bag back down to the Premium bench.

Brian pushed into the moving crowd as his wife closed her eyes with a sigh so soft that the bumped-down messenger bag man barely heard her.

‘You!’ yelled a woman’s voice behind Brian.

Again Brian whirled.

The Makes Sense couple Terri and Erik dodged the spinning coat, rode its centrifugal force into the line behind Constance and Mugzy. Mugzy growled.

Spun-around Brian spotted the woman who’d yelled at him: Her, her with her two kids and husband who. Brian growled: ‘What did you say to me?’

‘I didn’t say anything to you… sir.’

‘Like hell! You yelled “you”!’

‘I said “U.” That’s my husband. Ulysses. I was calling out to him.’

That wife knew she had to watch out for her husband as much as her kids in this fucking scene she’d had to play out 10 thousand times before, different dialogs and setups but always the same shit under What Was Being Said.

She shot her hand up and out, ordering her husband to hold.

It’s OK, she lied. Knew he’d understand. Knew adrenaline surged in him. Knew his ebony face hardened. Knew that tension was akin to the fury that found Ulysses when he won his Silver Star and a second Purple Heart in Fallujah.

She gave Mr Asshole in the cashmere coat The Look she’d used to stare down the angry, the lost, the manipulative, the lashing out, the troubled, even the few dead soul teenagers in classrooms she’d taught from sea to shining sea.

Brian shrank back, harumphed, whirled and filled his eyes with the backs of that Makes Sense young couple walking ahead of his strides outta here.

His ruby lipped wife leaned toward the messenger bag man. A human being who she knew her husband hadn’t noticed he’d knocked down. Some ordinary guy from an American town who, like her, saw 50 in the rearview mirror.

‘Sorry,’ she told him with experienced delivery as they moved into the shuffling queue. ‘My husband, when he’s had a few or needs a few, he gets…’

‘No,’ said the man with the messenger bag walking beside her.

She blinked.

‘That’s who he is,’ said the stranger. ‘Don’t apologize. It’s on him, not you.’

Came her whisper: ‘Me.’

From behind then between them came flaxen-haired Hollywood. He noticed the messenger bag man enough to move him aside. Checked out but didn’t leer at the lipsticked too-old and too-plain bird pulling two roller suitcases.

She found herself behind the messenger bag stranger and Hollywood.

Walking behind them. Pulling two bags. Knowing how to do that.

The man who’d been filming scooted past her, his lightning-struck face locked on where the cropped reddish haired woman near his 33 years had gone.

The married woman’s wistful smile watched him chase hope.

That young man slid into line behind the family of four her husband loathed and feared, all of them now at the kiosk where the white-shirted stationmaster took paper tickets or scanned cellphone screens to grant passage out of the station through the proper gate to the chilly April afternoon mist.

To the hissing silver dragon stretched along the station’s wooden platform.

Hollywood stepped out of line. Stood on the platform. Watched the rest of the world board as he tapped a cigarette from a gold case. Gave it fire from a glistening lighter. Blew a puff of smoke like he was the dragon.

Watched the last two passengers bumble on board.

They had to pass an Amtrak attendant in dark blue pants and a white blouse, a blue company cap on her 40+ blonde head and a pro’s smile on her face.

Bodacious Della, paper ticket in hand, pouty pancaked face, swished and swayed toward the waiting train –

– stopped, shifted this way and that to straighten the skirt that clung to her like a second skin. Wobbled a slow walk in those killer high heels.

Behind her and last in line came the silver werewolf.

He passed a paper ticket to the blonde Amtrak attendant.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘I’m Cari! You’re in Car 2013. My car. I’m your Attendant, here for whach you wanna and whach you gotta. You’re ticketed for a Bedroom Suite, Cabin B, up those stairs straight ahead, into the train. Second level, go left.’

‘Left,’ said the werewolf who could have gone to high school with her dad.

He nodded down the long wooden platform. ‘What’s “right” down there?’

Cari didn’t blink: ‘The front of the train.’

The front of the train.

Three cars beyond the one for Cari’s passengers.

That first car to the right from hers had a rolled-down aluminum door in its center, clearly the Baggage Car. SWAT gunners paced there.

Then came the second passenger car before the locomotive, a regular passengers’ car that instead of the train crew now housed SWAT troopers.

Past the SWAT-swarmed cars came the rumbling locomotive looking like a bullet toward tomorrow.

The passenger who was no way like her father smiled to Cari.

‘So,’ he asked: ‘Those… officers down there. Are they by the Baggage Car?’

‘Kinda looks that way.’

‘And –’

‘And you’re in this car, 2013. That’s after the engine, a Crew Car where – then the Baggage Car. Then us, three Roomettes cars – coach seats on the first level. The Dining Car over the Lounge. Then the Observation Car and shazam: the rear window and off the train.’

‘You’re on the train or the train’s gone.’

‘All aboard,’ said Cari.

The silver werewolf saw Della reach the stepstool on the platform in front of Car 2013’s open door. Hesitate. First that tight dress sheathed beefy left leg tried to rise to the occasion. Retreated. Lowered back to where it had been. Up went the right leg. Both efforts struggled and failed.

Hollywood stood only two steps away from helping Della.

He took a drag on his cigarette.

The silver werewolf reached Della’s stalled backside just as Della wrapped one strong neon pink fingernailed hand around the shiny steel handles bolted along the sides of Car 2013’s open door. That arm pulled and the opposite high-heeled foot pushed and up into the car went the everything of Della.

‘I’ll get your bag,’ said the black hoodie silver werewolf.

Della’s voice rasped: ‘Aren’t you just a dear.’

‘Well,’ he said, then did as he’d promised and said no more.

Those two passengers disappeared into the train.

Smoking Hollywood snorted with amusement.

A blast of steam.

A groan of steel.

Hollywood knew what Attendant Cari called out even though he couldn’t hear her actual words. Women were like that to him. He didn’t need them to say a thing to know what they wanted.

He sucked in a last big burn of because he could.

Blew out the cigarette smoke.

Saw the last of the SWAT guys board the train.

Flicked the still-burning cigarette to the tracks under the steel wheels.

Walked to the blue-uniformed blonde Attendant by the door into the train.

Hollywood nodded to SWATs on guard by the Baggage Car:

‘All that down there is about some kind of big bucks.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Attendant Cari.

‘Yeah, I suppose someone like you wouldn’t.’

He climbed up the stairs into her car.

Attendant Cari swung herself up and into Car 2013 while at the same time sliding the stepstool into its storage nook below the fire extinguisher cabinet.

She slid the heavy steel door in its slide-sideways path to a satisfying clunk. Yanked the lever centering the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

Thought: We’re all locked in tight now.

3

Nora’d hurried past Attendant Cari’s ticket check and greeting.

Did not ‘not’ look at the SWAT gunners as she boarded the train.

Told herself: Act like you’re a regular person. Innocent.

Bounced her roller bag up through a metal-walled door in the side of Car 2013. Climbed the interior set of switchback stairs to this sleeper car’s top level.

Inside the train smelled cleaned. Pine-scented disinfectant. A blue carpet led Nora down a narrow corridor past windowed doors until the cabin G specified by her ticket appeared. Only cabin H waited beyond hers before the wall of the train car and steep stairs down to the first level and the Baggage Car door.

Her cabin felt like a revolver’s chamber for a bullet.

A long window made the outward-curved, cream-colored plastic wall. A chair clung to that outer wall commanded a view of where the train had been. A cushioned bunk filled the wall to Nora’s right faced where the train was going.

The back cushion for that couch/bed ran up the curved wall to shoulder height, where waited a second padded slab labeled: FOLD COT DOWN

Across from the couch/beds by the door rose a metal sink with a mirror.

Next to the sink stood a floor-to-ceiling tube hiding a metal toilet and a shower. Inside the tube perpetually glowed with a night vision blue light. She parked her roller bag beside the chair bolted by the window. Took the grift’s cellphone from her burgundy jacket. That phone ran the grift as smoothly as the laptop in her suitcase. She tossed the jacket on the couch/ bed. Felt to be sure the black belt purse still hung on her right side where it always rode.

‘Attention please!’ A male voice boomed through the train speakers. ‘This is the Conductor. Welcome aboard the Empire Builder, Seattle to Chicago in only 47 hours on the rails, the last great train in America.

‘For our Coach Passengers, in about 30 minutes, the Lounge car located on the first level toward the rear of the train will be open to serve snacks, liquid refreshments, and adult beverages.

‘Dinner for Premium Passengers will be served between 5:30 and 7:00 in the Dining Car. Please confirm a reservation with your Cabin Attendant.’

In the corridor outside her opened-door cabin, Nora spotted the purple boa swirl of the could be retired Baltimore stripper lumbering past.

Attendant Cari loomed in Nora’s doorway.

‘Knock,knock!’ Cari leaned in for privacy with the woman passenger of Cabin G. ‘Everything good in here?’

‘Fine,’ said Nora.

‘Which way you like it in bed?’

‘What?’

‘Your turndown to a bed. You want the top or the bottom? Bottom’s easier.’

‘Sure,’ said Nora.

‘Bottom bunk it is. I’ll make it up while you’re at dinner.

‘Now,’ said Cari, ‘pillow by the door looking out the window or by the window looking toward the door? Most people want to face the window.’

‘Lay me down facing the door,’ said Nora.

They shared a woman’s look. A knowing. A sentiment. An awareness.

Cari nodded: ‘You got it. When do you want dinner? Most folks go by 6:00.’

‘Book me for 6:15,’ said Nora, knowing that choosing a later time to avoid ‘most folks’ would make the train attendant curious. Or worse, suspicious.

Cari smiled away to serve other passengers.

A man’s excited words in the corridor blew into Nora’s cabin as she walked toward her still slid-open door: ‘Isn’t this great?’

Nora heard no reply to that question. Slid closed and latched her cabin door. Didn’t pull the curtain across the door’s window to the corridor.

Sure, somebody out there could see in, but she could also see out.

The train whistle screamed.

A lurch clunking surge shook the train from the locomotive’s cyclops eye to the window in the first level EMERGENCY rear exit of the Observation Car.

That rear window filled with a blurry view of tracks under the steel wheels stretching away, growing longer even as all else shrank. White shirted stationmaster Wayne Faber stood on the wooden platform watching the train leave as he telescoped into an ever-smaller image, going going gone.

The train clackety-clacked through a chain-link fenced urban valley of steel rails and power lines and parked boxcars as it strained to get out of town.

Vibration shook the grift’s phone in Nora’s hand.

Her screen filled with Snapchat, a communication app favored by millions of teenagers in that era, one that Nora’d downloaded under a phony user I.D.

What made Snapchat perfect for the grift was that its messages vanished in cyberspace after they’d been read, gone like they never were.

Now phantom words in her phone commanded:

Don’t worry about B father.

U fix the dipshit guy filming

w/his phone. I’ll work

Mr Nosey old man in black.

Nausea mushroomed through Nora.

Zed isn’t supposed to be on the train yet!

4

Major Ulysses Doss, United States Marine Corps, slid his cellphone back into the pocket of his civilian blue shirt as the train rumbled out of Seattle.

His wife Isabella turned from storing the family’s bags in this Superliner Bedroom suite. Brushed black hair off her café au lait face.

Saw her daughter Mirana slumped on one of the couch beds. The teenager saw only the screen in front of her eyes, not where they were or were going.

Saw her son Malik riding the chair bolted to the window wall, his face to the outside world flowing past, seeing some where no one else would ever see.

Saw her husband Ulysses slide his work cellphone into his shirt pocket. Isabella said: ‘Everything OK?’

‘Gunny checked,’ he said. ‘No alerts out for this train or where it’s going.

‘I mean,’ Ulysses added, ‘beyond normal.’

‘Everywhere is “beyond normal” these days,’ said his wife. ‘Off kilter.’

Isabella shook her head. Thought of her Cuban grandmother fleeing Castro’s communist dictatorship in an overloaded fishing boat.

‘Smart of you to text,’ she said. ‘I doubt the kids were listening let alone hearing. But still, some things don’t need to be said out loud.’

She leaned closer: ‘But just some things.’

Ulysses got the message.

Turned from her and them to the kids.

Said: ‘How we doing?’

Malik smiled big and bright and true as he said: ‘Great, Dad!’

Mirana didn’t look up from her screen: ‘’Doing like you wanted us to.’

‘Really,’ said her father Ulysses.

He stared at his high school daughter.

Countered her indifference with: ‘What have you enjoyed seeing most?’

Mirana insisted her family call her what her real friends did: Mir.

Mir shrugged: ‘Those SWAT guys, there were a couple baes.’

‘What?’ said Ulysses.

His long-suffering daughter moon-eyed him, sighed: ‘Bae – cute guys.’

Whoa, she thought: Look at him flare up! So predictable.

Mir said: ‘What do you care, they’re not your troops, no sir, loud and clear.’

Then like, oh my God what’s the big deal! Mir flowed to her feet with the athletic grace that won a silver medal in her school district’s 400-meter dash. Tucked her phone in her right hip pocket. ‘I am so out of here! Taking a walk.’

Mom said: ‘Good idea. But be back in time for dinner – you know when.’

Through clenched jaws, Dad said: ‘Don’t get in trouble.’

‘As if,’ said Mir.

Then she was out the door. Truly gone.

But she left her purse.

5

Mir slid the door between her and her family closed with whunk.

The clackety-clack wobbled her from side to side.

You gotta learn how to walk on a train, she thought.

Looked left:

The corridor ran past other closed cabins, ended with the shut door between passenger cars. Wasn’t the food car down that way?

Looked right:

A passageway between solid walls led to switchback stairs coming up from the car’s first level, then that corridor angled beyond where she could see.

‘Hello dear,’ said an old woman standing inside the open door to the Superliner Suite across from Mir’s family. The old woman cradled that rat dog in the crook of her arm. Smiled. ‘Please: call me Constance.’

‘Ah, OK.’

‘And this,’ said Constance, ‘this is Mugzy.’

The old woman used her free hand to wave Mugzy’s front paw.

He growled.

Mir was pretty sure that wasn’t hello.

‘Mugzy: remember your manners. We’re neighbors with…’

The 15-year-old girl wobbling in the corridor told Constance her name.

The name she chose.

‘Lovely to meet you, Mir. Would you like to come in and have a chocolate?’

Mir blinked.

‘Oh my, yes dear, I just realized that, too! Father always warned me: Don’t take candy from strangers.’

A twittering laugh and a warm smile went from Constance to Mir.

‘But we’re not strangers. I’m Constance. And you’re Mir. And neither of us is a little girl who can’t make up her own mind.’

Mir took a deep breath.

Gave hard eyes to Mugzy: I can take you and the old lady you rode in on.

Mir marched into the old woman’s suite like everything was solid.

Heard her host slide the door shut behind her.

Wondered: Did she latch it?

Constance sat on the lower bunk beside a closed suitcase.

Lowered Mugzy to the blue carpet. Let him go.

Mugzy scampered toward Mir.

Rat Dog saw Teenage Girl.

Mugzy scampered back to Constance. Jumped on the bed beside her.

Mir suppressed a smile.

‘Oh dear,’ said Constance as the dog snuggled against her. She’d flipped open the suitcase on the bed. ‘Now we have to be so, so careful. When Mugzy gets jumpy, men get like that even if they’ve been snipped, well, I’m afraid now I’ll have to be a bad hostess.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mir: ‘What?’

‘Well if I am proper, stand up to bring you chocolates, Mugzy will dive into the suitcase. Now that he smells what’s in there, he’d push the closed lid open and dive into his own coffin. Dogs and men, what can be done.

‘And something must be done, mustn’t it Mugzy-wugzy? Because chocolate is so very bad for doggy-woggies even if they want it so very much.

‘But we can’t always get what we want,’ said Constance. She thought maybe that was from a song she’d heard way back before she stopped listening to music about things she didn’t know or that never came true.

Constance held a box of French bonbons out to the teenage girl.

Mir slid a piece of candy into the O of her mouth.

Dark chocolate with smooth maple cream melted on Mir’s tongue.

‘Oh my God,’ she moaned.

‘Yes, I know!’ Constance popped a chocolate in her own mouth.

The old woman and the teenage girl… giggled is indeed what they did.

Constance said: ‘Don’t you just love chocolate in the afternoon!’

Chocolate in the afternoon, thought Mir. Like the title of a French movie. She’d taken a film class. Wondered if she could touch the Big Screen.

‘But not too late in the afternoon,’ said Constance. ‘And look at the time: It’s after 5:00, so we’re pushing it. One doesn’t want to spoil one’s dinner.’

‘This spoils nothing,’ said Mir. ‘Thank you so much.’

Mir looked around this suite exactly like the one across the hall that comfortably held her whole family. Well, more comfortably than the roach motel outside of 29 Palms once when their Quarters orders got messed up.

She stepped to the center of the train cabin.

‘Is all this huge place just for you?’ she asked her hostess.

‘And Mugzy. He’s my constant companion. Constance’s Constant as they say in my hometown just, oh, an hour away from here,’ she said as here changed with every clackety-clack.

‘You’re going home?’ asked Mir.

‘No. There are some legal formalities for me to sign in Chicago. First they said they would email them to me and I could electronically sign and it would be legal. Imagine that! Who would be foolish enough to take a computer’s word that I am who I signed I was? And then it was overnight delivery. But overnight here, overnight there, that’s at least three days, and the Travel Tips column in Sunday’s Parade magazine that comes with my newspaper, only thing I really read, the rest is just topsy-turvy bad news that who can figure out, that column told about this heavenly train that takes less time for that trip. And when I checked yesterday, someone had just cancelled their reservation for this suite. Who knows why anyone would do that, but what wonderful luck for me.’

Mir grinned. ‘So that’s how you got out of town.’

‘My dear, I absolutely love my hometown. Lived there all my life.’

‘Living in one place your whole life.’ Mir shook her head. ‘I’m 15 – almost 16 – and I’ve already lived in 5 places.’

‘I just knew you were wonderfully unusual!’ Constance beamed. ‘Are you going home to Chicago, dear?’

Don’t know where I’m going, thought Mir, but she told her new friend: ‘No. Our school’s spring break family trip. Visit relatives. Aunt Roma in Chicago.’

Mir looked at one empty bunk. Then another lonely bed. Then a third. Put her eyes on the bed where Constance sat with an open suitcase. And Mugzy.

I won’t be all alone with empty beds like her someday! No way! Never!

‘I gotta go,’ said Mir. ‘Thanks.’