John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“Thirty thousand, plus a willing tool, Simon. First they’d take the thirty thousand, and then they’d show her one of the photostats of that receipt she signed. And then they’d send her down to join the Mexican end of the organization. They have a spot all planned for her, we think. Using her obvious charms on gullible tourists to get them to take stuff across the border. She would do it well.”

“And enjoy the work,” I said flatly.

“She did hurt you, didn’t she?”

“A long time ago, Skipper. Just the scar itches sometimes.” I frowned again. “Say, don’t they organize the smuggling better than that?”

“My dear Mr. Pell. The very best man you can get is some banker from Toledo with shining face, balding head, and sterling reputation.”

“Marj could collect that type like postage stamps.”

“She’s still got a little too much spirit for them. They planned to break her down, flatten her out good, and then put her to work after they had taken her for as much money as they could get.”

“Lovely people.”

“I’ve seen what they’ve done. I’ve seen fifteen-year-old children who open their wrists with a pin and use an eyedropper to squirt in the dreams. I hate the peddlers, Simon. I hate their guts!”

“Look. I better pack. Not much time left.”

“You’ll have plenty of time, Simon. Everybody on this train is going to have a long personal interview and show credentials. All of them are going to be hopping mad except one. And he’s going to be scared and desperate.”

They ran the Amtrak train over onto a siding that hadn’t been used since Casey Jones took his header. It was in a wilderness of tracks, out near a jungle of derelict boxcars and rusting steam locomotives. Chicago came equipped with its usual strong wind. The train stopped and the men were already spotted. Spaced out. A perimeter guard with shotguns and riot guns through the crooks of their arms. Neat young men who leaned against the wind while their topcoats flapped.

A puffy little man with protruding glass-blue eyes collared me in the aisle. “Friend, this is an outrage,” he wheezed.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Haven’t you heard? Look where we are. Out in the middle of nowhere! Some bum was knifed on the train. Busybody cops have taken over one of the cars up front. We got to go up there, one at a time, and let them question us. Me, I got a meeting to go to.”

The little man stamped on down the aisle, grunting and wheezing with indignation.

An official came through. “Kindly remain in your own car until called.”

I looked out my window for a while. They were handling it pretty well. Every few minutes one person or a couple would head across the tracks, windblown Elizas crossing the ice, heading toward civilization.

I wondered about Marj and decided to pay a little social call. I went into her car and tapped on her door.

“Yes?” a stentorian female voice said.

I pushed the door open. An iron-gray slab-faced matron with eyes like roller bearings stared at me. She had three parallel scratches down her cheek. Marj sat on the bed. I forgot about the planted knife, about her greedy amorality. She was a child who now stood outside life’s candy store, nose flattened wistfully against the glass, looking in at the goodies she could no longer afford.

They’d put handcuffs on her. The sleeve of her dress was ripped and her cheek was puffed, turning blue. She looked at me and said in a soft voice, “Thanks so much, Sim. Thanks for turning me in.”

There was no hope of explaining to her. She had gone too far away. She wouldn’t hear anything I said.

“Out,” the matron said.

Out I went, feeling exactly as though, hat in hand, I had tiptoed into sickly flower scent to view a waxen face on the casket pillow. I felt soul-sick and emptied.

As I walked back, I told myself I was a big boy now. I shaved and everything. I’d even snuck up on a gook tunnel and dropped a present inside that went boom. So this was just a tramp I happened to marry once. Lots of people marry tramps. Lots of tramps marry people. The silken wench was no longer a part of my life. It would be easy to forget her. Just as easy as leaving your head in the hatbox along with your hat.

I went into the men’s room and sat on the leather bench and exchanged cool stares with a salesman type inhabiting same bench, lipping an evil cigar butt.

“Hell of a note,” he said.

“Yeah,” said I.

He got up and slapped himself vigorously in the belly, belched largely, and left, dropping the butt into a shallow spittoon, where it hissed softly like a dying balloon.

I got up and aimlessly tried the john door. Locked, of course. I had me a drink of ice water. I wondered if the lounge car was in a fluid state. I wandered back toward it.

A conductor in a dark blue shiny suit said, “Stay in your own car, mister.” He had bright red cheeks and frosty blue eyes and a shelf of yellow teeth that pushed his upper lip out of the way.

“Got the time?” I asked him.

He looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly eleven, mister.”

I clumped back to the men’s room. I stood and looked out the top of the window, the unglazed part. The staunch young men were still leaning against the wind. I wondered how they’d work out as replacements in Vietnam. Replacements are so shocked at having the countryside loaded with eager little brown men who desire earnestly to shoot them dead that they obligingly freeze and get shot. The ones who scramble fast enough to avoid this unhappy fate six or seven times thus become what the newspapers call “combat-hardened veterans.”

The unobliging conductor appeared from somewhere on my right, spoke to one of the young law enforcers, and plodded across the tracks toward the distant station, shiny shoulders hunched against the fingers of the wind.

In due course they got to me. They said, “Okay, Pell. Sit over there.” I sat. They were thorough with the ones who came after me. Name, occupation, residence, identification, any personal letters, please. Reason for the trip. All recorded neatly.

A hefty man with a tombstone face who seemed to be in charge said, with considerable satisfaction, “Okay. That’s one ninety-two. He’s on the train, boys. Go get him, and be careful.”

Skipper moved over and sat across from me. “He was afraid to try to bluff his way through. We’ve got him now, Simon.”

It took thirty minutes. The boys came back. They looked as if the old farmer had just rock-salted them out of the orchard.

“He’s gone, chief.”

Tomb-face stood up. “Gone! How?”

“Maybe he dropped off the train before it got here, chief.”

“Impossible! You know that as well as I do. Did you look everywhere?”

“Even the ladies’ rooms,” the thinnest one said with a pretty blush. “One part of them is locked, of course. The train people locked them as we were coming in.”

“Maybe he picked the lock on one of them. Where’s that conductor? Get his keys.”

“He went over to the station. He’ll be back.”

“Get keys someplace, dammit!”

“Yes sir, chief.”

Skipper said, “If they don’t find him that way, the only answer is that he brought his invisible coat along.” She tried to smile, but there wasn’t much heart in it. “We wanted to get this one. Our tipster told us he was very high in the organization.”

I stared at her. I said, too loudly, “He did bring his invisible coat, honey.”

Tomb-face glared at me. “Shut up, you.”

I looked at him steadily. “Friend, maybe you’ve gotten too accustomed to talking to the lower classes. You use that tone of voice on me again, and I’ll slap a little courtesy into you.”

“When we want suggestions, Pell, we’ll—”