Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

The porter banged down the steel plate that covered the steps and swung the door shut. He said, “Man can kill himself easy that way.”

Ben’s legs were trembling. “I guess you’re right.”

“Hand slip and down you go, right between the platform and the car.”

Ben walked down the aisle of the coach and found a double seat that was vacant. It felt good to sit down. And it felt good to have worked his escape. He wondered whom the two men would have to explain their failure to, and about the penalty for failure.

There was a Sunday-morning tabloid on the seat beside him. He straightened it out. It had an “Extra” box on page one, and the headline on it read: RIVER YIELDS MISSING MODEL. He scanned the first paragraph, and the name Helen MacLane leaped out at him. He felt as though his heart had stopped, and he realized for the first time how very badly he had wanted to see her and talk to her.

The account was brief. It had evidently been set up for page-one coverage at the last possible moment.

It said that the police had recovered the body of a blonde young woman from the Harlem River at 5:45 p.m. on Saturday. It said that the medical examiner had estimated she had been in the water for at least four days. It said that James Delson, of Marchand, Ohio, brother of the dead woman, had made a positive identification at a few minutes after midnight. The item then went on to state that Helen MacLane had been the object of a country-wide search, that she was the only witness to the murder of Denise Young, playgirl model. The medical examiner had stated that death was due to drowning, and there were no indications of violence. The body would be shipped back to Ohio for burial.

Ben put the paper aside. He felt oddly close to tears. He had not realized how much he had depended on his vicarious involvement in Helen Mac-Lane’s problems to take his mind off his own. He had been diverted by her the way a sick child might be by having a story read to it. But now his attention was focused back upon himself, undiluted. Eric Gorman could now return safely to New York. Davey Lemon could find some new angle. Davis could grow more bitter. Willsie could add to his sense of guilt. But what could one Benjamin Morrow do? Perhaps it would be best to go on with his plan to vanish, hole up at the Cassidy place. He ought to think about what he was doing — but it wasn’t a case for thinking. It wasn’t an intellectual problem. It was emotional — his was a block as definite as amnesia...

The train stopped for Manitou and Garrison and Cold Spring and Beacon and Poughkeepsie. He had bought a ticket from the conductor. When he bought it, while they were stopped at Manitou, an increase of caution made him ask for a ticket to Hudson, which was beyond Rhinecliff. He had suddenly felt there was still a certain danger in saying to anyone what his destination was. He sensed that such illogical caution might stand him well in the future.

At Poughkeepsie he looked down at the station platform and tensed suddenly; the thin dark man he had eluded at Peekskill was striding along beside the train. It would not have been too much of a trick, he realized at once, to have got a taxi at Peekskill and to have driven straight through to Poughkeepsie on the off chance that Ben might not have gotten off at any of the stops in between. Perhaps the heavier man had been left off at one of the other towns — Beacon, maybe. Ben sat for a moment wondering why they should continue to follow him, now that the reason seemed to be gone. He moved away from the window and got up and grabbed his suitcase off the rack and walked toward the rear of the train. The next vestibule he came to was empty. The train began to move.

Ben glanced up and down the aisles of the cars ahead and behind him. No one was coming. He pulled the door open, raised the hinged iron plate, went down the steps and dropped lightly off onto the graveled roadbed, running a few steps with the increasing momentum. There was a freight on another track. It was moving slowly in the opposite direction. It blocked his escape in that direction. Then the end of the passenger train passed him, and he crossed the tracks and stepped up onto the platform. He looked around. The thin dark man was not in sight. He had obviously boarded the train.

Ben looked at his timetable. The train would be in Rhinecliff in twenty minutes. Before then somebody would find the open door and close it. But the thin man would find that he was not on the train, so he would ask the conductor if a blond young man had bought a ticket since the train had left Peekskill. And the conductor would say yes, a ticket to Hudson. Then the thin man would decide, since Ben was not on the train, that the Hudson destination was a blind. He would get off at the next stop, which would be Rhinecliff, and either contact the heavy man from there, or backtrack to Poughkeepsie.

The next train along would be the North Shore Limited, at one fifty, stopping in Rhinecliff at two nine. He walked out of the station and paused to get directions straight in his mind and then walked north, through the city. He found a bus stop and took a bus to the north edge of town, on Route Nine. The sun broke through the clouds occasionally now, but the air was still chilly. Freimak had said “above Rhinecliff,” so he wanted to go north of Rhinecliff. He stood on the shoulder facing oncoming traffic, thumb raised, wearing what he hoped was an ingratiating smile. Sunday traffic was fairly thick. He walked slowly backward, gesturing with his thumb.

Finally a black sedan pulled off on the shoulder fifty yards beyond him and honked impatiently. Ben ran to the car. The door swung open for him and he got in. A gray-haired man was driving. There was no one else in the car. There were heavy black suitcases on the back seat.

“Nice of you to stop.”

The man gunned the car. “The company says never give lifts, but a man can go nuts. I’m going to Troy.”

“I’m only going a little way. Just up to Rhinecliff.”

“Sorry you don’t go farther, son. I can’t take you to Rhinecliff.”

“Don’t you stay on Route Nine?”

“Yes, but unless they moved the town, it’s three miles west of Route Nine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure! I know every crack in this road. I’ve driven it twice a month for fourteen years, son. Rhinebeck is sixteen miles north of Poughkeepsie on Route Nine. Sure you’re not mixing them up?”

“I might be, at that.” He knew Freimak had said Rhinecliff but he had also said it was on Route Nine. If Freimak had mixed up the towns it was a piece of luck. The thin little man was probably hanging around Rhinecliff.

“Will you be able to tell when you see the town?” the man asked.

“I’ve never been there. But I guess you better let me out in Rhinebeck.”

“Visiting friends?”

“A girl I know.”

“Been in the service long?”

“Ever since I — how did you figure that out?”

The man grinned and shrugged. “Kind of a hobby with me, guessing about people. New clothes, new shoes, new suitcase. Right age. Healthy. Sort of an outdoor look. A lieutenant, maybe? Or an ensign?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Korea?”

“Eleven months of it. Eighty-one sorties.”

“Pilot, eh? Jet stuff, I suppose. Sorties. Thought you called those missions.”

“Some do. I guess we got it from the Aussie pilots.”

“Damn it, Rhinebeck coming up, and you could have kept me from being bored all the way to Troy. Center of town?”

“That’ll be fine. I’m certainly grateful to you.”

“Good luck to you, Lieutenant.”

Ben got out and waved good-by and stepped onto the sidewalk. It was a few minutes after noon. There was a drugstore diagonally across the street. He had a sandwich and milk at the counter. Now the sun was out for good, cutting what was left of the haze. There was a slim directory chained to the telephone booth. There were two Cassidys listed for Rhinebeck. One listed a street and number. The other was John J., with a rural route number. He wondered whom he could ask. He walked down to what appeared to be the main intersection in the town.