James Cain: Double Indemnity

The train was on a siding, out back of the station. I made a quick count of the cars. "Holy smoke, it's the third one." It was the one that both conductors were standing in front of, and not only them, but the porter, and the redcap, waiting for his tip. Unless we did something quick, it would be four people that had a good look at me before I went in the car, and it might hang us. She ran on ahead. I saw her tip the redcap, and he went off, all bows. He didn't pass near me. He headed for the far end of the station, where the parking lot was. Then the porter saw me, and started for me. She took him by the arm. "He doesn't like to be helped."

The porter didn't get it. The Pullman conductor did.

"Hey!"

The porter stopped. Then he got it. They all turned their backs and started to talk. I stumped up the car steps. I got to the top. That was her cue. She was still down on the ground, with the conductors. "Dear."

I stopped and half turned. "Come back to the observation platform. I'll say good-bye to you there, and then I won't have to worry about getting off the train. You still have a few minutes. Maybe we can talk."

"Fine."

I started back, through the car. She started back, on the ground, outside.

All three cars were full of people getting ready to go to bed, with most of the berths made up and bags all out in the aisle. The porters weren't there. They were at their boxes, outside. I kept my eyes down, clinched the cigar in my teeth, and kept my face screwed up. Nobody really saw me, and yet everybody saw me, because the minute they saw those crutches they began snatching bags out of the way and making room. I just nodded and mumbled "thanks."

When I saw her face I knew something was wrong. Outside on the observation platform, I saw what it was. A man was there, tucked back in a corner in the dark, having a smoke. I sat down on the opposite side. She reached her hand over. I took it. She kept looking at me for a cue. I kept making my lips say, "Parking…parking…parking." After a second or two she got it.

"Dear."

"Yes?"

"You're not mad at me any more? For where I parked?"

"Forget it."

"I thought I was headed for the station parking lot, honestly.

But I get all mixed up in this part of town. I hadn't any idea I was going to make you walk so far."

"I told you, forget it."

"I'm terribly sorry."

"Kiss me."

I looked at my watch, held it up to her. It was still seven minutes before the train would leave. She needed a six-minute start for what she had to do. "Listen, Phyllis, there's no use of you waiting around here. Why don't you blow?"

"Well-you don't mind?"

"Not a bit. No sense dragging it out."

"Good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

"Have a good time. Three cheers for Leland Stanford."

"I'll do my best."

"Kiss me again."

"Good-bye."

For what I had to do, I had to get rid of this guy, and get rid of him quick. I hadn't expected anybody out there. There seldom is when a train pulls out. I sat there, trying to think of something. I thought he might leave when he finished his cigarette, but he didn't. He threw it over the side and began to talk.

"Women are funny."

"Funny and then some."

"I couldn't help hearing that little conversation you had with your wife just now. About where she parked, I mean. Reminds me of an experience I had with my wife, coming home from San Diego."

He told the experience he had with his wife. I looked him over. I couldn't see his face. I figured he couldn't see mine. He stopped talking. I had to say something.

"Yeah, women are funny all right. Specially when you get them behind the wheel of a car."

"They're all of that."

The train began to roll. It crawled through the outskirts of Los Angeles, and he kept on talking. Then an idea came to me. I remembered I was supposed to be a cripple, and began feeling through my pockets.

"You lose something?"

"My ticket. I can't find it."

"Say, I wonder if I've got my ticket. Yeah, here it is."

"You know what I bet she did? Put that ticket in my briefcase, right where I told her not to. She was to put it here in the pocket of this suit, and now-"

"Oh, it'll turn up."

"Don't that beat all? Here I've got to go and hobble all through those cars, just because-"

"Don't be silly. Stay where you are."

"No, I couldn't let you-"

"Be a pleasure old man. Stay right where you are and I'll get it for you. What's your space?"

"Would you? Section 8, Car C."

"I'll be right back with it."

We were picking up speed a little now. My mark was a dairy sign, about a quarter of a mile from the track. We came in sight of it and I lit my cigar. I put my crutches under one arm, threw my leg over the rail, and let myself down. One of the crutches hit the ties and spun me so I almost fell. I hung on. When we came square abreast of the sign I dropped off.

There's nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night. The train shot ahead, and I crouched there, waiting for the tingle to leave my feet. I had dropped off the left side of the train, into the footpath between the tracks, so there wouldn't be any chance I could be seen from the highway. It was about two hundred feet away. I stayed there, on my hands and knees, straining to see something on the other side of the tracks. There was a dirt road there, that gave entry to a couple of small factories, further back. All around it were vacant lots, and it wasn't lit. She ought to be there by now. She had a seven-minute start, the train took six minutes to that point, and it was an eleven-minute drive from the station to this dirt road. I had checked it twenty times. I held still and stared, trying to spot the car. I couldn't see it.

I don't know how long I crouched there. It came to me that maybe she had bumped somebody's fender, or been stopped by a cop, or something. I seemed to turn to water. Then I heard something. I heard a panting. Then with it I heard footsteps. They would go fast for a second or two, and then stop. It was like being in a nightmare, with something queer coming after me, and I didn't know what it was, but it was horrible. Then I saw it. It was her. That man must have weighed 200 pounds, but she had him on her back, holding him by the handle, and staggering along with him, over the tracks. His head was hanging down beside her head. They looked like something in a horror picture.

I ran over and grabbed his legs, to take some of the weight off her. We ran him a few steps. She started to throw him down. "Not that track! The other one!"

We got him over to the track the train went out on, and dropped him. I cut the harness off and slipped it in my pocket. I put the lighted cigar within a foot or two of him. I threw one crutch over him and the other beside the track.

"Where's the car?"

"There. Couldn't you see it?"

I looked, and there it was, right where it was supposed to be, on the dirt road.

"We're done. Let's go."

We ran over and climbed in and she started the motor, threw in the gear. "Oh my-his hat!"

I took that hat and sailed it out the window, on the tracks. "It's O.K., a hat can roll,- get going!"

She started up. We passed the factories. We came to a street.

On Sunset she went through a light. "Watch that stuff, can't you, Phyllis? If you're stopped now, with me in the car, we're sunk."

"Can I drive with that thing going on?"

She meant the car radio. I had turned it on. It was to be part of my alibi, for the time I was out of the house, that I knocked off work for a while and listened to the radio. I had to know what was coming in that night. I had to know more than I could find out by reading the programs in the papers. "I've got to have it, you know that-"