Steve Martini - Undue Influence

I go around to the other side and crawl through the open triangle created by two of the locomotive’s immense drive wheels.

The space is smaller than I remember from childhood, and for an instant sensations of claustrophobia wash over me, thirty tons of steel over my head. My body is halfway into the opening under the wheels. Lying on my back, overhead I can see one of the mammoth drive axles, steel, and the girth of a good-sized tree trunk. I pull myself underneath and do some contortions. I boost myself on top of the axle. I am now lying on top of this like a cat lounging on a branch, with my head toward the wheels on the other side.

I shimmy along the axle to get closer. There are a few slots cut in the massive drive wheels, near where the steam-driven connecting rods fasten to the outside of the wheel. These give me a limited field of vision, back toward the area where carpet turns to hardwood, the end of my trail, the splotches of blood on the floor. I can feel the pulse throbbing in my temple as I check the sleeve of my coat for dripping blood.

As I move under the massive canopy of the engine, suddenly there is a flicker of red light through the slots in the wheel, narrow and intense. I freeze. It is the thing about laser light — concentrated, it does not diffuse over distance. I cannot tell if he is fifty feet away or three. I lie with my head pressed against the inside of the giant steel wheel.

Seconds pass, sweat dripping from my face. I hear footsteps. I look — he is thirty feet away. All I can see are his feet and the bottom of his pant legs, and one other thing — a beam of light. Simmons has some kind of a flashlight and is checking the undercarriage of one of the cars. The man comes prepared. In this instant I know that if I stay here, if the police do not come in time, I am dead.

I watch as his feet disappear up the steps to the post office car. He is checking the inside. This car is maybe sixty feet long. Then he will reach the other end, exit, and check the locomotive next to it, the only piece of rolling stock between us.

There are only a few windows in the postal car looking out in this direction, so I take my chance.

I slide off the axle and drop to the concrete between the wheels. I struggle through the narrow opening on my stomach and emerge from under the engine on the side away from him. There are now two engines between me and the postal car. I move to my right, past the engine with its concrete bay. It is not until I reach the last locomotive, a mammoth diesel, that I realize that this thing has blocked my view of a stairway leading to an overhead gallery, a kind of mezzanine that hangs above the exhibit hall. Quickly, in stocking feet, I move to it, around the corner and up the concrete stairs — two flights. I emerge on an upper level of the museum, bordered by a clear acrylic railing that is transparent, in full view of the floor below.

For the first forty feet I am able to steer clear of this, until I come to a bridge that passes between the turntable outside and the engines assembled below in the roundhouse. The bridge is only a few feet wide and I must crawl on my stomach to avoid being exposed by the safety-glass railing.

I can hear his footsteps moving around the engines on the level below, occasionally flickers of light, alternating red and white, laser and flashlight. I stop, still as death, for an instant, anticipating an explosion of plate glass should he see me.

It is then that I see it, a sign over the door at the far end of the gallery, red letters against white light: EXIT.

There is another way out, a set of stairs at the far end, a way down to the lobby that Simmons cannot see, a clear path to the front door and the restaurant beyond.

I crawl on my knees, keeping away from the railing, until I can stand. I have now worked my way back to the wall of windows. Somewhere directly beneath me is ‘The Empire’ and its mirrored platform. It is then I hear them, not leather this time, but the squeak of sneakers on wood, like two chipmunks in a pissing contest. My first thought is the police TAC squad, part of a SWAT unit.

Gingerly, so as not get my head blown off, I crawl to the railing and peer through. I cannot see Simmons. Then, below in the shadows, emerging into the moonlight cast from the mirror, I see the moving form. Not some cop in black with a twenty-shot-magazine Heckler amp; Koch, but Danny Vega, in all of his innocence, whispering my name.

‘Uncle Paul…’

I could spit, but I could not hit him. He is hugging the walls of an exhibit, trying to stay in the shadows, and giving himself away with his mouth.

‘Uncle Paul…Are you in here?’ Whispers that can be heard fifty feet away.

Then it hits me. The kid has followed my trail of blood from outside on the street into this place. With each step he moves closer to Simmons, somewhere in the darkness out by the giant engines. Then I wonder if he has called the cops. With Danny you can never be sure.

Some way to catch his attention…

‘Uncle Paul…’

For a moment I consider throwing one of my shoes at him, but the clatter would surely give him away. I fumble in my pocket for some change and come up with a few pennies, a nickel, and a quarter.

I look over at Danny. In a moment he will leave hardwood for concrete. From there it is only a few steps more until he mingles with engines in the roundhouse and stumbles across the fiery red eye of death.

I aim one of the coins, a penny, and throw it. I watch as it falls, deflected by a small potted shrub. It lands silently on the carpet near one of the exhibits.

Danny is turning the corner, coming up on the end of the postal car.

Across the way is a mammoth engine, something called a cab-forward, a football field in length, and thirty feet off the ground its curving black metal roof. I throw another coin over the railing, this one at the roof of the locomotive. It bounces off the metal cab, the sound of copper on steel plate, and echoes through the building. I hold my breath.

Danny stops dead in his tracks, looks back toward the engine and up. But when he turns it is the wrong way, with his back to me. I have no choice, I stand in full view, silent but waving frantically with both arms, an island of motion in the sea of stillness around me.

Suddenly an explosion of glass, pebbles of safety glass sting my hand below the railing, dust in my eyes. I step back to clear them, oblivious to the fact that I am now a stationary target. Another bullet snaps by my head and a wall of glass explodes behind me, open to the outside night sky. The Klaxon of a burglar alarm. I hit the floor.

Danny is looking up. He has seen all of this. He lurches forward as if he is going to speak. I press a single finger to my lips, the universal sign for silence, and motion with the other hand for him to back out, to retrace his steps to the entrance, and out.

Danny catches it, looks toward the roundhouse, and suddenly realizes that danger lies in that direction.

He takes two steps, and instantly from one of the displays, pistol in hand, Simmons grabs Danny from behind. The boy struggles, but Simmons has a death grip on his throat, pistol to his temple.

‘Move,’ he says, ‘and you’re dead.’ His voice is clearly audible. He sees me at the edge of the platform, where I am frozen in place. With the laser he could take his chances, a shot from there. But he could not be sure to kill me. If I fell back onto the platform, he might not get another clear shot. He would have to trek up the stairs, and by then, if I was wounded, I might crawl away.

He surveys his options, the Klaxon ringing in his ears. He knows he has seconds, perhaps a couple of minutes, no more.

‘Come down,’ he says. ‘Now. Or I’ll kill the boy.’

‘Don’t,’ says Danny. ‘He’s gonna kill me anyway.’ Frightened and alone, the kid has the clarity of mind to comprehend his situation.