by Susan Dunlap
“I can get into Southern Pacific’s database, but it’ll take time and luck. It’d be a lot quicker if I had a password.”
“Harry’s you mean?”
“Yeah.”
Ellen took up her post looking over his shoulder at the screen. “Try—” she sounded like she could barely get the word out—“Ellen.”
Tears gushed down Liza’s cheeks before she could catch herself. She scooped up Felton, walked to the back window and stood looking out at the underbrush and the trees, and the rain. Felton, awake now, squeaked. “I need to take him out,” she announced, knowing neither of them was listening.
On the back stoop she watched Felton sniffing seriously and rooting fervently. The rain walled her in and the cool damp brought out the fresh scent of the pines. An earthy smell wafted up from where Felton was rooting. Inside the house she heard the whistle of the Household Local Line.
The whistle blew again. She almost laughed. It wasn’t inside at all, but coming from some place beyond the trees. A real train.
“Liza, he’s got it. Come on.”
She gathered up Felton and checked the monitor screen. Before she could decipher the boxes, Ellen said, “Here’s Jay’s shipment, one container car. Here’s the destination: Richland, Washington.”
“Okay,” Wes said. “This triangle—Richland—Pasco—Kennewick—is pretty close over the Washington line.”
“Kennewick, isn’t that where Gwen was going?”
“Look here, mes femmes. The train’s due in Portland this afternoon at three seventeen.”
“Whew!” Liza nearly dropped Felton. “Three seventeen! It’s almost noon now. That’s too soon. Way too soon.” She plunked Felton on the floor. “Wes, you’re into the website, can’t you slow the train, put a cow on the track in Eugene or a blizzard this side of Portland?”
“Sorry. I can read this report. I can’t run the train.”
“Wes…Ellen, do you see what that means? We’ve got less than three hours to come up with a plan and get ourselves to Portland. It can’t—”
Ellen put a hand on her shoulder. “And the alternative is?”
“We run…” She chucked the rest of that option before it left her mouth. “Right, run and leave the crazy Chevette pusher to blow up the nuclear dump or do whatever it is he’s getting six million dollars of weapons for.”
“And Liza, that means we let him add Harry’s murder like a notch on his cane. We let Bentec go free. Maybe we’d even be letting him kill Gwen. And we never know who’s still after us.”
Liza took a breath. This was what she was good at: changing gears, thinking on her feet. “O…kay. How do we get the money and keep him from the weapons?”
“Here! Look!” Ellen pointed to the screen. We’ve got a phone number for the recipient.”
“Really? That’s amazing. Would he take the chance of someone calling a number and hearing, ‘Hello, Montana Militia. Death to liberals, non-whites and uppity women. Have a nice day.’ ”
“Maybe it’s not the Montana Militia, Liza. Let’s see.” Before Liza could protest, Ellen was dialing.
You’ve reached the law offices of Devon Malloy. Please leave your name and number and a good time to reach you.
Ellen hung up. The room was so silent the buzz of the computer sounded like a speeding freight.
It was Wes who said, “Makes it real, huh?”
Ellen nodded slowly. “Well, Hon, at least we’ll be dealing with a lawyer, not a flock of guys who haven’t been out of the woods since Vietnam.”
Odd, Liza thought, how matter-of-factly the issue was solved. We’re dealing. “Is there anywhere right before Richland where the train stops long enough for him to get on?”
Ellen nodded again, her mouth half open as if in thought. “Harry worked this stretch of track a lot when he was in Portland. There’s a long grade about five miles west of Richland that Harry always worried about. The train slows to a crawl there. If a man’s waiting, he can hop on. Harry worried about that.”
Liza could see the spot. She’d seen it through the rain-slick windshield of Jay’s rental car, cushioned by the smell of deli ham sandwiches. The memory of that picnic of Jay’s shifted and she saw him dying on the loft floor. “The Richland grade?”
“Right.”
Liza took a breath. She could feel the switch happening in her body, as if a gale had been growing into her chest, and suddenly the wind died, and now it was the instant before she took the first giant step ahead. “Okay, call Malloy back.”
“Now?”
The odd unreality vanished. Ellen was panicked, she could tell that, but Liza felt totally alive. “Here, I’ll do it.”
“No, Liza, let a man speak with the boys in camouflage.”
“I’m not catering to those sexists, Ellen.”
“They’re not going to take orders from a woman, believe me. That’s why they’re call supremacists.”
“They will if they want their guns.”
“Hey, you two, enough. Liza, do you want to raise their consciousness or take their money?”
Liza stalked to the far side of the room and back. “Okay,” she forced out. “Go ahead, Wes, call.”
Wes punched in the phone number and held the receiver an inch from his ear while it rang. The ringing stopped and the silence seemed like styrofoam filling the space between them. The phone rang again, stopped and rang a third time before someone picked it up.
Wes said, “I want to think you’re bright enough to know who your supplier is by now. If not check yesterday’s L.A. Times. Your shipment is waiting. Be at the top of the grade five miles west of Richland tonight at ten forty-eight. The spot where the train slows almost to a stop. There’s one passenger car. Get on it. Come alone with the money. Do this and the shipment is yours. We’re watching the tracks.” Wes hung up.
The three of them stood as if frozen. It was as if all of life has been frozen around them.
The phone rang. Liza gasped, and laughed to cover it.
The phone rang a second time. Wes reached for it. Hand over the receiver he eyed each woman as if for an okay, and picked it up just as the third ring began. He held it out for them to hear.
You’re going to feel real silly if this is your mother, Liza was dying to say.
The voice on the phone said, “I am bright enough to know who you are. I also know the train arrives at ten forty-eight. My people will be watching the tracks, too. If you want the money, have Liza Silvestri on that train, alone. Is that clear?”
Wes held the phone away from him as if it were a hot iron. She was afraid he’d drop it. Ellen was slowly shaking her head No. The picture that filled Liza’s mind was the man shoving the Chevette into the ditch.
Why does—Ellen began to mouth.
Liza grabbed the phone. “This is Liza. You remember me. I’m not a giant. Bring the money in two suitcases so I can handle them. See ya later,” she added with a flourish, and hung up.
Ellen clutched her arm. “Are you crazy? You can’t go alone.”
It was a moment before Liza could speak. “And the alternative is? You figure he’s going to shoot me, right? Getting shot has always been one of the alternatives. Only the shooter has changed.” She poured coffee and took a swallow before she could go on. She was trying to sound matter-of-fact and not succeeding any too well. “Like you said, Wes, this is bigger than us. We have to do everything we can to keep Malloy from getting these weapons. So our best shot—no pun intended—is if only one of us is on that train, right?”
She made a point of taking another swallow of coffee as she waited for them to object. When Ellen finally said, “We’ll talk about it on the way to Portland,” her voice sounded hollow, and that plan sounded pretty flimsy—because it was flimsy.
“Hey, we’ll figure this out. Wes, you download the railroad map and we’ll have the whole ride to Portland to decide which siding to slip our container onto. Ellen, I’ll bet you know twenty times more about how that’s done than you think
. Once you start remembering all the things Harry talked about when you were half tuning him out, it’ll all be there.” Even to her own ears she sounded perky. Ellen and Wes’s expressions labeled her a Pollyanna. “Hey, take some responsibility, huh! You deal with getting the guns off the train before the terrorists get on, then I’ll only have to worry about snatching the money and saving my ass.”
One glance at Ellen and Wes told Liza her pep talk was a disaster. And they hadn’t yet given a thought to what would happen after they got the money, assuming there was an after. “What about the bicycles? And—and Felton?”
Wes nodded, all business. “I’ll take the bikes to the freeway, leave them in the grass on the southbound side. I’ve got a friend with kids near there. They’ll love Felton. I can let him wander onto their place. He’ll be in hog heaven.”
“No…pig…jokes.” Liza swallowed. Felton was sniffing at a recycle bin. Automatically she started toward him.
“Three kids, Liza. Small girls with rabbits and hamsters.”
She nodded and quickly turned so Felton was no longer in her line of vision. “Okay, so back to the train, the first question is how I’m going to get on.”
Now Wes reacted. “There’s got to be a better way than just you—”
Ellen held up a palm. “No! Not now! We discuss this in the car, too. Who gets on and more to the point how we get away when we get off. Now we’ve got to clear our stuff out of here, because, Wes, honey, we can’t come back. You can’t come back.”
Wes looked down at his train with the empty cup and biscuit plate on the flatcar. He pushed a button and the little train’s whistle blew as the engine headed back toward the kitchen.
Liza walked across the living room. The rain had let up and she could hear Felton’s trotters tapping on the linoleum, the little train chugging, and a car stopping.
A car? Liza hurried to the window, shifted the blinds and peered out.
A police car! The red lights on the roof bar were pulsing on and off. A man was getting out of the driver’s side.
It was so reasonable that it should end like this and yet the shock was overwhelming. All their plans…
For an instant she couldn’t move. She was a pillar of ice. Then what she had to do was clear. She turned to Wes and Ellen. “Pull the plug on the computer and get out of here.”
“What?”
“Bentec’s outside.”
“How could he—”
“He’s got a patrol car. He’s walking up the path.”
“Liza, you can—”
Liza shouldered her purse, opened the door. As she stepped out she forced a smile and said, “Frank, I’ve been waiting for you.” She shut the door behind her.
Fifty-Three
ELLEN COULDN’T MOVE. WES took her hands but she felt only pressure. How could it end like this? She was so stunned she didn’t walk to the windows till she was jolted by the rasp of the car pulling off. Then guilt washed over her and the words seemed to drip slowly from her mouth. “I just let him take her away.”
“There was nothing you could do. Nothing either of us could.”
She slammed her fists into his shoulders. “There can’t be nothing. We can’t just let a murderer drag her off and shoot her on the train. We have to do something. Oh, God, poor Liza.” She trudged to the sofa and flopped down. He moved right next to her, their thighs touching. “Liza didn’t think I saw her looking at us, Wes. We were sitting here, like this. She glanced over and her whole face collapsed. It wasn’t jealousy, as much as shock, like we were a mirror on the emptiness of her life. She—”
He squeezed her hands. “Ellen, don’t.”
She inhaled and sat up straighter. “I’m not going to ‘dissolve in tears.’ ”
“El, Liza’s given me the biggest gift in my life. She knew what we have and she’s given us the chance to keep it.”
Ellen swallowed hard, but it was a moment before she could make herself agree out loud.
“The least we can do for her is make sure when the cops come back—cops are like ants, if one finds you, you can count on there being a line of them in half an hour—there will be nothing to incriminate her. I need to get the railroad’s web page off the computer screen.”
Ellen nodded but didn’t move. “We…can’t…just…”
In a minute he was back. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Ellen nodded again, but still made no move to get up. “I’m not abandoning Liza. We have to get to the train.”
“I hate to say it, Ellen, but what makes you think she’ll live long enough to be on it?”
Ellen pushed back hard into the sofa. Her teeth ran hard over her lower lip. It was a moment before she could translate the jumble in her mind into words. “I could say because she’ll be smart enough to not give Bentec the train’s time of arrival in Portland till she gets there. I could tell you when she gets to the station she’ll come up with a reason Bentec can’t do without her. She’ll make sure she’s on the train when it pulls into Richland grade, because Bentec’s not going to stop those weapons going to Hanford. He’ll either take his money and run, or he’ll be killed. The only one who’s going to stop those guns going to the nuclear power site is Liza. She’ll make sure she lives long enough to do that. I saw that in her face. Two days ago she wouldn’t have had it in her. She does now.” Ellen stood up. “That’s my logic. But the real answer is, I know she’ll be on the train because she’s Liza.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Ellen was halfway across the room toward the bedroom. “The real issue, Wes, is not how Liza gets on the train, it’s how we get her off.”
He followed to the bedroom door. “What are you doing in there?”
“Packing. We’ve got to get going, and you know, Wes, we can’t come back here.” Ellen poked through his closet. The black dress she’d worn for two days was no prize when she hiked it up under her windbreaker as she biked. She took a step toward the fireplace, thinking of the satisfaction of watching it burn. But she had overstated things with Wes. Maybe he could come back here. If so she didn’t want to leave any incriminating evidence to prove he’d harbored fugitives. She stuffed it in a duffle.
She pulled on sweat pants, a long underwear shirt like her grandfather wore, and a sweater worthy of the Arctic. When she checked the mirror the image startled her. With her hair unstyled and slicked behind her ears, no make-up or hope of it, and these thick baggy clothes she looked like a stranger from—No, not a stranger, what her face reminded her of was a picture taken of her at the finish line of the last race she won. Except men she was exultant; now she looked terrified.
She plucked tissue after tissue out of the box, stuffed them in the pants pocket and headed for the kitchen. “Look, we know the transfer point is the Richland grade, at ten forty-eight tonight. We know Malloy will get on the train no later than that. And if he gets on and sees Bentec with Liza—Oh shit. He’ll kill her.”
Wes tossed another thick sweater at her for the duffle. “No he won’t.”
“Why not? Are you just trying to make me feel—”
“No, listen. Malloy, he needs something. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have bothered to call back here. He made such a big point of wanting her on the train, why? If he’s off to blow up Hanford he’s not insisting on having her there because he wants a pretty lady along for the ride. He thinks she’s got something he needs. He’s not going to kill her till he gets it.”
Ellen stuffed a blanket into the duffle. She grabbed a handful of underwear, a couple balls of socks from his drawer and tossed them in. “If you have an anorak, stick that in. And a couple of wool hats. And gloves.” She handed the bag to him and headed for the kitchen. “Okay, so we go to Portland and hope that we can parallel the train and keep it in sight till it stops.”
“That’s a pretty thin plan.”
She’d opened cabinets and was stashing raisins, nuts and bread in a bag. Now she stopped and leaned back against the counter. “I’m open
to better.”
“I wish I had a great plan, even a good one. You know, Ellen, as little time as I’ve been with Liza I could tell she’s something special. Even besides being your best friend.” He turned and headed to the bathroom.
Ellen filled two bottles with water. Then the solution struck her. “Wes,” she shouted through the closed door. “The schedule!”
As he emerged, his face was pulled into a quizzical grin.
“Jeez! All the time I spent with Harry and I didn’t even think of the schedule! Here’s the plan. We drive to the station in Portland and get the schedule of where that freight is going to stop before Richland grade. It’s not like a regular passenger train, but still the station agent will have its scheduled stops. Then we make sure we’re at each stop first. If no one gets on, we go to the next place.”
“And then?”
“Do you have a gun?”
“A rifle.”
“How good a shot are you?”
“Good enough.” Now he grinned unequivocally. “Shooting tin cans was something I could do during my convalescence. I kept neighbors for five miles in each direction busy emptying beer cans for me. There’s not a six pack in Oregon that doesn’t fear me.”
Ellen put the bag by the door. For the first time since Liza left she felt some hope. “You’ll have to be dead on with both barrels. We’ll have to have a lifetime’s worth of luck, but, you know, we can do it. Really, I think we can.”
He nodded, then hugged her so hard she let out a squeal, kissed her hard, and grinned. “Damn right we can.”
Recovering her breath, she said, “Do you have a heavy box we can put this stuff in in the back of the truck?”
“The truck?”
“Your truck, Wes. Where is it?”
“Out front. The old yellow Chevy.”
“There was no truck in front last night. Are you sure—”
“Oh, shit. Goddamn fucking shit!” He sank back against the counter.
“What?”
“The truck. It’s in the shop.”
Fifty-Four
