Fast Friends

by Susan Dunlap

  Her head was jolting back and forth; she was terrified her neck would snap. She couldn’t think. “The train,” she blurted out. He let go and her head banged hard against the seat back.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He grabbed again, but didn’t shake. “When, bitch?”

  She was tempted to say: in Idaho. “In Richland.”

  He nodded. “This Malloy, why’s he so hot to have you in on this deal?”

  His nod was so perfunctory she realized he knew the train’s destination. He knew about Richland, so now he assumed she was telling him the truth. Okay, one for her. What exactly had she told him about Malloy? Malloy had told her to come alone but she hadn’t told Bentec about the alone part. “Malloy wants me as a guarantee. Jay and I met him at a gun show in Idaho. Now that Jay’s dead I’m the only one who can assure him that the deal’s still going through, that he’s not handing six million dollars to some guy who hopped a freight.”

  “How many men does Malloy have, Liza?”

  “What do you think, that Jay discussed every detail of every client’s business? I have no idea.”

  He jerked toward her then restrained himself. She knew the danger, but taking a punch or a cut was better than giving him time to concoct a plan that didn’t require her. “I’d say this, Frank, you don’t buy a railroad container crammed full of weapons for five people. Six million dollars is a lot of money to these guys up in the woods; they’ll have enough of an army to make this purchase pay off.”

  Bentec leaned back against the seat, too tense to slump. The news took him by surprise. Obviously, he hadn’t concerned himself with where the weapons would end up. He was used to having maneuvers mapped out by lieutenants or captains. But now he was on his own and he was worried—with good reason.

  Still, the logic of her own conclusion horrified her. How many soldiers would Malloy have? How was she possibly going to secure the container of guns from an army?

  She stared at the window. The dark beyond created a mirror reflecting the railroad car back on itself as if this was a capsule rattling through eternity. The clackety-clackety shifted her into almost a daze, a nightmare of uncontrolled visitations pulling her back into the moment of Jay’s death, thrusting her forward to Ellen’s funeral; shriekings that might have been train brakes or Felton’s plaintive squeals. She shook her head to wake herself and it felt like a bottle of loose screws and bolts. She was almost relieved when Bentec demanded, “The Richland grade? What kind of area is that?”

  “Didn’t you even check a map? Were you expecting limo service?”

  “I was expecting your husband to handle this.”

  “Too bad, Frank. That’s the price you paid when you had him killed.”

  He reached toward her as if to strike, but seemed to lose interest mid-way. Not a good sign. He was thinking too much. “The Richland grade?” he insisted.

  She tried to remember the spot from the day of the picnic-in-the-car. She could see Jay staring through the rain-blurred windshield. She could almost smell the ham sandwiches, feel the squishy roll bottom wet with mayonnaise and tomato. Her shoulders tightened as they did that day the third time she asked if he wanted to stop for coffee here in the state of serious coffee drinkers, and realized he wasn’t listening but staring into apparent nothingness. Staring at the tracks, of course, but that didn’t occur to her then. She remembered the scene inside the rental car so well she could paint it in oils. She’d been so absorbed in it she noticed neither the tracks nor a thing about the area around them.

  But clearly Bentec knew less than she did. She said, “It’s a suburban area.”

  “You mean houses?”

  “Houses on one side. The other side of the tracks have factories, light industry. And places like maintenance garages…” She was in her element now, creating out of whole cloth, taking each of his questions as a challenge, careful not to get too fanciful, careful to include options and questions in each answer, creating a fictional town with many roads out and choices on them all. He paused after answers, took time planning his route or concocting a backup plan.

  For her there was nothing to plan. Thoughts were useless; she stared into the dark, acutely aware of every change in the woods, every sound from the train, the roads they passed, Bentec’s breathing, the chill of the air on her chilled skin, of the smell of the dust, of the feel of the dust in her throat. Time passed without notice. She was oddly relaxed and yet ready to jump out of her skin.

  After a while—hours—Bentec grabbed her arm. “The train’s slowing. Is this it?”

  “Trains slow; otherwise they’d be called airplanes.”

  “Hey, don’t smart-mouth me.”

  The train jerked forward, tapping them back against the seat as it picked up speed.

  “You know,” he said sounding more reasonable than at any moment since he grabbed her outside Wes’s house, “if Jay hadn’t stonewalled me none of this would be happening. If he’d just played it straight.”

  He was making an offer. A couple of complaints about Jay and she could be Bentec’s ally. If Jay had played it straight with her, well lots would be different. He’d lied about their whole life. She owed him no loyalty. This offer was the reward for her hours of fictional town building.

  Bentec was waiting, offering her ample time to cross over. So why couldn’t she take it and give herself a little edge? In her mind she saw not the house in Malibu but the loft the moment Jay recognized the Point Pleasant Beach room. She could hear him calling out, “Ohmigod, Liza! A Philco, Liza, how did you find that? Oh my God!” Had he been faking it then? She’d never know. It didn’t matter. What she would not betray to Bentec was not Jay at all but her own self, the woman who’d created that room, and who had loved Jay Silvestri whether he deserved it or not.

  She looked Bentec in the eye. “If he’d played it straight? Like you, you mean?”

  He slammed her hard into the window. Pain blinded her. Blood filled her mouth. She had to stop taunting him. She couldn’t; not anymore. She was a short-timer now.

  She swallowed the blood and squinted till her eyes focused. Bentec glanced at her in disgust, got up, carried her purse half a car away to the seat second from the front, then turned to survey the aisle. He paced to the back, and forward again, never taking his eyes off her. After a while he sat back in his same seat. There was a good six inches between them but she felt the heat off his body. She was dying to get up and pace, too, but she didn’t bother to ask. She added the latest bit of data revealed by his moving her purse, with his gun. He was comfortable with that because he had another weapon on him. Of course. She leaned back listening to the clackety-clackety and watched time pass.

  Bentec flew out of the seat. “It’s stopping!”

  Outside her window were black woods. The road was probably on the other side. She looked across the aisle, but the windows only mirrored back the railroad car.

  Brakes creaked. Scraping wheels flung sparks into the night.

  “Malloy wants you; he’ll get you. Get over by the window where he can see you.” Bentec yanked her up and shoved her across the aisle.

  He raced forward and positioned himself by the front end door.

  Brakes ground, metal clanged, the car swayed and jolted as the train slowed to a stop.

  “Perfect. The perfect victim,” Devon Malloy said, admiring the blonde woman in the train window. He allowed himself a smile.

  Sixty

  ELLEN SQUINTED THROUGH THE windshield, but in her mind she could still see Wes standing at the back door, arm blocking her way back in, rain running down his face unabated. “Get the bike and go, El. The cops’ll be here any minute. They may have dogs. Go on!” His body had been stiff, his hand quivering against the door frame, as if it alone was keeping him from grabbing her and not letting go. She could have—should have—leaned forward and pulled him close. She’d have felt him against her one more time, kissed him one more time.

  Instead, she
had said, “Wes, if I can’t come back here—”

  “Meet me.”

  “Where.”

  “As far away as we can get. Maine.”

  “Where in Maine?”

  “Brooksville, a cabin by the sea. Ask for Foucault. Now move. Go.” He’d kissed her again.

  She’d squeezed his hand and run for the shed, grabbed her bike and, as if making up for her restraint with him, headed not for the woods and streams, but for the road. She’d have sworn her legs were too stiff to ever bike again, her butt too sore to come near the slicing little bike seat. She’d ridden the three miles to the repair shop, through the barrage of rain, with the siren squealing behind her. Her legs had gone numb and she’d pedaled from will alone, concentrating on stroke after stroke. She hadn’t looked out for cops or questioned the siren. She’d had no thoughts but: ride.

  At the repair shop, she’d snatched the old yellow Chevy pick-up with its beat-up shell, shoved the pile of newspapers to the floor, glanced in the glove compartment for a map and found only a flashlight and a cigarette lighter. She lit out east, warmed by the memory of this morning with Wes—making love frantically, and then so tenderly it almost made her cry for joy. It had been magic. A gift from Liza. She wanted to caress every second of that time, recall each touch of his lips, each luscious moan, to make plans for their long dark nights at the Maine coast.

  But there was no time. It was already too late to check the railroad station in Portland. The hour it had taken riding the bike, starting the truck, and finding a through road had ruined that plan. Now it was a question of how long till the police connected Wes’s truck to her. The ancient yellow Chevy would be a cinch to spot.

  With Wes beside her, saving Liza had seemed possible. Now there was only her. How was she going to divert a policeman while at the same time heading off a militia? Liza would count on inspiration. Ellen needed a plan.

  She turned on the radio and listened inattentively till she heard: “Los Angeles sex-loft chase ends in inferno.” Inferno! The announcer’s description of the chase, the street, the burning house blended and words became just sounds pounding against her head, until he paused and added, “In a bizarre twist, thrown out of the inferno, police found the tenant’s artificial leg, almost contorted beyond recognition by the extreme heat. And in Washington State the issue—”

  She snapped off the radio, but it was too late to block the picture of Wes dying, his flesh burning so hot that his leg exploded off—“No!” Her scream filled the cab. The steering wheel slipped out of her hands; the truck sidled onto the bank and she sat in the cab on the empty road and screamed and screamed till her throat went dry. Then she just shook.

  Eventually it was the cold that pierced her and she started the engine. She drove on rotely, putting no names to the waves of sensation that passed through her body. This was how people went insane, she thought.

  She just drove, east till an intersection, then north, then east again, not looking at signs, not stopping. The gas gauge was broken. After an hour the engine coughed and she bought fuel and drove on.

  She couldn’t bear to think of Wes; instead, she pictured the pig. Silly little animal. She squeezed her eyes hard against tears and felt foolish.

  And Liza? Was Liza dead already? Common sense said Bentec would find out when the train was due in Portland, then kill her. Common sense insisted he’d dump her dead body and keep moving.

  “But this is Liza,” she said aloud and the hollow ring of her voice mocked her.

  The car ahead slowed to a stop. A traffic light. She looked up at the sign and turned north to Richland. Goddammit, she would not let these men who killed Wes and Harry walk away. No, not even walk away, drive off with weapons to blow up the nuclear power site and spew death for decades.

  When the train stopped outside of Richland, she had to be ready to hop on. And? Liza would say: you’ll know when you get there.

  But she wasn’t Liza. She needed to plan. If she had Liza’s gun…But she didn’t. Nor did she have Wes’s rifle. All she had was an ancient truck full of newspaper.

  The truck? Okay, she wouldn’t get on the train at all. She’d wait for Bentec to jump off. She’d floor the gas and crush him against the train. He’d die; she’d die, the train would stop and the police would find the weapons. Not a perfect plan, but one that could work. She stepped harder on the gas. The pick-up rattled and when she hit sixty the whole thing shimmied.

  It was almost 10 P.M. when she crossed into Washington. The train was due in Richland at 10:48. She focused on the road signs. She couldn’t afford to get lost. Common sense said: make no contacts. Common sense had been her protection all her life. Now it seemed like a cloak from another person’s closet. She turned off the freeway in Richland, pulled into a gas station, gassed up and asked how to get to the railroad tracks at the Richland grade. For a moment she was afraid the Richland grade was a term known only to railroad men. But the boy at the gas station knew the spot.

  10:24. Plenty of time for a five-mile drive.

  “Take the first left,” the boy said. “It’s a two-lane road but you’ll stay clear of the city traffic. Keep on it straight past the fairgrounds. It’ll deadend at the tracks. Couldn’t be easier.”

  She hung a left onto the two-lane road and headed through the dark. One mile down, two.

  How odd, she thought, this last hour of her life. She would have expected something different, something more. She wasn’t afraid now. From her days at St. Enid’s a voice reminded her that it wasn’t good to smash a man into a train right before you meet St. Peter. She shrugged. When ol’ Pete saw Bentec he’d understand.

  Three miles down, two to go. The truck rattled like thunder; the engine groaned. She opened the window all the way and let the wind smack her face.

  Red lights ahead. Police? Did Bentec have crooked cops helping him way up here? She slowed, her foot stiff on the brake.

  The light multiplied, four pairs, eight, more than she could count, and they slowed, clumped. Their vehicles blocked out the right-side light. They weren’t police lights at all. They were tail lights. She laughed with relief, and shook her head hard. “Stupid! Pay attention!”

  In front a house trailer inched forward. She edged to the left to where she could peer around the edge.

  A line of tail lights as far as she could see; they were barely moving.

  She slumped back into the seat. This was worse than police lights. Them she might get past, but this, this was a solid wall between her and the tracks. All the running and planning and hope, and it came down to this: stuck behind a line of boxy trailers. The headlights shone off the bumper sticker ahead: Roving Women Convergence, Kennewick, Washington. There had to be a hundred women in a hundred trailers ahead, roving slowly, converging into a solid mass, blocking the only road to the railroad tracks.

  Sixty-One

  CAPTAIN RAYMOND ZERON WAS jerked awake by the phone.

  “Zeron.”

  “Rouch, here. Sorry to wake you, Captain.” Zeron looked at the clock: 10:29 P.M. He had been in bed exactly twenty-four minutes. He said nothing.

  “Thing is, sir, the stationmaster at Portland called and said one of our cars is in their lot. He said he knows you don’t leave cars in his lot overnight without notifying him. He asked me to check. He sounded pissed. I mean, otherwise I wouldn’t have woken you.”

  Now Zeron was alert enough to recall that final problem in the L.A. loft-sex case, the missing patrol car. “Any word on Bentec, the inspector from L.A.?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, not our problem. Maybe since he didn’t have any suspects to escort back south, L.A. told him to take the train. Anyway, like I said, it’s not our problem. Tell the station-master thanks and that I’ll send someone after the car tomorrow.”

  Sixty-Two

  NUCLEAR PLANT BLOWS UP while woman sits in traffic.

  It couldn’t end like this!

  Ellen’s foot cramped on the clutch pedal. The engine rattled and
groaned and an ominous burnt rubber smell came from somewhere around her feet. She thrust the truck into neutral and stamped her foot on the floor boards.

  In the distance a train whistle sliced softly into the night. Liza’s train? With Bentec on it? Malloy waiting in the bushes? It had to be the right train. The whistle sounded again, cutting through her thoughts. The train—and she was still two miles away. She leaned on the horn.

  Ahead of her nothing moved.

  She could almost see Bentec standing over Liza, Bentec telling her about the fire that killed Wes, Bentec waiting for his six million dollars and a ticket to Tahiti or to Paris. The clang of metal on metal cut through the night. Could she really hear that this far away? Was she imagining it? The clang resounded in her head, background music to the question of the train. Was Liza on it? And the weapons?

  She leaned on the horn. The trailer ahead jerked forward an inch. A redheaded woman stuck her head out of the cab and threw her hands up. Southbound traffic whooshed by.

  The train whistled louder, closer. How long before Malloy got on? How long before Bentec got the money and jumped off?

  Ellen hit the horn. “Emergency,” she yelled. “Let me out of line.”

  The red-haired woman shrugged and inched forward.

  Six minutes, and two miles to go. She hit the horn again. The trailer in front sat tight. She thought of Harry; she could still feel the warmth of Wes’s body against hers. She reached for the car door and was halfway out of the seat when the truck behind her backed up. Across the white line cars sped by.

  With one hand hard on the horn she cut left through the oncoming traffic onto the far shoulder, shot forward. Horns blared. Cars dodged right and left. She weaved forward missing them by inches. Headlights glazed her vision. At the corner the traffic light was amber; she shot through.

  She saw the huge, high headlights first, an eighteen-wheeler coming at her, guttural horn roaring. The shoulder might have been big enough for her; she didn’t look. She kept her foot on the gas, her eyes straight at the truck.