The baggage check girl failed to contain an incredulous smile. “A man is pointing a gun at us. Is this the time to try for a date?”
“There might not be a later.”
Hanner jammed his.45 into Maxton’s ribs. “Shaddup, Romeo. I need to know what Charlie’s boys are doing. I need to find my bag an’ get away from here. If I don’t get those things, you and Juliet are dead. Got it?”
Maxton nodded. “How about this, then? You looked for locker… 59 was it? And it wasn’t there. But did you look to see if there were two locker 159s? Or 259s?”
“Of course!” Rebecca gasped. “Hauling away a big bank of lockers would be impossible. But just stenciling an extra number on the ones with only two digits… ”
Even Hanner caught on. “It’s still there? Some joker changed the numbers?”
“That’s how I’d do it,” Maxton admitted. “Paint in the store, hardly anyone around this late… Of course, Charlie the Head’s boys never knew which locker the case was in. They’ll just jimmy them all open.”
Hanner’s red face twitched. “No. No, they mustn’t. Not after everything.”
“I know what you should do!” Rebecca blurted. “I know!”
The gun turned on her. “What?” Hanner demanded sullenly.
“There are men breaking into our lockers. Mr. Stuart may be… hurt. We should call the cops.”
“Oh, I get it,” Maxton saw. “The police come and clear out those knuckle-draggers. Maybe pin your security guy’s misfortune on them. While there’s a big fuss on, Hanner here just strolls down with his key and tries all the lockers ending in 59 until he finds the right one, then just hops on a train.”
The brutal killer looked suspicious. “How’d I get past the cops?”
“Well, that’s the easy part,” Maxton told him. “Don’t you see what that big package right behind you is?”
Hanner glanced over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“It’s a diversion,” Maxton answered as he grabbed the thug’s wrist and twisted the.45 aside. “And this is a punch in the kidneys. And that’s a left cross.”
Hanner slammed back into the racks. Parcels fell around him. The gun fell amongst them. Maxton went in with his fists.
Rebecca slid out of range of the brawl. She found a letter-opener sharp enough to serve as a knife and held it ready. She looked about for where the gun had skittered.
Hanner was bigger and stronger than Maxton. He was an experienced murderer.
Maxton never gave him a chance. His attacks were scientific, precise, devastating. “Gut blow… Right cross… Left cross… Haymaker.”
Hanner lost all interest in his missing case, the kidnapped girl, or anything.
Maxton bound him hand and foot with packing crate webbing. “There. That should hold him until the officers of the law come to claim their lost property.” The young man retrieved his hat.
Rebecca pointed the gun at him. “Not so fast, mister. I have questions.”
Maxton froze. He had Hanner’s key in his hand. “Enquire, Miss Sharp.”
“I don’t think it was coincidence that you lost your auntie’s hat, was it? You already knew about Hanner and the stolen goods.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Is there even a missing hat?”
“There’s not even an auntie, I’m afraid.”
“The renumbered lockers? Was that you?”
“Right on the money.”
“The goons?”
“Not really here. Charlie’s boys aren’t that smart.”
“And the gangster’s safe combination that this Hanner thug learned?”
“Yep. Fed it to him through a joe I know.” Maxton’s smirk vanished. “Didn’t expect Hanner to go rampaging round the station, though. I’m sorry about Stuart. And I apologize for your ordeal. I just wanted… ”
“To retire,” Rebecca understood. “From a life of… con artistry?”
“I need reforming. The love of a good woman.” He smiled up at Rebecca. “You know, this key opens a locker with the best part of a million dollars in it. That’s a lot of retirement. Enough for two. Before the cops arrive to drag Hanner away an adventurous couple could be on a train to anywhere.”
Rebecca kept the.45 steady. “You’re a thief and a scoundrel. You almost got me killed. No girl could trust you.”
“But you do. Right, Rebecca?”
From Grand Central Terminal there are trains to anywhere in North America. From Grand Central Terminal you can go anywhere in the world.
“I’m keeping the gun,” Rebecca told Maxton. “In case.”
“Then I’m keeping the girl,” Maxton insisted. “Deal?”
Rebecca relented. She slipped the gun into her pocket and fended off Maxton’s kiss. “Hold it,” she warned, sliding the lost property book over to him. “First you have to sign for me.”
Train to Nowhere – by Charles Salzberg and Jessica Hall
“YOU COME VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Mr. Swann.”
“I have no idea who might recommend me, much less highly, but I’m not going to argue with them or you,” I said, as I gave my prospective client the once over.
I’d received the call from her – she said her name was Karyn Shaw, with a K and a Y, she pointed out – earlier that morning. She asked if we could meet in the Atrium at the Citicorp Building, on Third Avenue and 54th Street. So that’s where we were seated, at a table in the center of the large, open expanse. It was nearly 3 p.m., so the lunchtime crowd had evaporated and was replaced by a sprinkling of people obviously killing time till something better came along. I know what that’s like. I spend most of my life doing the same thing.
“How will I know you?” I asked.
She laughed. A throaty laugh. Like Lauren Bacall’s. I wondered if she could teach me how to whistle.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble picking me out of a crowd. Just look for a woman with long red hair that looks like it could use a comb through.”
She was right. I spotted her right away. She was sitting at a table in the middle of the Atrium, one floor below Barnes and Noble. Scratch Lauren Bacall and replace her with a slightly older version of Nicole Kidman and you’d have a better idea of what she looked like.
“I’ll get right down to business. I’d like to hire you to find someone,” she said, twirling a wooden stirrer in her Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“Who might that be?”
“My father.”
“Your father’s missing?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“A long time.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
She thought a moment.
“I’ve never actually met him.”
“That would qualify as a long time.”
“Forty-five years to be precise.”
“So why now?”
“You mean why look for him now?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It seems like the right time, that’s why.”
I shrugged.
She pulled out one of those fake cigarettes, the ones that glow in the dark, and tapped it on the table. “I’m trying to quit,” she purred. “It isn’t easy. This helps. Maybe.”
She put the faux butt in her mouth, then quickly removed it and shoved it back into her oversized black bag. “It seems so ridiculous, but it helps just to take it out, look at it and stick it in my mouth.”
“Whatever does the trick. Back to your father. I don’t buy this ‘It seems like the right time’ business.”
“My mother died recently. I’m an only child. I have no other family. I thought I might like to see what I was missing.”
I refrained from telling her that from my own experience, she wasn’t missing much.
“I don’t work pro bono.”
“I didn’t think you did. I’m prepared to pay and I’m sure a man of your caliber doesn’t come cheap.”