The first contestant on the last day of finals was Dee Ligit, who felt sick in spirit and sick in body—he was permanently constipated these days.
He should just walk away. But the eyes of the world were on him, and the train was getting nearer. When Dee Ligit heard the steam engine rumble underneath the launch platform, almost without thinking about it he stepped off into space.
He landed on the top of the passenger car and screamed inside as the train whistled and rumbled around Hanged Man’s Curve. The dark red blot on the inside of the Moat was like the cyclopean eye of Satan.
But it wasn’t that bad, really. The train was moving fast, but he could work with G-forces like this. Dee rode through the Curve.
Next came the Forty-five Degrees of Doom, and Dee raised his arms wide and descended into a bouncy crouch, letting his instincts guide him through the vicious twist in the track. He felt good. His feet felt glued to the train car.
Before he knew it, Dee Ligit stepped off the train onto the landing platform. Everybody was cheering, for him. He had surfed the Pro Train Surf finals and survived.
He was taken into a private booth for an ESN interview, and read his responses sincerely to the camera, then tried not to watch the other surfers take their best shot at the high-speed finals. Every time he heard the gasps from the bleachers he knotted up inside. Competitors dropped every time. Dee realized nobody else was making it to the finish line.
“The final contestant is about to surf,” he heard an ESN anchor telling a camera. “If he falls, this competition is over. If he reaches the finish line, then we head into the superfinal competition.”
Dee watched on the monitors as Luke Hey Wayne prepared to surf. “Please fall. Please fall,” Dee prayed silently. He just couldn’t face the superfinals.
Luke Hey stepped onto the train car and surfed down the straightaway. The engineer cam got a close-up of the teenager’s face—terror drew his large mouth into grinch lips as he approached Hanged Man’s Curve.
As he came into the curve, Luke Hey’s arms began spinning and one of his feet flew out from under him. The boy screamed plaintively and somehow managed to stay atop the car as the track straightened again.
Luke Hey was crying like a baby. A hundred million people around the world watched it in close-up, and then they saw Luke do something unthinkable.
He jumped off the train. He bailed. He bowed out. He took a big dive. He slid off the train car, slid into the Moat and slid on his behind for a hundred feet. The boy clambered out of the Moat, crashed to the earth outside it and ran away sobbing.
Luke Hey was never heard from again.
Could have been me, Dee thought.
There was more hubbub. The crowds were cheering for him again. The reason, as far as he could understand it, was that he had won.
He was the first extreme rail surfing champion of the world.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo, and he felt just as stupid as he looked.
“You look fantastic,” said the Romanian image consultant.
“You’re just saying that.”
“I am a professional. I’d never say it if it weren’t true. Simply put, it is the most natural-looking fake mustache I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re trying to butter me up so I don’t splat you.” Remo gripped the Romanian by the belt and dangled him out the eighth-floor window of the Albuquerque Salon of Image Consultation.
“That wasn’t even a consideration,” the image consultant lied.
Remo could smell a lie a mile away, with or without the fake mustache tickling his nostrils. He wrenched off the mustache and flung it out into space. It tumbled to the street like a skydiving caterpillar. The image consultant watched it disappear.
“Long way down,” Remo pointed out.
“Yes, it sure is.”
“My arm’s getting tired.”
“Sorry to hear that.” The Romanian, named Flower-rescue, or something similar that Remo couldn’t pronounce, examined the arm in question. It wasn’t terribly muscular, but the wrists were thick and hard. The important consideration was how long it could hold a 170-pound Romanian image consultant by the belt.
“I believe my trousers are giving way,” Vlad Florescu said.
“Maybe you should try answering the first question again,” Remo suggested. “Maybe you should think carefully about your answer. The question is about Meredith Fordham. Where is she?”
“Meredith is dead. Dead and gone.” No lies this time.
“How do you know?”
“I helped, well, get rid of her, so to speak.”
There was a rip and yelp as the man’s pants failed at the seams. The image consultant fell.
But not for long. Something locked on his hand, and when he opened his eyes again he was standing inside his salon on the eighth floor of a historic building in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“What’s the story on Meredith Fordham?” Remo prodded.
Vlad Florescu adjusted his trousers and didn’t seem embarrassed that the inseam had ripped open to the shins. “I did it for her son, Jack. The boy was in trouble.”
“So you helped him kill his mother?”
“She was dead already. The poor woman was a heroin addict. How she managed to hide it from me for all these years I will never know. She was my best friend.”
“What about Jack?”
“Jack is…very intelligent.”
“Yes?”
“And reckless. Irresponsible. But so smart. Anyway, I came to the house to have dinner. We cooked dinner together once a week, Meredith and I. Usually on Mondays but occasionally on Tuesdays. I let myself in, and there was Meredith, dead on the living-room carpet. Jack was in a panic. He was devastated about his mother. She had overdosed herself, you see.”
“Oh boy,” Remo said. “You were doing okay until the end.” The image consultant went out the window again, this time dangling by his ankle. His shout echoed among the high-rises.
“If I let you back inside, do you think you can stick to the truth?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Florescu, who didn’t look at all like a Vlad.
“I got to hand it to you, Vlad, you are one cool customer.”
“Thank you,” Vlad Florescu said, although he was rather winded. He tried to adjust his trousers, but his trousers were now draped on a No Parking sign in the street below.
“Where was I?”
“Telling me how Meredith Fordham died and why you went along with it,” Remo said.
Vlad Florescu told the truth this time. “The boy did it. He never said so, and I think he wanted me to believe she killed herself, but I know he did it. I helped him get her into an incineration shaft in a local landfill.”
“And in exchange you got…
“My life! I was sure he was going to kill me, too! Plus, er, he gave me fifty thousand dollars from the life insurance.”
Remo rolled his eyes.
“From her savings account. I meant savings account.”
“Ever see Jack again?”
“No, should I?”
“How long ago was this?”
“A year, maybe a year and a half. How is Jack?”
“Rotting in hell.”
“Jack’s dead?” Vlad gasped.
“I didn’t say that.”
Vlad was confused.
“Now, go over one part of the story again,” Remo said. “You walked into the apartment and Meredith was dead. Right?”
“Right. Well, maybe not quite dead. But she was dead soon after that.”
Remo looked expectant.
“She was out cold. Her head was bashed in, you see. But she was still alive. I told Jack she was still alive. He said he didn’t believe me, but I think he did. She, you know, screamed. When she was, you know, burned up.”