by Tim Dorsey
“Take advantage of you how?”
“Hypnotizing me to think you were Brad Pitt so I’d have sex with you!”
“Moi?”
“You!” said the woman, pulling a gun from her purse and pointing it at Preston.
Some passengers ran out of space and had to break out new notebooks.
“Hold on a second! I can explain! I, I was trying to help you…”
“Help me! How was that helping me?”
“You obviously have a problem with men…”
Mistake.
Just before she pulled the trigger, Spider grabbed her arm, and the bullet flew out an open window. Andy and Frankie helped wrestle the woman to the ground, kicking and screaming.
Preston looked around with a fake grin. “Those blanks sure sound real!”
They got the gun away and hog-tied the woman with Andy’s belt and waited to hand her over to authorities at the next stop.
The BBB looked at each other.
“Did she say ‘Brad Pitt’?” asked Rebecca.
“Yes, she did,” said Sam.
“Something’s not kosher in Denmark,” said Teresa.
“You used me!” the woman screamed from the floor. “You made it so every time I heard the word harmonica, I’d think you were Brad Pitt.”
Rebecca began jumping up and down. “Look, it’s Brad Pitt!”
“The trigger word is probably a toggle,” Sam told Teresa. She grabbed the shrieking Rebecca by the arm. “Harmonica!”
Rebecca stopped jumping up and down. “Why are you holding my arm, Sam?”
“I think we need to have a talk.”
The women stood in the aisle explaining things to Rebecca. Rebecca’s head shook side to side. The other women nodded. Rebecca shook her head harder. The others nodded sadly.
Rebecca broke from the group and ran to the front of the car. “Wait!” yelled Teresa.
Too late. “Did you have sex with me last night while I was under hypnosis? I’ll kill you if you did!”
“Moi?”
One passenger leaned to another. “That Preston’s finished.”
The second passenger nodded, still writing. “Too many enemies, plenty of motive. Now it’s just a matter of creating the opportunity for murder.”
The train slowed at the next depot. Only a few little patches of snow left. The Savannah police boarded and carried off the woman in the red dress, still kicking and screaming. “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll cut your fucking dick off if it’s the last thing I do!”
A passenger turned to a fresh page in her notebook. “This is the best mystery train I’ve ever been on.”
36
The dining car began filling up again shortly after noon.
Waiters circulated, dropping off drinks, opening order pads. “Chef’s salad or Caesar?”
It was a sunny day on the train; warm light poured into the dining car through the glass skydome.
Serge was sitting with the book club. “Chef’s salad,” he told the waiter. “Extra dressing on the side. Double-chop the lettuce. That is all.” He still hadn’t seen any sign of Eugene Tibbs. Surely he hadn’t missed the train.
Paige pointed out the window. “Palm trees!”
They crossed the Florida state line as Tanner Lebos stood and clinked a glass of water with a spoon again, signaling the official start of the author’s luncheon.
“Thank you once again and welcome.” He shook his head and chuckled for effect. “This already has been quite an action-packed trip to say the least. And we have one person to thank for that! The author who thought all this up, Ralph Krunkleton!”
The audience began applauding. Ralph didn’t know what the hell Tanner was talking about. He had no idea what was happening—this was the craziest damn train he’d ever been on.
Passengers began standing up, five, ten, twenty, until it was a solid standing ovation.
“Speech!” someone yelled.
“Don’t worry,” said Tanner. “The problem will be shutting him up.”
Everyone laughed.
Ralph stepped into the aisle, and the crowd quieted.
“First, I’d like to thank the best agent money can buy.”
More laughter. Tanner pointed at Ralph and smiled: Ya got me!
“Seriously. What a weird business. What a weird life. I still haven’t figured it out. I’m getting to associate with a better class of people by writing about a worse class of people.”
More laughs.
“But I’m glad to see the mystery genre finally getting its due. For the longest time, people automatically thought there was no meaning. That’s simply not true. In my case, I’m on an internal journey, the crime plot just a pretext for me to explore the spiritual side of existence. Like when I used the urinal guy as a metaphor for Christ…”
The audience looked puzzled.
“…pure humility, serving others,” said Ralph. “And the tribulations of the people developing the first orange harvester are straight from the Twenty-third Psalm. I also borrowed some Eastern elements of cleansing and rebirth for the reunion of that women’s book club after all those lost years…”
The audience exchanged glances. Were they reading the same books? Tanner saw what was happening; he gave Ralph a slashing gesture across his throat with an index finger.
Ralph saw him and nodded.
“…Uh, and then I killed a whole bunch of people.”
“Hooray!” the audience yelled.
Tanner stood up and slapped his hands together. “What do you say we sign some books?”
The passengers quickly formed a line in the aisle.
Ralph’s little speech had been especially comforting to Serge. So he’d been right all along about the religious imagery in the book—it wasn’t just more hallucinations. “After you,” he told the BBB, who got up from the table and joined the autograph line. Then Serge stood and bumped into someone who didn’t recognize him.
“Excuse me,” said Eugene Tibbs.
The line began working its way down. The BBB finally made it to the front, and they heaped on the praise. “Your books have changed our lives,” said Teresa.
Ralph blushed. “Maybe that’s exaggerating a little.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Maria. “What a path of self-discovery!”
“Ahhhh,” said Ralph, nodding with satisfaction as he signed his name. “So you got my spiritual message.”
Teresa shook her head. “No, we went to all the bars. They were great!”
Next, a book critic from Miami.
“Oh, hi, Connie,” said Ralph, opening her book and writing. “Don’t you think you were a little hard on me in your last review?”
“It was more than fair. That one character you have who can never seem to score—he’s overstayed his welcome.”
Ralph finished signing and handed the hardcover back to her. “How’d you like me to pair you up with him in a book?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
Next, Eugene Tibbs. He pumped Ralph’s hand. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Your writing has completely changed my life.”
Ralph began signing his name. “Maybe that’s a stretch.”
“No, it’s true,” said Eugene. “I’ve patterned my entire existence after your last book. I took every one of your lessons and put them into daily practice.”
Ralph looked up, confused.
Eugene patted his chest. “I’m the urinal guy.”
“Ohhhh, that’s great! Thank you!” said Ralph, looking back down to finish his autograph. “You got my spiritual message.”
“No,” said Eugene. “I made a bundle in tips.”
Serge was next.
“Great book.”
“Thanks.”
“Especially the spiritual message.”
Ralph looked up. “What?”
“Your spiritual message.”
“You actually got it?”
“Are you kidding?” said Serge. “The im
agery was so vivid I could practically reach out and touch it. Screaming souls burning in a lake of fire. Drooling beasts ripping bowels out of the righteous, then avenging angels of the Lord chopping their heads off with big swords. A horrible blackness descending over the land. People running naked in terror, falling off cliffs and onto tall spikes. Manic little horned trolls scurrying about, slashing tires and sodomizing family pets…”
Tanner gently grabbed Serge by the arm. “Would you mind stepping aside? We need to keep the line moving.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry.”
Tibbs had retaken his seat at the back table, enjoying dessert and admiring the inscription in his book. Serge sat up front, keeping tabs on Tibbs in his peripheral vision.
Shouting broke out up front. Notebooks opened.
Spider bounced around in the aisle, throwing left hooks in the air.
“I know what you’re thinking—‘Just because he only has one arm, I’ll bet he can’t play the banjo!’”
“Who said anything about a banjo?” asked Preston.
“Okay, well maybe I can’t play the banjo, but I can still kick your ass!…”
One of the passengers pointed with a pencil at Spider’s right arm tucked behind his back. “Now that’s acting!”
“Hic,” said Preston. “Dammit, now you gave me the hiccups…hic…”
“Breathe in a paper bag,” said Andy.
“Drink water upside down,” said Dee Dee.
“Pull your earlobes and swallow,” said Spider.
“Boo!” said Steppenwolf.
Hic.
“I can cure hiccups,” offered Serge.
“Who are you?”
“Just a passenger. But I’ve studied this phenomenon for years, purely on an avocational basis, of course. All the cures you’ve mentioned are simply power of suggestion. The actual mechanics have nothing to do with it. It’s what you believe. So, Preston, do you want to get rid of your hiccups?”
“It’s worth—hic—a try.”
“Okay, focus on my voice. I want you to relax. Your muscles are getting loose. That’s better…”
“Hic.”
“Don’t worry about that last hiccup. The sound was a mile away. There will be a few more, but they don’t concern you. Each hiccup is one less until they end. Picture each hiccup being typed on a piece of paper as it comes out of your mouth, then mentally wad up the sheet and throw it away…”
When Preston was completely relaxed, Serge leaned forward and whispered in his ear. Then he sat back and clapped his hands sharply, startling Preston.
“Hic…I still have the hic hiccups.”
“Not for long,” Serge said with a grin.
In the back of the car, Eugene Tibbs finished his dessert and got up to head back to the sleeping compartment. This was the moment Serge had been waiting for—getting Tibbs alone, away from the herd.
“Good luck with those hiccups,” said Serge, standing and heading down the aisle after Tibbs.
“Everybody, look!” a passenger yelled in the middle of the car. They all turned to the window on the west side of the train.
“Unbelievable!”
Mild pandemonium as a crowd jammed the center of the car for a better view of the spectacle, blocking the aisle and Serge’s only path to Tibbs. Fifty disposable cameras pointed out the window.
“What a mystery train!”
Zigzag and Ivan slowly but surely gained on the train. They had ditched their Charger in Ocala, even though Ivan told Zigzag his plan would never work. Now it was looking like they just might pull it off.
“There she is!” yelled Ivan, spotting a train emerging from around a distant bend in a palm hammock.
“Giddy-up!” yelled Zigzag, snapping his reins.
“How’d you know Ocala raises some of the fastest thoroughbreds in the country?” asked Ivan.
“Made a killing on one in the Derby.”
It was a beautiful picture, the two horses—a brown-and-white filly and a pure black stallion—striding majestically, hooves thundering across the hot Florida scrubland, gaining on The Silver Stingray.
“They shoot horse thieves, don’t they?”
“Not anymore,” said Zigzag. “Come on, we’re nearly there.”
More passengers rushed to the middle windows of the dining car, pouring in from the sleeper and coach, lifting children up and pointing.
“Have to admit, this was a great idea,” said Ivan.
“The beauty of it is stealth,” said Zigzag. “There’s no way in the world anyone will detect our approach.”
The horses finally caught The Silver Stingray, and Ivan and Zigzag put the crop to their steeds. They gradually moved up the side of the train toward the break between the dining car and the first sleeper, passing a giant window filled with faces stacked three high, taking pictures and filming home videos.
Zigzag was in front. He reached with his left hand for the railing, two feet away, closing slowly. “Almost there.” One foot, six inches. “Alllllllll-most…Got it!” He grabbed the rail firmly and leaped from the horse to the tiny platform, the filly peeling off to the side and stopping. Ivan came up next. Zigzag reached out. “Give me your hand!”
Ivan strained, their fingertips inches apart. Zigzag saw the Russian’s eyes grow large. “What is it?”
Several passengers looked sideways out the window and pointed ahead in horror.
“Tunnel!”
“Grab my hand!” said Zigzag.
“I can’t!”
“You have to!”
Ivan whipped the reins a last time. Their fingertips touched, then parted, then touched again. Zigzag snatched Ivan’s hand and jerked him out of the saddle. The stallion hit the brakes. They were in the tunnel.
Zigzag felt around in the dark. He unhooked an emergency entrance in the side of the connector between the cars, and they climbed through.
“Now if we can just slip inside without anyone noticing,” said Ivan.
The tunnel still provided cover of darkness as they opened the back door of the dining car and quietly crept inside. They came out of the tunnel, light again. A carful of people was staring at them. Cheering erupted.
“This is definitely the best mystery train I’ve ever been on!”
“How can it possibly get any better?”
A woman let loose a bone-chilling scream.
Everyone turned. The screaming woman was up front, standing over a body in the middle of the aisle.
Preston.
“Someone must have killed him in the tunnel!”
“But who?”
37
Two crooked lines of cocaine wound across the instrument panel, just above the pressure gauges in the red zone. They were vacuumed up by the empty fuselage of a ballpoint pen.
The engineer stood straight again and wiggled his nose, then pinched it closed to get membrane action. “We’re not going fast enough…must go faster.” He pushed a lever forward.
A crowd had gathered around the body in the dining car.
“I don’t think he’s acting.”
“Of course he is.”
“It’s been five minutes.”
“I’ve seen human statues in New York go for hours.”
“He’s really good.”
Ivan and Zigzag wasted no time. The element of surprise was gone, but the train was still moving. They checked the schedule. Ten minutes until the Okeechobee depot. Ten minutes to find Tibbs or he could jump off with the briefcase. They worked quickly through the sleeping compartment, knocking on doors. “Tickets!…”
Serge tiptoed into the car behind them and peeked around the corner.
Eugene Tibbs heard a knock and opened his door. There was no nonsense. Zigzag tackled him and Ivan stuck a gun in his mouth. “The briefcase! Now!” Tibbs pointed up at the overhead rack. Zigzag pulled it down.
A voice from behind: “I’ll take that, if you don’t mind.”
They turned around. Serge stood in the doorway with an even bigge
r gun. They handed him the briefcase.
“Thanks.” Serge slammed the compartment door shut and took off.
Zigzag and Ivan ran out the door, and Serge took a shot at them from down the hall. They dove back in Tibbs’s compartment.
Passengers in the dining car heard gunfire, took notes.
Ivan and Zigzag poked their heads back into the hallway. Clear. The Russian pointed to the back of the car. “You go that way!”
They checked everywhere, but no Serge. Zigzag tried to find his sleeping compartment. He knocked on doors and came to one that was locked with no answer. He gave it his shoulder. The door popped open. He tore through luggage. Nope. Belonged to a couple from Kalamazoo. Three more doors down, no answer, also locked. He gave it the shoulder again. The door popped easily. It swung open and hit a switch on a small control box on the floor. Zigzag heard a little train whistle as a toy locomotive began to chug around a small circle of track on the floor.
Zigzag smiled as the train stopped at the loading dock in front of his feet, the logging car automatically tipping out its load: several plastic logs and an unpinned grenade whose handle had been wedged in the car. The handle sprang off as the grenade wobbled a few inches and bumped into Zigzag’s toes.
“Uh-oh.”
The explosion rocked The Silver Stingray all the way to the dining car. Passengers wrote faster. Others were still timing how long Preston could remain motionless.
Ivan spotted Serge sneaking out the front door of the first sleeping compartment. He ran after him. As Ivan passed through the connector between the cars, he noticed the emergency door was unlatched. He stuck his head out the side of the train and looked up a ladder.
Back in the dining car: “How long has it been?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Do you think we should poke him or something?”
They heard pounding and banging overhead and looked up through the clear skydome. Two men wrestled on the roof with a metal briefcase, rolling this way and that, legs swinging precariously over the edge of the train as it headed across the Indian River on an old steel-girder trestle. One man socked the other in the face; the other punched back. They rolled over again. Another punch. The briefcase went skidding away from both of them, sliding across the glass roof.