Night-Train

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Peake remembered what he had felt at that moment. No sorrow. No regret. Only relief that no one would be hitting him anymore …

  (Got to get out of here.)

  The thought jumped into his mind and he was abruptly in motion, standing and walking to the edge of the platform, peering down the tunnel into the darkness that was darker than the night. Somewhere in the snaking tunnel was a train that would take him from the station and into the underbelly of the city.

  There was something about the tunnels and the unnatural darkness that intrigued him, something from his memories, from the misty past, that made the tunnels important to him. But he could not remember what it was. Most people, he knew, did not like the subways, and they used them only because they were cheap and fast and they went just about anywhere.

  But for Melvin W. Peake, the tunnels meant something else. If he could only find out what it was …

  He saw the headlight of the train appear from beyond a bend in the tracks, felt a subtle rumbling through the concrete, then a roaring clatter of steel against steel, and a burst of air. The gray cars of the Broadway Local ripped past him, speckled with the spray-painted graffiti that Melvin had never learned how to read, and screeched to a stop. The doors opened, inviting him into the fluorescent sterility.

  Someone at the opposite end of the platform disappeared into the train, and Peake followed suit. The doors snapped shut behind him, and the train lurched into sudden motion. Melvin staggered to a seat and glanced up at the car-length banner of ads above the tops of the windows. Some were written in English, others in Spanish.

  Then he looked down the length of the car at his fellow travelers. There were only two. One was a young, oliveskinned boy, trying to grow a mustache across his thin upper lip and so far producing only about eighteen long, wispy hairs. Melvin thought the youth looked like a muskrat with several of its whiskers missing. He smiled at the boy, who eyed him with the suspicious gaze of the night-city people, and then turned away. The other rider was an old black man who was stretched out across four seats, a copy of the Daily News unfolded over his chest like a burial cloth. Why they never threw such people off the trains, Melvin would never understand.

  The train was picking up speed, rushing south through Harlem, that feared wasteland where tourists never went.

  Peake tried to look through the greasy windows into the darkness that rushed by, but the interior glare of the car made it impossible to see out. Every once in a while when Melvin was riding the trains, the lights would flicker and sometimes even go out for a second or two, and he liked that the best. It was probably caused by the wheels, or whatever they used to run on the third rail, passing over a dead spot in the tracks. The current would fail for an instant and the car would be plunged into the same darkness that lived in the tunnels. For those brief moments, Melvin could see through the windows, could peer into the depths of the city, and his heart would jump when it happened.

  The train slipped into the 125th Street station, and the olive-skinned boy shuffled out through the open doors. Three black youths entered the car through the other set of doors. They were wearing red berets, and Melvin knew they were part of the group called the Guardian Angels: self-appointed subway police who claimed to make the underground safer for everyone.

  (They won’t get me. Fucking black do-gooders! They won’t get me!)

  His hand tightened on the Cutco knife and wedged it more securely into the folds of his coat, under his left arm.

  (Take down your trousers, Peake! Accept your punishment like a man! Like a man! Like-a-man-like-a-man-like-a-mannnn!)

  The thought flashed through his mind, coming out of nowhere. It shocked him, pulling him into a new level of disorientation for a moment.

  (What the hell does it mean?)

  He leaned forward in his seat just as the doors closed and the train entered the darkness again. There was an ad above his head for Four Roses blended whiskey, and his eyes locked on the photograph, the confusion and questions fading quickly from his mind.

  (Ugly. That picture is so ugly! Got to get it. Get rid of it! Tear it up, cut it up!)

  Melvin Peake sat staring at the roses in the picture, feeling his hand tighten about the handle of the knife until the pressure began to hurt his knuckles. The train was stopping again, at 116th Street/Columbia University.

  (The roses! Got to get the roses! GET THE ROSES!)

  Peake was getting worked up now, and he watched the Guardian Angels as they stood and moved towards the doors as the train slowed at the platform. The thought of them leaving filled him with a sense of relief and of impending release.

  (ROSES! ROSES! ROSES!)

  The single thought echoed around the empty spaces of his mind as he watched the three black boys with red berets depart the train. No one boarded Peake’s car, and he smiled, not even bothering to cast a glance at the sleeping black man, who would undoubtedly sleep for the entire trip down to South Ferry, and perhaps through the uptown journey as well.

  In a single instant, as the train entered the tunnel heading southward, Melvin W. Peake jumped up, pulled the Cutco knife from his coat, and whirled upon the Four Roses advertisement. Slashing with the deftness of a surgeon, he quickly ribboned the cardboard placard and plucked out the tatters with the point of his knife. The savaged photograph fell past him in large snowflakes of paper.

  Then, just as quickly, he returned the knife to its hiding place and resumed his seat. The train was rocking and swaying, and for an instant the lights blinked out. Peake’s reflection in the smeared glass vanished as the darkness grabbed for him, and he grinned. It was like an omen to him.

  (It was an omen!)

  As though the spirit, the presence of the night, that thing that lurks in the tunnels, had witnessed his deed and with a power of understanding and compassion for madness that only it could have, it had banished the light for an instant as a sign. A sign of recognition, of approval.

  Melvin W. Peake was smiling broadly as the lights flashed on again, and he studied his reflection in the window opposite his seat. His mouse-brown hair was cut short and lacquered to his skull with Old Spice Brilliantine, and it shone in the fluorescent lights above the aisle. Thin eyebrows ran straight across his brow ridge, diminishing rather than accenting his dark, sparrowlike eyes. His nose was long and sharp, much like a bird’s beak, dominating his face and making his bloodless lips almost invisible, his mouth a razor slash through otherwise unblemished flesh. When he smiled, he could see a row of tiny, even teeth, like baby teeth, and the expression made his chin look even more pointed than it actually was.

  (Bird! I look like some kind of bird!)

  He thought that he resembled a crow, or maybe a cartoon version of a crow. An anthropomorphic crow dressed in a herringbone topcoat. Melvin Peake laughed. He was feeling good now. Very loose and fluid and full of energy. Cutting up that picture of the roses had banished all of his confusion, and he was ready to take on the world, ready to continue his mission.

  The train rattled and swayed around another curve and entered the Cathedral Parkway station. Two people boarded the Local this time, and Melvin eyed them openly as he held his knife under his coat. A shopping bag lady shambled into the car, hunched and rounded like a little sexless gnome, clothed in a faded orange housedress, a jean jacket, and a bright pink scarf around her ratty hair. Her face was a road map of wrinkles, so deep and intricate that no features were discernible except her slightly bulbous, cataracted eyes. The other passenger was a lanky, swaggering black boy. He wore a tightly wrapped black silk turban, which matched his black raincoat and gabardine pants. He was a portrait in black, interrupted only by the whites of his eyes.

  (He’s not here yet. Not yet, but he will be. He always shows up. Whenever I go out looking for him.)

  The Broadway Local continued its course south toward the tip of Manhattan. Melvin W. Peake sat in his seat with stoical acceptance as the stations appeared and disappeared. 103rd Street. 96th. 86th. 79th. Passengers boa
rded and departed his car. They were the night riders, the fearless and the homeless, the frightened and the bizarre. Peake watched them come and go, scrutinizing them, waiting for him to appear. He was out there somewhere, and sooner or later Melvin would find him.

  (I always find him … )

  He smiled and let himself be gently, then roughly, rocked by the motion of the cars. He felt loose and ready, totally synchronized with the heartbeat of the train and the tracks.

  72nd Street. 66th Street/Lincoln Center, and still he had not boarded the train. As the train slid into the station at 59th Street/Columbus Circle, Melvin Peake’s pulse increased and he could feel his eyes widening in anticipation.

  (He’s coming! I can feel him coming to me.)

  He often boarded the train at this station, thought Melvin, because there are hookers up on the street level all around the circle. Sometimes he went there looking for some dark meat.

  But tonight, he did not board at Columbus Circle. The bag lady shuffled off the train, her two brown sacks hunching her over as though they contained great weights, and three young white boys, clean-cut and full of alcoholic smiles, ran into the car, hanging on the vertical pole near the doors. Peake eyed them openly, thinking back to his own teenage years; he had never had friends such as these boys, never shared in this sort of adventurous camaraderie. One of them was wearing an athletic jacket with a varsity letter over the left breast, an enormous letter I. (Illinois? Indiana?) Melvin smiled at them. They looked so young and vulnerable, so full of naiveté. The school jacket could just as easily been a sandwich board carrying the message:

  I am a stranger here.

  Do something bad to me.

  Melvin Peake almost laughed aloud at the image, but he knew he was correct. The college boys were easy marks for whatever kind of creature chose to prey on them. And the city contained all manner of beasts.

  The Broadway Local accelerated from the station, traveling the seventeen blocks to Times Square in less than two minutes. This was a large station, and Peake knew his chances of finding him here were very high. In fact, he almost expected it now. The college boys pushed each other through the open doors, heading upstairs to the false glitter and shine of 42nd Street, along with several other passengers. More young boys crowded into the train, along with several men dressed in suits and raincoats.

  Melvin W. Peake watched the open doors. As the man he had been expecting entered the car, Melvin’s hand jerked reflexively under his coat and the point of the knife snicked his rib cage. There was a tiny shock of pain, which was overwhelmed by the rush of adrenaline that now pumped through Peake’s body. He stared at the man who had just entered the train: middle-aged or close to it, standing more than six feet, and wearing a tan poplin jacket with the collar turned up. His face was long, cheeks sunken, eyes deep-set and shadowed by a prominent brow. The man’s shoes were the shoes of a laborer and his pants were baggy and uncreased. His bony wrists stuck out several inches from the sleeves of his jacket as he held onto the pole with both hands. He looked fairly well drunk, and was not at all aware of Melvin staring at him.

  All the tension and the anxiety had left Peake, and he sat in a growing calmness touched with feelings of his coming elation.

  (I’ve got you now … Got you now! … Got you now!)

  The thought repeated itself in a childish singsong, which made him smile to himself. The doors had closed and the train had begun the next leg of its journey. The tall, thin man hung on to the vertical pole, his lean frame swaying with the roll of the subway car. With the abstraction of most night riders, the remainder of the passengers ignored him.

  Everyone except Melvin W. Peake.

  Holding the Cutco knife tightly under his coat, Peake began a slight rocking motion, his shoulders rocking to the rhythm of music heard only deep within his skull. All the pain and indignity, all the years of suffering, had been necessary so that now he could feel so good, so fulfilled. He had heard somewhere that in order to be truly happy, you also had to have been at one time profoundly sad.

  (How true! How deliciously true!)

  The Broadway Local was slowing down again. It was a short jaunt between Times Square and Penn Station, and many of the passengers were stirring in their seats in anticipation of the next stop. Peake watched the tall man, who was staring out the window into the darkness as though he were planning to get off at the next stop. This thought excited Melvin Peake, and the Cutco knife began to twitch under his topcoat, his knuckles whitening about its handle.

  The lights flickered in the car, and Peake smiled. He felt the deceleration, and the lurching, swaying motion of the car increased. People started getting up and moving to the doors, and Peake joined them, because the man he had been waiting for had moved away from his steadying pole and grabbed a metal strap near the door.

  (He is getting off! Getting off!)

  The train rocketed into the dim, sooty station, stopped, and threw open its doors. The tall, thin man walked out onto the platform with a flat-footed, straight-ahead gait. Melvin W. Peake followed him with short, fluid steps that kept him a respectable distance behind.

  The subway tracks in Penn Station are only part of the network of arteries beneath the huge complex. Amtrak trains and the spartan cars of the Long Island Railroad also converge here, and there are levels upon levels of tracks, platforms, stairways, and pedestrian walkways. If one is not totally familiar with the routes or does not read the signs carefully, it is easy to become disoriented.

  Ascending the first set of stairs, the tall man turned right without hesitation and headed down a deserted walkway tunnel toward the Long Island trains. Melvin Peake leaped up the stairs two at a time, grabbed the banister with his free hand, and whipped himself around to the right, closing the distance between himself and his prey.

  A quick look behind him. No one was following. The only sound was the other man’s hard-soled work shoes slapping flatly on the concrete, a slow and deliberate passage that would shortly lead to eternity.

  Peake lengthened his strides until he was almost close enough to reach out and touch the man’s shoulder. His breath was coming in quick gulps now and his heartbeat was speeding up. He kept expecting the man to notice someone so close behind him, but the man either did not sense his presence or simply did not care. This upset Melvin because he always liked to see their faces at the end, and his mind raced to find a way to make the man stop and turn.

  “Hey!” he heard himself saying between ragged breaths. “Hey, you can’t go down there!”

  Slowly, as though drugged, the tall, thin man stopped and pivoted like a dancer practicing a step on one foot. It was an almost graceful, studied move, except for his arms swinging out loosely in an effort to retain his balance.

  “Wha—? Who, me?”

  Peake watched his eyes expand in their sockets as he pulled the carving knife from his topcoat. There was an instant of confusion, then disbelief, then a shocked recognition in the tall man’s face. All these things flashed by so quickly that the average person would not have caught them.

  But Peake was waiting for them, needed them, and he smiled broadly, displaying his small, baby-like teeth. He held the large carving knife in both hands high above his head like a medieval warrior, which caused the tall man to raise his forearms defensively. It was a trick Melvin had perfected several months ago.

  As soon as the man’s arms were raised, Peake swung the knife down in a graceful, sweeping arc, beneath the upraised arms, then up into the unprotected stomach. The blade penetrated the thin jacket without effort, and in a perfectly timed maneuver, Peake heaved in and upward with all the power of his arms and shoulders, driving the blade into the man’s body cavity, up through the solar plexus and lungs until the edge of the blade grated against the bottom of his victim’s rib cage.

  The man squealed loudly, a high-pitched noise that sounded like the squeal of a pig, and brought his arms down reflexively. Pink, bubbling foam appeared in his open mouth like suds from a
berserk washing machine, and he staggered back as Melvin withdrew his blade and swung it higher this time, catching the man’s face, slicing cleanly through the left cheek, making the man’s mouth twice as wide as it should have been. The victim’s midsection was a bright, flowering blossom now, and his arms had fallen to his sides. His eyes had narrowed into small grapeshot balls of darkness, and he slumped back against the wall of the tunnel.

  Lunging again, Peake jammed the knife into the center of crimson flower on the tan jacket, ripping and tearing it as he had destroyed the Four Roses poster. The man fell away from him, and his head cracked against the concrete wall with a sickening sound. As he slid down the wall, Peake gave him a coup de grace across the right side of his neck, then jumped away as the life spurted upward one final time.

  Lying motionless, the tall, thin man looked like nothing more than a heap of darkly stained rags. Melvin W. Peake, breathing heavily and fighting to control himself, stepped forward and wiped the blade on the man’s sleeve, restoring it to its shining, pristine state.

  (Die! Die, you bastard! In all your bodies! All your tricks! You’ll never get me again!)

  Replacing the knife under his topcoat, Peake ran up the tunnel to the next set of stairs, across to the turnstiles, and back down to the platform for the northbound trains. As he reached the bottom step, another gray, graffiti-covered beast roared up to greet him. He dashed through its open doors and walked slowly to a seat, his eyes scanning the advertisements for any ugly pictures.

  CHAPTER 4

  CORVINO

  The Monday morning edition of the Daily News carried a photograph of the NYPD’s uniformed cops bending over a white-sheeted body. Above the full-page picture a boldface headline screamed at Michael Corvino: