by Dorsey, Tim
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 bigger 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.
Ivan and Serge rolled over a couple more times until they came to the edge of the car. Ivan was on top, his hands around Serge’s throat
, Serge’s head hanging back over the side of the roof and turning blue. Ivan reached his right hand back and slugged Serge in the face. Then he unsnapped his shoulder holster, pulled out a pistol and pressed it to Serge’s forehead. Serge grabbed it by the barrel and pushed it up; a shot flew into the sky. It became a battle of arm strength, the barrel of the gun slowly moving back down toward Serge’s face.
The train rumbled across the trestles, the vibrating briefcase sliding left and right across the roof. A hand reached down and grabbed it by the handle. The passengers pointed up through the glass at two new feet walking toward the pair of struggling combatants.
Ivan was winning the war of muscles, and the barrel of the gun reached Serge’s face again. Ivan pressed it between his eyes. “You lose.” He began squeezing the trigger.
Wham.
The briefcase slammed into the side of Ivan’s head. He flew off Serge and rolled in disorientation and pain. The gun fell over the side of the train and clanged off bridge beams on the way down.
Suddenly, the air was full of green paper, countless hundred-dollar bills swirling into the sky. Serge and Ivan looked up at the money, then at Sam standing over them, holding the handle of the flapping, empty briefcase. The pair crawled to the side of the car and got down on their stomachs to look over the edge of the train’s roof, watching in shock as the money gently fluttered down to the river and began floating toward the ocean.
They crawled back from the edge of the car and stood up. Serge pointed at the open case still in Sam’s hand. “What’d you do that for?”
“He was going to kill you!”
Serge and Ivan looked at each other and shook their heads. “Women.” They walked to the back of the roof and climbed down the ladder. Wild cheers erupted again as they entered the rear of the dining car. People shook their hands and slapped their backs. The drummer for——walked up. “I couldn’t come through.” He handed Serge forty-three dollars.
The train approached the Okeechobee station. Teresa looked out the window. “We’re not slowing down.”
“What?” said Maria.
“We’re supposed to stop at this depot. We won’t be able to at this speed.”
She was right. The train blew right past the depot and the confused people on the platform.
“Was that supposed to happen?” asked Maria. “Maybe because the mystery program’s sold out?”
“Can’t be,” said Teresa. “They also handle parcels.”
“Do you think something’s wrong with the engineer?”
“We are going faster,” said Teresa.
The women made their way forward. When they got to the back of the engine, they found the train’s staff already on the case. They were trying to radio the engineer, but no answer.
“Why don’t you force your way in?” asked Teresa.
“We can’t,” said one of the staff. “You can only get into the engine from the outside. Prevents interference.”
“What about a backup guy?” said Rebecca. “In case of a heart attack or something?”
“That would be me,” said the staffer.
“But then why aren’t you up there? What are you doing back—”
“Look, I’m already in enough trouble.”
A man and his young son crouched in the woods just before sunset, out where Palm Beach County meets the Everglades. Their eyes focused on the train tracks a few yards away, a tight bend just past the clearing where Pratt & Whitney tests its jet engines. A shiny new Lincoln penny sat on one of the rails.
“Why are we doing this, Daddy?”
“To get a flat penny.”
“What for?”
“Because it’s fun!”
A train whistle blew in the distance. “Here she comes! Get down!”
The pair crouched and waited, the train growing closer. It was in sight before they knew it, nothing but a blur as it entered the bend and hit the penny. There was a harsh grinding of metal. The father and son watched in astonishment as The Silver Stingray jumped the tracks and twenty cars jackknifed down the embankment toward the swamp.
“Daddy? Did we do that?”
“How’d you like some ice cream?”
38
A half hour after sundown, flashlights split the darkness, wisps of smoke. The crew worked its way through the train lying on its side halfway down the embankment to the swamp. They came to the dining car, but the door was jammed and blocked by twisted metal. The crew banged on it. “Is everyone all right in there?”
“We’re fine,” a passenger yelled back. “Just some scrapes.”
“I think Preston’s dead,” yelled someone else. “But I think he was dead before. We’re not sure.”
“Everyone stay calm.” An emergency generator came on, then backup lights. The car was a mess, but it could have been much worse.
“Yep, we’re sure now,” the passenger yelled again. “Preston’s really dead.”
“Did you poke him?” yelled the crew member.
“Twice.”
“Stay put,” he shouted. “We’ll get you out, but it’s going to take a while. We have to cut through some big pieces of metal out here, and we only have a hacksaw.”
“What about the authorities? Won’t they send someone when we don’t show up?”
“Sure,” yelled the crew member. “But the remoteness of our location and the trickiness of the terrain complicate it a little. Also, we don’t really have an excellent on-time record, so they might not notice for a few more hours. But immediately after that, they’ll be right here.”
A naked, sobbing book critic from Miami wrapped herself in a towel and ran from the sleeping compartment to the dining car, followed by Johnny Vegas. “What’s the matter, baby? It’s just a little derailment.”
The train lurched a few feet as soil gave way on the embankment; passengers fell over. It was still again. People uprighted chairs in the diner and sat down on the left wall, bracing for a long wait.
“Nobody leave this car!”
They looked up. Serge strolled through the wreckage in his burgundy smoking jacket. He stopped next to Preston’s body.
“Someone murdered this man!” He turned around slowly. “And that someone is still in this room!”
The crew member banged on the door again. “I heard shouting. What’s going on in there?”
“Someone’s trying to solve a mystery,” yelled a passenger.
“Jesus! We just derailed! Don’t you people know when to quit!”
Serge paced and scanned faces. “Preston had accumulated quite an impressive list of enemies…”
“You!” he yelled, spinning and pointing at Dee Dee Lowenstein, holding a fruit hat in her lap. “Dozens of people heard you threaten Preston’s life.”
“I didn’t mean it. It was just a stupid banana.”
“You had motive and opportunity. People saw you near Preston when we went in the tunnel…. But you weren’t the only one.” Serge resumed pacing, looking people in the eye. He spun again.
“You’re the one they call Spider! He humiliated you time and time again!…And you, Frankie Chan. He almost got you killed in Bridgeport!”
“But we didn’t murder him!”
Serge nodded thoughtfully. He took a few more steps and stopped in front of the BBB.
“What are you looking at us for?” said Sam.
“You know why. You all know why,” said Serge.
“What are you talking about?”
“The brochure for the mystery train that first got you interested in the trip—the name of one of the celebrity guests caught your attention.”
Teresa nodded. “Ralph Krunkleton. We love his books.”
“That’s what you’d like us to believe,” said Serge, then raised his voice dramatically: “But in fact the person you came to see was not Ralph Krunkleton at all, but Preston Lancaster!”
The women recoiled in their seats.
“Why would we want to see him?” said Maria.
“Becaus
e he got all of you pregnant at the University of Florida twenty-five years ago before fleeing to Nevada. Isn’t that true!”
The women were speechless.
“That’s how all of you got together in the first place!” said Serge. “It’s the common factor that explains why a club would consist of such completely different—though unquestionably lovely—personalities.”
“That’s crazy!” scoffed Teresa.
“Is it?” said Serge.
“Where’d you get such a ridiculous idea?” said Rebecca.
“Sam talks in her sleep.”
Four heads turned. “Sam!”
“I didn’t know I talked in my sleep.”
“We never intended to kill him!” said Rebecca. “We were just planning to confront him after all these years and embarrass him publicly. Sam wanted to kick him in the nuts, but that was it! I swear!”
“Maybe that was the plan, but when he picked you for hypnosis volunteers, everything went haywire,” said Serge. “You never expected that, did you? But you had to go through with it or he’d get suspicious. And guess what, Rebecca? He did it to you again! You were fit to be tied when you found out about Brad Pitt!”
“But not mad enough to commit murder!”
Serge walked away from the women, back to the center of the car. “So we have a whole roomful of people who had a bone to pick with Preston—all with ample opportunity. The question is, which one of you acted on that opportunity?”
A chorus of denials filled the overturned train car.
The train lurched another foot. Everyone shut up and grabbed something for balance. They waited a moment until they were sure it had stopped.
“All your protests will be moot in a few moments,” said Serge. “I have irrefutable proof as to the identity of the killer.”
Heads looked back and forth; suspicion everywhere. Serge walked to one of the passengers with a camcorder, the same one who had taped the hypnosis show with the BBB.
“May I?” asked Serge.