The Christmas Train (6 page)

“No offense, but why is the ‘king of the class-action lawsuit’ taking the train? He probably can afford his own jet.”

“From what I’ve heard, the oh-so-tough Mr. Merryweather is afraid to fly. I wish he’d just buy his own train and stay off mine.”

“Well, thanks for stopping me from knocking that scotch down his throat. I actually have plans for my life that don’t include prison.”

Tyrone smiled. “No problem. Any time.”

Tom could tell Tyrone was really hustling to get things ready, so he decided to wrap things up. “And thanks for the info and the beer.”

“Come on back after dinner. I serve some hard stuff.”

“Hard stuff, now that’s always been my kind of drink.” chapter seven

Tom went back to his compartment and looked out the window; it was already dark at five-fifteen. They’d just cleared Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, a place immortalized when John Brown made his famous raid on the federal armory there prior to the Civil War’s commencing, and went to the gallows as his price for being in the history books.

At Cumberland, Maryland, the Cap would be going through the Graham Tunnel, which ran about a third of a mile in length. According to Tom’s train brochure, both the entrance and exit to the tunnel were in West Virginia. Yet due to the mysteries of geography and the happenstance of surveyors etching state lines, Tom supposed, the tunnel itself was actually in Maryland. The Cap would also be navigating the famous Cumberland Gap, the same natural breach frontiersmen had used to get through the wall of the Appalachian Mountains on their way to the Plains and the Pacific. But for that hole in the rock, America might still be a motley strip of thirteen very oppressed English colonies.

After Cumberland, the train would next encounter Lover’s Leap. Here, legend had it, an Indian princess forbidden by her father to marry the American soldier she loved threw herself off in despair. The anguished chief then supposedly threw himself over too. Tom didn’t think he’d be sharing that tale with Steve and Julie. They were nervous enough.

Deciding it was finally time to hunt down the film people, Tom passed between cars in the opposite direction of the dining room and found himself in the other sleeping-room section. By now he’d adjusted his balance to the gentle rocking and swaying of the train, and he was proud to note that he took a tumble only once out of three clear opportunities to do so. He slowed his pace. Deluxe units were marked with letters, while the economy compartments were numbered. He was sure that Hollywood types would only travel first class, especially famous or infamous ones. He drifted toward this section, hoping one of the movie folks would come out of hiding and he could strike up a conversation, perhaps get a part in a blockbuster for a million bucks and become merrily infamous himself.

He moved to the first compartment. There the curtain was pulled tightly across the opening and he could see nothing, although he heard someone moving around inside. As he went to the next compartment he could see that the curtain was pulled back a bit. He stopped, checked the corridor, and then took a quick peek. The room had been outfitted as an office. There was a laptop computer set up, what looked to be a printer, a power strip complete with surge protector, and a tall young man, with a flattop haircut and wearing a dark turtleneck, pacing in the small space. As he turned, Tom could see that he was wearing a phone headset with his cell phone riding in a belt clip.

This couldn’t be the famous director, could it? This guy didn’t seem like the director type—not that Tom knew what that type was, exactly. Then he had to be either a star or a writer. Tom’s money was on his being a writer. He had a computer and a printer, after all. And he seemed like the young, hip scriveners probably much in demand out there. As everyone knew, people over thirty were ceremoniously stripped of their cool gene and given a bad haircut and a pair of sensible shoes in return.

Tom went to the next compartment. He was about to take a look when a man slid the door open and almost collided with him.

“Sorry,” he said. Tom glanced at the unlighted cigarette in the man’s hand. “I was just told I can’t smoke in my compartment,” he explained.

Tom quickly ran his gaze over the fellow, a longtime reporter’s habit. He was medium height, early sixties and slim, but with the beginnings of a small paunch. He had thick silver hair, a healthy California Christmas tan, and was dressed very expensively in black slacks, white silk shirt, tweed jacket, and, on his feet, Bruno Maglis. To Tom he just reeked of casual, frolicking millions.

“They have a smoking lounge on the lower level,” Tom advised.

“Well, I guess that’s where I’m headed then. Tried a hundred times to kick this habit. Did the patch, even hypnosis. Nothing.”

“I was a two-packer a day, but now I limit myself to the occasional cigar.”

He looked interested. “How’d you manage it?”

“Well, my life sort of depended on it.”

“I hear you. Who wants to die of lung cancer?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I used to be a news correspondent overseas. I was in a convoy of journalists that was attacked by guerrillas. One of the cars in front of us was hit. Our guards told us to remain calm. Then a truck in front of us exploded. The guards told us to keep calm, stay put. Then a mortar round hit right next to us, and the guards told us one more time to keep calm. Right before they jumped out and ran.”

“My God, what happened?”

“Well, they obviously had us in range, and we weren’t waiting for the next shot to find us. We all jumped out and ran for the mountains. A guy from Reuters, about fifty and a heavy smoker, didn’t make it. He dropped to the ground, probably due to a heart attack.”

“Did you stop and help?”

“I would have, but I was carrying somebody at the time—twisted ankle, the person couldn’t run. I was hauling up that mountain, my heart and lungs near to bursting; it seemed like every smoke I’d ever had was coming back to haunt me. But we made it to a friendly camp, barely.”

“And the other guy?”

“I hope the heart attack killed him before the guerrillas reached him; they weren’t known for their compassion. I haven’t touched a cigarette since.” Tom added, “I wouldn’t recommend that method for everyone, of course. It could have some serious side effects.”

“I guess so. Wow, what a story. War correspondent, huh?”

“Not anymore. The most dangerous things I report on these days are how to construct his and her closets in a way that allows the husband actually to live, and the harrowing pitfalls of home barbecuing.”

The man laughed and put out his hand. “That’s good. That’s funny. I’m Max Powers, by the way.”

Tom thought he had recognized him, and when the man said his name it all clicked. He was a very famous director, regularly in the top ten of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Though he was known more for his enormous box-office successes, he’d also done some work that had pleased the critics, been nominated several times for Academy awards, and had taken home the grand prize a few years ago.

“Tom Langdon. I’ve seen a lot of your movies, Mr. Powers. You really know how to tell a story. And I’ll take that over the highbrow stuff the critics always tout.”

“Thanks. That’s all I try to do, tell a story. And it’s Max.” He slipped the unlighted cigarette into his shirt pocket and looked around. “Well, we’re trying to cobble a story together about this mode of transportation.”

“Because there’s something about a train?”

“You got that right. Cars? Forget it! Crazy drivers, jammed interstate highways, eating fast food till you drop? No thanks. Planes are impersonal and nerve-racking. Now, I don’t like to fly, but in my business you have to. I was coming back on a flight once from Cannes, and we hit some really bad turbulence and I went into the lavatory and lighted up, because I was so nervous. Well, the smoke alarm went off, and when we landed they took me to jail. Jail! All for smoking one unfiltered menthol. Cost me thirty grand in legal fees, and I still had to do community service.”

He calmed. “But trains, that’s something else. I’m a native Californian, and my old man was a conductor on the Santa Fe passenger line back in the days when trains were really the classy way to travel. He’d arrange it so I could ride up with the engineer. Let me tell you, there’s no greater feeling in the world. Ever since, I’ve known there’s a story to be told about riding the rails, and not like the stuff that’s already been done. And now I’m finally doing something about it.”

Tom told him about the story he was writing and some of his impressions of train travel. “It’s not getting from A to B. It’s not the beginning or the destination that counts. It’s the ride in between. That’s the whole show,” he said. “If you only take the time to see it. This train is alive with things that should be seen and heard. It’s a living, breathing something—you just have to want to learn its rhythm.” Tom wondered where this was all coming from, but there it was. Maybe the Cap was growing on him.

Max gripped Tom’s arm excitedly. “You understand exactly what I’m trying to get at here.” He suddenly smacked his forehead. “I just had an unbelievable brainwave. This is always happening to me, Tom, all the time. Look, you’re a writer, seen stuff all over the world, and you’re on this train trying to take the pulse of America over the holidays.”

“Right, so?” Tom said cautiously. He had no idea where this was going, but Max Powers seemed to be floating in the clutches of his brainwave.

“So, you and my writer should team up—I mean, for this trip, for the research part. Swap notes, stories you’ve heard, brainstorming, stuff like that. And I’m not talking for free. I’ll pay you, believe me.”

“But I’m already working on a story.”

“That’s the sheer beauty of it. You write your story, fine. But the same stuff you’re doing for your story can help my writer put the film plot together. It’s perfect. Two bangs for one. Get it?”

Tom nodded. However, he wasn’t really looking forward to working with the ten-year-old with the headset. Tom was neither very young nor very hip, and if the guy called him “dude” just once or perhaps blurted out “Ciao!” instead of simply “goodbye,” it might get ugly.

To Tom’s surprise, Max led him right past the compartment with the headset-wearing hipster and went to the first compartment and rapped on the glass.

“You decent? It’s Max.”

The door slid open, and in that instant Tom felt every bit of breath leave his body. He could no longer even hear the hum, hush, siss-boom-bah of the mighty Cap as Eleanor Carter stared back at him. chapter eight

Max said, “Eleanor Carter, Tom Langdon. Tom, Eleanor.”

Neither Tom nor Eleanor uttered a word. They just stared at each other for so long that Max finally said, “Um, do you two know each other?”

“It was years ago,” Eleanor said quickly.

She was even more lovely now than the last time Tom had seen her, and that bar had been set pretty high. She was tall and still slender, and hadn’t cut her auburn hair short as so many women closing in on forty do. It was still shoulder-length and sexy. Her face, well, there were a few more lines there, yet they possessed an attractiveness—a statement that the owner had actually lived —that smooth, unblemished skin could never match. And the big green eyes still packed a wallop and made Tom want to find a chair to sit in before he fell over. She was wearing gray wool slacks, stylish black, low-heeled shoes, and a white sweater with the collar of a blue shirt sticking out.

Tom remembered vividly the first time he ever saw Eleanor on campus. She wore short shorts, showcasing those long legs, a red sleeveless sweater, flip-flops, and a yellow bandanna in her hair. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. For the next fifteen years he rarely had.

Both journalism majors, they’d decided to be a team after graduation. Their first investigative assignment for a little newspaper in Georgia had been following the legendary Reverend Little Bob Humphries around the Deep South, from Anniston, Alabama, to Tupelo, Mississippi, and every backwater in between. Reverend Bob, dressed in his white suit, white shoes, and wide, wide white belt, could heal the sick, calm the angry, cheer the bereaved, and save the wicked, all in a night’s work, and for a very reasonable amount of money (namely, all that you’d brought). You could hide your last penny as well as you could, and Reverend Bob would find it and take it with a charm and manner that made you feel ashamed for holding out on him.

The holy man drove a custom-built Impala, the biggest Tom had ever seen. It was mostly for the prodigious trunk space, he discovered, for the good minister unabashedly accepted everything from legal tender to salt-cured hams to the occasional spare relative to serve as an assistant. Tom had always thought that the Reverend must be related in some way to the Duke and the Dauphin, the shysters of Huckleberry Finn infamy. As far as Tom knew, unlike the genteel highway robbers in Twain’s masterpiece, Little Bob had never been ridden out of town on a rail tarred and feathered. Yet the defrauded citizens could have indeed done such a thing and God probably wouldn’t have even blinked. In fact, He might have sent a miracle or two their way as compensation for such a good deed.

Yet Tom had to admire the man’s tenacity. During their investigation, Tom had even ended up giving Little Bob his last twenty bucks and he wasn’t even Baptist. It was a moment of insane weakness that Tom still felt shame for. However, to Eleanor’s credit, she’d gotten Tom’s twenty back, the only person living or dead ever known to have retrieved money from Reverend Bob without recourse to the courts. Their resulting exposé of the charlatan hit the national newswire, made their reputations, and also stopped the Reverend’s little con game.