Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) (24 page)

It was time to get away from the scene. Jeff made his way quickly along 34th to the west, putting as much distance as he could between him and the flurry of cops who had converged on the site of Mellen’s murder. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Dexter and Emeka, but he assumed they’d time traveled back right in front of everyone. How the papers would report two guys disappearing into thin air on Fifth Avenue would be interesting.

What was important was that it was probably enough that they wouldn’t necessarily be looking for the guy that had just plowed into two police officers to stop them from arresting a murderer. He kept looking behind him, but no one had followed. No one from 1930 or from the future. It did occur to him that they could make an infinite number of runs at him, trying to catch him before he left the alley, but he quickly theorized that in his current reality he’d safely made it away from them – and, with his current momentum, that would be the logic with which he went forward.

The location of Kane’s murder was particularly convenient for his next course of action. After heading a couple of blocks west, he made a quick left on 7th and came to Pennsylvania Station. As cool as it had been to see the Empire State Building under construction, the old Penn Station was equally as breathtaking. It was an enormous structure, spanning the street as far as he could see. Pillars three or four stories tall lined the entire front of the building. It was a far cry from the Penn Station he’d visited many times to catch the train up to University of Albany. For a moment, he wished Dexter was here with him to see it. Then he reminded himself that Dexter could actually be on his way to catch him, so he kept moving.

The sentiment about Dexter also made him give a second thought to sticking around for a bit, and checking out Depression-era New York. He had cash, so he could get a room and relax. Maybe check out Central Park or Yankee Stadium – see the Babe and Gehrig in action. But even though it defied logic, he felt as though he needed to move as quickly as possible. If they were somehow able to pinpoint his whereabouts, they had all the time in the world to make a trip back to get him. He really needed to stay mobile and avoid any opportunity to be traced in the vicinity of Mellen’s murder.

The grand entrance to the station was at street level, and Jeff strode through the doors and into the building, looking down onto the main floor. Bright morning sunlight shined through the skylights high above as commuters made their way to and from the boarding area. While the beige of the brick made the station appear much more vibrant than he’d ever seen in any black-and-white photo, he was thrown off by the fact that every single person in the place – himself included – was wearing black or some shade of gray. He wasn’t used to seeing a group of people so devoid of fashion differences and color choices.

He descended the stairs, watching the people as he walked. In the train station, there was only the slightest evidence that there might be a depression going on. Most travelers were businessmen, with a few well-dressed couples heading past him for the New York shopping district, probably before taking in a show. Everyone, both the men and the women, wore a hat. Strangely to him, the smell of tobacco smoke tinged the air. The floor and the fixtures were immaculate. Clean, polished and attractive. It was exactly the kind of scene that the USTP was designed to allow people to experience. He was taking advantage of the opportunity to enjoy it.

To Jeff’s right was the ticket booth, so he headed there. He almost laughed out loud when he was told a one-way trip to Newark was $1.50. He handed over one of Dexter’s $20 bills and was given his change and a yellow piece of paper entitling him to one ride from New York City, N.Y. to Newark, N.J. to be taken within one year of the date stamped on the back. While he wasn’t big on the concept of time travel souvenirs, this would be a cool thing to carry around in his wallet.

Looking at a sign behind the clerk, he noted that the train for Newark didn’t leave for almost an hour. While he didn’t want to be sedentary for fear that the USTP would catch up with him, he was feeling hungry. Turning away from the ticket booth, he noticed a sign for the Pennsylvania Station Restaurant. Since he didn’t have anywhere to be right at the moment, and he had a wad of era-appropriate cash that he wouldn’t be needing for very long, he made the decision to treat himself. He made a pit stop first, though, at a fancy men’s store tucked into the station’s walls, to purchase some more appropriate clothes for the time.

If Pennsylvania Station itself scoffed at the Depression taking place outside its walls, the restaurant simply pointed at it and laughed. With high decorative ceilings, artistically-drawn windows and clothed tables, the lavish atmosphere of the restaurant represented the kind of life that people must have aspired to in the 1930’s. Standing there, it was difficult to gather that a quarter of the American population was out of work and that people waited in line for hours for bread or cheese for their families. He knew he wasn’t getting a true picture of the era, but history – at least Depression-era history – wasn’t what had brought him here.

Jeff was seated among what he imagined to be New York’s aristocracy, fitting in well with his grey suit and newsboy cap tucked under his arm, and informed his waiter that he only had forty minutes before he had to catch his train. The waiter nodded and then left, giving him a moment to look at the menu, printed on a card stuffed between two ends of a leather-bound folder. Though he’d time traveled from the early evening, which meant that to his body it was probably now around 9 p.m., it was still morning where he was now, so the menu was a breakfast menu. He was hungry enough, though, that everything looked delicious, and when the waiter returned he ordered a ham and cheese omelet with smoked salmon. The waiter brought a pitcher of coffee without asking, but Jeff asked for tea instead.

As he ate his meal, he continued to scan the restaurant while trying not to look like a criminal casing the joint. To his right, a well-dressed man with a bow tie sat with a woman who was presumably his wife, eating without talking to, or even looking at, each other. On the other side, two businessmen talked loudly with occasional bellowing guffaws, but lowered their voices every so often during the more critical parts of their conversation. While scanning the scene, he realized he was underdressed for the room, but knew that a pocketful of cash leading to a big tip could compensate. Besides, he’d never see these people again.

When he finished, Jeff, as planned, left a sizable tip on the table for the waiter – a $20 bill – and left without speaking to him. He made his way across the floor and down a flight of stairs labeled “Incoming Trains” to the platform that was indicated on his ticket. His timing was good, and an enormous black electric engine like the one he’d seen as a teenager at the Smithsonian pulled a half-dozen train cars into the station. He boarded, and a few minutes later the train lurched slowly forward.

Out his window, Jeff had a decent view of the city growing upward as the train rolled the several blocks until it hit the tunnel to go under the Hudson. He saw a few downtrodden neighborhoods, but was quickly into the harbor shipping areas, with dockworkers pulling crates off of ships nestled along the east side of the river. It was a short glimpse, though, as the train disappeared into the tunnel. It picked up speed and several minutes later emerged in his home state, four decades before he was born.

He tried to identify different landmarks along his path, but New Jersey had changed so much. Without all of the highways and the industry, it was difficult to make sense of where he was. Still, he stared out the window like a child, each neighborhood and each house he passed enthralling him. The train was shortly out of the residential areas and into the industrial, and he knew he was getting close to his destination in Newark.

Shortly thereafter, he heard the conductor yell that the Harrison Interchange in Newark was the next stop, and Jeff hopped off of the train, ready to begin the next leg of his trip. At the train station, he had a clerk make change for him and used the public pay phone to call the airport. He was connected to the Trans World Airlines representative, who told him that he could accommodate him on a flight departing in about three hours. He booked it. The train station was only about a half-mile from Newark Metropolitan Airport, so without any bags to carry except for the one over his shoulder, he decided to walk. Ten minutes later, he arrived at the terminal.

Newark Airport was a far cry from the bustling metro airport he’d experienced so many times, though he guessed that in 1930 it was one of the busier commercial airports in the country. Standing in front of the spacious airfield was a box of a building with large letters denoting “Newark Airport.” Despite the fact that air travel was presumably for those with some degree of wealth, there were few aesthetics in the building, except for large windows that allowed those in the waiting area to see the planes in action. He smiled, as people were glued to the window watching. As he entered, one of the twin prop planes took off and he saw people pointing in admiration.

Jeff made his way to the TWA – or what was to become TWA – counter and announced his arrival to the clerk, who had his record ready. Jeff gave him the fare in cash, $100, and was surprised when they asked him if he wanted to spend $5 for a $5,000 insurance policy, which he refused, and was handed a long piece of ticker tape with printing of his entire itinerary on it. New York to Cleveland, Cleveland to Kansas City, overnight in Kansas City, and then the rest of the way to San Francisco. He shoved the ticket into his pocket and felt the time device buried deep inside. He tapped it with his fingers, knowing that in modern times there was no way he’d get it onto an airplane.

His flights were comfortable enough, the most memorable part being the sheer terror on most of his fellow passengers’ faces. He almost found himself laughing out loud at one point, though once they were airborne he understood that it wasn’t of nearly the same comfort level he experienced at home, even though the male flight attendants provided every amenity they could to ease the trip. He did take advantage of his tolerable level of anxiety, however, to get some sleep on the plane. Which was a testament to how tired he must have been, because it wasn’t cozy by any means.

Cleveland led to Kansas City, where he stayed the night in a bed-and-breakfast about two miles from the airport, driven there by a black Ford taxicab with three fellow travelers. He didn’t want to engage them too much because he wasn’t confident he could keep up with accurate history in the conversation. It had been easy on the plane, where you couldn’t hear anything over the propellers anyway, but in the close confines of the car, they got to talking. These were businessmen in a time when the country was still growing, even if it was temporarily stunted by the Depression. They saw a two-mile cab trip as an opportunity to make a deal.

The cab ride led to dinner at a small diner next to the hotel. Jeff did his best to convince them he was an entrepreneur scouting for new business on the West Coast, but he couldn’t go into too much detail. That fascinated them even more than if he’d actually come up with a story for them. He had no idea what had been invented by then, what business terms and phrases people used (such as, could he tell them he was a “consultant”?), or even, he was embarrassed to admit, who the President of the country was at the moment. So, he learned as much as he could about them, which was especially easy after they’d had a few cocktails. One of them worked for J.P. Morgan, which he thought was an exciting nugget, considering the company’s future.

Overnight, he learned that he actually slept better on a rickety plane than he did the hotel’s mattress, and in the morning they were back at it. His friends from the night before kept to themselves on the last leg of the trip and, in San Francisco, they each went their own ways without even a nod of the head, leaving Jeff to finish his journey alone. He spent $10 on a train ride to Sacramento, and from there to the town of Truckee (famous for the Donner Party), which was as close as he could get to his destination by public transportation. In Truckee, he was able to rent a horse for $3, and he followed a mapped out path down a series of trails through the mountainous forest until he reached a clearing in what his calculations told him was Henness Pass. Trudging through the mountainous landscape, he was eternally thankful that Benjamin Kane hadn’t chosen a winter month to murder George Mellen in 1930, because the Sierra Nevadas would have been impassable.

The area looked familiar – or at least as familiar as he could remember. He’d been here just before the trip to Russia, when he and Dexter had snuck away from Agent Fisher while being escorted through the airport. He got down off the horse and sighed, feeling as though he’d reached the end of a long adventure. Of course, he
had
– traveling across the United States in 1930 was adventure enough, but his feeling was related to everything he’d had to go through to get away from the USTP and get back to 1849.

And then, to get back to his own life.

Jeff reached into the bag slung over his shoulder and pulled out the tablet and the old, original time device. He fired up the tablet and entered his destination. The screen spit out coordinates, which he entered meticulously into the device. He replaced the tablet in its case and returned it to his shoulder, then held the device in front of him and pushed the button.

The scenery around him melted and was replaced with a slighter version of itself.

While during the last 36 hours he’d often felt as though he was in slow motion, there was no time for dilly-dallying. After the transitional feeling of the time travel subsided, Jeff looked at his surroundings and smiled. He was indeed back. He was standing in the middle of the trail that Joe Wilton would come traipsing down momentarily. And he was standing in the exact spot where Dexter had been shot in the leg by one of Wilton’s hired guns – in some other reality.