Work Done for Hire (21 page)

On the cab ride back to Biloxi, the cabdriver and I listened to music on a country station. We didn't talk until we got to the train station and he opened the door. The cab machine took my card with no protest, and I tipped him up to three hundred.

“It's none of my business,” he said, “but you better watch your ass. Listen to a fellow vet. Guns are never nothin' but trouble. Haven't we had enough trouble?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We shouldn't go looking for it.” He nodded and drove off shaking his head.

When trouble comes looking for you, though, best to be ready. A little revolver with five shells is five shots better than a pocket full of nothing. On cue, a train whistled in the distance. The train to Maine, soon enough.

I'll come to thee by moonlight,
the poet said,
though hell should bar the way.

I
probably could have upgraded my ticket to a sleeper compartment, but didn't want to push the one credit card too high. I did nurse a couple of glasses of wine, watching TV movies in the bar car.

The revolver seemed heavy and obvious in my Amtrak bag, and perhaps the idea of a gun clashed with its cheerful logo, but it would be more conspicuous in my pocket. I decided to use my layover in Washington to buy a shoulder holster. And a double-breasted dark jacket, with padded shoulders, to go with it. Mirror shades and a rent-a-girl to hang on my arm. Or maybe I should stick with the Amtrak bag.

Actually, an inconspicuous light jacket and a shoulder holster would be a good idea. I checked the web on the bar-car computer, and was amazed to find out (admittedly in an ad for shoulder holsters) how risky it was to simply carry a pistol in your pocket—at any second, the trigger could snag the pocket lining and blow your dick off! Buy a shoulder holster for the sake of your theoretical progeny! I'd gone all my life without worrying about that.

Actually, I'd be more concerned about a policeman saying, “Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just . . . wait! That
is
a pistol in your pocket! Hands up!”

The Amtrak bag seemed effective and inconspicuous, and the price was right. But I wondered whether I might be going into a situation where I would want a concealed weapon and both hands free. That might be worth the hundred bucks or so. Though I wouldn't put it on unless I was walking into an actual “situation.”

I did get a solid six hours of sleep on the train, even getting up a couple of times to take the foil off for random intervals, to confuse things. As we approached Washington, I left it off for the last hour or so. The people who were renting the room in the Marriott would no doubt be listening.

I'd want it covered up all the time when I headed north, but also, naturally, I'd want it to be “not working” for hours at a time before I left.

Of course I had no idea where the listeners were located. Maybe they were in Maine, in the same room as Kit, which they implied. I must be ready to surprise them there, at least approaching with the hand quiet, wrapped up.

But first there was Washington to worry about. In all likelihood, they would expect to meet, or at least contact, me when I arrived in Washington. Perhaps I should do that, reassuring them just before I headed north, with my foil-silenced hand. If I checked into the hotel on schedule and
then
turned around, wrapped up the hand, and went straight to the train station, I could be halfway to Maine before they missed me.

By now, I hoped, they should be used to the intermittent signal from the hand.

When I got off the train in Union Station, I looked around, checking the time, as if I were expecting someone to meet me. Kept looking as I walked from the track through the huge station, but nobody contacted or, apparently, followed me.

I got to the taxicab rank and then doubled back to the ticket machine. Quickly bought a ticket up to Maine via Penn Station. There were lots of trains from Washington to Boston, but not so many from Boston to Maine. Two leaving in the morning, two in the afternoon, and a red-eye just before midnight.

I did toy with the idea of chancing a plane north. Of course the pistol was the obstacle. I could just ditch it and improvise when I got to Maine, a state with a lot of hunters. How hard could it be to buy a pistol in Portland?

Actually, I had no idea. But a gun in the hand is worth two in the bush, or something, conjuring the pubic ultimate in concealed weapons.

And I would actually only save about two hours, flying. There weren't that many flights to Maine from New York. I guess people in Maine took the train or stayed home.

The only legal gun store in the District of Columbia, according to the computer, was one operating inside the main police station—how handy for them. I'm sure there was a fascinating story behind that. But I just needed a holster, and Googling, found a list of sporting goods stores that sold them, one right in Union Station.

I got a hot dog and a Coke from a vendor and asked her where the sporting goods store was. She pointed down a long corridor of shopfronts. I sat and finished my lunch contemplating the question, “How do you look innocent while asking to see concealed-weapon accessories?” Then I went off to try it.

I walked through a huge assortment of balls and bats and gloves and hats, until I got to the very rear of the store, where behind a forest of rifle barrels pointing skyward and a veritable clothing store of desert- and jungle-colored garments, there was a glass case with dozens of bright new airguns. A few aisles down, I found stacks of various holsters.

The shoulder holsters looked a little too gangster-ish. But I guess gangsters preferred them for a reason.

“Can I help you decide?” asked a little round man with a nametag.

“Looking for a holster for a snub-nosed Taurus.”

“Would that be a 605? An 85?” He looked left and right. “You don't have it with you?”

“No. No, it's for a friend.” Wouldn't be smart to pull it out, I presumed.

“Good. Do you know if it's a .38 Special or a .357 Magnum?”

“Either, I think. I was told.” By a highly trustworthy arms merchant in a smoky New Orleans dive.

“Will you be wearing it under your clothing or outside?”

“Under.” He nodded and didn't ask to see my permit.

He picked up two cardboard cartons. “Under the arm or on the belt?”

“Belt, I suppose.”

He handed me one. “This is best, I think, for men who aren't, well, very fat. Some policemen are.”

“I've noticed.” I took it from him. The belt clip seemed to be on the wrong side.

“It's not for cross-draw,” he said. “Strong side.”

I clipped it on my belt on the right hip. “You don't recommend cross-draw?”

“Your choice.” He shrugged, I think meaning
not for the likes of you
. “You might want to wear it with a roomy jacket. Sports coat.” I bought it and went to look for something inconspicuous to put over it.

There was a clothing store called Next2New less than a mile's walk away. Plenty of time before the train, so I strolled there, through a part of Washington the guidebooks probably didn't mention. I got a shabby tweed jacket for less than a hamburger on the train, and a well-worn beige shirt with the monogram MPX on the breast pocket. Michael P. Xavier, if anyone asks.

I changed clothes in a grubby men's-room stall at Union Station, throwing away the old shirt. My heart jumped when I did that: before the next time you change clothes, you'll face down the Enemy. Don't sweat, now.

Clipped the holster onto my belt and slid the Taurus into place. In the mirror I looked innocent enough. Would it fool a trained policeman? An untrained one? I put the gun back in the Amtrak bag.

On the way to the waiting room I passed the sporting goods store and hesitated. I'd reloaded the pistol after the billboard confrontation, but no longer had that box of cartridges. So should I face the bad guys with only five rounds, or go in and buy a new box?

I didn't know enough. Could you buy a carton of bullets as casually as a carton of milk here? Or would your face automatically appear on a Homeland Security computer screen with the notation “armed and presumed dangerous”?
Escaped from a military hospital where he was being held under armed guard.

Here's your change, sir. You might want to run for the door.

Well, the depressing truth was that one box of cartridges more or less was not going to profoundly affect my fate. If five rounds didn't do the job, then thirty wouldn't either. Factor in the time it would take me to shuck out the used shells and reload, cowering behind that Ikea coffee table. Five would have to do.

If it came down to a firefight, my trusty snub-nose against however many serious weapons they had, I was going to come in second anyway. That didn't worry me as much as it should have, though; give a man a weapon and he starts to think with his balls.

Maybe when I get to Maine I can pick up a flamethrower or a machine gun. Or maybe when I pull the snub-nose out of its policeman holster, they'll all throw up their hands and surrender.

There were three computers in an alcove off the Union Station waiting room. Pretty shabby ones, keys yellowed with age and the grunge from thousands of random grimy fingers. I made a mental note to autoclave my hands when I was done, and used the Visa card as a key to the wonderful world of global communication.

Google Earth took ten seconds to show me an aerial view of a cottage with the address on Ring Road. At greatest magnification, the roof of the A-frame was a stark grey rectangle at the end of a brown dirt driveway off the “ring road” that circled the small island's perimeter. I bought a print of that view and also a map of the island; folded them up and put them in the bag with the other incriminating stuff—carefully saved the foil and rolled it up inside the sling that hid it.

This part had to be done quickly: I took a cab to the JW Marriott Hotel and waited in line for two minutes. No one sidled up to me. I showed the clerk the reservation receipt from the glove compartment of the car, and he gave me the key to 1138. I declined help with my bag.

No one else in the elevator. I went up one floor and got out, re-wrapped my hand with the foil, then walked back down to the lobby and went outside to the taxi rank and said “Union Station.”

If they were able to follow me, well, we'd have our confrontation in a very public place. Not in room 1138.

Back at the station I found a place to sit with my back to a wall, and tried not to look too furtive while I killed a half hour with the
Washington Post
and watery coffee. When it was ten minutes to boarding time, I went toward the train. On the way, I stopped at the bookstore and looked for something that might keep me occupied for some hours. Thrillers were a little too close to real life, so I picked up a copy of
Stranger in a Strange Land
, which I'd read when I was too young. Maybe it would give me some tips for dealing with aliens. Assuming the bad guys were not citizens of the United States.

My seat was half occupied by a black gentleman who was sound asleep in the window seat, so I went on to the bar car, or “lounge,” where I would have wound up anyhow.

I got a beer and sat down at a table not too close or too far away from the security guard, a serious-looking woman in a grey uniform with a Glock in a fast-draw holster clamped to her thigh. Had she been trained to detect nervous amateur spies carrying little holsters clipped to their belts? Evidently not.

I studied the
Post
editorials long enough to be able to discuss global ocean trash issues or the current revolution in Somalia with her, but she didn't come over.

The train was underground for some time, and then spent a few minutes speeding over the suburbs in elevated mode, and then slowed down to connect with the twentieth-century rails that served Amtrak through most of the northeastern corridor. Slowed down regularly for nineteenth-century curves.

After the Baltimore stop, I checked back in the coach and the black guy was gone; both those seats were empty. Clipped my ticket to the back of the seat in front of me and cranked back the seat; the train wouldn't reach Boston for another seven hours.

A conductor woke me up when the train was approaching Boston, about ten at night. I got off and South Station was a huge quiet cavern full of places to eat, all closed.

A sleepwalking rent-a-cop directed me to a twenty-four-hour place a couple of blocks away, the South Side Diner, which was full of interesting people. I probably was not the only one carrying a gun, but nevertheless felt somewhat out of place, neither intoxicated nor obviously unwashed. Though I wanted a shower so much I might have
used
the gun to force my way into one.

I'm sure there were fine restaurants still open in some other part of town, but I only had an hour. I nibbled on a fried-egg sandwich, which seemed safe in all respects other than cardiac, and went back to the station to wait for the late train north.

I felt like a time traveler marooned in the twentieth century, or the nineteenth.

The small crowd waiting for the train was mostly old black or Hispanic people. The few who were white or prosperous-looking were absorbed in their readers or papers. How many of them had sought out this slow venue because they were also carrying guns? How many were
not
? We were a fairly desperate-looking crowd, myself definitely included.

The gun was chafing my side, so I went into a men's-room stall and returned it to the Amtrak bag. I doubted there would be a quick-draw situation on the Portland train.

A good thing, too. I was exhausted from travel, and once I got to Portland it would still be at least four hours to Bangor on the bus.

When I got to Bangor, what then? Daniel Craig and Sean Connery would always appear all fresh in their tuxedos, with plenty of weaponry and ammo tucked away somehow. I couldn't visualize either with dark shadows under his eyes and his gun in an Amtrak bag.

At least I wouldn't look dangerous. And I could put it back in the holster before I confidently kicked down the door.