roared, his eyes bright and primal like an animal’s.
I tried to catch Fisher’s eye. This seemed all wrong. Anna Becker had mentioned nothing about an ankle bracelet.
“Did you find the body?” I asked.
Navarre brandished the blackjack toward me. “We don’t need anything more than what we got to send this nigger to the gas chamber. Now get the hell out, bull.”
With that he advanced on me in three fast strides, raising the sap with one hand and reaching inside his coat with the other. I took a step backward and I was faster. He had a .38 Police Positive in his left hand, but it was frozen uselessly in mid-air. My Colt .45 was five inches from his broad, veiny, ugly nose. His eyes were obsidian, dead.
“Kill him!” Navarre commanded, but his voice shook.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
“I’ll kill you, Darrow!”
But his arm remained where it had been, the pistol pointed out into the room.
I aimed, staring at him down the heavy barrel of the automatic. “You like to hurt people … you like it …” Those were all the words that would come out.
Then I felt Joe Fisher next to me and the spell broke. “Let it go, Jimmy.” A stocky desk sergeant pushed Navarre away and I holstered the Colt.
“James, you’re walking like an old man. That’s not right.”
I turned to see Mose, resplendent in his immaculate sleeping-car porter uniform. We stood at trackside, and it was oddly quiet. The usual call of train whistles was silent. My eyes roved over the station tracks and saw spikes and blocks of wood driven into the switches that connected the array of tracks to the main line. Alarm shot through me: Secure the line.
“Why are the tracks spiked? No train can switch off the main line.”
“You’re gonna see, boy,” Mose said, his teeth huge and white.
“What are you doing here anyway, Mose? You should have departed an hour ago. Nothing seems to be moving.”
He gave his deep, melodious laugh. “Some things moving. The pilot train came through twenty minutes ago, right on schedule.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Mose clapped me fondly on my good shoulder. “Son, you would be the only person on the Espee who don’t know.”
I was going to protest more but a thick, sharp whistle echoed through the dry air. I leaned over and could see a headlight in the distance. I pulled out my nearly empty pack of Luckies, offered one to Mose, and lit them both.
“I’ve got to go to the freight station, do Simms’s dirty work.”
Mose stared toward the black masses of the South Mountains. “You got your reasons, son.”
Now the train was close enough that I could hear the engineer start to sound the bell.
“There’s no goddamned justice in this town.” I said it in a conversational voice, to no one in particular, drowned out by the locomotive’s approach.
“You just finding that out?” Mose shook his head and laughed. “Oh, Jimmy, you a piece of work.”
Then the train was on us, passing quickly. It was double-headed, with two powerful steam locomotives. Then a pair of baggage cars rolled by, one with an odd set of antennae on top, followed by a pair of sleepers. The last car rumbled heavily. It had new dark green paint that glowed under the plat-form lights and fresh lettering on the side said, PULLMAN, but unlike every other car it had no number. The shades were down. Yet the rear window had light, and there … right there inside. The familiar patrician head, the jaunty jut to the chin, even the cigarette holder in his mouth, just like in the newsreels. He looked at us. Mose stiffly saluted.
Then the train was gone. Nothing was left but the red marker on the last car, which quickly went around the slight curve and continued east.
Mose put his arm around me. “On his way home from a tour of bases on the coast, and the Espee handled it all the way,” he said proudly. “See, boy, happy days are here again.”
I walked toward the freight station and the song was in my head. But my head played it too slow, like a dirge.
THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN
BY CHARLES KELLY
Hassayampa Valley
Father Carty O’Toole could see the hard-knocked Dodge pickup beating down on him from a half-mile away, dust huffing from its tires and settling on the mesquite, a tiny torpedo tracing the western edge of the White Tank Mountains. Walberto must have the goods today. Sweat clutched at O’Toole’s crotch beneath his black