Page 4

Three

For the journey, Herb Pulaski chose a dark green Brioni suit that—like Herb himself—has seen better days.

Both man and clothes are frayed at the seams, although for different reasons.

The suit’s condition is Herb’s fault. He wears it all the time.

Having grown up in his big brother’s hand-me-downs, he enjoys showing off in a pricey suit.

As for his own wear and tear, Herb chalks that up to bum luck. Some men are born lucky, and he’s not one of them. Even when fate does sometimes smile on him, it comes with a catch.

And it never lasts very long.

That’s why Herb arrives at the first-class lounge twenty minutes early, clutching both the card he’d found in his room and the original invitation he received in the mail.

He worries he won’t be let in without them.

He’s accustomed to not being allowed into places, both before he had money and after.

Now that he’s on the verge of having no money again, Herb thinks it’s important to not just be present but to be the first to arrive.

That way, everyone who comes in after will see him and know he belongs here.

If anyone else shows up.

The lounge is empty when Herb enters, making him feel foolish about bringing along the invitation.

No need to worry about being let in when no one else is there to stop him.

There’s not even anyone behind the semicircular bar at the rear of the car.

Just a gleaming oak bar top and, behind it, several mirrored shelves cluttered with liquor bottles.

Herb considers hopping behind the bar and pouring himself a drink to steady his nerves, but he fears someone else might enter at last and mistake him for the bartender.

Determined to avoid such indignity, he sits in one of the plush armchairs scattered throughout the car, lights a cigarette, and looks around.

The lounge reminds Herb of his suit. Fancy but faded.

Between the chairs are small round tables covered with white linen frayed at the edges.

The curtains at the windows are blue velvet, similar to those in Herb’s room, but so long they brush the floor.

Catty-corner from the bar, at the front of the car, sits a baby grand piano.

Herb continues to wait in solitude as his cigarette becomes a smoldering butt in the ashtray and a thin sheen of sweat has formed on his brow. Nerves, he knows. He needs to make a good impression.

He examines that first invitation, fixating on the note written across the back.

It will be to your financial benefit if you come.

Herb doesn’t know anything more than that, but he’s eager to find out. It’s probably an investment opportunity. Not that he has any money to invest with. Not anymore. But he’ll find some, if necessary. He just hopes that this time it’s on the level.

That wishful notion leaves Herb’s head the moment the door at the front of the car swings open and someone else finally enters the lounge.

Someone, it turns out, Herb used to work with.

He feels a fresh sheen of sweat on his brow as Judd Dodge stares him down and says, “Are you behind all this?”

“What do you mean?” Herb asks while using a handkerchief to mop his brow. “Behind what?”

“There’s no one else on the train,” Judd says. “There used to be, but they’re all gone now. No conductors. No porters. Even the goddamn passengers are gone. Yet here you are, sitting in the very lounge where I was instructed to be by eight.”

“But ain’t you the one who invited me here?”

“No, I am not, ” Judd says, overenunciating his words to make it clear he’s smarter than Herb. A rude move, Herb thinks. Snobbish, too. He knows they both come from identically humble roots.

And it’s likely the reason both of them agreed to do something terrible.

The two hadn’t been close when they both worked for the Union Atlantic Railroad.

Judd had headed up the design team, located in a section of the company jokingly known as the Brain Train.

Herb spent his time in the manufacturing plant, the factory foreman who made sure the engines Judd designed got built, including the one pulling the very train they are on.

Their paths collided one fateful day when Herb received Judd’s design for a train commissioned by the U.S.

Army. An old-fashioned workhorse of a steam engine.

While it was intended to be built quickly and cheaply, Herb saw immediately that the design was flawed.

Things were out of balance, with the engine too big for the train and too powerful for the kind of iron Judd wanted to use to build it.

Herb took the plans back to him and said, “Something about this isn’t right. This engine won’t last a single trip.”

“I didn’t come up with it,” Judd replied. “The boss man did. And he demanded it be built this way.”

Herb knew he was lying, and not just because there was no way Arthur Matheson could have designed an engine by himself. That was Judd’s job, and everyone knew it. No, what tipped Herb off was the fact that his boss would never in a million years cut corners like this, even with a war going on.

“This stinks to high heaven,” he told Judd. “And I think you know what’s causing the smell. So, this engine of yours won’t get built until you tell me what it is—and what’s in it for me.”

Judd indeed told him everything, bringing Herb into a deal that would have disgusted him if he hadn’t been in desperate need of money.

He’d grown up with nothing, a trait that followed him into adulthood, even though he’d spent years working at Union Atlantic.

It was a job he hated, although Herb knew he should have been grateful.

He could have been overseas, dodging bullets on the front lines.

A fate he’d avoided only because his work was considered valuable enough to snag him a Selective Service deferment.

That hadn’t made the work any easier. It didn’t cool the plant, which got hotter than a furnace. It didn’t make his muscles ache less or keep the stink of grease from following him home. When he slept, clanging machinery and white-hot steel filled his nightmares.

Herb agreed to take part, ethics be damned.

And for the first time in his life, he felt like a winner.

Finally, he had all the money he needed.

More than enough to pay off his debts, quit his job, move out of his crummy apartment, and find a house in a well-to-do development outside the city.

He bought a new car, new clothes, new everything.

He even got himself a wife—no small feat for someone like Herb, who didn’t have much in the looks department.

With his thick arms, squat frame, and embarrassingly hairy knuckles, he looked half-gorilla.

His wife didn’t mind as long as she had money to spend.

She liked the finer things even more than he did.

Which, it turned out, was too much.

Now the money is all but gone. Herb knows that only another big-time score will keep his wife from leaving and him from being forced back to the heat, noise, and stink of the manufacturing plant.

“Wait,” he says. “You got an invitation, too?”

“I did,” Judd says.

“What do you think it’s about?”

“Beats me.” Judd starts anxiously pacing the car, which makes Herb feel a little jumpy himself. “But something’s not right here. Those people I saw when I boarded. Where’d they go?”

“They probably got off the train,” Herb says.

“But why? Someone had to tell them to do it.” Judd suddenly stops pacing. “And the only person I can think of with that much power is the man who owns this train.”

God, Herb hopes not. He doesn’t want to be forced to think about what they’d done. How innocent men had died, including that Matheson boy. How their charred, mangled bodies have replaced noise and steel in his nightmares.

“Do you think he has something else planned?”

“If he does,” Judd says, “I don’t want any part of it.”

“Maybe it’s something on the level,” Herb says hopefully. Because even if it’s not, he knows he’ll still go along with it. He has no other choice. Desperate times and all that. “Or maybe it wasn’t him who brought us here.”

Judd resumes pacing, crossing the car twice, a finger pressed to his chin.

It makes Herb wonder if this is how he came up with the design for the Philadelphia Phoenix.

Even more, he wonders with a shudder if it’s also how Judd thought up the train engine that enriched their lives while destroying so many others.

“Of course it’s him,” Judd says. “Even so, something’s not right. Do you have the invitation on you?”

Herb does, having slipped it into a jacket pocket when Judd entered the lounge.

“Take a look at it,” Judd tells him. “See anything strange?”

Herb examines the invitation, noticing nothing out of the ordinary.

There’s a starting point, a destination, and the assumed time it will take to get between them.

Thirteen hours. At first, Herb thinks Judd is confused about the listed arrival of seven a.m. because he forgets they’ll be changing time zones somewhere in Indiana, thereby gaining an hour.

Only after staring at the card a few seconds longer does he realize what Judd’s referring to.

The invitation only details the trip to Chicago.

There’s no mention of how they’re supposed to get back home.