Grand Central Noir Read online

  GRAND CENTRAL NOIR

  Compiled by Terrence McCauley

  Published by Metropolitan Crime

  Copyright © 2013 Terrence McCauley and by individual authors for their respective works.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase another copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  Cover image © licensed from Clipart.com

  Cover design © Terrence McCauley

  Published by:

  METROPOLITAN CRIME

  New York, N.Y.

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  Lost Property - by I.A. Watson

  Train to Nowhere - by Charles Salzberg and Jessica Hall

  Fat Lip’s Revenge - by Ron Fortier

  Fortune - by S.A. Solomon

  Meet Me at the Clock - by R. Narvaez

  Terminal Sweep Stakes - by Amy Maurs

  Without a Hitch - by R.J. Westerhoff

  The Drop - by J. Walt Layne

  A Primal Force - by Kathleen A. Ryan

  Off Track - by Matt Hilton

  Herschel’s Broom - by W. Silas Donohue

  Timetable for Crime - by Marcelle Thiébaux

  Mary Mulligan - by Jen Conley

  Spice - by Seamus Scanlon

  Grand Central: Terminal - by Terrence P. McCauley

  CONTRIBUTORS

  INTRODUCTION

  Grand Central Terminal. The most dynamic building in the most dynamic city in the world. Thousands travel into and out of it every day. Get their shoes shined or buy a new outfit before a posh dinner at Michael Jordan’s or, less posh to some, Two Boots. All without having to step outside. Meet business partners, families, lovers, friends. Even criminal cohorts. It’s absolutely a world of its own. A world of hellos and goodbyes. A maze. A limbo. A banal conduit for some. A refuge for others. A tourist destination for throngs.

  In short, a place teeming with stories.

  Which is why we have assembled more than a dozen tales from some of the best authors working today. Specifically, stories about crime. For years, Grand Central Terminal has been seen as a place of despair, where the gullible arrived by the dozens and the homeless and the addicted flocked lacking anywhere else to go. Now celebrating its hundredth year, the terminal is experiencing something of a renaissance, but still, in the most dynamic city in the world, the most dynamic building lends itself to tales of adventure, of redemption, and of noir.

  Botched robberies. Chance encounters. Stolen lives. Revenge. Revenge. And more revenge. All of this happens within the confines of the magnificent Beaux-Arts structure, under its great and ever-watchful vault of stars. Some of the authors here you may have read before. Others you may be reading for the first time. All of them are worth a look.

  While crime and noir stories are often about those without hope, we thought it was important to hold a note of hope with this book. That is why we selected God’s Love, We Deliver to receive100 percent of the proceeds from this book. It is an organization whose mission is to improve the health and well being of men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. They prepare and deliver nutritious, high-quality meals to people who, because of their illness, are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves. They also provide illness-specific nutrition education and counseling to their clients, families, care providers and other service organizations. All of their services are provided free of charge without regard to income. For more information about this great organization, visit https://www.glwd.org/.

  In purchasing this book, you’ve not only helped some great writers find a new audience, you’ve also helped a worthwhile charity continue an important mission.

  Safe travels,

  Terrence P. McCauley

  Lost Property

  - by I.A. Watson

  THE BIG MAN VAULTED the counter before Rebecca could react. He caught her by the collar and slammed her into the wire-mesh racking where the lost property was stored. “Where is it?” he snarled into Rebecca’s face. “Tell me now and I won’t hurt you – much!”

  It was late, past two in the morning. Even the Grand Central Terminal’s main concourse was quiet. A difficult traveler at baggage checking might have been spotted by the clerks at the south side ticket booths – if the angry man hadn’t come over the counter and pushed Rebecca back from their line of sight.

  The slim brunette gasped, choked by the calloused hand gripping her throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I . . . please . . . ”

  The grasp tightened. “I’m talking ’bout locker 59, honey,” the intruder growled. “I want my suitcase.”

  The woman struggled but he was too strong. “I don’t understand,” she insisted.

  Hanner’s face was red. A vein on his temple pulsed with his rage. “Two hours back I deposited a case in one of your lockers. I come back, it isn’t there.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Rebecca insisted. “Talk to security. They have a master key. Maybe you had food in there that smelled rotten? Or a live animal?” It was remarkable what people tried to stuff into platform lockers. The baggage check girl could have told some great stories if a strangler’s hand wasn’t at her windpipe.

  “I’m not talking about the bag,” her attacker hissed. His spittle splattered her cheek. “I’m talking about the locker. The whole damn row of lockers – gone!”

  “That’s . . . unlikely,” Rebecca stammered. Was the man mad? Drunk? His stale breath has a sour whiskey tang to it.

  “You took it. You or your thieving station buddies!”

  “Sir . . . I have no idea what you’re . . . you’re hurting me. I can’t breathe!”

  “I want it. I gave everything for it. If I don’t get it then it was all for nothing. No reason to take away those lockers ’cept to steal what’s mine. So again – one last time, sweetheart – where is it? Where’s my case?”

  “Nothing’s been handed in.” How many times had Rebecca to say that every day to plaintive passengers? She’d never expected they’d be her last words.

  The intruder had a gun. He pressed it to her cheek. “I already asked your security guy. He didn’t tell me. You want what he got?”

  Rebecca cringed. So she was going to die. Her clerk’s life seemed very grey and flat. What had happened to her wild romantic dreams? She worked where thousands of people travelled to far off wonderful places – and she never went anywhere. Death in a lost and found was only one last disappointment.

  Her mind raced through her options. Knee the big man, or maybe scream for help? Both would probably get her killed. But since he was going to murder her anyway . . . .

  The counter bell rang.
The ding-ding was too cheery and incongruous for the final moments of a young woman’s life.

  Hanner dropped out of sight behind the desk. His .45 kept steady on the woman. “Get rid of him,” he whispered.

  Rebecca turned back to the front of the shop. A man in sharp pinstripes and a tilted fedora gave her a winning smile and tipped his hat. “Evening.”

  “How – how may I help you?” The gun was three feet away from Rebecca. The thug could see her every motion, her expressions; any wrong move and she’d be dead.

  “This is where lost property gets reported? I’ve lost a hat.”

  Rebecca glanced up at the newcomer’s head.

  He had a charming, roguish smile. “Not that one. The absent article’s a big flowery wide-brimmed affair of Auntie’s. In a hat-box about, oh, like this . . . .” He gestured a circular container two feet in diameter. “Candy-striped. The box, not the hat. The hat’s monstrous enough without stripes.”

  “Nobody’s handed in anything like that.”

  “Probably not. Who’d want to be seen with it? It probably crawled off the train by itself. We should be calling up the circus with nets and – hey, are you okay?”

  Rebecca hadn’t meant to tremble. “I’m fine. Long day, late night shift. You know?”

  “Not really. I try to avoid honest work.” The newcomer handed over a calling card. “Bill Maxton. And you are . . . ?”

  “Rebecca Sharp.”

  It was surreal, being flirted with in a killer’s gun-sights. But how could Maxton know what was hidden beneath the counter? He saw only a personable clerk in a deserted concourse in the small hours of Monday morning. Another time Rebecca might even have flirted back.

  “Look, Mr. Maxton, I can fill out the lost property register with your details and we’ll call or write you if . . . ”

  “Oh, call me anyway.” The newcomer grinned. “Life’s too short not to.” He turned to his left, where the turnstiles led to the tracks. Steam gushed out from the platforms, sending warm gusts into the high roof-vaults of the world’s most elegant station. “You know, we could just turn round, the two of us, and hop on any one of those trains and go anywhere.”

  When Bill Maxton said it like that, with that twinkle, it was almost enough to convince. If Rebecca hadn’t been at gunpoint, if her throat wasn’t still sore from Hanner’s chokehold, if she’d not been scared out of her wits . . . she’d still not have gone. But in her dingy one-room walk-up later she’d have regretted it, and dreamed of how her life might have changed forever.

  “I’ll take your details. About the hat, I mean.”

  “What hat? Oh, that hat. Auntie’s hat. Horrible, really. If someone does hand it in, you might do the public a service and arrange for it to be ceremonially burned. With a priest on hand for exorcism. It’s that horrid a hat. I’d probably have written it off and faced the wrath of Auntie except I noticed that there was a remarkably gorgeous girl on late-night lost property duty. And so . . . ” Maxton offered a what-can-you-do gesture with his hands.

  The thug under the counter pinched Rebecca’s leg hard. “Get rid of him,” he mouthed.

  “Mr. Maxton . . . ”

  “Bill. Call me Bill. People who’re going to run off together should be on a first-name basis. Where d’you fancy? Chicago? Toronto? Niagara Falls?”

  “Mr. Maxton, I’m very busy. I don’t have time for nonsense tonight.”

  Maxton looked around the quiet concourse. A few travelers drifted about, mostly crossing the waiting room to the men’s smoking room or the women’s rest room, but the seething bustle of the day’s traffic was reduced to a handful of visitors.

  “I don’t have time for nonsense from you,” Rebecca clarified. She wished there was some way she could signal to Bill – Mr. Maxton – that she was in trouble. But that would kill them both. “Be on your way.”

  Maxton was persistent. “You haven’t put Auntie in your book yet,” he pointed out.

  Rebecca reached for the lost property register. She flipped the big ledger open and uncapped a pen. She checked Maxton’s card for his address.

  Written on the calling card in sprawling script was: I know you’re at gunpoint. This is a rescue.

  The woman swallowed hard. She glanced over at Maxton. His expression remained amiable and relaxed. He winked at her.

  She scribbled onto the register page: There is a man with a gun under the desk. Call the police.

  Bill Maxton grinned. “What’s going on here tonight?”

  Rebecca tensed. Did he realize that the killer under the counter would shoot them both at even the suspicion that he’d been detected? “I don’t know what you mean,” she told Maxton.

  “All those goons with guns running round the station. At first I thought maybe the Mayor or someone was coming and they were security. But their suits are a bit loud for Secret Service, and badly cut for hiding the gun-bulges.

  Beneath the desk Hanner looked around wildly, like a hunted man.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” the baggage girl replied.

  “Oh sure. A real mooks’ convention, down where the lockers are. Half a dozen knuckle-draggers scratching their heads. I think they’re looking for their buddy.” Maxton dinged the counter-bell merrily. “Ah well, I’ll be off, then. I’ll be seeing you again though, Miss Sharp. I promise.”

  The baffling traveler turned to go, but Hanner sprang from concealment and leveled his .45. “Don’t move, bud. Climb over the counter and get back here. Fast.”

  “How can I not move and jump back there?” Maxton asked reasonably.

  The thug turned his gun to Rebecca. “Get in here. Where nobody can see you.”

  Maxton shrugged, then scrambled over the desk to join Rebecca.

  “In back,” Hanner insisted.

  Maxton laid a guiding hand on Rebecca’s shoulder and steered her before him into one of the aisles behind the front desk. The wire shelving was filled with cases and parcels ready to be collected.

  Rebecca felt absurdly ashamed at her relief when the gun turned back on Maxton. He seemed so much more suited to being held up by some seedy gorilla.

  “Tell me about those guys you saw at the lockers,” Hanner demanded.

  “What’s to tell? Around six of them, I’d say, with some buddies out on Vanderbilt by the taxis. Plenty of mashed noses and cauliflower ears between them. Like if an old boxers’ convention accidentally stumbled into a cheap tailor’s store. They’re looking for a friend of theirs called Hanner.” Maxton looked speculatively at the man aiming a weapon at him. “You wouldn’t be Hanner, by any chance, would you? You’ve got the tailoring for it.”

  “Don’t be smart. Did they have a suitcase?”

  “A case? No, no case. To be honest I didn’t get too close. I think they might be jimmying open lockers. I steer clear of that kind of business. You’d think the station guards might be a bit more vigilant.”

  “I think . . . he may have done something to Mr. Stuart the night guard,” Rebecca admitted.

  Hanner’s lip twisted. It might have passed for a smile in the dim light of the naked overhead bulbs if the expression had reached his eyes. “Nothing like what I’ll do to you if I don’t get my goods. I want my locker. I want my suitcase. I want what’s due me.”

  Maxton turned to Rebecca. “This fellah seems to have lost some property. Any ideas?”

  “No. He just grabbed me and knocked me around and pointed a gun at me. I don’t understand what he’s after.”

  Maxton glanced at the sweating thug. “Let me take a guess. This guy Hanner, he’s run off with something that he thinks he’s entitled to. Those bruisers out there disagree. He hid his swag in one of your station lockers while he, I don’t know, bought a ticket, got a drink, used the boys’ room – I hope you washed your hands, buddy. And now he can’t remember where he parked his stash.”

  “I remember fine!” snarled the gunsel. “Locker 59. Here’s the key, see? But when I went back down to the lockers, opposite the barbe
r shop, it’s gone.”

  Rebecca frowned. “You’re not claiming that a whole row of metal cabinets has just disappeared, are you? That’s ridiculous – and impossible!”

  “I know what I did! I know what I saw!” Hanner was sweating profusely now. His eyes kept flicking toward the counter. He was afraid that the men he’d double-crossed might search here next. Time was running out. It made him more dangerous than ever.

  “Stay calm,” Maxton advised him. “We can solve this. You’ve got a gun on us so we’ll have to. Tell us some more. We need all the info. What’s in the case?”

  “None of your damned . . . , ” the thug began; but he caught himself and explained through gritted teeth. “Thirteen years I worked for Charlie the Head. Done everything he asked me to. Tortured. Maimed. Killed. Took out my own cousin when he was going to squeal. Charlie owes me. He owes me big.”

  “So you took a retirement plan?” Maxton guessed. “When Charlie wouldn’t just let you go away with a fair settlement you grabbed what you could into a suitcase and made for Grand Central?”

  “It was due me!” Hanner insisted. “I heard about – this guy sold me the combination to Charlie’s safe. So I took what I was due. And now I want it. I want it!”

  “Maybe those men Mr. Maxton saw have already found it?” reasoned Rebecca.

  “I can understand your frustration, big guy,” Maxton admitted. “Been thinking about retirement myself. Get out of the rat race. Travel the world. Maybe settle down somewhere eventually with a nice girl. In fact, I was considering Miss Sharp here for the part. I’m fairly confident that if there hadn’t been a hulking goon lurking behind the counter I could have had her on a train out of here before the guard blew his whistle.”

  “You would not!” Rebecca insisted, blushing.

  “Why not, honey? I saw it in your eyes when I dinged your desk. You’re just spinning your wheels here. It’s not living. It’s not what you dreamed of, is it? But you’re smart, you’re easy on the eye, you’re a good person – and brave, I can see that – so why not take a risk and retire with a fellah like me? You need a change. I need reforming. Could be a match.”