Grand Central Noir Page 2

  The baggage check girl failed to contain an incredulous smile. “A man is pointing a gun at us. Is this the time to try for a date?”

  “There might not be a later.”

  Hanner jammed his .45 into Maxton’s ribs. “Shaddup, Romeo. I need to know what Charlie’s boys are doing. I need to find my bag an’ get away from here. If I don’t get those things, you and Juliet are dead. Got it?”

  Maxton nodded. “How about this, then? You looked for locker . . . 59 was it? And it wasn’t there. But did you look to see if there were two locker 159s? Or 259s?”

  “Of course!” Rebecca gasped. “Hauling away a big bank of lockers would be impossible. But just stenciling an extra number on the ones with only two digits . . . ”

  Even Hanner caught on. “It’s still there? Some joker changed the numbers?”

  “That’s how I’d do it,” Maxton admitted. “Paint in the store, hardly anyone around this late . . . . Of course, Charlie the Head’s boys never knew which locker the case was in. They’ll just jimmy them all open.”

  Hanner’s red face twitched. “No. No, they mustn’t. Not after everything.”

  “I know what you should do!” Rebecca blurted. “I know!”

  The gun turned on her. “What?” Hanner demanded sullenly.

  “There are men breaking into our lockers. Mr. Stuart may be . . . hurt. We should call the cops.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Maxton saw. “The police come and clear out those knuckle-draggers. Maybe pin your security guy’s misfortune on them. While there’s a big fuss on, Hanner here just strolls down with his key and tries all the lockers ending in 59 until he finds the right one, then just hops on a train.”

  The brutal killer looked suspicious. “How’d I get past the cops?”

  “Well, that’s the easy part,” Maxton told him. “Don’t you see what that big package right behind you is?”

  Hanner glanced over his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “It’s a diversion,” Maxton answered as he grabbed the thug’s wrist and twisted the .45 aside. “And this is a punch in the kidneys. And that’s a left cross.”

  Hanner slammed back into the racks. Parcels fell around him. The gun fell amongst them. Maxton went in with his fists.

  Rebecca slid out of range of the brawl. She found a letter-opener sharp enough to serve as a knife and held it ready. She looked about for where the gun had skittered.

  Hanner was bigger and stronger than Maxton. He was an experienced murderer.

  Maxton never gave him a chance. His attacks were scientific, precise, devastating. “Gut blow . . . Right cross . . . Left cross . . . Haymaker.”

  Hanner lost all interest in his missing case, the kidnapped girl, or anything.

  Maxton bound him hand and foot with packing crate webbing. “There. That should hold him until the officers of the law come to claim their lost property.” The young man retrieved his hat.

  Rebecca pointed the gun at him. “Not so fast, mister. I have questions.”

  Maxton froze. He had Hanner’s key in his hand. “Enquire, Miss Sharp.”

  “I don’t think it was coincidence that you lost your auntie’s hat, was it? You already knew about Hanner and the stolen goods.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Is there even a missing hat?”

  “There’s not even an auntie, I’m afraid.”

  “The renumbered lockers? Was that you?”

  “Right on the money.”

  “The goons?”

  “Not really here. Charlie’s boys aren’t that smart.”

  “And the gangster’s safe combination that this Hanner thug learned?”

  “Yep. Fed it to him through a joe I know.” Maxton’s smirk vanished. “Didn’t expect Hanner to go rampaging round the station, though. I’m sorry about Stuart. And I apologize for your ordeal. I just wanted . . . ”

  “To retire,” Rebecca understood. “From a life of . . . con artistry?”

  “I need reforming. The love of a good woman.” He smiled up at Rebecca. “You know, this key opens a locker with the best part of a million dollars in it. That’s a lot of retirement. Enough for two. Before the cops arrive to drag Hanner away an adventurous couple could be on a train to anywhere.”

  Rebecca kept the .45 steady. “You’re a thief and a scoundrel. You almost got me killed. No girl could trust you.”

  “But you do. Right, Rebecca?”

  From Grand Central Terminal there are trains to anywhere in North America. From Grand Central Terminal you can go anywhere in the world.

  “I’m keeping the gun,” Rebecca told Maxton. “In case.”

  “Then I’m keeping the girl,” Maxton insisted. “Deal?”

  Rebecca relented. She slipped the gun into her pocket and fended off Maxton’s kiss. “Hold it,” she warned, sliding the lost property book over to him. “First you have to sign for me.”

  Train to Nowhere

  - by Charles Salzberg and Jessica Hall

  “YOU COME VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Mr. Swann.”

  “I have no idea who might recommend me, much less highly, but I’m not going to argue with them or you,” I said, as I gave my prospective client the once over.

  I’d received the call from her – she said her name was Karyn Shaw, with a K and a Y, she pointed out – earlier that morning. She asked if we could meet in the Atrium at the Citicorp Building, on Third Avenue and 54th Street. So that’s where we were seated, at a table in the center of the large, open expanse. It was nearly 3 p.m., so the lunchtime crowd had evaporated and was replaced by a sprinkling of people obviously killing time till something better came along. I know what that’s like. I spend most of my life doing the same thing.

  “How will I know you?” I asked.

  She laughed. A throaty laugh. Like Lauren Bacall’s. I wondered if she could teach me how to whistle.

  “Oh, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble picking me out of a crowd. Just look for a woman with long red hair that looks like it could use a comb through.”

  She was right. I spotted her right away. She was sitting at a table in the middle of the Atrium, one floor below Barnes and Noble. Scratch Lauren Bacall and replace her with a slightly older version of Nicole Kidman and you’d have a better idea of what she looked like.

  “I’ll get right down to business. I’d like to hire you to find someone,” she said, twirling a wooden stirrer in her Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  “Who might that be?”

  “My father.”

  “Your father’s missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “A long time.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  She thought a moment.

  “I’ve never actually met him.”

  “That would qualify as a long time.”

  “Forty-five years to be precise.”

  “So why now?”

  “You mean why look for him now?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “It seems like the right time, that’s why.”

  I shrugged.

  She pulled out one of those fake cigarettes, the ones that glow in the dark, and tapped it on the table. “I’m trying to quit,” she purred. “It isn’t easy. This helps. Maybe.”

  She put the faux butt in her mouth, then quickly removed it and shoved it back into her oversized black bag. “It seems so ridiculous, but it helps just to take it out, look at it and stick it in my mouth.”

  “Whatever does the trick. Back to your father. I don’t buy this ‘It seems like the right time’ business.”

  “My mother died recently. I’m an only child. I have no other family. I thought I might like to see what I was missing.”

  I refrained from telling her that from my own experience, she wasn’t missing much.

  “I don’t work pro bono.”

  “I didn’t think you did. I’m prepared to pay and I’m sure a man of your caliber doesn’t come che
ap.”

  Being a sucker for flattery, I also refrained from telling her just how cheap I came and how often. Why burst her bubble when we hardly knew each other?

  “I’m prepared to pay the price, your price, so long as I think I’m getting quality.”

  For my part, I was prepared to let her live with her illusions, especially this one. I asked her to tell me what she knew.

  Her father was a Vietnam vet. He met her mother while they were students at a small upstate college after he came back from the service. They were together a year when she got pregnant. He took off. Her mother said he just couldn’t handle the stress, that he was never quite right after he got back from Southeast Asia. According to her mother, he suffered from terrible nightmares.

  When she was finished telling me what she knew, I asked the appropriate questions.

  Did he ever come back to visit?

  Not that she was aware of.

  What about his family?

  He was from Ohio and she checked the web for the family name, Osborne, but she came up empty.

  When she was finished, I shook my head. “I’m not a miracle worker,” I said.

  “There is something else,” she said, her eyes dropping from me to the half-empty cup of joe.

  “What’s that?”

  “I do have what I think is a good lead for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think he may be hanging in or around Grand Central Terminal. Maybe he works there or maybe . . .” – she paused a moment – “he’s homeless.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “When he was in the service he received a Bronze Star. Not long ago, it turned up in Grand Central.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It was found amongst the belongings of a homeless woman. You know, the kind who wheel all their possessions around in a shopping cart and plastic bags. Obviously, it wasn’t hers, so the authorities tracked it down as belonging to my father. Donald Osborne.”

  “She could have gotten it a dozen different ways.”

  “She could, but she said she got it from the man who owned it. The authorities couldn’t find a current address, for him, I mean, my dad, so they could return it to him, but they did contact the Veteran’s Administration, and I found out about it through them when I began searching for him. I would suggest you start there.”

  When I’d exhausted all the questions I could think of, she took out her checkbook, wrote me a check for a retainer of $1,000, which would cover two days’ work, and I was off and running. I promised a two-day turnaround. If it took longer we agreed to negotiate the additional cost.

  * * *

  Grand Central Terminal, not Station, which is a common error people make, is smack in the middle of midtown Manhattan. You start there or end there, and in this case it was the end or certainly near the end for many people who were and are so down on their luck that they have made GCT their home. Technically then, they are no longer homeless – they are simply unwelcome.

  This was where I was to begin my search for Karyn’s father.

  But first, I learned as much about him as possible.

  His name was Donald Osborne. He was born in Ohio, a small town outside of Columbus. He enlisted in the army right out of high school, in 1968. He spent two tours of duty in Vietnam and was wounded, which is how he got the Bronze Star, saving three men by holding off the Vietcong for three hours, until help arrived. He served his time and then when he came back to the states he enrolled at Alfred University on the GI Bill, where he met Karyn’s mother. There was no record of them ever being hitched, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the father.

  His trail went cold soon after that. Karyn’s mother wasn’t alive, so I couldn’t get anything from her, and I couldn’t find anyone left close enough to be called family. I was able to dig up a photograph from an article in the college paper. Over forty years old, would be difficult to go by, but it was better than nothing. Osborne, dressed in his Army uniform looking stoic and proud, was standing in front of student services. Of greater interest was an article in the paper following his first week of attendance, showing protesters sitting on the school lawn holding signs. “Baby Killers NOT Welcome Here.” And “Give Peace a Chance.” Apparently the schools anti-war club didn’t think Osborne deserving of a hero’s welcome.

  That was it.

  The rest I’d have to learn by visiting where things started and ended.

  Grand Central Terminal.

  My first stop was security, where I asked about the found medal. Initially, I was met with blank stares and quizzical looks, but eventually I was able to track down the officer who’d found the woman who had the medal. Fortunately, he happened to be on duty that evening and I found him patrolling the downstairs area, where most of the homeless now congregated, sitting at the café tables intended for commuters. At first glance they might seem like anyone else traveling through, but after watching them for a while it was clear they weren’t going anywhere. Many of them sat without their coats on, surrounded by plastic shopping bags, newspapers, and empty coffee cups.

  Lined with fancy restaurants like Junior’s and Zocalo, the place was just emptying out with the last of the commuters headed home for the night. I hadn’t been there for a while and it took me by surprise that the large, comfortable leatherette wing chairs had now been replaced by benches, obviously meant to keep the homeless from becoming too comfortable. Tables meant for the public to eat take-out food from several of the non-sit-down eateries, were mostly empty now, except for the homeless.

  I spotted the cop, whose name was Doyle. He was kicking the soles of the feet of an old man, slumped over and sleeping, arms wrapped tight around a dirty plastic bag bulging with unidentifiable items. “Sir! Sir! You can’t sleep here, sir!”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I wonder if you could help me.”

  “Information booth’s upstairs,” he said, still focused on his work.

  “That’s not the kind of information I’m looking for.”

  “You’re in a friggin’ train station, what other kind of information you want. Where the toilets are?”

  “Wearing my Depends, so I’m good there. I’m looking for a homeless woman. Do you remember the woman you picked up the other day who had that Bronze medal in her cart? Don’t you think it should be returned to its rightful owner? Maybe if I can find who I’m looking for you’ll have one less person to roust.”

  “She was shipped off to a shelter, but that doesn’t mean she’s not back here by now. They all come back. They complain the shelters are dangerous, and maybe they are. This is like home to them.”

  “But it’s your job to get them out of here.”

  “Personally, I couldn’t give a shit. So long as they don’t bother anyone, it’s fine with me. It’s just that we can’t allow them to sleep, make a mess of themselves, or bother the customers.”

  “They have favorite spots, don’t they?”

  “Yup.”

  “And hers?”

  “Over there, back table,” he said, gesturing behind me. “In fact, I think that’s her. Grey hair, pinned back, black sweater.”

  I looked over my shoulder, and there, sitting at a small, round table, covered with newspapers, a water bottle and Starbucks coffee cup, and surrounded by three shopping bags, a coat on the back of her chair, was a surprisingly elegant looking woman.

  “Her?” I said, nodding my head in her direction.

  “Yup.”

  “She looks almost . . . ”

  “Normal?”

  “Yeah, if there is such a thing.”

  “She’s not bat-shit crazy, if that’s what you mean. But she probably has an alcohol problem, or she’s not on her meds. She’s lucid. At least she was the other day.”

  “She got a name?”

  “Lucy.”

  I excused myself and headed over to Lucy’s table.

  As I approached, she looked up and a look of fear spread over her face.


  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” I said, as I stopped a couple feet from her. “I just have a few questions. I’m looking for someone.”

  She didn’t say anything, her bright blue eyes, surprisingly clear, seemed to look right through me.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  She didn’t say anything, so I slowly, as non-aggressively as I could manage, pulled a chair out and sat down. She didn’t get up and leave, so I figured I could forge ahead.

  “I understand you had a medal . . .”

  “I didn’t steal it,” she said defensively, her body moving away from me slightly.

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  “They took it from me.”

  “I know. I was just wondering who you got it from.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Lucy. That’s your name, right?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, never taking her eyes off mine.

  “Well, I’m looking for the man who gave you the medal because his daughter hired me to find him. She wants to help him, if he’s in trouble.”

  “He ain’t in no trouble.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “We look out for each other down here. We’re like family. Ever since he showed up he’s been like an angel for everyone, looking out for us, getting us food, clothes, whatever we need. Me, I’m conducting research on human behavior.”

  “His daughter would like to help him. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “I can, but that don’t mean I will. He’s a friend of mine. That’s why he gave me the medal to hold on to, now they took that from me, too. What if you’re lying to me?”

  “I’m not lying. I don’t want to hurt him, I just want to talk to him. Can you tell me how to find him?”

  “You got any money?”

  “You want me to give you money?”

  “It look like I have any of my own?”

  I reached into my back pocket and took out my wallet. I peeled off two twenties and laid them on the table. She eyed them a moment, then quick as a frog’s tongue, her hand shot out, she grabbed them, and stuffed them in her pocket.