Grady This Train

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-85730-523-7
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

All aboard. It's a countdown to murder... This Train races us through America's heartland, carrying secrets. There is treasure in the cargo car, along with an invisible puppeteer. There is a coder named Nora, Mugzy, the yippy dog, and Ross, the too-curious poet. On This Train there is a silver madman, a targeted banker, and crises of conscience. This Train harbours the 'perfect' couple's conspiracies, the chaos of being a teenager, and parenthood alongside the wows of being nine. There is a widow and a wannabe, and the sleaziest billionaire. On This Train, there is the suicide ticket, the bomb, sex, love, and loneliness. The heist. Revenge. Redemption. This Train is a ticking clock, roaring through forty-seven fictional hours of non-stop suspense and action.

James Grady has published more than a dozen novels and three times that many short stories, and worked in both feature films and television. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, became the classic Robert Redford movie Three Days Of The Condor and the current Max Irons TV series Condor. Grady has been both US Senate aide and a national investigative reporter. He has received Italy's Raymond Chandler Medal, France's Grand Prix Du Roman Noir and Japan's Baka-Misu literature award, two Regardie Magazine short story awards, and been a Mystery Writers of America Edgar finalist. In 2008, Grady was named as one of the Telegraph's 50 crime writers to read before you die, and in 2015 the Washington Post compared his prose to George Orwell and Bob Dylan. He has two children and lives with his wife inside Washington, DC's beltway.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grady, James

Leseproben

1 Nora kept her head down as she hurried up the stairs into Seattle’s train station that chilly spring Thursday afternoon. She angled away from the main entrance’s glass doors toward a brown steel slab Service Door. All that any sentinel looking down from the station’s brick watchtower might notice was her night-before’s home-chopped short and dyed chocolate-cherry hair. She wore an unzipped burgundy leather jacket. A black purse/belt-pack. Black slacks. Savvy shoes. Pulled a clunking roller bag behind her. Her cellphone unlocked the Service Entrance’s brown steel slab. An Authorized Use Only sign was bolted to the inside of that steel door that slammed shut behind her as she stepped into the station’s vast main lobby. She surged to that particular square of the black & white tiled chessboard floor. A dozen strangers to her went about their business across those black & white tiles inside that pale-walled ballroom. Sunlight streamed into the huge lobby through the far wall’s glass portals to the waiting tracks. Nora filled her cellphone screen with the station’s security cameras’ Live Feed showing her the same reality as her eyes. The black square where she stood was a blind spot for the cameras. She tap-tap-tapped her cell. Blink and the seen in her screen became not what she saw with her eyes. Yes, it was the same giant ballroom of Seattle’s train station lobby. And yes, there were people hustling their lives over the chessboard tiles – – but what the cameras now played and logged was yesterday’s scene. Nora roller-bagged her way to a lonely blue & red US Post Office mailbox standing against a wall. Opened her purse/belt-pack. That black purse held all her not-much cash. A charger. Pills. Six condoms. Red and pink lipstick. Deodorant, toothbrush, TSA-tiny toothpaste tube. Musk perfume. Black hairbrush – a round, grooved-handle cylinder of rubber bristles that couldn’t brush blood-black hair back to the way things used to be. She pulled out a new thin maroon wallet. Slid out her Washington State driver’s license. She never liked that picture. Her natural Marilyn Monroe hair flowed fine, but her face strained in her usual ‘Official Picture’ expression. She filled the wallet’s slot with the driver’s license she’d made last night after she’d scissor-slaughtered and dyed her blonde hair to chocolate-cherry. The picture on that fake ID showed a dead-eyed face above a name that wasn’t hers. Nora put her real license in a stamped envelope addressed to who she used to be in the studio loft apartment where vertical windows beyond the three desktop screens in front of her chair revealed real horizons where she wasn’t. She licked the envelope. Lost herself in the taste. Opened the lonely mailbox’s slot. Released the envelope of the true her into its darkness. From behind her came a cellphone camera’s Click! She whirled – – saw a pubescent peach fuzz boy with thick glasses lower his cellphone from taking her picture dropping the envelope into the lonely mailbox. Only the two of them stood in that deserted section of the station. ‘Wow!’ said the just-made-teenager. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do that! Like, you actually for real mailed an old-timey letter!’ ‘Here’s for real,’ said Nora in her husky voice. ‘We delete that picture and I’ll let you take a more ‘wow’ one right now.’ The kid named Luc shrugged OK. Nora let go of her bags. Shed her burgundy leather jacket. Mesmerized Luc held his cellphone between them. His back was to the pale stone wall. Her back was to the station’s distant and distracted shuffling crowd. Nora jerked her blue sweater up and over her face. Cool air brushed the uncovered flesh of her front. She heard Luc’s cellphone Click! Let her sweater drop. Lifted the cellphone from jaw-dropped Luc’s hands. Nora worked the algorithms of his unlocked cellphone. ‘One image gone and then really gone, but you got your for real,’ she said. Put the cellphone back in Luc’s hands. ‘BTW, it won’t take pictures for two days.’ She left him mind-blown against the wall by the lonely mailbox. Slid into her burgundy leather jacket. Grabbed her roller bag. Rolled all she had through the vast castle toward a sign that reserved wooden benches for Premium Passengers with Roomette Suites, Bedroom Suites and Superliner Bedrooms. A second sign pointed to a corral of yellow plastic chairs designated for Coach Passengers. Nora sat on an empty wooden bench. She still had time to run. BAM! A street door slammed open back by where she’d come from. The ever-louder slap slap slap of sandals on the black and white tiles made him easy to track as he closed in on her. His gold and maroon monk robes showed no dots from the rain. He’d shaved his head to a smooth skull. The monk marched straight to where Nora sat and in Iowa American said: ‘Do you know the gate for the four-oh-four train from San Francisco? I want to be sure my son sees me when he gets off.’ ‘Ahh… I don’t think he’ll miss you in the crowd.’ ‘I would think there’d be better signage.’ Nora blinked. ‘I mean,’ said this 21st century official monk, ‘I look around, and do I see proper, clear, definitive directions? No I don’t, do I?’ The man in gold and maroon robes sandal-slapped away with all his I’s. Out of nowhere came a middle-aged man wearing a gray jacket, khaki work pants, a denim shirt. He pulled a duct-taped roller bag. Strapped across his chest hung an army surplus messenger bag. The messenger bag man headed toward the corral of yellow plastic chairs. Looked down at his ticket as if he couldn’t believe what he bought. Rolled his duct-taped suitcase to the Premium bench opposite Nora. His messenger bag bonked the bench. He jerked! Froze in horror. But the young woman across from him acted like she hadn’t heard a thing. Nobody ever notices, he thought as he sat down. Now, finally, that’s good. ‘Yip!’ Never-married Constance, a stout mature lady in traveling clothes from her parents’ dignified era before the Beatles, cradled that yipper rat dog in the crook of her arm as she marched into the Premium waiting area, paused in the black & white tiles valley between the facing-each-other wooden benches. ‘Yip! Yip!’ ‘Mugzy!’ scolded she who carried him. ‘Mind your manners! I’m sure she’s a perfectly respectable young woman.’ Constance and Mugzy gave Nora their backs and butts. Constance saw a mature man clutching a messenger bag sitting on that bench. But even with his flecked gray hair, he was more than a decade away from that magic moment when The Government declared you ‘old’ and mailed you a red-white-&-blue Medicare card to prove it. No, that does not mean one is old! Constance sighed. Messenger bag man was younger – OK, a lot younger than her. She eyed his shabby clothes. Still settled on his bench across from the woman Mugzy had doubts about. Constance sat close enough to not discourage Mr Messenger Bag and far enough away to be safe from his indifference. Mugzy growled at four more two-legged beasts marching his way. The 15-year-old daughter led her rolling suitcases family. Her eyes saw only more strangers who wouldn’t understand. Who couldn’t possibly know what she was going through. Her purse of secrets rode strapped across her chest like an outlaw’s bandolier of bullets. Striding behind the teenage daughter came the family’s mom. Ebony hair swayed on her shoulders. The mom kept her eyes locked on her walking away daughter. Strained to see where she was going. Trudging behind Mom came her 10-year-old son pulling his suitcase while bent over with the weight of his backpack. He raised his gaze off this castle’s black & white floor tiles to search for the answer to the obvious question: Are there monsters here? Dad marched behind his family. Rear guard but facing What’s Really Out There. Like he should. Like every Marine – any Marine – would. Ready to do what had to be done. Trustworthy. Loyal. Semper fi. Semper fi fucked, he thought even as he hated himself for ever thinking that even though that ever was now. His daughter marched them to the Premium passengers’ wooden bench where a cherry black haired woman twice her age sat on the far end. His daughter dove into her cellphone as she plopped near that edgy woman. Dad made sure his son who tended to drift off to dreamland – Not, no NOT on to some ‘spectrum,’ Dad told himself. – his boy sat down just like he should. And their mom… Their mom. His wife. The high school teacher. The ebony haired beauty. She settled on the wooden bench beside her screen-mesmerized daughter. Just one minute, thought Mom. Please give me just one minute. One minute without me having to...