16

LATER THAT NIGHT, Ron Hughes kicked back at his trailer on the beach at Ventura. The ocean smashed up against the beach below and Hughes sat by his fire, remembering his friend and partner Zac Blakely. He had Chet Baker on his CD player, and drank a Negro Modelo. Usually, coming up here to his trailer, one that he’d inherited from his uncle Herb ten years ago, put him in a perfect state of mind. He’d always been the kind of agent who could turn off the frustrations of the job with music, a good beer, and the roar of the ocean. But tonight that was impossible. The idea that the thieving rotten bastard had killed Blakely was like a stake in his heart. All the years they had worked together, doing things their own way and making it work, and the son of a bitch cuts his brakes. He wanted to get his gun and go after Steinbach on his own.

And besides, when he looked at the evidence, he wasn’t really sure if it had been Steinbach at all.

Possibly there were other people who wanted to kill Blakely . . . Blakely and himself, too. It wasn’t as though they had a shortage of enemies.

Maybe he’d look into them as well.

Hughes poured himself a cognac to go with his beer, and downed the shot in one gulp. He looked at his watch and a small smile lit up his lined face.

It was 10:50, only ten more minutes until the train came by. The Northern Pacific. All the way from San Diego, through Los Angeles, then up to Santa Barbara, Monterey, San Francisco, and back again.

When he’d first started coming up here from L.A., the train coming through at night had bugged him. The little trailer shook and rattled as the big train rumbled close by on the tracks. But after a while he’d grown to love the sight and the sound of the gleaming train streaming through the moonlight. It had become one of the natural sounds of the area, as familiar and welcome as the surf pounding the beach, the seagulls crying as they circled his home. It was a high, lonesome sound, and the boy in Hughes responded to it eagerly.

Now he picked up his beer, slipped on his loafers, and walked out the side door toward the beach. The night was mysterious, foggy, and the beach looked hazy in the mist and moonlight. A magic place, made even more so by the fact that Hughes knew the train was speeding toward him . . . He walked east toward the tracks, taking another sip of the rich Mexican beer. It was good and cold, and it reminded him again of Blakely, the beer aficionado. It was Blakely who had gotten him to drink good beers, rather than working-class Pabst. Hughes wasn’t sure that moving up in life wasn’t somehow a betrayal of his working-class roots. But Blakely had teased him for worrying about such stuff . Called him “peasant man.” Zac had shown him the way. He owed Zac so much, and now he’d never be able to repay him.

Hughes arrived at the tracks around 10:58. He stood there sipping the last of his beer, and waited for the first sound of the train roaring up from the south. In the wind and the moonlight and with the surf still pounding, it was always an amazing moment for him. Sometimes he’d take off his shirt and let the sea mist cover his chest, and when he heard the train whistle, and the sound of the engine rumbling down the tracks, he’d shut his eyes and imagine that he was a boy again and that he could hop the train and go . . . go anywhere. Anywhere in the world he wanted, start over, maybe live a whole other kind of life . . .

Yeah, it was silly, and sometimes later, when he thought about it, he’d get embarrassed and red-faced thinking about his little fantasy. But what was wrong with it, after all? Didn’t everyone wish they could live multiple lives, start over and maybe be a different kind of person? A better person. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t have become an agent at all.

Tonight was just such a night. The mist, the moonlight, the ocean, and now the train itself. He could hear it coming up the line, and he smiled and took off his shirt and felt the cool air clinging to him. He took one last long chug of beer and waited, a foot or two from the tracks, where he could feel the draft the train made swirling all over him, and there in the moonlight for a few seconds he’d be transformed . . . transformed into the kind of guy he used to dream of being when he was a kid in Reseda.

And then he heard it getting closer to him, speeding out of the electric night, the rush of speed, the sound of the whistle, the roar of the ocean, the sound of the circling and crying birds . . . all of it was inside him as well as outside on the beach. He felt a huge happiness, a transcendent moment, of pure, clear sensation . . . felt it right up until someone stepped up behind him. Someone who seemed to come from nowhere, and who waited until the train was barreling down upon him, someone who thrust Ron Hughes onto the tracks. The whistle screamed, and as Hughes looked up, he saw the engine coming down on him like a screaming silver torpedo. And then — briefly — he felt another sensation . . . as the torpedo exploded into his chest, squashed his ribs, chest, and lungs, all in one brutal motion.

Like the snap of one’s fingers, Ron Hughes’s life ended.

The person who had pushed him stood there for a second, silently, filming every piece of the action. Actually, it had been a little awkward sneaking up with the camera on his shoulder. For a second or two, he felt a little resentment toward Jim, who wanted all this to happen, who thought it all up, but who left him to do the dirty work. He was too sensitive to actually see bodies flying into school walls, or people being ripped apart by machines.

But just the same, it had been exciting to pull it off . And there was a bonus tonight. He felt as though he could actually feel the precise second Ron Hughes’s soul had left his body. That was the kind of thrill you could never get just sitting on the sidelines.

You had to be out here, on the front lines, to feel that kind of thing.

He was a player. Blakely, Hughes, Harper, and Hidalgo thought they were the players, but they had no fucking clue.

Compared to himself and Jim, they were nada. Nothing at all.