CHAPTER TWO
Old Feng’s bright idea was to smuggle me onto a south-bound train while the clean linen was being delivered to the Pullman cars. This wasn’t particularly difficult as no one pays the slightest bit of attention to the porters, cooks or anyone else who works on the trains. I didn’t even really need a disguise: just some old clothes that Feng’s cousin, Moo, the launderer, loaned me and a wide-brimmed hat. I kept my head low and my face obscured by an armload of fresh sheets and I was in like Flynn. All I had to do was stay undercover until the train was well on its way, change clothes and find a seat. Feng had sent a boy out for a regular ticket, so I had that all ready. So far as the conductor would ever know, I was just another ordinary passenger.
There’d been cops all over the station and there was a flatfoot at each platform, giving the once-over to everyone boarding a train, but, like I said, I didn’t get so much as a second glance, going in with the rest of the porters and train crew like I did. Moo grinned at them and where they saw one Chink they assumed everyone with him was a Chink. It was the first time in my life I’d been glad for racial prejudice. It’s jake when it saves your skin.
Once on the train, a Negro porter nodded knowingly to me and took me to the galley where an enormous cook immediately put me to work peeling a pile of potatoes. I kept my back to the rest of the kitchen and my hat pulled low and no one said a word. After about half an hour of this, I felt the car give a sudden lurch and we were on our way. I stayed where I was, though, knowing it would take some time to get out of the station and that I wouldn’t be even half safe until we’d crossed the river into Jersey.
Soon enough, the cook pounded me on the shoulder and when I got to my feet he led me to a little restroom at the end of the car, evidently intended for the private use of the restaurant car staff. I had my street clothes neatly folded within one of the sheets I’d brought on board and it took only a few minutes to change. When I stepped back into the kitchen, I looked—I hoped—like any other businessman on his way home from a meeting or convention. Neither the cook nor any of his people so much as glanced at me as I straightened my tie and left the compartment. I crossed the rattling vestibule and strolled down a couple of cars until I found an empty pair of seats—I wasn’t terribly anxious for company, as you might imagine, at least not until I’d put a few hundred miles between me and that bastard Dewey.
But I hadn’t even settled in comfortably when I felt someone looking over my shoulder. I tried to pretend that I was too fascinated by the passing scenery to notice—a difficult fiction to maintain given that all I could see was Trenton—but whoever was standing behind me apparently had no intention of moving until I acknowledged their presence. It was a battle of wills I was determined to win until I heard a delicate and distinctly feminine cough.
I turned to look and found standing in the aisle, holding herself steady with one hand on the baggage rack above, a girl who immediately made me realize that I’d been looking on the wrong side of the window for scenery. Trenton for sure didn’t hold a candle to what was three feet in front of my eyes. From my vantage point she looked as though she were made almost entirely of leg. I had to crane my neck to see her face. She was definitely one long drink of water. I suddenly felt mighty thirsty.
“Are you all right?” she said in a voice that was a kind of husky whisper. I felt the hairs on my nape rise just at the sound of it.
“Pardon?”
“I thought for a moment you were having some sort of epileptic fit. I was all ready to stick my fountain pen in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue.”
“No. No fit.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. My pen is new and I value it. Is this seat taken?”
“Seat? Taken? No . . . no, not so far as I know.”
“Great!” she said, as her sinuous prolongations folded into the seat beside me like a carpenter’s rule. She was wearing a skirt of some sort of grey jersey, a pretty smart number that even I could tell was high-class stuff, an ivory silk blouse, a jacket that matched the skirt and a neat little hat—very business-like, yet for all that she looked like she’d just stepped out of Vogue. She had silk-clad calves that looked like they’d been turned on a lathe but as soon as I could drag my eyes to her face, they were ready to settle in for the duration. I’d never seen anything quite like that face before—she left even Ann Darrow simply nowhere in the class department. Square-jawed, with just a little cleft at the point of the chin; high cheekbones over slightly hollowed cheeks sloped down to a straight, full-lipped mouth that was turned up in something between a smile and a smirk; a narrow, straight nose with flaring nostrils, and, well, those eyes. Large and wide-set, they matched her hair—which was the same gleaming bronze you see on newly-minted medallions—except there seemed to be little metallic flecks that swirled around in her irises, like freshly stirred gold paint does. It was the uncanniest thing I’d ever seen and I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff. Even her skin had a kind of metallic look, as though it had been dusted with powdered bronze. Maybe it had been, for all I know. And there were muscles under that smooth skin, too, that made me think of some of the big anacondas I’d seen up the Orinoco. She was an outdoor girl for sure. “Going far, Mr. Denham?” she asked and it spoke volumes for her that it took me half a minute before I realized that she’d used my name.
“Well, that tears it.”
“Tears what, Mr. Denham?”
“Stop calling me that,” I whispered. “Someone’s going to hear you.”
“Well, what should I call you, then?”
“I don’t know. Call me anything you like, just don’t call me Mr. . . . that name.”
“All right, then. I’m sure I’ll think of something better. You may call me Patricia.”
“Patricia? Patricia what?”
“Patricia Sa . . . ah . . . Wildman. Patricia Wildman.”
Well, well! I thought. “Wildman” my ass! Whatever her real name is, she evidently has some secrets of her own!
“Mr. Cacciatore,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Mr. Cacciatore. It’s Italian for hunter. I think that’s what I’m going to call you. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Sure. Fine. Look here, Miss Wildman . . .”
“Please, you may call me Pat.”
“All right, ah, Pat. Look here . . . we can’t talk about this right now. If you know enough about me to know my name, you know enough to know why I gotta keep low.”
“Oh, sure! I know all about that. It’s why I’m here, as a matter of fact.”
That was pretty intriguing, but the conductor was asking for our tickets and I clammed up. I stared out the window until he left the car, then turned to ask Pat what the hell she had meant but a white-coated steward entered and sounded his chimes—bing bong bing—for the first call to dinner.
“Come on, Mr. Cacciatore,” the girl said, springing from her seat, “we can talk while we eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
This didn’t surprise me in the least: the girl obviously had so much energy she couldn’t sit still for five consecutive minutes. She must burn up calories like a Bessemer converter. When I stood to join her I was astonished again to see how tall she was: she could look directly into my eyes and—I noticed—she wasn’t wearing high heels, either. A practical girl, but I had already figured that from her pageboy haircut. Those long legs of hers had to account for more than half of the six feet that separated the soles of her feet from the crown of that fabulous bronze head.
I was relieved to find the dining car virtually empty. There were only a half dozen tired-looking businessmen either sitting by themselves or engrossed in some business deal or another. Pat and I found a table well away from the others, where I felt we could talk with some privacy. As soon as the waiter had taken our order, I leaned toward her and asked: “What the hell are you doing here? How’d you know who I am? What d’you want?”
“Goodness, Mr. Cacciatore! So many questions and we haven’t even gotten our soup yet.”
“You a reporter?”
“Heaven forfend! It’s all I can do to keep out of the papers!”
“Is it money you want? I can tell you right now, I’ve got less money than anyone on this planet.”
“Don’t be silly. I have more money already than I know what to do with, and I can always get more if I want it.”
“So you’re filthy rich. What’s your game, then?”
“Adventure, Mr. Cacciatore.”
“What?”
“Adventure. You know, thrills, excitement, danger—that sort of thing.”
“You’re nuts, if you’ll forgive the familiarity.”
“That’s an opinion I’m in no position to debate, though I fail to see your point.”
“The point is, Miss Wildman—”
“Pat, please!”
“—Miss Wildman, the point is that if it’s your intention to tag along with me, the answer is: not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“Mr. Cacciatore, you’re not thinking this through. You need to eat something. Get your blood sugar up. Your brain cells will be much more coöperative for a little gesture from you like that, you know.”
“My brain cells are perfectly happy as they are.”
“I’ll bet they’re just starving, the poor things. I can tell. They’re going to revolt like a bunch of Russian peasants and then you’ll have a stroke or something. You’ll say you’re sorry then, if you even remember who I am after that. In case you forget, I’ll be the nice lady spoon-feeding gruel to you.”
“Don’t you think for a moment I’d be able to forget you.”
“Why, Mr. Cacciatore,” batting her eyes coyly, “now you’re just trying to flatter me!”
The woman was maddening. She wasn’t being stupid—I could tell there was a mighty sharp brain under that sleek bronze hair—her answers were too quick, too glib and too knowing to have been the product of a lightweight mind. In fact, she was downright snotty. But I still couldn’t figure out for the life of me what she was after. Maybe she was telling the truth when she said all she was after was adventure and excitement. There are women like that, you know. I’d run across my fair share. They were usually rich girls bored with night clubs and brilliantined wolves, who thought it’d be fun to be chased by a tiger or fall off a mountain.
“I know what’s going through your mind, Mr. Cacciatore—may I call you Carl? It seems only fair since you’ve been calling me Pat for half an hour—I know what you’re thinking, Carl, but I’m not here on the behalf of anyone other than myself.”
That’s not what I’d been thinking but I didn’t argue with her.
Our soup arrived just at that moment, damn it, and we spent the next few minutes eating, the conversation drifting toward the darkening landscape that rolled past us.
“Don’t you just love traveling?” she asked.
“Sure, but it’s a lot more fun when it’s done voluntarily.”
“Makes no difference to me at all. Any excuse to get away from the city and somewhere where something exciting might happen is okey dokey by me. And speaking of exciting . . . just where is it, exactly, you’re going, Carl?”
“My ticket’s for Miami. I thought maybe I could catch a ship for South America from there.”
“Looking for passage are you?”
“It’s the only safe way out of the country I can see.”
“Well, then, if you get off at Mobile instead you’ll find a ship waiting there for you.”
“Ship? What ship?”
“The Venture. Captain Englehorn’s steaming there as we speak.”