She was very sure that he had said fireworks.
4.
Elton Curry was a conductor on Amtrak’s Phoenix-Salt Lake run. The tall man appeared promptly at 10:00 A.M. on January 2, and Elton helped him up the steps and into the car because he was limping quite badly. He was carrying a rather old tartan traveling bag with scuffmarks and fraying edges in one hand. In the other he carried a brand-new cowhide attache case. He carried the attache case as if it were quite heavy.
‘Can I help you with that, sir?’ Elton asked, meaning the attache case, but it was the traveling bag that the passenger handed him, along with his ticket.
‘No, I’ll take that when we’re underway, sir.’
‘All right. Thank you.’
A very polite sort of fellow, Elton Curry told the FBI agents who questioned him later.
And he tipped well.
5.
January 6, 1979, was a gray, overcast day in New York -snow threatened but did not fall.
George Clements’ taxi was parked in front of the Biltmore Hotel, across from Grand Central.
The door opened and a fellow with graying hair got in, moving carefully and a little painfully. He placed a traveling bag and an attache case beside him on the seat, dosed the door, then put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he was very, very tired.
‘Where we goin, my friend?’ George asked.
His fare looked at a slip of paper. ‘Port Authority Terminal,’ he said.
George got going. ‘You look a little white around the gills, my friend. My brother-in-law looked like that when he was havin his gallstone attacks. You got stones?
‘No.’
‘My brother-in-law, he says gallstones hurt worse than anything. Except maybe kidney stones. You know what I told him? I told him he was full of shit. Andy, I says, you’re a great guy, I love ya, but you’re full of shit. You ever had cancer, Andy? I says. I asks him that, you know, did he ever have cancer. I mean, everybody knows cancer’s the worst.’
George took a long look in his rear-view mirror. ‘I’m asking y6u sincerely, my friend …
are you okay? Because, I’m telling you the truth, you look like death warmed over.’
The passenger answered, ‘I’m fine. I was … thinking of another taxi ride. Several years ago.
‘Oh, right,’ George said sagely, exactly as if he knew what the man was talking about.
Well, New York was full of kooks, there was no denying that. And after this brief pause for reflection, he went on talking about his brother-in-law.
6.
‘Mommy, is that man sick?’
‘Shhh.’
‘Yeah, but is he?’
‘Danny, be quiet.’
She smiled at the man on the other side of the Greyhound’s aisle, an apologetic, kids-will-say-anything-won’t-they smile, but the man appeared not to have heard. The poor guy did look sick. Danny was only four, but he was right about that. The man was looking listlessly out at the snow that had begun to fall shortly after they crossed the Connecticut state line. He was much too pale, much too thin, and there was a hideous Frankenstein scar running up out of his coat collar to just under his jaw. It was as if someone had tried taking his head clean off at sometime in the not-too-distant past – tried and almost succeeded.
The Greyhound was on its way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they would arrive at 9 30 tonight if the snow didn’t slow things down too much. Julie Brown and her son were going to see Julie’s mother-in-law, and as usual the old bitch would spoil Danny rotten –
and Danny didn’t have far to go.
‘I wanna go see him.’
‘No, Danny.’
‘I wanna see if he’s sick.’
‘No!’
‘Yeah, but what if he’s dine, ma?’ Danny’s eyes positively glowed at this entrancing possibility. ‘He might be dine right now!’
‘Danny, shut up.’
‘Hey, mister!’ Danny cried. ‘You dine, or anything?’
‘Danny, you shut your mouth! ‘ Julie hissed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
Danny began to cry then, not real crying but that snotty, I-can’t-get-my-own-way whining that always made her want to grab him and pinch his arms until he really had something to cry about. At times like this, riding the bus into evening through another cruddy snowstorm with her son whining beside her, she wished her own mother had sterilized her several years before she had reached the age of consent.