Derailed

FORTY

I went back up the stairs.

But this time I heard someone in there with me.

Not at first, though. I was concentrating too hard on simply walking up the stairs. Putting one foot in front of the other and eerily conscious of my own labored breathing. I thought I sounded like the old man in the lobby — like someone with one foot already in the grave.

Then I heard somebody else in there with me.

At least several floors above me and maybe drunk, because whoever it was was stumbling around up there and occasionally cursing at himself.

In Spanish.

Lucinda and Mr. Griffen would be in the room by now, I thought. Lucinda would be demurely removing her clothing. Turning her back to Mr. Griffen as she removed her dress and stockings. And Mr. Griffen would be thanking a benevolent God.

Vasquez? He would be positioning himself in the stairwell opposite their room.

I pulled the gun out of my pocket and took a few deep breaths and kept coming.

When I turned the corner between the seventh and eighth floors, I saw him wedged against the hall door, panting and sweating.

“Who are you?” Vasquez said when he turned around to see who’d come up the stairs. He looked stoned.

“Charles Schine,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I need that loan back.”

“This room’s occupied.”

The first words out of Sam Griffen’s mouth.

I’d carefully opened the door to 807 with my room key, keeping my gun trained on Vasquez. I’d made sure he entered the room first.

Sam’s statement had been directed at Vasquez. But when he saw me following him in with a gun, his expression turned from annoyed to panicked.

“What . . . who are you?” he said.

“Charles!” Lucinda answered for me. She was lying on the bed dressed in a lacy black thong, or un dressed in a lacy black thong. She’d evidently gotten the show on the road already.

Four of us — a horrified-looking Sam Griffen dressed in pale blue boxers, Lucinda in her black thong, Vasquez in a turquoise velour sweatsuit, and me in sunglasses, holding a gun.

“Hello, Lucinda,” I said.

It felt strange holding a gun like that. Pointing it at the people who’d cheated me out of over one hundred thousand dollars — moving it back and forth between them. It felt powerful, like an extension of my hand, except my hand had mythological powers now — it could suddenly throw thunderbolts. They were all scared of the gun, even Mr. Griffen.

“Look,” Mr. Griffen said in a very shaky voice, “you can have all my money." You can have all my money — isn’t that what I’d said to Vasquez that day?

“I don’t want your money,” I said. “She does.”

“What?”

“She wants your money.”

Now, in addition to looking terrified, Mr. Griffen looked confused. My heart went out to him — sympathy for a kindred soul, for someone who was about to go through the same shock and disillusionment I had.

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Griffen said. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Mr. Griffen said.

“They were going to take you for everything you have,” I said. “You’re already in trouble.”

Lucinda said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Me and Sam fell in love . . . we — ”

“You met on the train, didn’t you, Sam?”

Sam nodded.

“By accident — it just happened. I understand. You talked and talked about everything. She was pretty and sweet and understanding, and you couldn’t believe how attracted she was to you. She was too good to be true. Wasn’t she, Sam?”

Sam still looked scared of me, but at least he was listening.

“Ask yourself that question. Wasn't she too good to be true? Ask yourself if she ever told you where she lived. Did she? The address, Sam. If she ever seemed to know anyone else on the train — her friends and neighbors. Most people know someone on the train, don’t they. Even one person?”

“He’s been stalking me, Sam,” Lucinda said. “We had a thing once, before you. He’s jealous. He’s out of his mind.”

You had to give her points for trying, I thought. She was good and she was desperate and she was trying.

Vasquez had moved a little. He seemed definitely closer to me than he’d been before. He was playing red light, green light with me.

“Get back,” I said to him. “One giant step back.” I pointed the gun at him. Vasquez took a step back.

“I don’t know who this crazy fucker is,” Vasquez said to Mr. Griffen. He was playing along — he’d seen where Lucinda was going with this now, so he was playing along. “I was just walking in the hall, man, and this asshole pulls a gun on me.”

Sam had a small potbelly and thin, blue-veined arms. He’d crossed them tightly over his pale, hairless chest, as if he were trying to keep himself from crying. He obviously didn’t know whom to believe — maybe it didn’t even matter now. He wanted to get out of there.

“Listen to me, Sam. What does she do for a living? Has she told you where she works?”

“She’s an insurance agent,” he said, but not too convincingly.

“What company, Sam?”

“Mutual of Omaha.”

“Shall we call them, Sam? There’s a phone right over there. Why don’t you call Mutual of Omaha and ask for her. Go ahead.”

Sam glanced at the phone sitting on the night table by the bed. Lucinda glanced at it, too.

“Did she show you the picture of her little girl, Sam? The cute little blond girl on the swing? The one you can get for yourself at any stationery store?”

“We got to take this crazy fucker down,” Vasquez said. “He’s out of his fucking mind—he’s gonna shoot us. You with me, Sam?”

But Sam wasn’t with him. Sam looked forlorn. He was still confused, but he was being worn down by logic. Maybe he had asked himself if Lucinda was too good to be true — maybe he’d always known she was too beautiful and too smart and too available.

“Whatever she’s told you is a lie, Sam. All of it. You’re being set up, understand what I’m saying to you? You were going to get a surprise. You were going to walk out of the room and Vasquez here was going to jump you in the hall. He was going to rob you. He was going to rape her. Only it wouldn't have been rape because she’s already given her consent. They’re in this together.”

Vasquez was on the move again. He was edging forward.

“I don’t understand why raping her . . . ,” Mr. Griffen said.

“The rape is to make it look legitimate, Sam. And to make you feel guilty that you didn’t stop it. That you didn’t protect her. So when he starts blackmailing you—you and Lucinda, or whatever she calls herself—when he asks you for a little loan and then a not so little loan, you’ll pay up. Even if you start having second thoughts about it, even if you start thinking about going to your wife and telling her everything. Because that would still leave her husband, wouldn’t it? And she would’ve told you no, she would've begged you not to do it—that she couldn’t have her husband know about it—about you and her and the rape. Even though she doesn’t have a husband, Sam.”

Mr. Griffen believed me now. Maybe not 100 percent, but enough.

“Can I . . . go?” Mr. Griffen said. “Can I just . . . get out of here?”

But Vasquez said: “Are you stupid? You gonna take off and leave us with this crazy motherfucker?”

“Look,” Sam said, “I just want to go home. I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t care. Really. I just . . . just let me go, okay?”

Vasquez reached back into his pocket and hit him across the mouth with something black, and Sam went down. That fast. His mouth began to leak blood.

Another gun.

I’d done just about everything right. I’d gotten the room key and surprised Vasquez on the staircase. I’d made it into the room. I was going to get my money back. Even if my plan was just a little bit murky on how I was going to get my money back. Maybe by keeping Lucinda at gunpoint until Vasquez came back with it — maybe by all going for the money together. But I’d made one mistake. I’d forgotten that Vasquezes carry guns. I hadn’t searched him or patted him down or made him throw his gun away.

There were a few seconds when all wasn’t lost. When I still had the advantage. Vasquez had a gun and Sam was down and bleeding, but I was still the only one in the room with his gun actually pointed at someone.

I could tell that Vasquez was thinking that it was one thing to hold a gun on somebody and an entirely different thing to pull the trigger. He didn’t think I had it in me.

But he didn’t know something. They say money is the great equalizer, but it’s really, truly, desperation. It had leveled the playing field.

I pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

In the millisecond it took for Vasquez to realize his good fortune, to begin raising his gun hand, I understood why nothing had happened.

I’d forgotten to click off the safety.

I launched myself at Vasquez, using the only advantage I had going for me. Surprise.

My initial charge knocked the gun right out of Vasquez’s hand, and it skittered somewhere under the bed. So now we were more or less even.

Maybe I even had the edge. Because there was a chance my desperation was even more terrible than Vasquez’s. I had nothing much to lose. Detective Palumbo would be calling back any day now, and even if he didn’t, Barry Lenge would. So I did have desperation on my side. And something was not quite right with Vasquez. He was drunk, or stoned, or something.

Vasquez had gasped from the initial shock of body contact, then immediately tried to separate himself from my grasp. But he seemed like a punched-out heavyweight in round twelve, sluggish and wobbly kneed. It gave me courage.

I could see Sam out of the corner of my eye — up on his knees and looking down at his hand, which was bright red because he’d just touched his mouth with it. He looked dazed and confused.

“Mother . . .fucker . . . ,” Vasquez said, grunting now from the exertion of trying to get me off him but not having much success. I had my arms firmly around him, and I wasn’t letting go.

Vasquez staggered into the wall. I had him in a bear hug, so he was doing what bears do when they want to get something off their backs. They rub themselves against the nearest tree trunk. Vasquez was using the nearest wall.

I held fast as I crashed into the plaster wall and dislodged a yellowed reproduction, my sunglasses spinning off onto the floor.

Then we fell to the floor with a loud crash; I could smell Vasquez now — the stink of garlic and cigarette smoke and fried eggs. The carpet was so thin that it was like rolling around on playground cement. And for the first time, I was absolutely convinced I was going to win. I’d moved my right arm around Vasquez’s neck and was squeezing for all I was worth — and right at this minute I was worth a lot. One hundred and ten thousand dollars, at least.

Vasquez was sputtering, and I wondered if I was going to kill him. And I thought: If I have to, I will.

Vasquez gave one last effort at getting me off his back, but one of his arms was pinned between me and the floor, and I had the other one wrapped up tightly, so even though Vasquez gave an awkward lunge forward, he couldn’t dislodge me.

He collapsed; I felt all the strength go out of him — whatever strength booze or drugs hadn’t sapped from him already.

I hadn’t killed him, but I’d won.

I’d won.

There were a pair of shoes standing just at eye level. At first I thought they belonged to Sam, but Sam was over there on the other side of the room, bleeding into his hands.

So I peered up.

“Lookit here,” said Dexter, “it’s Chuck.”