The Hot Rock

6

Murch stood beside the tracks, smoking a Marlboro and thinking about railroad trains. What would it be like to drive a railroad train, a real one, a modern diesel? Of course, you couldn't change lanes when you wanted, but it nevertheless might be interesting, very interesting.

In the last fifteen minutes one vehicle had gone by, westbound, an ancient green pickup truck with an ancient gray farmer at the wheel. A lot of metal things in the back had gone klank when the truck had crossed the tracks, and the farmer had given Murch a dirty look, as though he suspected Murch of being responsible for the noise.

The other noise had come a minute or two later, being a brief stutter of tommy-gun fire, faint and faraway. Murch had listened carefully, but it hadn't been repeated. Probably just a warning, not an indication of trouble.

And now, here came something down the tracks. Murch leaned forward, peering, and it was good old Tom Thumb, backing down the rails, its Ford engine whining in reverse.

Good. Murch flipped away the Marlboro and ran over to the truck. He backed it around into position, and had it all ready when Tom Thumb arrived.

Chefwick eased the locomotive to a stop a few yards from the rear of the truck. He was already looking a little sad at the prospect of being returned to normal size, but there was no alternative. His Drink-Me was all used up.

While Greenwood stood guard over Prosker in the tender, Dortmunder and Kelp, no longer in their wet-suits, got out and lowered the ramp into place. Chefwick backed the locomotive carefully up into the truck, and then Dortmunder and Kelp shoved the ramp back inside. Kelp climbed into the truck, and Dortmunder shut the door and went around to get into the cab with Murch.

Murch said, "Everything okay?"

"No problems."

"Nearest place?"

"Might as well," Dortmunder said.

Murch put the truck in gear and started off, and two miles later he made a sweeping left onto a narrow dirt road, one of the many dirt roads they'd checked out in the last two weeks. This one, they knew, trailed off into the woods without ever getting much of anywhere. There were small indications in the first half mile or so that it was sometimes used as a lovers' lane, but farther along the ruts grew narrower and grassier and finally petered out entirely in the middle of a dry valley, with no signs of man except a couple of meandering lines of stones that had once been boundary fences and were now mostly crumbled away. Perhaps there had once been a farm here, or even a whole town. The wooded lands of the northeastern states are full of long-ago-abandoned farms and abandoned rural towns, some of them gone now without a trace, some still indicated by an occasional bit of stone wall or a half-buried tombstone to mark where the churchyard used to be.

Murch drove the truck in as far as he dared and stopped. "Listen to the silence," he said.

It was late afternoon now, and the woods were without sound. It was a softer, more muffled silence than the one at the sanitarium following Dortmunder's tommy-gun burst, but just as complete.

Dortmunder got out of the cab, and when he slammed the door it echoed like war noises through the trees. Murch had gotten out on the other side, and they walked separately along the trailer, meeting again at the far end. All around them stood the tree trunks, and underfoot orange and red dead leaves. Leaves still covered the branches too and fluttered constantly downward, making steady small movements down through the air that kept Dortmunder making quick sharp glances to left and right.

Dortmunder opened the rear door and he and Murch climbed inside, then shut the door again after themselves. The interior of the trailer was lit by three frosted-glass lights spaced along the top, and the place was very, very full of locomotive, with no room at all to move on the right side and just barely enough to sidle along on the left. Dortmunder and Murch went along to the front of the tender and stepped aboard.

Prosker was sitting on the arms case, his innocent-amnesiac expression beginning to fray at the edges. Kelp and Greenwood and Chefwick were standing around looking at him. There were no guns in sight.

Dortmunder went over to him and said, "Prosker, it's as simple as can be. If we're out the emerald, you're out of life. Cough it up."

Prosker looked up at Dortmunder, as innocent as a puppy who's missed the paper, and said, "I don't know what anybody's talking about. I'm a sick man."

Greenwood, in disgust, said, "Let's tie him to the tracks and run the train over him a few times. Maybe he'll talk then."

"I really doubt it," Chefwick said.

Dortmunder said, "Murch, Kelp, take him back and show him where we are."

"Right." Murch and Kelp took Prosker ungently by the elbows, hustled him off the tender, and shoved him down the narrow aisle to the rear of the truck. They pushed open a door and showed him the woods, with the late afternoon sunlight making diagonal rays down through the foliage, and when he'd seen it they shut the door again and brought him back and sat him down once more on the arms case.

Dortmunder said, "We're in the woods. Am I right?"

"Yes," Prosker said and nodded. "We're in the woods."

"You remember about woods. That's good. Look up there in the driver's part of the locomotive. What's that leaning against the side there?"

"A shovel," Prosker said.

"You remember shovels too," Dortmunder said. "I'm glad to hear that. Do you remember about graves?"

Prosker's innocent look crumpled a little more. "You wouldn't do that to a sick man," he said and put one hand feebly to his heart.

"No," Dortmunder said. "But I'd do it to a dead man." He let Prosker think about that for a few seconds and then said, "I'll tell you what's going to happen. We're going to stay here tonight, let the cops travel around looking for a locomotive someplace. Tomorrow morning we're going to leave. If you've handed over the emerald by then, we'll let you go and you can tell the law you escaped and you didn't know what it was all about. You won't mention any names, naturally, or we'll come get you out again. You know now we can get you wherever you hide, don't you?"

Prosker looked around at the locomotive and the tender and the hard faces. "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, I know that."

"Good," Dortmunder said. "How are you with a shovel?"

Prosker looked startled. "A shovel?"

"In case you don't give us the emerald," Dortmunder explained. "We'll be leaving here without you in the morning, and we won't want anybody finding you, so you'll have to dig a hole."

Prosker licked his lips. "I," he said. He looked at all the faces again. "I wish I could help you," he said. "I really do. But I'm a sick man. I had business reverses, personal problems, an unfaithful mistress, trouble with the Bar Association, I had a breakdown. Why do you think I was in the sanitarium?"

"Hiding from us," Dortmunder said. "You committed yourself. If you could remember enough to commit yourself to a maximum security insane asylum, you can remember enough to turn over the emerald."

"I don't know what to say," Prosker said.

"That's all right," Dortmunder told him. "You've got all night to think it over."