Description
AFTER SIGNING TWO DOZEN books, Sunday politely turned down the bookstore manager’s offer to take him to dinner, saying that he had a previous engagement with an old friend. The rain had stopped by the time he left the store and started down the sidewalk.
He crossed Twentieth Street and was walking past a Dunkin’ Donuts when the woman with the panther tattoo fell in step beside him and said, “That went well.”
“Always helps to have the mysterious Acadia Le Duc in the audience.”
Acadia laughed, put her arm through his, and asked, “Shall we get something to eat before we drive back to DC?”
“I want to see it leave first,” he replied.
“It’s fine,” she said in a reassuring tone. “I watched you seal it myself. We’re good for sixty—no, make that about fifty-eight hours now. Almost seventy hours, if we had to push it.”
“I know,” he said. “Just call me obsessive.”
“All right.” Acadia sighed. “And then we’re doing Thai food.”
“I promise,” Sunday said.
They went to a late-model Dodge Durango parked two blocks away, and Sunday drove through the city until they were abreast of the empty Eagles stadium on Darien Street. He turned left into the vast lot at Monti Wholesale Foods opposite the stadium and parked at the far end, up against the iron fence, where they could look beneath the Delaware Expressway and across into the South Philadelphia rail yard.
Sunday picked up a pair of binoculars and found what he was looking for about a hundred yards in: a line of freight cars, and one in particular, a forty-five-foot rust-red container, the top of which was fitted front to back with solar panels. A reefer—a refrigeration and heating unit—stuck out of the front of the container. He lowered the binoculars, checked his watch, and said, “It should be rolling out of here in another fifteen minutes.”
Bored, Acadia slouched in her seat, said, “So when is Mulch going to contact Cross?”
“Dr. Alex will get a message loud and clear on Friday morning,” he said. “It will be a week. He’ll be ready.”
“We have to be in St. Louis by five p.m. on Friday at the absolute latest,” she said.
Sunday felt irritated. Acadia was the smartest, most unpredictable woman he’d ever known. But she had an annoying habit of constantly reminding him about things of which he was well aware.
Before he could tell her just that, he caught a flash of movement in the rail yard. He raised the binoculars again and saw a young black guy dressed in dark clothing slinking along the freight cars. He was wearing gloves and carrying a small knapsack and a crowbar. He stopped and looked up at the solar panels.
“Shit,” Sunday said, watching the man.
“What?”
“Looks like … shit!”
“What?” Acadia said again.
“Some asshole’s trying to break into our car,” he said.
“No way,” she said, sitting forward to peer into the shadows of the rail yard. “How would he—”
“He wouldn’t,” Sunday said. “It’s random, or he saw the solar panels.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Only thing we can do,” he replied.
Sixty seconds later, Sunday and Acadia were over the fence. They split up beneath the overpass and hurried in opposite directions, both keeping low behind an earthen berm that ran next to the nearest set of tracks. Sunday carried a tire iron and was seventy yards past the rust-red container car before he stopped. The rail yard was lit, not as well as it was to the north, but he’d be visible until he reached the shadows along the freight train.
He had no choice. Sunday clambered over the berm and angled out into the yard, dancing across the tracks, aware of Acadia doing the same to the north, trying not to make noise until he reached the shadows where he’d seen the black guy slinking. The container with the solar panels was six cars ahead. He stood there until he felt his phone buzz, alerting him to a text.
Sunday started forward quickly, keeping his steps light until he was alongside the rust-red car. Hearing metal scraping metal, the sound of the crowbar working that lock, he slowed to a creep and then stopped at the corner.
He waited until he felt his cell phone buzz again, and he gripped the tire iron like a hammer.
“Just what do you think you’re doing there, mister?” Acadia said.
She was on the opposite side of the train.
“Fuck, bitch” was all the thief got to say before Sunday sprang around and spotted him up on the turnbuckle, facing Acadia and menacing her with the crowbar.
Sunday’s tire iron smashed into the man’s knee. He grunted in pain, fell off on Acadia’s side. Sunday vaulted up and over the buckle and was on the man before he could do a thing to defend himself.
He aimed for the guy’s head this time and connected with a thud that put the thief out cold. The third blow was more considered and caved in his skull.
Breathing hard, Sunday looked at Acadia, whose eyes blazed and whose nostrils flared with the sexual excitement she always displayed after a killing.
“Marcus,” she said. “I’m suddenly—”
“Later,” he said firmly and pointed to the adjacent line of freight cars ten feet away. “Help me get him underneath that train. If we’re lucky, he won’t be found till morning. Maybe later.”
They grabbed the dead guy under the armpits, dragged him and pushed him over and in between the rails, and put him facedown beneath the line of railcars.
A sudden squealing noise startled them both.
The freight train, including the container car with the solar panels, was moving out, heading west.