The House of Special Purpose by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788636261
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2019-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Sunday, November 30, 1941

Chicago

A light snow was falling and the clock on the twelve-storey tower of Chicago’s Dearborn Station on Polk Street read exactly seven p.m, as the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe’s crack passenger express, the Super Chief, left the pink granite terminal and began to move west on its thirty-nine-and-a-half-hour journey to Los Angeles. Most of the passengers barely noticed the gentle tug as the train began to move, thumping through the complex throat of the station’s approach tracks and then coming out into the cool air of the early evening.

The train was made up of two engine units painted in the Santa Fe’s traditional scarlet and yellow livery. There were no coaches, only Pullman sleeping cars, their interiors finished luxuriously and equipped with every modern amenity. Each streamliner car had a name, inscribed on panels on either side of the car as well as on the broad metal bars across each door leading to the next car in the train. Using Fleming’s money, Jane had thrown caution to the winds and booked herself and Black into double bedroom D in Oraibi – which contained six double bedrooms, two compartments and two drawing rooms – roughly in the middle of the train and only one car away from the diner.

While Jane used a tube of Ipana and the brand-new Dr West Miracle Tuft she’d bought at the Fred Harvey news stand in the station, Black pulled his armchair close to the window and watched as the Super Chief crossed the X’s of the huge switching yard beyond Dearborn Station, heading south-west. As they rumbled over the train bridge that crossed the foul-smelling Illinois and Michigan Canal in the industrial wasteland around Thirty-first Street, Black saw a dozen slipways running off the main canal, scores of barges piled high with lumber moored neatly, waiting for their inland cargoes to be offloaded and taken to the harbour.

Jane came out of the tiny bathroom, the tip of her tongue testing her freshly brushed teeth. She stopped when she saw Black, his nose virtually pressed up against the glass of the window as he peered out into the gathering darkness. ‘You look like a little kid.’

‘I always dreamed of this,’ the detective answered without taking his eyes off the passing scenery. ‘Riding a transcontinental train into the American Wild West and beyond. I used to read books about it. Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill Cody. Sitting Bull and Geronimo.’

‘Cross the mighty Mississippi and all of a sudden there’s a bunch of Indians whooping it up, wearing war-bonnets and paint, shooting arrows at the train.’

‘And every horse a pinto,’ said Black, smiling up at her. ‘The first cinema I ever went to was showing Riders of the Purple Sage.’

‘You had it bad,’ Jane said. ‘Getting back to the present, Sheriff, look across the corridor and you’ll see the Chicago Sewage Canal running along on the other side of us.’ She laughed. ‘Good thing this train’s got air conditioning.’

‘You’re putting a blight on a child’s fantasy.

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