“Gloria!” I said, all happy surprise.
The dick lowered his paper and glowered over it.
“John,” she said warmly. Hot syrup on a griddlecake.
“Imagine seeing you here,” I said, pulling over a single seat and dropping into it. “What’s it been? Ten years? I almost didn’t know you.”
“I have changed,” she admitted.
“Look, bud,” the dick growled, “find another place to park it.”
I put on a look that was mostly confusion with a dab of irritation. “What do you mean? Look, mister, she and I go way back...”
Gloria gave the dick a quick pleading look and said, “Oh... John, this is my Uncle Andy. Uncle Andy, John and I... a long, long time ago, Johnny and I were in love.”
The dick made a face. “Look...”
She whispered to him. What she said I couldn’t hear, but her lips spoke to me. “He doesn’t know. Please.”
The dick looked at her, then he looked at me, and a sigh started down around his shoes. “Sure, John. Stick around. Catch up a little.”
I leaned toward her a little. “You’ve grown ever more beautiful, honey.”
“That’s because I was just a kid,” she said, smiling just enough, “and you’ve been away so long.”
“I’ve dreamed about you, sugar. So many times. I was in the mud, but your face was in the clouds... or on the ceiling, when I was lying in a field hospital.”
She glanced at the dick and he seemed uneasy, almost embarrassed.
I said, “Where are you off to, honey?”
“I’m, just... you know. Going away. Visiting family.”
“You can’t run off, not now. Not when I finally bump into you after so long. Could we at least... talk a little? In private, maybe.”
She glanced at the dick. But he was looking at me, reading me.
“Korea?” he asked.
“No. The dustup before that. Pacific.” Then I said to her, “Let’s go get a drink. Hey, Uncle Andy — Gloria and me, we got so much to talk about... What do you say, Uncle Andy?” I stood and gestured for her to get up too. “Come on, Gloria.”
She looked at him. “Couldn’t we? I mean, I’m going to be away for... so long...”
The dick thought about it. Then he forced a smile and aimed it at me. “Listen, John — why don’t you go pour yourself a couple, and then you two kids can catch up.”
“Thanks, Uncle Andy,” I said, and went to the bar. I fixed us some bourbon and ginger ale.
The dick didn’t know I heard their hushed conversation.
“You play me for a sucker, babe,” he said, and then came the click that I knew was the handcuff key working, “and I’ll shoot you and your pal. Nothing funny better happen.”
“What could happen?”
“Go easy on the slob. Don’t tell him you grew up to be a killer. Let him have his drink and his old flame and his face in the clouds he saw from the mud and the field hospital. Because if he wants to see you again, there’ll be a heavy screen between you two.”
“You have a funny way of showing a girl a little pity.”
“Maybe I just want to see you sweat.”
“Thank you, anyway.”
Then she was beside me. She held out her hands and I drew her close. We never touched the drinks, just leaned against the bar.
“You lost track of me,” she said very softly, “but I keep track of you. They call you ‘Irish.’ They’re looking for you like they were looking for me.”
“And now,” I said, just as softly, “we’re two of a kind.”
“Not really,” she said, as she took my hand and led me to another tandem seat, away from and behind her cop companion. We settled in, and she said, “I’ll tell you what I told them all, and nobody believed. I’ll tell you I’m supposed to be a killer, only it never happened that way. But they said it did, and took the rest of my life away. You were part of that life once, and now, for just a moment, we’re young again. And in love. But before we can pick up where we left off... it’s over.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
“It’s only just starting. See, I didn’t do what they say I did either. The world’s wrong about both of us, baby. And we’re paying through the nose for it.”
“What can we do, Johnny?”
I grinned at her. “Me, I like a challenge. I like going up against the smart boys. Nobody believes us, but we believe each other. They took us down, one at a time, but now we’re a couple. Fred and Ginger, Bonnie and Clyde. We make a go of it, together. We might die in the process, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.”
Those blue eyes were wider now — excited, filled with love, and belief in me. Somebody had put the two of us together on this old-fashioned train moving through a cold, damp night — call it kismet or God or maybe just sheer coincidence. But the two of us had found each other in the darkness, and the sparks we made gave us a chance.
The conductor came in and rushed up to me and said, “Look here, Officer. This just came in.”
I took the telegram and read: “WANTED MURDERER JOHN ‘IRISH’ MURPHY ABOARD SOUTHEAST SPECIAL. DANGEROUS, PROBABLY ARMED. HOLD FOR ARREST. POLICE BOARDING EMERGENCY STOP. REPEAT DANGEROUS AND PROBABLY ARMED.”
I asked the conductor, “Think you’d recognize him? Have you seen his picture, in the papers, maybe?”
“No.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, I have, Pop. If he’s here, I’ll find him. And get him.”
The conductor gulped. “What shall I do?”
“Not a thing. Don’t alarm the guy.”
The conductor nodded and, looking spooked, went off.
I slipped an arm around Gloria’s waist. “They know I’m here, kitten.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Working on that,” I said.
Then I saw that the dick had stopped the conductor and was talking to him, and they both looked back at us, the conductor in fear, the dick in rage.
The cloak was ripped from our deception and there stood the law, indignant, outraged. The big man approached me, coat unbuttoned, hand over the .38 on his hip.
“You made a sucker out of me, Irish,” he said. The trembling in his voice had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with anger. “Brother, did I get took. I let the babe soft-soap me and make a mark out of me.”
I said, “Is that so, Uncle Andy?”
“You’re dead, boy.”
“Don’t make the big try, friend. I’m a little younger. A little faster... and I got more to live for — now, anyway.” The conductor, to the rear of the dick, was going for the emergency cord. “Don’t pull that thing, Pop!”
The dick asked, “You heeled, Irish?”
“Make a guess. But make it good — nobody wants to die for your kind of paycheck.”
Gloria’s smile was beautiful and awful. “You’re sweating, Uncle Andy. What’s the matter?”
“You two are crazy,” the dick said. “You won’t live the night out.”
I said, “Care to bet?”
“You’ll have to go through me first, Irish.”
“You married?”
That threw the big man. “...Yeah.”
“Kids?”
The dick swallowed and nodded.
“Want to risk all that?” I asked. “Make the try if you want, but remember — I have the edge.”
Another swallow, another nod.
With two careful fingers, the dick removed the .38 from the hip holster, slowly. He bent and tossed it gently away — he knew not to throw it down hard and risk it going off.
I leaned down to pick it up and he was on me. It was a sucker play and I fell for it. But neither one of us got the rod — Gloria got there first and used it to hold the conductor at bay, the old boy goggling at the two men thrashing on the carpet. The dick was heavy and he was on top of me, but then my knee found just the right place and he rolled off, groaning. Then I was on him, and I threw a punch that might not have put Marciano out but sent this overweight copper to dreamland.