The conductor had already checked everyone’s ticket. Hesitating, Sal reached again for his. Arguing was not an option for people like Nico and him.
The conductor examined it—and him. “Hey. Yous. That little scene just now . . .”
“A dream only.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t allow no dreams that scare the holy crap out of my passengers. Yous got that, guinea?”
Yous. These Americans in their separate parts of their country; they seemed not to be using the same language.
Spinning on one heel, the conductor stomped toward the door. Behind it was the vestibule, the new accordion-sided connector between cars, which, for most passengers, probably beat being thrown off on a sharp curve. But for Sal it meant one fewer place to escape.
Like every time, his nightmare was slow to loosen its grip. He was still sweating, pulse racing, as if he and Nico had been running for their lives all over again.
Directly across the aisle from him sat the young woman Kerry, who’d challenged his name. Reason enough to speak little to her.
And there sat the reporter. He and Sal both being careful not to acknowledge each other. There’d be time for that later. If all went as planned.
His chest tightening with the old spasms of worry, Sal focused on the young woman, Kerry. Her face had beauty in it, but also—what was it?—risentimento.
She and her brother and sister all had hair the color of Palermo roofs, with their dark-red tile. And so did the graying older woman who stole looks at Nico and him over her knitting. Wiry hair prickling out from her bun, the elbows of her blouse worn to threads, and her toes poking through the ends of her shoes, she was giving Nico and him looks of pity. Well, fair enough.
“Aunt Rema,” the boy Jursey said now, glancing toward Sal, “has that man yonder gone loose to the head?”
The old woman held a finger to her lips.
“All their kind is,” a man in front of the old woman offered—loudly, as if addressing the whole car. Flicking his bowler back from his face, he snapped the pages of his Baltimore Sun. “Paper’s full with them extorting from their own kind. Murder, too.”
Murder.
Hundreds of miles from the wharves of New Orleans, yet the word had followed them here. Like it was scrawled in blood across Sal’s face.
Maybe the man in the bowler had recognized him. Alongside pictures in the newspaper of a police chief, gunned down, who’d lived long enough to name his killers.
Glancing to the other side of the car and also forward, Sal could watch his fellow passengers in the windows’ reflections now as twilight began to settle outside. Across the aisle, the girl Tully tugged at her braid, a shredded strip of burlap tied at its end.
The woman Rema addressed the boy. “Hush, Jursey. Ain’t neighborly to point. And I’ll thank you to recollect the Lord also loves them that’s done lost their minds.” She lowered her voice—though not enough that Sal couldn’t still hear. “Just stay a piece clear of the poor soul, in case he pitches to muzzied again.”
Sal pulled his cap’s brim lower over his face.
More scenes like the one he’d just caused would alert anyone paying attention—not to mention hunting for him—that he and Nico were here. Here and alive, when they shouldn’t have been either of those.
Winching his brother closer, Sal breathed in the mountain air, brisk and full of scents he couldn’t name. A world apart from the sultry swelter of four years ago.
Although that other world could come raging back any moment. With one particular man bursting into the car, his fury having festered and swelled in four years.
Bastard got away with murder, he’d say. If he spoke before he shot.
Sal reached for the oilskin tube that poked out from the mouth of his rucksack. Slipping loose the twine that held it, he unrolled it onto his lap. Its edges had become a stained fringe. Creases cobwebbed the image. Still, after all these years and all these miles traveled, the ink lines of the sketch popped out nearly as clearly as when he’d seen it drawn in Florence—and added his own strokes.
Running a finger over the lines, Sal marveled: the soaring rooflines, the intricate detail. And there, the sketch’s one word scrawled at the bottom: Biltmore.
Tully leaned close, peppermint on her breath, stick candy clutched in one fist. “Mighty pretty—even seeing it a second time.” She gave a low whistle, then stopped. “Aunt Rema says I shouldn’t ought to whistle like I was some sort of randy sailor. Only she won’t tell what randy’d be.”
The boy nodded. “It’s awful nice, sure enough. Where’d you get it from, mister?”
“Firenze,” Sal said. But maybe that was saying too much. “Much far away.”
The girl whistled again while the boy offered a low “Ah.”
Both nodded, as if the simple, literal truth somehow explained a story of years and oceans, of a millionaire and a peasant whose paths should never have crossed.
Hurriedly, Sal rolled the sketch up again.
Jursey, who had risen from his seat, tapped Sal on the shoulder. “You’uns sure did rile things up back yonder.”
Sal glanced away. “Is nothing.”
Tully tossed back her braid by its burlap-sack bow. “Had to be something, way you reared up like a horse with his hay on fire.”
Far, she pronounced it. It took Sal a moment to sift out the sounds.
The girl leaned toward the boy. “Me ’n Jursey’d be twins, though we don’t favor at all.” The boy squeezed in closer. “That’s our aunt Rema ahead with the knitting. And you met Kerry. She only looks to be not paying attention.”
Kerry’s eyes flicked to Sal, then back out the window.
Tully cocked her head. “You don’t much favor the type that comes here from the outside for the breathing porches. They got a look to them, all gussied.”
Jursey leaned in to stage whisper. “Rich as Jesus.”
“Croesus,” Rema corrected without looking up from her needles. “Jesus hadn’t got one flea-bitten donkey to be calling his own, which is an especial hard thing if you’re God.”
Jursey said, conspiratorially, “You friendly up close with Mr. George Vanderbilt?”
Sal paused. “From a long time ago.”
At the rear of the car, the vestibule suddenly flew open again, its door smacking the wainscoting. Heart slamming his ribs, Sal watched the reflection in the window.
But it was only two gentlemen in top hats who’d entered. Sal knew their kind from when he’d hauled luggage for tourists back in Italy: Baedeker-toting Brits and Americans, looking down on all they surveyed. These two must have strolled up from one of the luxury cars at the far end of the train—curiosity, maybe, to view the commoners’ car, which was missing the plush, upholstered chairs and crystal chandeliers and filigreed mirrors of their own. He’d seen this before: rich people who liked to peek at the lower classes—like royalty surveying the peasants. As if the great width of the gap made them feel richer still.
Standing just feet away at the back, the gentlemen peered alternately at the passengers and at what was still visible through the dusk of the landscape. Berkowitz, Sal noticed, glanced behind at the two men, then stiffened in his seat. The color drained from his face.
The shorter one stroked a thick, brown mustache, waxed on its ends. “The cuisine in the dining car was surprisingly adequate, wouldn’t you say, Cabot? Rather good oysters, really. Not a bad choice of pairing with the Château d’Yquem Sauternes—though I might have chosen a different white.” He glanced toward the view. “Extraordinary.”