Gone Tomorrow

“I think I’m entitled to at least see it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
    She made a face, like she didn’t understand.
    She said, “I don’t see why you’re entitled to see it.”
    “You don’t?”
    “No.”
    “Because I’m involved here. And maybe I can check it’s fixed right. For later. Because you need to do this later. Not now.”
    “You said you were a cop.”
    “We can work this out,” I said. “I can help you.” I glanced over my shoulder. The train was creeping along. White light up ahead. I turned back. The woman’s right hand was moving. She was juggling it into a firmer grip and slowly shaking it free of the bag, all at once.
    I watched. The bag snagged on her wrist and she used her left hand to free it up. Her right hand came out.
    Not a battery. No wires. No switch, no button, no plunger.
    Something else entirely.

Chapter 5
    The woman had a gun in her hand. She was pointing it straight at me. Low down, dead center, on a line between my groin and my navel. All kinds of necessary stuff in that region. Organs, spine, intestines, various arteries and veins. The gun was a Ruger Speed-Six. A big old .357 Magnum revolver with a short four-inch barrel, capable of blowing a hole in me big enough to see daylight through.
    But overall I was a lot more cheerful than I had been a second before. Many reasons. Bombs kill people all at once, guns kill one at a time. Bombs don’t need aiming, and guns do. The Speed-Six weighs north of two pounds fully loaded. A lot of mass for a slender wrist to control. And Magnum rounds produce searing muzzle flash and punishing recoil. If she had used the gun before, she would know that. She would have what shooters call Magnum flinch. A split second before pulling the trigger her arm would clench and her eyes would close and her head would turn away. She had a decent chance of missing, even from six feet. Most handguns miss. Maybe not on the range, with ear defenders and eye protection and time and calm and nothing at stake. But in the real world, with panic and stress and the shakes and a thumping heart, handguns are all about luck, good or bad. Mine or hers.
    If she missed, she wouldn’t get a second shot.
    I said, “Take it easy.” Just to be making sounds. Her finger was bone-white on the trigger, but she hadn’t moved it yet. The Speed-Six is a double-action revolver, which means that the first half of the trigger’s pull moves the hammer back and rotates the cylinder. The second half drops the hammer and fires the gun. Complex mechanics, which take time. Not much, but some. I stared at her finger. Sensed the guy with the ballplayer’s eyes, watching. I guessed my back was blocking the view from farther up the car.
    I said, “You’ve got no beef with me, lady. You don’t even know me. Put the gun down and talk.”
    She didn’t reply. Maybe something passed across her face, but I wasn’t watching her face. I was watching her finger. It was the only part of her that interested me. And I was concentrating on the vibrations coming up through the floor. Waiting for the car to stop. My crazy fellow passenger had told me that the R142As weigh thirty-five tons each. They can do sixty-two miles an hour. Therefore their brakes are very powerful. Too powerful for finesse at low speeds. No feathering is possible. They clamp and jerk and grind. Trains often skid the last yard on locked wheels. Hence the characteristic screech as they stop.
    I figured the same would apply even after our slow crawl. Maybe more so, relatively speaking. The gun was essentially a weight on the end of a pendulum. A long thin arm, two pounds of steel. When the brakes bit down, momentum would carry the gun onward. Uptown. Newton’s Law of Motion. I was ready to fight my own momentum and push off the bars the other way and jump downtown. If the gun jerked just five inches north and I jerked just five inches south I would be in the clear.
    Maybe four inches would do it.
    Or four and a half, for safety’s sake.
    The woman asked, “Where did you get your scar?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Were you gut shot?”
    “Bomb,” I said.
    She moved the muzzle, to her left and my right. She aimed at where the scar was hidden by the hem of my shirt.
    The train rolled on. Into the station. Infinitely slow. Barely walking pace. Grand Central’s platforms are long. The lead car was heading all the way to the end. I waited for the brakes to bite. I figured there would be a nice little lurch.
    We never