Serge’s shout came back faintly: “A couple more seconds!” Lenny watched him in the distance, standing in the middle of the train tracks, snapping photos of the back of a departing Amtrak heading south to Kissimmee. A handful of weary passengers had just gotten off and carried suitcases across the pavement toward the depot. Otherwise, the place was deserted, the Florida sun directly overhead without clouds. No wind. Crickets, sandspurs. The stagnant heat seemed to have weight.
“Will you come on! I’m getting something on the tracker!”
Serge took a couple parting shots, then sprinted back to the car and vaulted into the passenger seat without opening the door.
“What the hell were you doing?” asked Lenny.
“I’ve decided to completely dedicate my life to the study of trains and things that look like trains.”
Lenny started up the engine. “I knew I should never have asked you about trains. Now we’ll never catch up with that briefcase.”
“This was on the way to the briefcase — sort of. And besides, we’ve got them cornered with the five million.”
“Really?” said Lenny. “I thought this was just fucking around. Not that I’m against that.”
Serge pointed his arms in two different directions. “The logical escape routes are Daytona and Miami. But the tracker’s pinging due east, which can only mean the port and the cruise ships out of the country. The next one leaves Friday.”
“How do you know?”
“I have the schedule memorized,” said Serge. “I go over my own escape routes all the time. To survive in this state, you have to think like the French Resistance.”
Lenny took the entrance ramp for I-4, and Serge stood to snap a final elevated photo back toward the train station. He sat down and stowed the camera. “I can’t believe nobody visits that depot anymore. They’re all too busy heading for the Tower of Terror or the Aerosmith roller coaster. What’s happening to us as a people?…”
“They have an Aerosmith roller coaster?”
“…The depot’s barely changed since it was built in 1926. This is where the town began, for heaven’s sake. People should be flocking here whether they’re taking a train or not. But now the only people who still come are forced to after making a horrible mess of their lives through a series of gross miscalculations until they can’t scrape together airplane money.”
“Now I can see how you got arrested that time in that old train car.”
“You mean the first time.”
“There were others?”
“I’m telling you, it’s like life is out to get me,” said Serge, reaching in the glove compartment for his novelty 3-D glasses.
“Flashback?” asked Lenny.
Serge nodded, slipping on the glasses. “Courtroom scene.”
“You ever watch
“Shhh,” said Serge. “The flashback is starting…”
The judge levied a stiff fine and probation on a retired banker for killing a prize swan with a pitching wedge at a local golf course.
“Bailiff, call the next case.”
“Number six-nine-seven-two-five,
“Will the defendant please rise…” The judge stopped midsentence and took off his glasses. “Back already?”
“I can explain, Your Honor,” said Serge. “This is all a tragic miscarriage. A mockery of justice. If what I did was wrong, I don’t wanna be right!…”
“Your Honor,” interrupted the prosecutor. “The defendant is charged with burglary, trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest and vandalism, to wit: applying paint to an object of historic national importance.”
“What does that mean in English?” asked the judge. “Spray-painting graffiti? Throwing paint balloons?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what exactly?”
“Uh, um…”
“You’re mumbling,” said the judge.
“He was in a historic railroad car, restoring some detail work that was chipping.”
The bailiff handed the judge an evidence bag marked “Exhibit A,” an extra-fine camel’s-hair brush with dried gold paint on the tip.
“There I was,” said Serge, “minding my own business…”
“Your Honor,” said the public defender. “This is really a mental-health case. The defendant needs professional care. He shouldn’t be in criminal court at all.”
“Why is he in
“Your Honor, this violates the conditions of the probation that you placed upon him last week for breaking into the railroad car at the Flagler Museum, so it throws it back here,” said the prosecutor. “Most disturbing is the resisting-arrest charge.”
“What’s that about?” asked the judge.
