Hocus by Jan Burke Page B

freight train came slowly rumbling by, horns sounding, echoing loudly off the concrete buildings. He watched it, read the names on the boxcars. AT&SF… Southern Pacific… Cotton Belt. Where was it going? Where had it been? Conrail… Golden West… GATX…. It slowed, stopped, began backing up, apparently switching or adding cars. As the head end passed him again, an engineer saw him and waved. Surprised, Frank waved back.
    When he could no longer see the engineer’s face, he straightened his suit and turned back to the house. A mockingbird sang half a dozen verses of a borrowed two-note song, then fell silent.
    He paused, listened. Nothing. Gravel crunched and grated as he walked up the drive.
    He had never known any trouble from Ross, he told himself. And if Ross had information on the Novak case, he wanted to hear it. The Novak case had been a real pain. Absolutely no breaks in it so far. Probably all kinds of witnesses, but everybody too scared to talk. Nobody knew anything. It angered him. Novak had been a small-time dealer with all the wrong kinds of ambition; whoever executed him had probably saved the state a lot of money by ending his miserable life. But a murder was a murder, and as much as he hated the Novaks of this world, it bothered him more that people would aid a killer with their silence.
    The porch steps creaked. When he came to the front door he halted, stepped to the side. It was open. Just a crack, but open.
    “Ross?” he called.
    “Come on in, Frank,” he heard Ross call. “It ain’t locked. I seen you comin’.”
    He thought of every other time he had met with the junkie: the nervousness, the triple-locked doors.
    He pulled out his gun.
    “Come out here, Ross,” he called.
    Silence.
    “Come out here, or I’m going back to Las Piernas. We’ll talk another time.”
    He heard the porch creak behind him and whirled.
    A man in a gold lamé cape and a full set of purple-sequined tails stood on the other end of the porch. He took off his glimmering top hat and bowed.
    “Want to see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?” he asked.
    “No. Drop the hat and hold your hands—” He sensed a movement behind him but did not quite turn in time to ward off the blow to the back of his head.
    He blacked out for a moment, not feeling the fall to the porch until he hit it with his face. His gun clattered away from him, but he could smell powder. Had he fired it? Hit the magician? No, one of the men pinning him to the porch was wearing purple and gold. Dizzy, half-stunned, he struggled beneath them, but they held him down. Soon his hands were tied behind his back.
    “You didn’t hit him hard enough!” the magician said.
    “It won’t matter.”
    He felt fear, cold and real, clearing his head.
    “He almost shot me!” the magician complained. “What if someone heard it?”
    “Get his gun, goddammit,” the other said. The cape lifted.
    He struggled again, felt the jab of a needle in his neck.
    “Keep wiggling around,” the voice said, “and it will only work faster.”
    He was hauled roughly to his feet and shoved into the house.
    Ross was inside, cowering in a corner.
    “Oh, God!” he wailed when he saw Frank. “You two are fuckin’ nuts! He’s a cop!”
    “Shut up,” the magician said.
    Ross started crying but said nothing more.
    The pain from his head was not so bad now, but he could feel his own blood, warm and wet on his neck and back, could taste it in his mouth. He was dizzy, but it wasn’t so bad to be dizzy, he thought.
    “How much time?” the voice behind him asked.
    The magician pulled out a pocket watch. “Any minute now,” he said, and looked toward the tracks.
    A train. Even through the fog that was settling on his mind, he thought of the train. He started to move toward the door. He was yanked back, hard.
    He heard the train. These sons of bitches were going to kill him, he thought hazily. Well, screw them. They weren’t going to put him down without a fight.
    He stumbled