Night Train Read Online Free PDF

shaving the head, working in toward the exit wound.
           But here's the worst. The electric saw is circumnavigating Jennifer's cranium. A lever is being wedged under the roof of the skull, and now you wait for the pop. And now I find that 'my' body, so ordinary and asymmetrical, the source of so little pleasure or pride, so neglected, so parched, is suddenly starting up, acting up: It wants attention. It wants out of all this. The cranial pop is as loud as a gunshot. Or a terrible cough. No is pointing to something, and Silvera leans forward, and then the two men are backing away, in surprise.
           I watch on, thinking: Colonel Tom, I hear you. But I'm not sure how much this means.
           It appears that Jennifer Rockwell shot herself in the head three times.
           'No. No, I don't live alone', I said. I live with Deniss. And just that once I shed tears. I don't live alone. I live with Deniss.
           As I was speaking those words, Deniss, in actual fact, was scowling through the windshield of a U-Haul, taking himself and all his belongings at high speed toward the state line.
           So I did live alone. I didn't live with Deniss.
           Is that Tobe now, starting up the stairs? Or is it the first rumor of the night train? The building always seems to hear it coming, the night train, and braces itself as soon as it hears in the distance that desperate cry.
           I don't live alone. I don't live alone. I live with Tobe.
     
     
     
    March 9
     
    Just come back from my meet with Silvera.
           The first thing he said to me was: 'I hate this.'
           I said you hate what?
           He said the whole damn thing.
           I said Colonel Tom thinks it plays to homicide.
           He said what does?
           I said the three shots.
           He said Rockwell never was any good. On the streets.
           I said he got shot in the line for Christ's sake. He got shot in the fucking line.
           Silvera paused.
           'When was the last time 'you' took one for the state?' I asked him.
           Silvera went on pausing. But that wasn't it. He wasn't thinking of the time, way back in company lore, that Tom Rockwell stopped one in the Southern, as a beat cop, while flushing hoodies from a drug corner. No, Silvera was just contemplating his own career curve.
           I lit a cigarette and said, 'Colonel Tom has it playing to homicide.'
           He lit a cigarette and said, 'Because that's all he's got. You shoot yourself once in the mouth. That's life. You shoot yourself twice. Hey. Accidents happen. You shoot yourself three times. You got to really want to go.'
           We were in Hosni's, the little gyro joint on Grainge. Popular among police for its excellent smoking section. Hosni himself isn't a smoker. He's a libertarian. He threw out half his tables just to skirt city law. I'm not proud of my habit, and I know that Hosni's crusade is one we're eventually going to lose. But all cops smoke their asses off and I figure it's part of what we give to the state—our lungs, our hearts.
           Silvera said, 'And this was a.22. A revolver.'
           'Yeah. Not a zip. Or a faggot gun. You know like a derringer or something. The old lady upstairs. She said she heard one shot?'
           'Or she's woken by one shot and then hears the second or the third. She's blacked out on sherry in front of the TV. What does 'she' know.'
           'I'll go talk to her.'
           'This case is so fucking cute,' said Silvera. 'When Paulie No fluoroscoped her, suddenly we're looking at three bullets. One's still in her head, right? One's in Evidence Control: The one we dug out of the wall at the scene. After the autopsy we go back. There's only one hole in the wall. We dig out 'another' round. Two bullets. One hole.'
           In itself this was no big deal. Police are pretty blase about ballistics.