Free Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter

shows—Perry Como and Bing Crosby are just a start—and that night enter a magic world and feel the thrill and the excitement that’s formerly been felt only by high rollers and aristocratic scoundrels. They’ll pay! They’ll pay dearly! Ultimately we will become just another American corporation, like Sinclair Oil or Motorola or RCA. Ultimately, we will be America!”
    “Talk, talk, talk!” said Virginia. “You chumps, a Chicago mechanic could clip you and you wouldn’t even see it coming. It ain’t going to change, Owney. Them old bastards, they got too much riding on the way they do things. They’ll kill you before they let you change the fucking rules, without batting an eyelash.”
    They were talking so furiously nope of them noticed the black ‘38 Ford with two glum detectives following them a few car lengths back.
    The train lay like a fat yellow snake, huge and wide and imposing. Its diesel streamline seemed to yearn for a horizon, a plain to cross, a river to vault, a mountain to climb. The engine had a rocket ship’s sensible sleekness, and a small cab twenty feet off terra firma. It issued noises and mysterious grumblings and was attended by a fleet of worshipful keepers. Conductors and other factotums prowled the platform, examining documents, controlling the flow into and off the thing. The crowds rushed by.
    Amid them, but indifferent, and smoking gigantic cigars, the two lords stood in their magnificent clothes, waiting imperially. It would take time for the boys to get the luggage into the compartment and now Owney and Ben were contemplating history.
    “This is where that train was jacked, isn’t it?” asked Ben.
    “It is indeed, old man.”
    “Nineteen forty-one?”
    “Nineteen forty.”
    “What was the take?”
    “I believe over four hundred thousand in cash. The Alcoa payroll for the Hattie Fletcher bauxite pit. In Bauxite.”
    “In Bauxite?”
    “Yes, old man. They named the town after its only product, which is bauxite. The bauxite of Bauxite rules the world, that is, when applied to aluminum by some alchemical process I couldn’t possibly understand, and then built into lightweight ships, planes and guns. We won the war with aluminum. The miracle metal. The metal of the future.”
    “Damn, sure is a lot of the future here in Hot Springs! It was at this station?”
    “Not in the station, per se. It was the mail car, and the train was over in the freight docks. You can’t see it from here, but this is really a yard. There are several other tracks, controlled by the tower, and warehouses on the other side. You’ll see when you get aboard.”
    “The crew? They’ve never been caught?”
    “Never. They must have been out-of-towners. No local thief could operate at that level of perfection.”
    “I heard they were Detroit boys, usually work for the Purples. Some done some time with Johnny D back in the wild times. Good people with guns. I heard Johnny Spanish himself.”
    “I thought he was dead.”
    “Nobody will ever kill Johnny Spanish. He’s the best gun guy in America.”
    “Well, if you say so. I thought I was the best gun guy in America. I could tell you some fabulous adventures I had back in New York before the Great War!”
    Both men laughed. Ben took a mighty suck on his cigar, a very fine Havana, and looked around in the late afternoon sunlight. It suddenly occurred to him: where was Virginia?
    “Where’s Virginia?” he asked, instantly coming alert from his torpor.
    “Why, she was here a second ago,” said Owney.
    “She was pesky this morning. She can get real pesky sometimes,” he said, soothing his panic as he eyed the crowd. At last he saw her. She had wandered down the platform to get a cigarette while the boys loaded the bags. But—who was she talking to? He could make out a figure, someone strange, someone he didn’t know, but hard to see through the crowds. But then the crowds parted magically, and he saw her companion. A tall, tough-looking gent in