Cover

Also by David Quantick and available from Titan Books

Also by David Quantick and available from Titan Books

Night Train

(April 2020)

Title Page

TITAN BOOKS

Dedication

To Fub

Part One

PART
ONE

One

ONE

It was a Saturday night in March of 1979 in DeKalb, Illinois, and Todd Milstead was being an asshole. Not that Todd Milstead wasn’t being an asshole every night of the week, but this particular night he was giving free rein to his inner dickhead. All the pointers had been in place from the off: there was booze, there were other writers present (although “writers” was pushing it), and Todd’s wife Janis had made the dinner and taken the coats, so Todd reckoned everyone there was on his turf as well as his dime (although Janis’ money from her late dad—who also gave them the house—had paid for the dinner).

So, Saturday night at the Milsteads’. Janis, in her best dress and her hair done nicely because even when there was no point, Janis made the effort. And Todd, looking like a youngish Peter Fonda, with a strong manly chin and twinkling masculine eyes and hair just the daring side of long, smoking a lot of cigarettes—he’d wanted a pipe, but Janis kept laughing whenever Todd affected a stout briar and if there was one thing Todd couldn’t abide, it was being laughed at—and holding a big tumbler of Scotch, because he liked the feel of the heavy square glass and because Scotch was a real drink.

And that was Saturday night at the Milsteads’; Janis bringing in the bowls and the plates and Todd holding forth. On Kissinger, on Farrah Fawcett-Majors, on Superman, on Carter, and on books. Always on books. The men who called themselves writers and met at Todd’s on a Saturday night were a mixed bunch in the way the people crammed into an elevator that is plunging ten floors into a basement are a mixed bunch. They had one thing ostensibly in common—the writing, the being trapped in a falling elevator—but what they really had in common was that they were a totally disparate bunch of losers all screaming, “Get me out of this elevator!” And nobody was listening. Especially not Todd. Todd never listened. Somebody—Joe Hines, one of the people trapped in Todd’s elevator—once said that the only way you could get Todd to listen would be if you taught a mirror to talk, and even then, Todd’s reflection wouldn’t be able to get a word in because Todd would be lecturing it on the best way to be a reflection.