“That’s fantastic.” The bespectacled little man grins again, his eyes twinkling behind the granny glasses. “The man is what I would call a true humanitarian.”

  “That is exactly what he is,” Dalessandro concurs, and then shoots a thumb at the dimwit. “Ya see, Mark here, bless his heart, he’s got a rare form of brain cancer.”

  The Ferri kid doesn’t even look up, just keeps twiddling his Game Boy with his thumbs, chewing his straw.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the Amtrak guy says, his voice dipping an octave, the twinkle going out of his eyes.

  “Oh yeah. Kid’s brain is a mess.” Dalessandro casually pops a piece of chewing gum in his mouth. “Believe me.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Yeah—so anyway. Kid really wants to run a train before he croaks.”

  The administrator wipes his mouth. “Kid loves trains, does he?”

  “Oh yeah, just loves ’em. Don’t ya, Marky?”

  Behind Dalessandro, the Ferri boy is in a videogame-induced stupor.

  “Marky?”

  No answer.

  “HEY, KID!”

  The Ferri kid looks up. “Huh?”

  “Tell the man how much you love trains.”

  The kid goes back to his game, gnawing on the straw and mumbling, “Oh yeah... trains are, like, totally cool.”

  “That’s wonderful,” the little Amtrak guy says with a sad crease in his brow. He looks like he wants to find a sucker or something to hand out to the boy. “Did Mr. Ferri give you the information on what train you’ll be using?”

  “Kalamazoo, right?” Dalessandro pulls a black notebook from his pocket, clicks a ballpoint.

  “That’s right.” The administrator flips through a schedule book. “Departs Chicago at 9:01, last train of the night. You fellas can pick it up at the Michigan City station around 9:40. Is that all right?”

  Dalessandro writes it down. “Fine.” He looks at the little man. “So where exactly does the kid get trained to operate one of these beasts?”

  The Amtrak guy stands up and claps his hands. “Tell ya what. The boy can ride to Michigan City with Charlie, the engineer. Learn the ropes, be his apprentice. How does that sound?”

  Dalessandro looks at the dimwit. “How does that sound, Marky?”

  The kid just keeps playing his game.

  “Marky?” Dalessandro reaches over and tears the straw out of his mouth. “Tell the nice man how excited you are to learn how to run a train.”

  The kid just shrugs.

  Dalessandro smiles at the Amtrak guy. “He’s overcome with emotion.”

  Oswald can’t remember the last time he had such a nasty case of the shakes.

  Standing barefoot in the center of the fleabag room, dripping on the worn carpet, his gigantic nude form still wet from his shower, his long hair matted to his face, his stitches tingling and itching unmercifully, he looks down at his hands. Is this withdrawal?

  “Fuck it.”

  His voice is thin and spent with tension. He looks down at the bed.

  His paraphernalia is spread across the moth-eaten spread like a merchant’s wares in some back-alley bizarre: a filed-down .22 Ruger, a matching suppresser, an ankle holster, two ammo magazines—one primary and one spare—each one filled with eight high-velocity Zippers, a wallet full of fake IDs, his little lock-pick set in its vinyl pouch, his Kevlar vest, and a little leather sap that he found buried in the back of his glove box.

  About the size of a pear, the hard leather surface worn down to a dull shine, the sap is weighted with a piece of pig-iron. The thing is just about the only way Oswald knows to put somebody’s lights out quickly and cleanly. Knocking people out is tricky business, and if you’re not careful you can seriously hurt them, but a sap applied to the back corner of the skull, just above the jugular, will drop a person like a pregnant girlfriend.

  “Fuck it,” Oswald murmurs, getting dressed, pulling on his boxer shorts.

  He puts the flak vest on over his girdle, a denim jacket over the vest. He straps the pistol to his ankle and stuffs the rest of the items into his duffle. He looks at his watch: 7:49 p.m. Not long now. One more save and it’s over, and he’s free, and he can disappear. He hears a noise and whirls around but finds that the room is empty.

  He’s been hearing noises all day. Voices. Shadows. He doesn’t care anymore.

  “Fuck it.”

  He finishes dressing, and he turns out the lights, and he heads downstairs to check out.

  34.

  Oswald makes it to the station with plenty of time to buy a round-trip ticket and then relax for a few minutes before departure, completely unaware that he’s being watched. After making his purchase at the lobby ticket counter, he checks the video monitors on the mezzanine level and is pleased to see that the 9:01 is on time and boarding in twenty minutes on Track Seventeen.

  He visits the men’s room across from the boarding gate, and relieves himself, oblivious to the fact that he’s being followed by more than one party. He checks his reflection in the mirror. Hair pulled back in a ponytail, black denim jacket buttoned up to the neck, he looks fairly presentable, despite the bald patch on his scalp still bristling with fresh sutures, or his sunken, bloodshot eyes: just some poor blue-collar schmo with a work-related injury, or some hapless mope returning from a round of shock treatments at the Cook County Mental Hospital.

  In the mirror, Oswald notices the ghost of the Ho-Chunk elder behind him, observing balefully from the shadows. “I know, I know,” Oswald murmurs, looking down into the sink. “I’m an insult to the tribe, I’m a dick, I’m a fool, and I’m going to hell…”

  Dalessandro and the Ferri kid arrive at the station at about twenty minutes to nine and head directly to the boarding level. Just inside the baggage staging area, Dalessandro yanks the boy into a deserted, shadowy alcove behind the claim counter and slams him against the wall.

  “Hey!” The Ferri kid blinks at the pain and the shock. “Easy, dude.”

  “Don’t call me dude,” the big man growls at him. “And don’t call me cucumber. And shut your dick hole. And try to pay attention because I’m only going over this once. You got that? Are you listening? Please respond.”

  “What?”

  Dalessandro grabs the kid by the neck of the hoodie and squeezes. “Please respond!”

  “Okay! I mean—yes, I’m listening.”

  “Good.” Dalessandro lets go of the sweatshirt. “You’re dying of cancer, and you’re gonna ride with this engineer, Charlie, to Michigan City. Watch and learn. Learn how to operate this fucking train. All right?”

  “All right, all right.”

  “Now this next part is important, so blow the wax outta your ears and listen. The hit team’s gonna be waiting at the Michigan City station. At that point, we’re gonna clear the train of all civilians. Tell ’em we gotta service the engine or something. Tell ’em they can stretch their legs. One of the Morelli brothers will take care of Charlie the engineer. You understand?”

  The kid nods furiously. “Clear the train. Right. What about the Indian?”

  Dalessandro frowns. “Who?”

  “The Indian. Big Chief. Don’t we want him stayin’ on the train?”

  “He’ll stay. Believe me. He thinks Felson’s going down, he’ll stay on board. He’ll think it’s all part of Felson getting set-up.”

  “What about Forty-Five?”

  Dalessandro sighs. “Would you please stop asking stupid questions? He’s gonna pretend to be asleep. Okay? Let me worry about Felson.”

  The kid nods.

  Dalessandro pokes the kid’s pectoral. “Do not fuck this up, Sunny Jim, or you will suffer the torments of the fucked. Your dad thinks you can handle it. I think you’re a born mook. But your dad has that Vito Corleone problem—a soft spot for his kin and shit. So be it.”

  The kid looks at the floor. “I can handle it.”

  Dalessandro pokes him, gets his attention. “Michigan City’s fifty minutes away. Learn how to run the train by then, or I will reem you a new earhole, I will skull-fuck you with a metal dildo, I will unscrew your head and shit down your fucking neck.”

  “Got it,” the kid mutters softly. “New earhole, metal dildo... shit down my neck.”

  “Go on. Your boyfriend Charlie’s waiting.”

  Dalessandro watches the dimwit turn and shuffle morosely away, vanishing through the grimy entrance to the loading platform.

  At 8:44 p.m., Oswald emerges from the men’s room and follows an elderly woman with a cane and nylon backpack around her scrawny shoulders through the massive marble archway into the cavernous, tomb-like boarding area. The place is fairly deserted—most of the commuters long gone by that point—and the high stone walls echo with last-minute announcements.

  Oswald follows the old lady along the cement platform, past idling, steaming hulks of train cars lined up for their morning routes. The air smells of hot oil and burning metal, and Oswald keeps his eyes peeled for any sign of Freddie “Forty-Five” Felson or the hitter assigned to nail him. Oswald wonders if the old lady is a shooter.

  The Kalamazoo “Night Owl” is waiting for them in a fog bank of vapor on the last track.

  The Night Owl is a Superliner, one of Amtrak’s flagship trains, and it rises up impressively as they approach. Two levels of windows glow above the walkway with warm yellow light, and the engines drone a low basso-profundo growl that resonates up through the metal skin.

  The last passengers of the night—a rumpled businessman with a suit-bag and a middle-aged nun in full habit, lugging a tuba case—are being helped on board Car Number One by a skinny, African American porter in a blue cap and starched blue uniform.

  “All aboard, folks!” the porter calls out when he sees Oswald and the old woman approaching. Oswald helps the old lady maneuver her way around a cloud of steam and across the corrugated metal threshold. The porter takes her hand and helps her up the stepladder.

  Oswald comes next. Duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he ascends the steps two at a time, his big boots ringing on the metal treads.

  He reaches the carpeted cabin level, then makes a sharp left, edging his way down the aisle, looking for the seat with the best vantage point.

  Unbeknownst to Oswald, down on the walkway, one last passenger materializes like a phantom emerging from a penumbra of steam, hurrying toward the fore-hatch.

  She wears a makeshift veil across her face—the black scarf obscuring her features—and a tattered, black, pleated tablecloth that she found in a dumpster outside the Wells Street flophouse, cinched around the waist of her black jeans—all in the hopes that people will mistake her for an Arab or maybe a Hassidic wife or something.

  The young woman vaults up the steps, her ragamuffin disguise flapping behind her.

  Minutes later, the steps are pulled up.

  The engine hisses, and the train starts to groan out of Union Station.

  The first leg of the journey finds the train clacking slowly through the vast gray gulag of switchyards and sheds due south of Chicago, the endless maze of derelict freight-cars stretching as far as the eye can see, lined up like tombstones in the twilight—and it’s a long while before Oswald senses anything wrong.

  In fact, for those first forty-five minutes or so, as the cabin gently pitches and bumps through the night, everything goes right.

  Shortly after departure, on his way to the restroom, Oswald sees Freddie “Forty-Five” Felson at the aft end of that first car, last bench seat on the left, dozing like a baby, a Chicago Tribune tented over his sunken chest, his head lolled against the window.

  Oswald doesn’t make a big deal out of his discovery, just makes a mental note, and then continues on to the head to relieve himself.

  Back in his seat, Oswald does a quick threat-assessment. The businessman is two seats in front of him, buried in a Wall Street Journal, smelling like a civilian. The nun—sans her tuba—is one seat ahead of the businessman, lost in a romance novel. If she’s a shooter, Oswald will eat his duffel bag. The others are even less threatening: an old lady with a bum hip in seat 12-B, a pimply-faced young sailor two seats over in midshipman whites and a crew cap.

  Oswald can smell a contractor a mile away, the walk, the stare, the way a shooter will look at nothing straight-on, the way they’ll just sort of scan a room like someone perpetually driving at night. None of these folks fit the profile. And Oswald has seen all varieties. One time he ran into a lady clip-artist who was so fat she looked as though she might be moonlighting in a freak show. But she was also a whiz with a garrote wire. She could take a guy’s head off while he was in the middle of a sentence.

  Oswald settles back into his big cloth reclining seat and plans out his next move as the train wends its way through the darkness. Past dark refineries, past the churning steel mills of South Chicago.

  The gentle rocking motion of the train—accompanied by the muffled drumming of the wheels, the passing strobe of signal lights and vapor lamps—calms Oswald and puts him in a thoughtful frame of mind. For a moment he almost feels as though he might have a future.

  Barring any unexpected shenanigans, Oswald’s plan is to get Felson off the train at the next stop—at gunpoint, if necessary—and then talk some sense into the asshole. No state troopers or chickens or water parks or golden showers this time. This one is going to go smoothly.

  Out of the corner of his eye Oswald notices something in the window.

  At the top of the smudged glass, just barely visible behind the blur of passing factory spires, a full moon rises behind a tattered skein of clouds. Pollution has turned the great luminous sphere a dull shade of orange—like the color of dried blood—and the sight of it sends a cold shudder down Oswald’s spine.

  The moon is talking to him: You should have told Gerbil the truth, ya stupid fat half-breed.

  Oswald turns away and checks his weapon tucked into his ankle holster. The Ruger’s butt is cold against his shin. He checks the safety. Better to keep it on. Better to be discreet this time. He smooths out the cuff of his jeans against his boot. Then he sits back against the headrest. He hears somebody snoring.

  He is about to lean against the window and rest his eyes when the first sign of trouble comes. It announces itself with a sudden jolt—nothing spectacular, just a subtle little jerk of the undercarriage—as though the train has abruptly shifted gears.

  Oswald sits up. Eyes wide. Blinking. He’s no expert, but something about that little nudge sets his teeth on edge. Trains this size don’t jerk like that.

  Ever.

  Then the second jolt comes, and Oswald is sure now something is wrong.

  35.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!—Don’t be touchin’ that one!—That there’s the throttle!”

  The engineer, Old Charles McDaw, Chuckie-D to his friends, clamps an age-spotted claw down on the boy’s hand in the dim light of the control cab. The white-noise of the engine surges behind them, a ghostly thread of sparks jumping up across the side window.

  Marky-Mark rears back suddenly at the old man’s touch, which feels like the touch of a zombie scarecrow from some third-rate horror movie. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” the kid mumbles with a nervous giggle, banging the back of his head against a giant gear-housing.

  The cab is barely eight feet wide, and framed in grimy, riveted steel conduits and control consoles. The single seat, on which the old man currently sits, dominates the greasy corrugated-iron floor. Marky keeps staggering back and forth on the iron like he’s on a boat in a storm. He is barely able to see his hand in front of his face, but when he does see it, his fingers seem to be glowing, streaking radiant artifacts across his line of vision.

  “You okay, kid?” The old man is a gnarled specimen clad in oil-spotted dungarees and a greasy CAT hat. His long, tanned face, deeply lined and reflecting the red lights of the control console, appears to be the color and texture of a rotten apple. His grizzled chin sticks out from a perpetual gob of chewing tobacco.

  “Absolutely, man, I’m, like, totally great,” the kid says, grabbing a paint-chipped pipe to steady himself. He giggles again.

  “You sure?” The engineer glances one more time over his shoulder at the kid. “You don’t look so hot. I could call Mr. Hayes at HQ—”

  “No, no, I’m good, I’m fine.” The kid nods robustly in the dim light.

  In truth, Mark Ferri is just about as good and fine as he can be, thanks to the fifty milligrams of the designer drug tryptamine—otherwise known as “Foxy”—that he popped a little over forty minutes ago. He took the pills just before climbing aboard the metal monster, not only to smooth out the ride, but also to ease the pain and humiliation of getting verbally thumped by the Cucumber.

  In the three short years since Jimmy Dalessandro had been made, Mark had seen Dalessandro rise through the ranks of the Ferri family with the aplomb and upward mobility of a Harvard Law grad. Mark had observed his father giving Dalessandro more and more authority, entrusting him with more and more secrets, accepting him, loving him, coddling him, kissing his ass, verbally jerking him off. It wasn’t long before Mark realized the old man had found—in the form of Jimmy “the Cucumber” Dalessandro—the son he always wished he had. And this tormented Mark Ferri, and this made the insatiable need inside Mark Ferri rage for more and more drugs.

  And right now, the latest chemical concoction to placate the kid is fully kicking in, and turning the lights and noise and space around the control cab into a spectacular three-dimensional video game.

  “As I was sayin’…” The old engineer turns back to the controls and eases the throttle-stick back just a tad. Through the dark windshield, jumbles of red and green signal lights blur past the train. “When ya round the bottom of the lake, you gotta watch yer speed.”

  The kid points at a big red button in the center of the console. “What’s that one do?”