“Fucking thing is humpin’,” Jilly Morelli observes with a furrowed brow. He has a .44-caliber Charter Arms Peacemaker in his road case, decked out with a laser scope and three speed-loaders filled with liquid tip, metal-jacketed slugs commonly used to put down the larger woodland creatures such as Kodiak bears.

  Dalessandro frowns. The brilliant magnesium-bright light is looming a couple of football fields away. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Look at this shit.” Jilly Morelli stands there agape in the darkness.

  “They’re gonna stop.” Anger flares like a Roman candle in Dalessandro’s guts. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  Jack Morelli is transfixed by the oncoming beast. “I don’t think so, Jimmy.”

  The train roars toward them—a hundred yards away now, lighting up the night—and the jet-engine shriek fills the air and nearly drowns their voices.

  “They better fucking stop!” Dalessandro watches, his eyes watering with rage, as the metal behemoth bellows closer and closer.

  Jack Morelli stares. “The kid’s retarded, sure, but he’s not that retarded—!”

  Jilly Morelli shakes his head. “I don’t know, Jacky! I think he might be that retarded!”

  The train roars into the station with a screaming metallic howl and a corona of silver light. The blur of double-decker cars rushing past the three gunsels at 120 miles an hour whips up a slipstream of noxious air across the platform. The wind flaps the pant legs of all three mobsters as the train passes.

  A moment later, the caboose plunges away into the night, the little red light like a taunt.

  For one awkward, charged moment, the three gunmen stand thunderstruck on that lonely platform, watching the caboose recede into the darkness, a tiny dust-devil of trash whirling around their ankles on the tailwind. For several seconds, nobody talks.

  Finally Jimmy “the Cucumber” Dalessandro mutters to himself, “This will not do.”

  “Excuse me?” Jack Morelli blinks. “What did you say, Jimmy?”

  Dalessandro starts walking back toward the Navigator, then he starts jogging. “This will not do!”

  “Jimmy, wait up!” Jack Morelli grabs his brother by the arm and drags him after the big man. “Jimmy, where you going?! Hold up!”

  “THIS WILL NOT DO!” Dalessandro rips open the driver’s side door and lurches behind the wheel.

  He fires the Navigator’s engine, and he’s putting it into gear before the other two goombahs can even reach for their doors.

  “Slow down, Jimmy, c’mon, we’ll get him, c’mon, slow down,” Jack Morelli is babbling as he throws his bag into the back and then fumbles with the rear door.

  The rear tires squeal, throwing gravel, as the Morelli brothers both dive into the vehicle, barely making it on board before the Navigator thunders out of there, kicking up a cloud of dust and exhaust.

  By the time Oswald manages to pry the shotgun out of the frozen, clenched hands of the unconscious Freddie Felson, and then stagger back over to Gerbil, who still sits flash-blind on the floor, the noise inside the dark, hurling passenger car is extraordinary—a rumbling, vibrating, rushing cacophony only heightened by the intermittent screams and moans of the traumatized passengers, most of whom are still hiding under their seats. Kneeling down by Gerbil, bracing himself against a seat pedestal, Oswald holds her blood-spotted face in his hands. “You sure you’re okay?”

  The train jerks to one side, then violently keens back against the starboard rails.

  Outside the windows, a fountain of sparks leaps up and then flickers through the car, reflecting off Gerbil’s proud, indignant face. “What do you care?”

  “Don’t start with me right now, Gerbil, please,” Oswald says, glancing over his shoulder at the cracked glass of the fore-hatch. The pressure is threatening to tear the train apart. He looks back at Gerbil. “We don’t have time for this shit.” He stands up and braces himself against the headrest. “Everybody, listen up! LISTEN UP!”

  Other passengers are peering out from behind seats and fallen luggage.

  “I WANT EVERYBODY TO DO EXACTLY WHAT I SAY! IF YOU WANT TO GET OFF THIS FUCKING TRAIN ALIVE! DO WHAT I SAY! YOU UNDERSTAND?!”

  Nobody says anything. The car groans and rumbles, and sparks lick the windows.

  “ANSWER ME!” Oswald raises the muzzle of the shotgun, pumps it once, and then squeezes the trigger.

  The blast lights up the car, the shell tearing through the ceiling like a fist punching a hole in the metal, the noise making Oswald’s ears hum. Wind whistles through the hole like a teakettle.

  “ANSWER ME!” he screams again, his voice garbled and hoarse.

  “Okay, yes, we understand!” The shrill voice of the businessman, who is on his hands and knees on the floor three seats away, barely pierces the clamor.

  “I WANT EVERYBODY IN THE ASILE NOW! I WANT EVERYBODY TO LOCK HANDS! GOT THAT?! LOCK HANDS!”

  No answer.

  The train jerks and shudders, the centripetal force like an elephant standing on Oswald’s shoulders. He raises the shotgun again, and he pumps another shell into the breach. “I SAID I WANT—!!”

  “Okay!—okay!” The businessman crawls out into the aisle, struggling to his feet. His suit is off, his sweat-drenched shirtsleeves rolled up. “Sister, c’mon—do what he says—please!”

  One by one, the others—the nun, the old lady with the cane, the acne-scarred kid in Navy whites—crawl out of hiding. They each rise up on wobbling knees in the aisle with horror-stricken eyes bulging and mouths working soundlessly like they desperately want to press PAUSE on this movie but they can’t figure out how to operate the remote control. The flickering light illuminates the four terrified faces awaiting further orders.

  Oswald reaches down to Gerbil and unceremoniously yanks her to her feet. “Let’s go, c’mon! We don’t have time fuck around!”

  She gets up with a grunt. “Once again I save your fat ass and you’re giving me shit.”

  “Bullshit! I saved your fucking ass this time!” He drags her down the aisle, banging into seat backs, heading toward the aft-hatch, which leads into the next car. “Everybody lock hands and follow me!”

  Gerbil lets out an exasperated sigh and grabs the businessman’s clammy hand.

  “C’mon, people, hurry!” Oswald yanks Gerbil toward the hatch.

  “That is so typical of you to think that,” Gerbil complains as she stumbles along. Behind her, the businessman is clasping hands with the nun, and the nun is clutching the sailor’s hand, and the sailor is grabbing for the palsied, arthritic hand of the old woman.

  Gerbil feels the drag of feeble joints and arthritic hips behind her as she staggers along behind Oswald, still whining, “After I risk my fucking life once again!”

  “Is it my fault you followed me?!” Oswald reaches the aft hatch and slams the butt of the shotgun down on the metal lever. The door gives a couple of inches, a whistling rush of air streaming through the gap. “I told you to buzz off, and what do you do?”

  Gerbil steadies herself against the jamb. “That asshole was going to blow your head off!”

  “Can we talk about this later?!” Oswald shoves the door open with his boot, and then pulls Gerbil and the others across the noisy, greasy, wind-swept parapet.

  38.

  Screaming along the high plateau of Highway 212, Dalessandro has Navigator’s pedal to the floor and his huge hands welded to the steering wheel. In his peripheral vision he can see the runaway train plunging down a long forested grade a quarter mile away, closing in on the Michigan border, a cold silver ice pick of light cutting a swath through the Duneland Beach State Park. “No way, sorry no, not after three fucking years,” Dalessandro is muttering as he fixes his sights on the train.

  “Whattya doin’, Jimmy?” The question comes from the strained voice of the man sitting next to him in the front passenger seat, but it’s not really a question, it’s more rhetorical, more of a plea.

  Jack Morelli is the practical brother, the thoughtful one, and right now he is chewing his lip with nervous tension at the prospects of chasing a goddamned Amtrak train across the state line.

  “Not after three fucking years,” Dalessandro mumbles, spying a lonely crossroad dead ahead, a narrow tractor trail into the woods, visible in the wash of the Navigator’s high-beams. Dalessandro’s temples pulse with rage in the dim green light of the dashboard.

  “Jimmy, don’t do this to me.”

  “Shut up, Jacky!” The voice calls out from the back, full of amped-up bravado. Jilly Morelli, the volatile brother, is buzzing on Benzadrine and cough syrup—his secret cocktail of choice—and now he’s like a high-spirited racehorse banging against the gate. “He’s gonna git her done!—Git her DONE, CUCUMBER!—GIT HER DONE!”

  “Jimmy, don’t do this.” Jack Morelli is staring bug-eyed at the oncoming turn-off, absently reaching for his seat belt, tugging it across his chest. “Jimmy, c’mon—”

  “GIT HER DONE!!”

  Dalessandro yanks the wheel, and the Navigator lurches into a skid.

  “WHOOOOOOO—HHHOOOOOOOOOO!!”

  Dalessandro puts the spur to the gas, and the engine roars, and the SUV plunges down the narrow dirt road.

  “JIMMMMMMEEEEEEEEE!!”

  For a wild instant it feels as though they just fell off the edge of the world.

  Pine boughs and branches churn against the windshield, and the chassis threatens to crack apart amid the thundering, booming vibrations, and Jack Morelli has to wedge himself between the front seat and the dash for fear of cracking his head against the side window. The engine churns and roars as the SUV descends the wooded decline, mowing down saplings, banging over boulders.

  Through it all, Dalessandro keeps his hands riveted to the steering wheel, his baleful, watery stare locked on the distant silver beam of the train cutting through the forest preserve a couple hundred yards away.

  A minute later, the Navigator bursts through a wall of foliage and careens across a scabrous clearing.

  The headlights illuminate a narrow access road of pea-gravel running along the rails, and Dalessandro yanks the wheel toward it.

  The SUV fishtails wildly as it seeks traction on the gravel, throwing a wake of noxious dust and rocks into the air, until it finally digs into the road and charges forward. Dalessandro keeps the pedal to the floor and his gaze locked with laser intensity on the fleeing train—now maybe 200 yards away, going at least 110 miles per hour—the spinning red light of the caboose like a beacon in the night.

  The train is moving erratically now—throwing great gouts of sparks off its hindquarters—speeding up and slowing down like a wounded animal.

  Pedal slammed down to metal, Dalessandro, gaining on the beast in fits and starts, silently curses the mental case at the controls.

  “MR. CHECKOV! MR. SULU! WARP SPEED—!”

  Marky Ferri hollers over the noise of the engine in his best William Shatner, slamming a clenched fist down on the dead man’s switch so hard the impact raises stars in his bleary vision.

  The cab lurches in a spasm of grinding gears, the powerplant behind the cab bellowing up through the superstructure of the train in a deafening roar. Marky grabs for a handrail to steady himself, but he misses the metal bar and staggers backward, tripping over the unconscious body of the engineer.

  Marky tumbles to the floor.

  The train shudders furiously, the engine accelerating again, and Marky crawls back toward the console. “SPOCK! BONES! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! THE KLINGONS ARE ATTACKING, THEY’RE ATTACKING!”

  Marky claws his way back to the console and grabs for the dead man’s switch.

  The switch snaps off in his hand, and Marky topples backward. His head hits the bulwark, and a dagger of pain shoots through his skull.

  He collapses to the floor next to the engineer, instantly passing out.

  Over the space of ten minutes, Oswald manages to drag the string of terrified passengers a grand total of five cars closer to the caboose—despite the fact that the train is keening out of control, and the dome lights have flared out with the failing electrical system, and the elderly woman with the artificial hip has to rest every fifty feet or so, and Gerbil won’t let up on her constant nagging.

  “And another thing,” she says as Oswald drags her down the rumbling, flickering, deserted aisle, yanking the chain of humanity behind her toward the second-to-last car. “You just drop this bombshell that you’re leaving the business without a word of warning to me.”

  “What am I—a human resources department?” With one violent nudge, Oswald throws open the aft-door, the metal tracks screaming. He clutches the 8-gauge shotgun in his sweaty left hand.

  “I would expect a little notice,” she says.

  “Shit happens,” he says, urging Gerbil across the noisy platform. “C’mon, everybody, we’re moving, we’re moving, we’re hurrying!”

  They stagger into the parlor car. “Jesus Christ,” Gerbil comments, scanning the dark interior.

  Moonlight shines down through the sky windows, illuminating the disaster area. Broken glass, flower vases, and silverware litter the aisle. The booths are soaked with liquid from overturned pitchers, and some of the linens have slid off onto the floor. Pale blue smoke wafts from behind the counter, and carafes roll across the damp carpet with each violent pitching motion of the train.

  “Come on, everybody, almost there!” Oswald side-steps an overturned coffee urn and drags the slow-moving brigade toward the far hatch.

  “Shit happens?” In the flickering cabin Gerbil is still harping on Oswald’s poor people skills. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

  Oswald starts to muster up a response when he notices a pair of figures crouched down under the last booth on the left like two children playing hide-and-seek. “Don’t shoot, brother,” says one of the figures, peering up at the shotgun—a young black man in a conductor’s uniform, a Rorschach pattern of coffee spilled across the front.

  “We didn’t see a thing, man, we just work here,” says the other figure, a bald geezer in a stained fry-cook apron.

  “C’mon, the more the merrier,” Oswald tells them, yanking the cook out into the aisle by the nape of his shirt. The twosome joins the line dance.

  The train bangs over some rough track, sending up another plume of sparks

  “OKAY, EVERYBODY—LISTEN UP!” Oswald pauses in front of the final hatchway leading into the caboose, taking a moment to address the team. “I WANT EVERYBODY ON THE CABOOSE! RIGHT NOW! IN AN ORDERLY FASHION! COME ON! CHOP-CHOP! WHILE WE’RE YOUNG!”

  “Take the wheel!—Take the wheel!—TAKE IT—GODDAMNIT!!” Dalessandro rolls down his window. The noise of the train and the wake of wind blasts through the Navigator, which is shaking so furiously it feels as though it’s disintegrating.

  “JESUS, JIMMY!”

  Jack Morelli reaches across the seat and grabs the wheel. The needle is pinned at 120, and the Navigator’s chassis is threatening to crack apart as it tommy-guns wildly over stone rail beds, the front quarter panel only inches away from the midsection of the train.

  “I’m gonna take my foot off the accelerator!” Dalessandro hollers over the din.

  “Jimmy, don’t!”

  “I want you to stomp down on it the minute I take my foot off!”

  “Jimmy—!”

  Dalessandro climbs out his window, the deafening shriek of metal wheels and the cold steam-blast of the train engulfing him.

  The Navigator swerves. Dalessandro holds onto the window frame for dear life. The train drifts to the left as the Navigator drifts to the right. Jack Morelli struggles with the wheel, and stomps on the gas pedal.

  In the darkness of the back seat Jilly Morelli is cheering and howling inarticulate cries of encouragement. He rolls down his window, and he starts squeezing his fat ass out the opening. It’s a compulsive act—very little premeditation to it—and it is visible in the rearview mirror.

  “JILLY, NO!”

  It’s too late. Both men are halfway out their respective windows.

  Dalessandro gets his left boot on the lower ledge of the driver’s side window, and lifts himself up closer to the train. The train looms. The Navigator careens closer and closer to the hurling iron. The noise is so terrific now that all Dalessandro can hear is a severe ringing noise pinging off the inside of his skull.

  “JESUS-H-CHRIST!!”

  The hard part for Dalessandro is getting his hand on the greasy step-rail hanging down between the two center coaches. He makes a grab for it, and misses. A second attempt, and he misses again.

  The third time’s a charm. He clutches the handrail, and then he swings the rest of his body across the gap in one awkward plunge. The heels of his boots bounce off the greasy metal risers, and he nearly falls, but somehow manages to keep a death grip on that handrail.

  Meanwhile, eight feet behind Dalessandro, Jilly Morelli is pulling himself up the side of the iron beast with the vigor of a giant ape. Clutching at a handrail, fueled by Vick’s cough syrup and amphetamines, he grunts and pulls and lifts his enormous girth up onto the roof.

  The wind is a monster up there on top of the speeding train car, and Jilly has to cling to the roof for a moment, hugging a vent stack for purchase.

  He lets out a primal scream of victory, and then, with great effort, holding onto the top of the stack, squinting into the gale-force winds, he awkwardly rises to his feet.

  Unfortunately, nobody has warned Jilly Morelli that you can’t stand up on the roof of a speeding train. Especially at night.

  The signal bridge comes out of nowhere—a low-hanging iron housing stretching across the tracks—striking Jilly squarely across the solar plexus. The impact lifts him out of his Lagerfeld loafers and sends him catapulting backward through the air with the force of a cannon.

  Subsequent crime scene investigations will likely be stymied by what’s left of Jilly Morelli. Jurisdictional issues will prove troublesome. Part of Jilly lands in the weeds on the Indiana side of the border.