by Robin Yocum
Another punch sent the Troll reeling backward. Off-balance, he fired again, this time hitting Moonie on the inside of his right leg. It just missed his balls and tore away a hunk of flesh on his inner thigh. Moonie again reached for the revolver with his left hand and dropped his right elbow between the Troll’s eyes, and they tumbled in a heap onto the heavy wooden timbers of the bridge decking. He twice slammed the Troll’s gun hand into the wood, and an errant shot was launched into the night. Moonie pinned the Troll against the deck and with both hands wrestled the gun from him.
As blood was running down his pants, Moonie jumped up and backed away, pointing the revolver at its owner.
“Goddammit, I told you, I wasn’t trying to rob you,” Moonie screamed.
He released the cylinder and emptied the chambers of the remaining shells into his hand. He threw them over one side of the bridge and the gun over the other. He took a breath and looked down at his leg. Blood was covering the crotch of his blue jeans.
An instant after he threw away the gun, Moonie realized the gravity of his mistake. Slowly, the Troll stood and smiled as he wiped at his bloody nose with the back of a hand.
“I still don’t believe you,” the Troll said.
He reached to his ankle and from a leather sheath produced a knife with a locking blade and holes in the handle, into which he slipped his fingers. When he unfolded the blade and it locked in place, it extended a glimmering eight inches. “You’re dumber than you look for not killing me.”
Moonie groaned at the sight of the huge blade. The weapon’s design was dual in purpose. The holes in the handle enabled it to be used like brass knuckles in a fight. The other purpose was obvious. The Troll rolled the blade around and made a few slashing motions as raindrops hit the glinting steel.
“My God,” Moonie said. “What are you, a walking aerosol?”
The Troll frowned. “Aerosol?”
“Yeah, one of those places where they keep guns and ammo and stuff.”
“Arsenal, you fucking idiot. Christ, you’re too stupid to live!” He started walking slowly toward Moonie. “Do you have any kids?”
“No.”
The Troll slashed at Moonie, who easily evaded the blade. “Good. Mankind will thank me for killing you before you have a chance to bring more dumb-asses into the world.” He slashed again, this time slicing Moonie’s upper midsection with the tip of the knife.
Moonie ran, with his hand pressed to the bleeding wound, and limped to the other side of his car. The Troll couldn’t run with his bad leg, so the only way he was going to catch Moonie was if he collapsed from lack of blood.
On the driver’s side of the Fairmont stood the Troll, with blood still running out of his busted nose and onto his yellow teeth as he smiled. On the passenger side was his prey, scared, admittedly stupid, bleeding from his torso and thigh, his right ear throbbing from the gun blast.
While keeping an eye on the Troll, Moonie took a bandana from his hip pocket and tied it around his bleeding thigh, staunching the blood flow. “Listen, I know you don’t believe me, but isn’t there any way we can work this out?” Moonie asked.
The Troll nodded. “Sure there is.”
“There is?”
“Sure. I can give you some choices, if that’s what you like.”
“Okay.”
“I slit your throat.”
Moonie shook his head. “I don’t think I like that one.”
“Okay,” he said. “How about I give you your keys and you just drive on out of here?”
“I like that one a little better. What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You just get in your car and leave. Of course, I’m going to tell Mr. Antonelli what you did tonight, and that will anger him greatly. You know what happened to the last guy who tried to rip off Mr. Antonelli? He got castrated with a pair of tin snips. It only took him a couple minutes to bleed out, but it’s still not a good way to go. I’d be doing you a favor by slitting your throat.”
Moonie took a breath. “Do I have any other choices?”
“Yeah. You can come out here and fight like a man. Maybe you’ll get lucky and kill me and no one will find out. And, you get to keep the money.”
“But I don’t want to kill you.”
“This whole concept of what’s going on here is escaping you, isn’t it, dumb-ass? Understand this: Only one of us is going to walk off the bridge.”
“But, I . . .”
Fire flashed in the Troll’s eyes and he jammed the knife into the front, driver’s-side whitewall of the Fairmont. It hissed as an empty coal train passed beneath them.
“Hey, no, okay, okay, stop it, I’m coming.”
The Troll backed up toward the middle of the bridge, grinning that constant, evil smile, blood smearing his teeth. Moonie stepped around the front of the car and into the open.
“This isn’t very fair,” Moonie said. “You’ve got a knife.”
“You had a gun. You should have kept it.” The Troll waved the fingers on his left hand at Moonie, beckoning him forward. “Say your prayers and step on out here.”
The Troll stepped forward and slashed at air. He was much quicker than Moonie would have guessed. He used his good leg as a base, and lashed forward on the shorter leg. Moonie kept moving, watching, glancing to the ground in hopes of finding some kind of weapon.
The Troll charged forward again, the knife extended like he was making a saber charge. Moonie sidestepped the attack and grabbed the Troll’s sinewy wrist with both hands. As they struggled, the Troll used his left hand to pound the side of Moonie’s face. Moonie drove his shin into the Troll’s balls. It was a clean and painful shot. The Troll winced but held tight to the knife, his fingers intertwined in the holes in the handle.
As empty coal cars of the train below rumbled on, Moonie brought his forehead down into the middle of the Troll’s face, pounding the pulpy mass of a nose. The Troll pushed hard at Moonie’s face, trying to dig a thumbnail into his eye. But Moonie forced his right forearm under the Troll’s chin and ran forward two steps, pushing him backward and releasing his grip.
For years, the mining company had covered the bridge with creosote, an oil-based wood preservative. In the rain, the oil pooled in little slicks atop the water. When the Troll backpedaled, his deformed leg slid on the creosote. His momentum carried him back until his calves pressed hard against the short, wooden guardrail that lined the bridge. He couldn’t catch himself. The inertia that would carry him over the side of the bridge could not be stopped.
In that moment, Frankie “the Troll” Silvestri knew he was going to die. The weight of his upper body began to slowly lose the battle against gravity. He struggled to stay upright, his arms parallel to the bridge railing and swinging in circular motions, the blade still glinting in his right hand. In the instant before he dropped, he instinctively stretched out his left hand, a silent and unrealistic plea for help. The hand was less than a foot from Moonie; he could have easily grabbed the Troll and pulled him back from the edge. But, at last, Moonie Collier understood. Only one of them would survive the night.
The Troll made a guttural grunt and started over backward. His deformed leg left the ground first, followed an instant later by the good one. He said, in a calm and accepting tone, “Shit.”
Despite the darkness between the hills, Moonie could see the Troll fall, his arms flailing and his legs kicking. It was thirty feet to the roadbed. He dropped headfirst, striking the back of one passing coal car and then the front of the next. It was too dark for Moonie to see where the Troll had landed, but he assumed he had fallen into one of the empty coal cars that were now lumbering away. This was a problem, as Moonie’s car keys were in the pants pocket of the recently deceased. There was another key on top of his refrigerator, but that was going to be a long walk, particularly with a hunk of flesh taken out of his leg.
From the edge of the bridge, he stood and watched, bleeding and waiting. As the last coal car passed, Moonie scanned the darkness, finall
y spotting a crumpled mass in the middle of the tracks. “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” he said aloud, hobbling to the end of the bridge and moving sideways down the weedy embankment to the tracks.
The body of the Troll was chest-down in the middle of the tracks. He had landed diagonally, his neck and right arm pressed against one rail. The corpse was headless; the right hand, with its fingers still in the holes of the knife handle, was lying in the ballast outside the rails. Blood covered the rails, ties, and ballast.
“Oh, Mother of Christ,” Moonie said, taking a step back from the body and gagging back a salty bile that filled his throat. He stared at the body parts for several minutes, afraid to look at the bottom of the ballast where the head must rest.
“I hope you died with your eyes closed, you ugly turd,” Moonie said, wobbling and nauseated from the blood loss—both his and the Troll’s. He took two deep breaths and looked down the side of the gravel ballast to where it scattered into a thicket of wild raspberries. What he saw scared him more than a headless Frankie Silvestri.
Nothing.
“This is not good,” he muttered. The large, misshapen head that had scared children and adults alike was nowhere to be found. He walked to where the gravel met the thicket and peered into the bramble. Still, nothing.
Moonie walked slowly down the tracks, squinting into the raspberries. A raccoon ran out of the brush, causing him to jump backward and nearly fall. He limped twenty yards down the tracks, then back, pacing slowly between the rails. As he neared the body, he turned and scanned the other side of the tracks. Again, nothing.
“Crap,” he yelled, twice kicking the corpse in the ribs. “This is all your fault, you freak.” He kicked him once more, then sat down on the rail. “No, Moonie, it’s your fault. What the hell were you thinkin’?”
The rain fell harder, soaking his jeans and causing the bloodstain to spread.
“I am so screwed. Could this get any worse?” He laughed and nodded. “Of course it could. You’re Moonie Collier. You can always make it worse.”
He was about to find out how right he was.
It began with an almost-indiscernible tingle in his loins. It lingered there for a minute, a somewhat-soothing feeling, before Moonie realized the tingling was the result of the vibrating rails. Another train was heading his way. As the westbound train of empty coal cars cleared Broadway Station three miles to the west, an eastbound coal train was idling on the siding. When the westbound train had cleared the siding, the eastbound train had been given the green light. The sharp light of the engine’s head beam was peering from around the bend in the tracks, illuminating the trees and the carved rock ledge several hundred yards from Moonie.
“Shit, shit, shit!” he yelled, leaping to his feet. He grabbed the left ankle of the Troll with his right hand and reached for the severed hand with the other. For a moment, he hesitated and pulled his hand back. “No time to be squeamish, Moonie.” He grabbed the blunt side of the blade that was still attached to the hand and started running backward, dragging the body by the ankle as it bounced on the ties. Moonie had only taken a few steps when his heel caught on the rail. As he fell backward, the hand and knife flew from his grasp, landing in the weeds. Moonie crashed on his tailbone and rolled down the ballast. The diesel was making the turn. He grabbed an ankle with both hands and ran up the embankment, the corpse flopping and trailing blood.
He struggled to get the body out of sight, dragging it under the bridge and hiding it behind a heavy growth of fountain grass and thistle. Moonie dropped to the ground behind the corpse as the head beam lit the bridge and the surrounding embankment. Lying on his back, head-to-toe next to the Troll, Moonie sucked in air. The loaded train groaned past, its axles squeaking under the weight.
When the engine had passed from sight, Moonie raised himself to his elbows. “You’re not so damn tough now that you don’t have a head, are you?” Moonie asked the Troll. “Yeah, you ugly turd, you thought you’d do mankind a favor, huh? Thought you’d kill me, huh? Guess not. You’re dead; I’m not. What do you got to say about that? Nothin’. You know why? ’Cause you can’t talk, ’cause you’re dead and you got no head, which is an improvement over that God-ugly puss of yours. You know what else? You smell like a pile of horse shit.” Moonie pushed himself to his feet. “Just lay there and keep your mouth shut. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
He stared at the stars, listening to the rhythmic clicking of the wheels over the track joints. His lip had gone numb, but the knife and bullet wounds burned like hell. His right ear throbbed. He used his fingers to probe the bullet hole in his thigh. It had ripped out a hunk of flesh the size of a silver dollar. He didn’t move from behind the weeds until the train had been gone several minutes. Finally, he stood and looked down at the corpse.
“I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.”
He limped back down the hill and into the weeds. The hand and knife had landed near a surface vein of coal, and Moonie found them in a few minutes. Once he located them, he stepped on the palm and wiggled the handle off the fingers. He folded the blade into the handle and slipped the knife into his back pocket. With his index finger and thumb, Moonie pinched the tip of the middle finger of the severed hand. He carried it halfway up the embankment and threw it up on the bridge.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said. “Good news. I found your hand. I wish I could have found your ugly head.” He grabbed the Troll’s ankles and dragged the corpse to the rear of the Lincoln. There, he reached into the Troll’s front pants pocket and fished around for two sets of car keys. “I’m going to borrow your ride, Trollman.”
In the trunk of the Troll’s car, Moonie found the familiar canvas bag that the Troll carried on his rounds. Moonie unzipped it and found more money than he had ever seen in his life. It was stuffed full of stacks of bills and receipts, each held together with rubber bands and paperclips.
“You don’t need this, do you?” he asked the body lying by the back bumper. After a moment of silence: “I’ll take that as a no.” He limped back to his Fairmont and put the cash in his trunk.
Back at the Lincoln, he lifted the corpse into the trunk, then tossed in the severed hand. “I guess this is good-bye,” he said, slamming the trunk closed.
Moonie drove the Lincoln toward the quarry and parked the idling car at the top of a small incline above a concrete abutment that once supported a large dredging line. It was twenty feet from the abutment to the water’s surface. The water was at least eighty feet deep off the edge. Moonie made sure that the car was lined up, put his right foot on the brake, reached inside and pulled the gearshift into drive, and jumped back. The vehicle rolled down the grade, picking up speed as it went. After the front tires cleared the abutment, sparks flew when the bottom of the Lincoln scraped concrete before plunging nose-first into the water. Moonie walked to the abutment and watched as the car bobbed several times before the taillights disappeared into the depths.
A night of fighting for his life, being shot and cut, had left Moonie exhausted and weak. Fortunately, the bleeding had mostly stopped, though his entire leg was going numb from the makeshift tourniquet. Unfortunately, his work was not done. He returned to the Fairmont, moved it back into the brush, out of view of any train engineers, and was just finishing changing the punctured tire as the first rays of sun started to illuminate the hills. Another empty westbound train passed as he tightened the last lug nut. When the train had disappeared around the bend, Moonie struggled down the hillside and in the light of morning located the head of Frankie “the Troll” Silvestri in a patch of cattails in the marshy lowland near the ballast, about ten feet from the track. Much to Moonie’s dismay, it was face up, the eyes open and still set in a hateful squint.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Duke stared at his old friend in what he knew was a look of slack-jawed disbelief. Even by Moonie’s standards, this was an incredible story.
“By now you realize that asking for a job to work off a gambling debt is generally not
an accepted business practice with the Mafia?” Duke asked.
Moonie nodded. “When I pitched his gun over the bridge and he still wouldn’t listen to me, I knew I was in deep shit.”
“Imagine that. So, after you found his head, what did you do?”
“Puked. I got about halfway home, and I had to pull over and heave. I couldn’t get his stink out of my nostrils. Dealing with that body in the dark wasn’t that bad, but looking at that gross head in the daylight was more than I could handle.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I grabbed it by the hair and threw it in the trunk. I tried to wedge it in the corner with my tool box, but it got loose and I could hear it rolling around all over the place coming down New Alexandria Road.”
Duke buried his face in his hands. “You put his head in the trunk of your car?”
“Where else was I going to put it? I didn’t want that nasty thing rolling around in the front seat with me.”
“Okay, but why did you keep it? Why didn’t you just bury it or throw it in the quarry?”
“First of all, Duke, let’s remember that I’d been shot. I’d lost a lot of blood, and I wasn’t thinkin’ too clear. Besides, I didn’t have a shovel and I didn’t have the time. The sun was coming up, and I looked like I’d been working in a slaughterhouse—my blood, his blood. I’ll tell you, Duke, no matter how hard you try, you can’t drag around a guy who’s had his head and hand cut off without getting covered with blood.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Why didn’t you just throw his head in the quarry?”
“Since you think you’re so damned smart, let me ask you this: Does a human head float?”
