by Robin Yocum
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I, and I didn’t want to throw it in the quarry and then have it bobbing around like some kind of fishing lure.”
“So, what did you end up doing with it?”
Moonie swallowed.
“The head, Moonie? What did you do with the Troll’s head?”
Moonie looked at his old friend for several seconds, gnawing on his lower lip. “Nothin’.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? Don’t tell me that thing is still rotting in the back of your car.”
Moonie swallowed. “No. Actually, you’re sitting on it.”
Slowly, Duke looked down at the triangular section of the green cooler between his crotch and thighs, then back at Moonie. “The head of Frankie Silvestri is in this cooler?”
Moonie nodded. “Yeah, but it’s packed real good in ice. Real good. Frozen solid, pretty near. I put fresh ice in two, three times a day.”
Slowly and with no small amount of dread, Duke stood and unlatched the lid of the cooler. Beneath several inches of cubes was a mass of black hair, below which protruded the mangled nub of a neck. “I turned him facedown,” Moonie said. “It was creepin’ me out, lookin’ at his face every time I opened the lid.”
Duke’s gasp was audible, like a man who has been gut-punched, and he slammed the lid closed and took a deep breath. A headache was in its infancy behind his left eye; the roar in his ears sounded like jet turbines winding up for takeoff. “Jesus H. Christ, Moonie, were you planning to have it mounted?”
“No, goddammit. Every time I came up with an idea of how to dump it, I came up with another reason not to. I was afraid of getting caught.”
“So, the smart thing to do was to keep it preserved in a cooler in your hotel room?”
“I figured you could help me with this one. You’ve always got good ideas.”
“In all the years you’ve known me, Moonie, how many bodies have I dumped?”
Duke paced the room, trying to come up with a solution to the myriad of problems Moonie was facing, not the least of which was Tony DeMarco. He looked at his watch. He regretted dragging Cara into the mess. Across the room he spotted a folding knife on the night stand. “That . . . isn’t . . .?”
“The Troll’s knife? Yep.”
“You kept it?”
“It’s a nice knife. Besides, the little bastard laced open my chest and tried to kill me with it.”
“So you thought you’d take a trophy?”
Moonie shrugged. “Spoils of war.”
“I’m venturing into uncharted territory, here, Moonie, but I think one of the fundamental rules of killing someone and not getting caught requires you to get rid of all evidence linking you to the deceased.”
“I thought about that, but, hell, I killed an Antonelli bagman and stole their money—how upset are they going to get over taking his knife?”
“Where’s the money?”
“Under my bed.”
“How much?”
“Fifty-eight thousand, three hundred and twelve dollars.”
“No way.”
“Trust me, Duke, I’m no math wizard, but I’ve had a lot of time on my hands and I’ve counted it a dozen times.”
Duke pulled the cooler across the linoleum floor and slid it under a battered desk, then began picking up the trash strewn around the room and stuffing it into some empty fast-food bags. “When Cara gets here, you’re not to mention anything about the Troll or . . .” He looked at his friend. “Or, anything. Let me do the talking. We clear?”
Moonie nodded. “She’s going to want to know how it happened.”
“I know. When she asks, I’ll tell her . . .”
“Tell her what?”
“A lie. I’ll tell her a big, fat, throbbing lie. Of course, she’ll know it’s a lie, but she’s solid and won’t ask a lot of questions.” Duke continued to run around the room, cleaning and straightening. “How did this place get to be such a disaster? Don’t you have housekeeping service?”
“At this place? The no-tell motel? I’m lucky to have running water.”
Cara arrived an hour and fifteen minutes after Duke had called her. She carried an overnight suitcase, in which was the equivalent of a small pharmacy. Moonie was propped up in the bed, a sheet covering him from the waist down. He was exhausted and wan.
Duke had been watching for Cara and opened the door upon her approach. Her lips were tight, and the tiny lines that ran away from her eyes were stretched taut and white. She set the overnight case on the edge of the bed and looked at the slash wound on Moonie’s chest. She gently touched the tender area around the gash and asked, “Do I want to know how this happened?”
Duke walked around to the other side of the bed and said, “Moonie has a girlfriend in Wellsburg. She’s married. He went over to see her about a week ago and her husband came home. He had a gun and . . .”
Cara put up a palm and shook her head. “Duke, stop right there,” she said. “That way, you won’t have to continue to lie, and I won’t have to be pissed at you for trying to shove a line of total bullshit down my throat.”
“Fair enough. Show her your leg, Moonie.”
Moonie pulled back the sheets and revealed his right thigh, swollen and bright red. There was no sign of shock or disbelief on her face. She spent several minutes inspecting the bullet wound. She pushed at a couple of places, and Moonie jumped both times. “When did this happen?”
“A week ago last night.”
She looked around the room. “Do you have any towels that aren’t covered with blood?”
“No,” Moonie said.
“We need to clean that out. Let’s do it in the shower.” Cara helped Moonie into the bathroom.
Moonie straddled the edge of the tub, with his injured right leg inside. “I’m probably not going to like this, am I?” he asked.
“You’re going to hate it,” she said, taking a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the bag. She poured it over the wound. It bubbled, and Moonie jumped. “Jesus, that hurts worse than getting shot.”
She squinted. “I seriously doubt that.”
When the bubbles disappeared, she poured again, repeating the procedure until the bottle was empty. The drain fizzed as the hydrogen peroxide percolated in the filthy pipes. She opened a second bottle and cleaned the chest wound. While it had healed much cleaner than the leg, it was still infected and would leave a deep scar.
“You should have gotten some stitches,” Cara said.
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“There were extemporary circumstances.”
“Extenuating circumstances?” she asked.
“Yeah, whatever the circumstances were, I couldn’t go to the doctor.”
She walked him back to the bed, cleaned off some dead skin, and dressed and bandaged the wounds. “This has something to do with that guy of Antonelli’s that disappeared, doesn’t it?” Cara asked.
Moonie looked away and groaned.
“How’d you know about that?” Duke asked.
“One of the doctors who does shifts at Heinzmann said he was on call at the hospital last week when a couple of Antonelli’s goons showed up at the hospital morgue. They heard there was a John Doe who died in the emergency room, and they said their cousin had disappeared and wanted to see if it was him.”
“I’m assuming it wasn’t their boy.”
“The John Doe was about eighty and black—not your typical Italian mobster.” She smiled and looked up from her work. “Rumor has it that this guy bolted with a bunch of gambling money?” She pulled a syringe from her bag and filled it with an amber fluid, an antibiotic to fight the infection. She rolled Moonie onto his side and buried the needle into his hip, but not with the same gentleness that was her trademark at the convalescent center, where she was known as the Velvet Needle.
Moonie jumped and yelped, “Goddamn, Cara.”
She removed the syringe, capped it, and tossed it into the open case, t
hen turned to Duke. “I’m betting that Mr. Collier had something to do with that guy’s disappearance. Otherwise, why would he be holed up in this lovely place with bullet and knife wounds?” She shook her head. “Shot by a jealous husband? Is that the best you two could come up with?” Moonie and Duke avoided her glare like errant schoolboys standing before the principal. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to go to the hospital and let a doctor look at that leg.”
“No, I don’t think that would be such a good idea,” Moonie said.
She left him enough salve and bandages to change the dressing in the morning and promised to check in on him the following evening. “It’s infected, but, surprisingly, you did a moderately good job at doctoring it yourself.”
Moonie looked up at Duke and smiled.
“Call in sick for at least two more days.” She looked at Duke. “Make sure he eats, and not just hamburgers and French fries. Try to find something with a little nutritional value, and buy him some vitamin C pills and multivitamins.”
As Duke walked Cara across the parking lot to her car, she said, “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, Duke, but I am not happy about it. I like Moonie and I know he’s your friend, but he’s a complete and utter idiot, and now he’s got you involved.” She threw her case in the trunk of the car and climbed behind the wheel. “I love you, Duke, but I’m not willing to put my kids in harm’s way for you or anyone else. I don’t want Tony DeMarco or any of his compatriots showing up at my house, looking for you.”
“He won’t. I promise. I would never get you involved.”
“You already have.” She dropped the car in reverse and started easing back along the gravel drive. “I would like it very much if you didn’t get yourself killed.”
And she was gone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Duke was a sophomore at Mingo High School, Ed “Kodiak” Kripinski, a burly, squat senior with a bad attitude and biceps like telephone poles, had taken a disliking to him. This was not good. Kodiak, who earned his ursine nickname for the thicket of hair that covered his chest, back, shoulders, and arms—and was always protruding from the collar of his shirt—was the defending district heavyweight wrestling champion, and not one you wanted on your bad side.
Kodiak had decided that Duke was in need of a severe ass-whipping. It wasn’t for anything in particular; he just didn’t like Duke Ducheski. Down in the Ohio Valley, that was enough to justify beating someone’s ass. Duke was the starting quarterback on the football team and always got his name in the paper. Kripinski was an offensive guard and got mud shoved up his nose every Friday night for the privilege of blocking for Duke. This sat in his craw, because Kripinski thought Duke was a prima donna who didn’t like to get his pants dirty. A good beating wouldn’t change Duke’s attitude, but it would make Kripinski feel better. He came over to Duke’s lunch table midway through basketball season, sat down, and said, “I don’t like you, Ducheski, and the next time I catch you out of school, I’m gonna kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.” He winked. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
The odds that Duke would come out on the better end of that matchup were astronomical. Mingo Junction was a small town, but Duke’s plan was to make sure Kripinski didn’t catch him alone until graduation, then hope he forgot about it.
A couple of weeks after the warning in the cafeteria, the basketball team returned from a game against Martins Ferry, and Duke walked behind the school where he could take the shortcut over the hill to his house. He did not see Kripinski’s Pontiac in the parking lot until he heard the door latch open and saw an imposing shadow stretching across the asphalt parking lot. Duke got weak in the knees; this was not a bluff. “Take your jacket off, Ducheski,” Kodiak said. “Me and you, we’re gonna go.”
Before Duke could make a plea for mercy or run back into the school, Moonie Collier walked out of the shadows of the fire escape. “What’s the problem here, Dukie?”
Kripinski whipped his head around to see Moonie’s silhouette looming large at the edge of the building. “This doesn’t involve you, Collier,” Kripinski said.
“The hell it don’t,” Moonie said, walking toward Kripinski. “Duke’s my friend. I don’t like people messing with my friends.” Kripinski was still standing with his hands on his hips when Moonie sucker-punched him, lashing out with a fierce right hand that snapped the cartilage in the senior’s nose and knocked him on his rear. Kripinski jumped up, blood running down over his lips and chin.
“Collier, you motherfu—”
Moonie snapped off another punch, this one landing square on Kripinski’s mouth, causing him to reel back several steps before sprawling into the jagged barberry bushes that rimmed the parking lot. His upper lip was split below the left nostril, and blood poured from both wounds, covering his chin and dropping onto his varsity jacket. “If you get up, I’ll drill you again,” Moonie said.
It was the first time in his life that Kodiak Kripinski had been on the losing end of a fight. He wiped away the blood and fought back tears. “You can’t protect him forever, Collier.”
“The hell I can’t. You touch him, ever, and I’ll kill you. I swear to Jesus, I will.”
Moonie put his hand on Duke’s shoulder and led him out of the parking lot. “My car’s around the corner. Come on, I’ll give you a lift home.”
Duke’s knees were still wobbly. “What were you doing here?” he asked Moonie. “How’d you know he was waiting for me?”
“Angel told me what he said to you in the cafeteria. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He told a couple of his buddies that he was going to jump you tonight after the game. I saw his car parked behind the school and figured he was up to no good.”
It was at that moment that Duke truly realized what a tremendous friend he had in Moonie Collier. Moonie had made it his business to watch Kodiak Kripinski and be there when he made his move. That kind of friendship was rare. Moonie had been the most loyal friend Duke had ever known.
For that reason, Duke would never let him hang, even if it involved disposing of a mobster’s frozen head.
After Cara left, Duke drove down the road to a diner and got both of them open-faced roast-beef sandwiches over mashed potatoes, along with green beans and milkshakes. As they were eating, Duke pointed at the cooler with a plastic fork and said, “I’m going to take care of that.”
“No chance,” Moonie said.
“Excuse me?”
“No way you’re taking that thing out of here. I got myself into this; I’ll get myself out. I appreciate you getting Cara up here to doctor me up, but you’re now relieved of duty.”
“You’re in no condition to dictate terms to anyone, and you’re in no condition to get rid of it. I’m doing it.”
Moonie wolfed down his dinner like a starving dog. Duke handed him the rest of his meal, and Moonie took it without comment. He said, “If you take that thing out of here, it makes you complacent in the murder.”
“Complicit?”
He blinked twice and said, “Whatever the right fuckin’ word is, I don’t want you involved. Look, you’re Duke Ducheski, the Duke of Mingo Junction. Everyone loves you, and the restaurant is about ready to open. You don’t need this aggravation. If you don’t know what happens to it, you won’t have to lie.”
“But I already know what happened to the rest of him.”
“Just let me take care of it, Bo-Peep.”
“Can’t do it, partner. I’ll get rid of it, you get better, and we’ll get this entire mess behind us.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
Duke shrugged and held up both palms. “I don’t know, Moonie. I’m venturing into uncharted territory.”
Heading west on Route 22, cutting across the West Virginia panhandle, Duke found he could empathize with his old friend. The mind jumps around when you’re driving down the road with a mobster’s head sloshing around in your vehicle. Rational thought is replaced by skittish behavior, and ideas for
disposal assault the brain with the rapidity of a pinball digit counter clicking off numbers. As he crossed the Fort Steuben Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River between Steubenville, Ohio, and Weirton, West Virginia, potential solutions came to Duke like streaks of tracer ammo shooting across his cerebellum, almost too quick to process. Unfortunately, for every solution he devised, he was able to manufacture a more compelling reason to ignore it.
He pondered sneaking the head into the mill and tossing it into the hopper car that carried iron ore into the blast furnace. The temperature in the belly of a blast furnace can reach 2,300 degrees. The head would dissolve like an ice cube on a hot skillet. However, this option required walking into Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel with the cooler and somehow sneaking the head into a hopper car. It was far too risky.
The Ohio River offered a wide and deep repository, though he would have to get in a rowboat to get to the middle channel, where the water runs deep and fast. If he added some rocks to the cooler, poked some holes in it, and anchored the lid with some wood screws, it would sink. However, at this point, Tony DeMarco still had to consider the possibility that the Troll had skipped town. That wouldn’t be the case if the cooler popped open and the head came bobbing to the surface.
There was an abandoned coal mine shaft, not far from where they had built Fort Logan, where it took a stone ten seconds to hit bottom. Again, Duke would have to park and lug the cooler up the hill. It was probably the most feasible of the plans, but he quickly convinced himself that he would get caught.
A safer option, he thought, would be to buy a twenty-gallon can of carburetor cleaner and let the head soak until it dissolved. The downside was having it inside the garage during the process. It was this last idea that finally slowed down his racing brain. “Carburetor cleaner!” he said aloud. “Jesus H. Christ, Ducheski, get a grip.”
Only one point remained clear. Wherever he decided to dispose of the head, there had to be a compelling and logical reason for him to be there.
He turned south onto Ohio Route 7—Dean Martin Boulevard in Steubenville—and kept one eye on the speedometer, making sure he stayed just below the posted limit of thirty-five miles an hour. His palms were slippery on the steering wheel. His stomach roiled. The only logical answer was to bury the head, but where and when? The only answers he came up with were deep and soon.