Billy Povich: Loot The Moon Part 4

Gonna buy me some champagne

Scratchs apartment building was a wooden triple-decker in a renters neighborhood that was noisy 24/7 with car alarms and police sirens, fireworks and occasional gunshots, roaring engines from unsanctioned drag races, and heavy metal and rap music pounding from car stereos worth more than the cars.

The buildings were similar old Victorians, packed as tight as teeth. On either side of Scratchs place, vacant lots of knee-high weeds cut two gaps in the smile. For a hundred years, a twelve-room Victorian had occupied the s.p.a.ce on the left, and it took twenty years of neglect from absentee landlords, and two weeks of attention from a grumbling bulldozer, to clear the lot.

A budding arsonist had flattened the house on the other side in barely half an hour. Beginners luck, the insurance guy had said.

What you saw when you walked or drove the neighborhood depended on your perspective. If you were financially comfortable and just selfish enough to feel guilty around poverty, well, youd see the gang graffiti and the broken windows and the greasy stray dogs trotting in packs and leaving s.h.i.+ts on the sidewalks that would stay there until the next thunderstorm. Someone more like Scratch, a lover of cheap rent and anonymity who chose to live here, saw different touchstones around the neighborhood. He noticed the hopscotch boxes drawn in chalk. He saw the six-year-olds fluent in two languages, who translated effortlessly for parents who didnt know ten words of English. And he noticed the circular economy of immigrant markets selling food from the old country to homesick adventurers experimenting with the American dream. He would not steal from those kind of people ... well, unless they were dumb enough to leave their doors unlocked. He was as sentimental as anybody, but a mans gotta eat, and if you left your cash drawer open or your payroll lying around w.i.l.l.y-nilly, you got what you deserved.

The neighborhood ruthlessly punished fools.

He bounced up four concrete steps with tiny seash.e.l.ls embedded in them, and let himself into his building. The vestibule had four mail slots, though two of the buildings apartments were empty. One of those empty places held several grand worth of Scratchs boosted loot.

With a small key, he opened the mailbox labeled Gary Gleason.

G.o.d, how he hated seeing his real name on so many credit card and utility bills. The building superintendent kept a small ash can in the vestibule for junk mail. Any envelope with the words "Open immediately" or "Do not discard" or "Check enclosed," or any other hoax the junk mailers had invented to get people to open their spam, went right in the can. One letter said, "Do not fold or mishandle." Scratch creased it down the middle before he slam-dunked it.

There were two credit card offers addressed to his former roommate in the mailbox. If only these card companies had known how crazy his roommate had been-crazier than Scratch had ever imagined.

Crazy, and now dead.

With a shudder, he pushed the letters back in the box, slammed and locked the door. Putting his old roommate out of his mind, he hummed some more on his way up two flights of stairs.

Im singing in my brain ...

Inside his apartment, Scratch flicked on the light, slapped his baseball cap over the head of his pet mannequin, then dumped the shopping bags on the table. He had scored six womens business suits, jackets and slacks. Each was navy blue, made from fine summer-weight wool. He had four suits of size 6 and two of size 4. Each had a security tag on it, of course. The tags were never much of a problem. He held a pair of slacks to the light and examined the device-a simple dye bomb, essentially a thin gla.s.s tube of permanent red dye, partially encased in plastic. The fragile gla.s.s was designed to break and ruin the garment with ink if anybody tried to remove it without a special machine. The dye bomb was pinned to the pant leg with a heavy needle embedded in a hard plastic disc. Scratch had defeated plenty of similar security devices, but none of this specific brand.

Lets try one.

He carried a pair of slacks down the hall, past the bathroom and the battered plaid sofa that had been his roommates bed, which Scratch had unofficially inherited. The dresser clock in the bedroom said 1:37 a.m. He walked across his squishy bed to the window, eased it up, and climbed gracefully onto his balcony herb garden.

The match method of removing a dye bomb, his favorite tactic for this type of device, required lots of ventilation. He lit his cigarette lighter and held the bulbous side of the dye bomb in the heat. The plastic caught fire in a few seconds, and then burned with a low smear of flame that sent up a thread of deep black smoke, which gently waved in the still night air like the worlds skinniest charmed snake. The gases were loaded with cancer-causing dioxins, and Scratch turned his head from the fire. He let it burn for thirty seconds or so. Then he blew out the flame and used a pottery shard to sc.r.a.pe away the softened plastic. That exposed the interior locking ring. A few jabs with a ballpoint pen dislodged a tiny BB under the ring, and the device fell apart, dye tube intact.

He laughed and tapped a few more dance steps, which sent happy vibrations down the fire escape. Freeing these garments from retail bondage would be easy.

Back in the kitchen, he made sure the slacks were undamaged, then left them on the table and went to the bathroom to scrub the soot from his hands.

He lost himself in the was.h.i.+ng, thinking of profit. The retail tags on the suits said $575. n.o.body ever paid retail; this kind of high-end garment was generally on sale for $499. He could unload them to a fence he knew, probably for no more than fifty bucks each. Or he could sell them himself, anonymously, over the Internet. Say he could get $250 each, plus s.h.i.+pping ... s.h.i.+t, I cant do math. No matter. He said aloud to the mirror, "Whatever price I get will be the square root of a great score-squared." He blasted his own smile in the mirror with double-barreled finger guns, then cranked the water shut and half listened for the echo drip from the shower stall, a quirk of his inferior plumbing.

Whats that?

Huh.

He turned the water back on, then off, and heard an odd crackling again, an unnatural noise in an apartment he would know in the dark.

Scratch turned toward the shower as the curtain sc.r.a.ped open, gloved fingers sweeping it away.

Impossible.

Imf.u.c.king possible.

A chill paralysis spread through him like a voodoo drug.

Im not seeing this. This is a movie I saw. Im remembering this.

Then he saw a head encased in a plastic bag with just a slit for the eyes and a wrinkle of brow pressing heavily. The black pupils were swollen huge, encircled by a delicate gray ring of iris no thicker than a wedding band. A mans eyes, Scratch thought.

A water droplet raced down the plastic face, recoiled ever slightly at the chin, as if gathering itself for a leap, and then cast off.

The figures right hand had been moving at him all this time, Scratch finally realized.

By instinct, Scratchs hips jerked to the side, to matador away from the clumsy thrust.

He would pretend the man was real, just until he figured out why he was seeing this.

As if in slow motion, he watched the stranger push a thin shank-Holy Christ, an ice pick-through the empty s.p.a.ce Scratch had just abandoned. The man was out of the shower stall. He wore a black sweater, tight black pants. Momentum carried him across the tiny bathroom. He was growling.

This cannot be happening.

At the violent stab of the ice pick, the bottom half of the mirror shattered. For an instant as they dropped, each shard reflected a chaotic fragment of the scene in a tiny moving picture.

The crash of gla.s.s obliterated the hope this might be imagination. Scratch set his feet and drove his palm at the mans shoulder. A glancing blow.

Hes real, all right. But why?

The attacker regrouped. Scratch turned his right side to him, to keep his heart as far from the shank as possible, as he had learned during a four-month bid in state prison. He had never been stabbed, but had once seen an inmate take a shank to the shoulder, wrestle it away, and jam it back from where it had come. His eyes locked on the pick, on the bright white point at the end of it, on which his twenty-six years of life, plus nine months in the womb, delicately balanced. His brain flooded his body with fight-or-flight chemicals, racing his heart, tightening his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, rerouting blood to the big muscles that could save him.

The figure swung the weapon in a wide arc. Scratch ducked, felt the drag of a forearm across his hair, and shot a frantic uppercut to the mans rib cage. Bang. Fist on ribs, but without much leverage. A grunt, nothing more. Scratch threw an off-balanced hand toward the bagged head, and missed.

The pick flashed up. Scratch shrank from it.

Suddenly from the left a fist crashed into Scratchs cheekbone. He knew instantly he was hurt, though he felt no pain, not yet. Just a high ringing in his ear.

With a guttural growl, like from a beast, the man lunged. Scratch leapt blindly aside. He had a vision of his body spiked on the metal and abandoned in the bathroom, undiscovered, until the super came to collect the rent.

The pick pierced the pale inside of Scratchs left forearm, driving effortlessly through skin and fat cells and capillaries and muscle meat, sliding between the radius and the ulna, pus.h.i.+ng a channel through flesh and fat on the other side, exiting the skin on the backside of his arm between little brown hairs standing on end, before stabbing the wall and burying into the wood.

There was no pain, just a shocking sense of invasion; a rape. He gasped. The attackers body carried into him and knocked his head against the wall.

Scratch smelled the mans salty sweat.

The scene seemed to slow down again, as the man in the plastic hood pulled at the pick, growling in frustration.

The shank had stuck fast in the wall, pinning Scratchs outstretched arm through a tiny bulls eye of blood. Scratch shrieked at the sight, high and shrill, like a child surprised by a spider.

Im crucified.

For a second, the man seemed to transfer his wrath to the ice pick that refused to budge. He fought it with a staccato roar, like a growl and a sob together.

Scratch drove his right forearm up, catching the man just under the chin. His head snapped back, though he kept his grip on the pick, and gave the weapon a fierce yank.

The tools old wooden handle splintered and came off in his hand; he tumbled backward against the vanity. His shoes skidded on chips of broken mirror and he went down.

With no handle, the tool was just a spike, a long nail with no head. Scratch tore his arm from it, felt a hollow whoosh in his gut, and warm blood racing free. He tried to stomp the mans leg as he thundered over him, out of the room. A hand slapped his shoe and Scratch staggered into the hall. He stumbled into the sofa, caught himself. The man was up, coming at him. Scratch lurched off toward the kitchen.

The door, the G.o.dd.a.m.n blessed door, so close.

A fist clubbed his shoulder. He crashed into the refrigerator, heard bottles of Ba.s.s ale tumbling inside. His wound spattered red on the door. An arm wrapped around his neck from behind, catching him under the Adams apple. The attackers body pressed tight against him. Scratch leaned forward and lifted the mans feet from the floor. The attacker rode his back as they slowly spun in the center of the room. The bagged head pushed on Scratchs right shoulder. Swampy panting breath pulsed against the plastic. Scratchs mannequin stood frozen, a witness to nothing, its eyes just shallow indentations.

Was this bagged a.s.sa.s.sin really trying to suffocate a man of equal size and strength? With just his arm? Whered this guy learn to fight? The movies? The attacker had surrendered leverage, the most valuable advantage in unarmed fighting. Scratch bent at the knees, tightened his midsection, reached back to grab two handfuls of sweater, and violently yanked the man over his head like he was whipping off a s.h.i.+rt. Now it was this clowns turn to smash into the fridge. He slammed into it with a moan and rolled.

From his ankle-high boot, the man drew a steak knife serrated like piranha teeth.

Holy Jesus, gotta have a weapon. Anything!

Scratch yanked the loose arm off the mannequin. The crude club was surprisingly well balanced, like a fairway driver with a slight kink in the shaft at the elbow. He swung a mighty uppercut as the man tried to rise.

Fore!

The plastic arm whacked above the mans temple; he dropped like he had been shot. On the floor, he clutched his head and squirmed, still holding the knife.

For the slightest moment Scratch considered beating the man with the makes.h.i.+ft club. But the a.s.sa.s.sin was only stunned; Scratch was deeply wounded, and bleeding.

And the enemy was armed with a real weapon. Scratch was armed with an arm.

Instinct insisted: Run away.

He flung the arm, flew out the door, rumbled down the stairs, out into the night. He ran with one hand over the hole in his forearm. He didnt look back.

seven.

The breakfast buffet began with stove-boiled Autocrat java, inky black and infused with coffee grounds in what the old man liked to call "chunky style." The chrome toaster on the table was forty years old, same age as Billy, but it delivered four perfect s.h.i.+ngles at a time. Not one of the thirty flapjacks piled chaotically on a tin plate was round; despite Billys best short-order cookery, the cakes had hardened into the shapes of Confederate states. On the table, arranged like a row of books, were four boxes of sugared cereal, a box of golden raisins, a half-gallon carton of skim milk, and a quart of orange juice. The bacon hardened on a greasy paper towel. The boy had arranged six triangles of seedy watermelon flat on a plate, like pizza slices. A b.u.t.terscotch short-haired cat, with a potbelly and an overdeveloped sense of ent.i.tlement, relaxed sphinxlike on the table among the dishes with its front paws tucked invisibly beneath its bulk.

Surrounding this feast were three generations of males with the same name.

The eldest William R. Povich had parked his wheelchair at a short end of the rectangular table. In the late-morning sun, his startling blue eyes looked like those of an optimist, maybe a poet or an adventurer, or like the eyes of a young bridegroom. But sunken into the head of a living corpse, among the scars of old age, the jagged creases and pockmarks littered with white whiskers, the eyes shone like stolen goods.

Across the table, boosted on two copies of the Providence Yellow Pages, sat the youngest William Povich, a second-grader with little white legs leopard-spotted with brown bruises. Bo hurt himself often because he rarely moved at less than full speed, and had not yet developed the grown-up pessimism that made people hesitate before they jumped off a shed with a pillowcase for a parachute, or tried to pilot a bicycle down a flight of stairs.

The stuffed Mr. Albert Einstein, which had become some sort of security anchor for the boy, leaned against the orange juice, silently contemplating s.p.a.ce-time, light speed, and the twin paradox. Billy didnt understand what the kid saw in the doll, which the old man had bought for him over the Internet. The Einstein action figure did not talk or move. It did not use batteries; it lacked the kung fu grip. Did the kid even know Einstein had been a real person?

Bo tore open a paper sugar pack saved from Dunkin Donuts and sprinkled the excess energy over his Frankenberries.

"Ziggs put his tail in the b.u.t.ter," the boy said. He giggled.

"No one likes a tattletale," the old man told Bo. The kid laughed and slapped a hand over his mouth. The old man shooed away the cats tail, then used a knife to sc.r.a.pe hair off the stick of soft b.u.t.ter.

Billy laid a folder of doc.u.ments on the table. His eyes dutifully pa.s.sed over Adam Rackerss arrest record, but the distractions prevented the words from actually entering his brain. He sighed and glanced around to clear his head. The giant white range had left the kitchen too warm. The ten-year-old cat sat pensively on the table, b.u.t.tered tail silently slapping the cherry red laminate. Outside the window, cars lined the street for a service at Metts & Sons, the funeral parlor on the first floor of their old Victorian apartment house. Beyond the street, a parade field of green, broken up by paths and clumps of trees, stretched to the base of the old Cranston Street armory, a tremendous yellow-brick castle of gates and turrets.

"His tail would taste like popcorn," the boy said. He stroked the cats soft back.

"Maybe thats why he licks it sometimes," said the old man.

"Im working," Billy said.

"Were eating," sa.s.sed the old man. "This aint the library."

"Cant even chew gum at the library," Bo said.

"Wheres the horseradish?" the old man asked.

"Puts hair on your belly," Bo said, parroting what the old man had taught him to say whenever somebody mentioned horseradish.

Organ music from the funeral home downstairs percolated up through the red-flecked black linoleum and vibrated into Billys bare feet.

"Whos dead down there?" the old man asked.

Billy consulted an index card on the kitchen counter. "According to the schedule Mr. Metts sent up, this would be Mr. Crespie, of Eden Park. He was a foreman at the brewery."

"You knew him?"

"I wrote the obituary."

The old man wheezed. He tapped a knife on his plate four times, sounding impatient. He said, "I want to go out and sit in the park."

"You know we cant use the stairs during a funeral. Its in the lease."

He moaned, "Are they gonna be long down there?"

"How should I know?" Billy said. The cat slapped its tail back into the b.u.t.ter. Billy brushed the tail away and slid the b.u.t.ter dish out of range.

"You wrote the obit," the old man grumbled. "What kind of life did this guy have? Was he worth mourning for the full hour? Did he do anything worth remembering?"

"He lived to ninety-two."

"Whoop-tee-d.a.m.n-doo," the old man said. He reached a trembling knife to the soft b.u.t.ter, sc.r.a.ped off a smear, and spread it on toast. "The lucky fool walked between the falling pianos for ninety-two years before something finally crushed him. Maybe he was Mr. Magoo."

"Theres cat hair on your toast," Billy said.