Billy Povich: Loot The Moon Part 11

Billy s.n.a.t.c.hed his phone from his desk, flipped the receiver off, pounded 911, and fumbled with the hand piece on the floor.

"h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?" he pleaded.

The dead sound he heard from the phone was like a call to a tomb. He drummed a finger on the hang-up b.u.t.ton.

No dial tone.

Uh-oh.

The visitor knocked softly again, but not with a knuckle-something harder, something metal. A gun? Why couldnt he just go back to pounding?

Billy quietly replaced the receiver, then slid the phone under the desk so he would not trip if he had to run.

What to do?

His first plan was to answer the door with a flying desk chair. Bull-rush him, fight it out on the stairs. Hope some pa.s.sing driver noticed the commotion and called the cops. Stay alive until the police arrived. Maybe win the sweepstakes for the Worlds Worst Plan.

On hands and knees, Billy crawled to Plan B.

He hurried through a maze of office cubicles toward the back staircase. Carpet burn scorched his knees through his pants. At the back corner of the room, he waited against the fire door, mouth-breathing in silence, sweating tangy fear into his shirt, until he heard the metallic knock again, soft and chilling. Mustering courage, he pushed through the door and sprinted down the stairs. Billy had always been clumsy going up stairs; he was a tap dancer going down. At the ground floor, he yanked open the fire door and shot out the stairwell. He ran past empty desks and file cabinets and a conference table littered with sickly office plants, toward the outside door in the back of the building. Even if the visitor had seen Billy make for the stairs, by the time the guy ran down from the landing and around the office, Billy would be lost in the neighborhood. Bullets dont take corners.

Billys palm hit the panic bar and the door burst open, revealing a steep concrete ramp leading to a parking lot of cracked asphalt.

He never saw the rope.

His foot caught the trip wire just above the ankle. He had the sensation of diving into a pool. It was all a ruse, he thought. The obituary, the knock at the door ... to get me to run out the back, away from the street. His fingers grabbed impotently for handholds in the air. He tucked his left shoulder to take the impact, and hit the concrete with an oomph. His chin clacked against the ground. Spit and sharp pain flooded his mouth. He had bitten his tongue. The numbness in his hand told him he had suffered a deep sc.r.a.pe, before it even had time to bleed.

They were on him with the rope in an instant.

"Rides like a floating bed, doesnt it?" the driver asked.

Billy said nothing until the goon sitting to Billys right elbowed him lightly in the ribs and said, "Hes talking to you."

"Nothing beats Cadillac for the ride," Billy agreed from the backseat. No lie; it did ride great. Theyre taking me for a ride.

"This is the DTS model," the driver said. He was a little guy, very pale, anemic-looking. "Right off the dealers lot. Came tricked out like this, all standard. Is the air too much for you guys back there?"

Billy sighed. "Im comfortable."

The driver pushed his derby hat higher on his forehead, shot Billy a glance in the mirror, and smirked behind his rainbow sungla.s.ses. Billy hoped the guy could see the road through those shades, though it probably would be better if they crashed; at least Billy had a chance to survive in the car. Bullets dont come standard with air bags.

They traveled south on Route 95, exactly at the speed limit. Traffic was light. A few headlights flew by the other direction; the Cadillac seemed to have the southbound lanes mostly to itself. On the right, they pa.s.sed the broadcast headquarters of a local rock station. The stations call letters glowed in pink neon in a fifth-floor window. The overnight DJ would be awake, Billy thought. Was there n.o.body else who could help him?

"Make sure them headlights back there aint following," said the goon sitting on Billys right.

"I know what Im doing," the driver snapped. "Keep him under control."

Though the driver tended to give a lot of orders, the goon on the right struck Billy as the true brains of the operation. He was a steroid freak of six foot four, with a profile like the departed Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire. His long goatee had been dyed pure white. The other goon was almost as big, with striking green doe eyes, and a brooding sense of doom about him. Billy had not yet heard him speak.

He took measure of his situation. After binding his feet with rope, taping his wrists together with duct tape-and choking what little fight had remained in Billy-they had bandaged the sc.r.a.pe on his palm with tape and an old T-shirt. That was probably so he wouldnt bleed in the car, Billy figured. He swallowed the blood from the cut on his tongue. No sense spitting on the upholstery and angering these men.

Was it time to talk his way out of this? Or would talking hurry his fate? Did these men have authority to decide how the evening would end? Or were they just following orders? Could they be bribed or threatened? Bribed or threatened? With G.o.dd.a.m.n what?

Escape seemed impossible at the moment. Billys hands were bound in the front, which was a tiny advantage if he had to defend himself. But that was a small favor. He could not run with his feet tied, nor could he survive the tumble if he somehow forced past one of the goons, unlatched the door, and inchwormed out of the car.

Nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the smooth ride.

Twenty minutes south of Providence, and just a mile off the highway, the car bounced gently down a graded dirt road, into a vast sand pit dotted with dark blotches of vegetation. The tires crunched softly on gravel. They drove through the open gate in a chain fence and then pa.s.sed a portable office trailer, a dozen pallets stacked with bricks, and two piles of new white lumber. This was a construction site. Hard to tell what was to be built here. A mall or an office building, probably. Billy sighed. Were it up to him, theyd be building a police academy and a hospital.

He wondered what time it was. Sometime past 3 a.m., for sure. He wondered what Bo and the old man were doing. He never knew with those two. The old man was an insomniac, and the kid a light sleeper. Billy endured a brief flash of dread ... what would happen if the apartment caught fire when Billy was not around? The kid wasnt strong enough to take his grandpa down the stairs, as Billy did nearly every day, wearing his father like a backpack and carrying him in silence so not to add to the old mans shame. William Povich Sr. weighed barely a hundred pounds, but that was still too much for Bo.

Would the kid know enough to leave the old man and save himself?

Billy shuddered. He feared the kid would not leave, and that the boy would die from smoke trying to save an old man who didnt want to be saved.

The Cadillacs headlights landed on a yellow Caterpillar backhoe with a wide front bucket and a narrow back pail lined with steel teeth. The driver jammed the transmission into park and shut off the car, but left the headlights on. He reached into the glove box for a long metal flashlight, then got out of the car and slammed the door.

The goon on Billys left smiled and spoke his first words of the evening, "This is your stop, Mr. Povich." He opened the door and stepped out.

Billy swallowed a taste of his own blood. The bleeding had nearly stopped, but his tongue pulsed with dull pain. Outside, the driver panned the light around a moonscape of sand, revealing emptiness that stretched far longer than the flashlight beam.

The other goon nudged Billy toward the open door. "Out, Povich."

"Are you guys going to tell me what the h.e.l.l this is about?"

"Plenty of time for productive conversation." He pointed and commanded sharply, "Out."

Billy swung his bound feet onto the seat. f.u.c.k them and the upholstery, he thought. From a sitting position, he walked on his a.s.s bones until his feet could touch the ground. The other goon grabbed a handful of Billys shirt and pulled him from the car. He dragged Billy a few steps from the Cadillac and then left him.

So what do I do? Just stand here? He felt like the main event at a firing squad.

Without a word, the driver walked straight to Billy and slammed the flashlight into the crook of Billys neck.

Billy crumpled, as much from shock as pain. He clenched his jaw so that he would not cry out with weakness that would disgust them and invite another blow. The sand felt cool against his face. The muscles in his neck tightened around the bruise and felt like they would pull themselves from the bone. A hand grabbed Billys shirt and rolled him onto his back. Then the hand pinched Billys Adams apple, and the flashlight shone into his face. Billy shut his eyes and turned his head from the light, but the hand squeezed his throat until Billy turned back.

"You must have quite a phone bill," said the bearded goon, from somewhere off to the side.

s.h.i.t, are these guys from the phone company? No wonder theyre so rough.

"You made a lot of calls about Mr. Glanz," the second goon said.

The bespectacled driver shouted in Billys face, "What do you want with Mr. Glanz?"

Billy pushed a mouthful of spit and blood over his lip and felt it slither down his cheek. Son of a b.i.t.c.h, these are Glanz s goons. Billy was accustomed to violent bill collectors, but these men were different in every way except tactics. They could not be appeased by promises to pay. And they did not care that dead men did not honor their gambling debts.

Billy cursed his former self, the Billy Povich of the past two days, who had plumbed many crooked sources for information about Rhubarb Glanz. Billy should have known to be more careful, especially after Garafino had told him of the rumors on the street, about a former investigative reporter trolling for sc.r.a.ps about Glanz. Oh, G.o.d, how could he have been so reckless? Of course the news would have gotten back to Glanz, who was tapped deeper into underworld sources than anyone else in Providence.

So how to play it?

The truth was dangerous-once he told it, there would be nothing to fall back on. Billy thought about the chain of people who knew of Glanzs threat to Judge Harmony: Martin Smothers; Nelida, the judges mistress; and Harmonys clerk, Kit Ba.s.s. If Billy sold them all out, what was to stop these goons from whacking all three in order, like killing a virus before it contaminated the population?

He could think of no lie they might believe, so Billy said nothing.

Two fingers roughly pried open Billys eyelid. The flashlight blinded him. "Got a problem understanding the English language?" the bearded goon asked.

"Whats wrong with your English?" the driver screamed in Billys face.

They waited for Billy to answer. Billys heart slammed in terror against his rib cage. He offered, "The paper wanted to do a profile of Rhubarb Glanz and they asked me to make a few calls." Sweat had filled his ear ca.n.a.l, and his own voice sounded like he was speaking underwater. "But I didnt get anything so they dropped the project."

For a second everything was quiet, except Billys panting.

"Whos writing this project?" said the talkative goon.

"Why they writing bout my father?" the driver screamed.

His father ... ?

Uh-oh.

Billy had a.s.sumed this encounter was just business, a little violence between people used to dishing it out and a client accustomed to getting it. But this was about family, and a realm of emotion in which people often made rash and stupid decisions.

"Watch your mouth, Robbie," warned the bearded goon.

Of course, Billy thought, the driver was Robert Glanz, resident of Newport, the younger brother of David Glanz Jr., resident of the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Inst.i.tutions, courtesy of Judge Harmony.

The big goon squatted beside Billy, grabbed a handful of Billys shirt, and pulled him close. "Whos writing this story?"

"n.o.body. The editors dropped it. They gave up."

"What gave them the idea in the first place?"

"Dont know." Billy had answered without hesitation and was pleased with himself. If they could be taught to see Billy as just a bottom-rung plebe, who just made a few calls on the order of The Man, maybe he could slip out of this.

Robbie swung the light from goon to goon to check their expressions.

"Well see," the bearded one said. He pushed Billy back to the ground and then nodded toward Doe Eyes. "Fire up the Cat," he commanded.

Without a word, the gloomy goon swung himself gracefully into the backhoe and wiggled onto the seat. The engine huffed to life, and then snarled at being woken in the middle of the night. Bug-eyed lamps mounted atop the cab threw harsh white light onto the ground. Bits of reflective minerals sparkled in the sand. The goon seemed like an expert at piloting such a machine. The Cat backed away from the party with a series of warning beeps, then turned a sharp semicircle and dropped the wide front bucket to the ground. The goon spun the seat around and worked a separate set of controls. The hydraulic limb at the back of the machine uncurled like a scorpions tail, and the pail scooped a mouthful of earth. With jerky motions, the pail swung to the side and dumped the sand. It swung back to scoop again. The sand from the hole was darker than that on the surface; it looked damp.

They are digging my grave.

Billy faced the revelation without emotion. He recalled his conversation with Brock Harmony, who had feared his kidnapper would force him to dig his own grave. Would Billy prefer that Glanzs goons did a good job? Did he want to be buried in a proper grave, deep under the soil, in a sandpit that soon would be a parking lot?

No ...

To just disappear without leaving a body is to risk becoming a sad joke. A Jimmy Hoffa for the modern day. He preferred to be buried shallow. Snacked upon by coyotes, perhaps, but at least a fair chance to be discovered in time to head off an urban legend.

At least he would not have to endure that conversation with his father. The old man would have no choice but to continue his treatment. He would have to stay alive for the sake of the boy. They would need some kind of home health care service. How would the two of them manage? They would be indigent without Billy. Maybe Medicaid would pay.

Billy looked around in wonder. So this was what a murder scene looked like during the act. He had been to plenty of murder scenes-as a reporter, the day after the crimes. He had for a long time been struck by how an ordinary place, even a beautiful one, can leave a chill once it becomes the scene of a violent death. Like the orchard where a young drifter hanged himself in anonymity. Or the all-night restaurant where a gangster died in a shower of bullets. Or the rolling fields of Gettysburg, where Billy swore he could feel the breeze left behind by cannonb.a.l.l.s. Haunted places, he had called them, though Billy never believed in doomed spirits that walked the earth. He enjoyed a deep breath, despite the diesel fumes. Maybe this would be a good time to believe in ghosts.

The backhoe tucked its pail against the cab and suddenly fell silent. Billy felt pain in his wrists and realized he had unconsciously rubbed them raw against the tape, trying to break free.

"Good enough?" asked Doe Eyes.

"Fine," said the Beard.

"You want me to square off the corners?"

"And be here all night?"

From the Cadillacs trunk, the driver gathered three short-handled shovels, like for moving coal in the old days. He javelined a shovel to each of the goons, then swung his own shovel by the handle, like a majorette, and cracked Billy across the thigh.

So sudden the blow, Billy howled and grasped for his leg. Robbie chuckled as he beat him. Billy pulled himself into a fetal tuck, understanding without irony that he was close to leaving the world in the position he was carried into it. The flat side of the spade punished Billys shoulders and ribs and the backs of his legs. The blows struck with a slap on soft flesh, and with a ringing plink when they hit close to bone.

When Robbie had decided the beating was good enough, or maybe when he just got tired, he stopped, panting, and stabbed his shovel into the ground. He spat in the sand and commanded, "To the hole, okay, boys?"

The two goons pulled Billy to his feet, dragged his battered body to the edge of the trench. The hole was about six feet long and five feet deep. They had done a fine job digging, but Billy was not glad about it. He felt nothing. Such a deep hole. They leaned Billy over it.

I am Hoffa.

"For the last time," the bearded goon said, with a beleaguered tone of disappointment, as if Billy were a child who had let him down. "Why were you calling around for dirt about our employer, Mr. Glanz?"

I will not sell out Martin.

Billy swallowed blood. "Told you guys already," he croaked. "The whole truth."

They spun him into the hole.

He landed on his tailbone and slid to the bottom of the trench. Billy wiped sand from his face. Five feet below the surface the sand felt like an icebox. Above him, a thousand stars were out. He thought for a moment how there were more stars in the universe than grains of sand in this entire pit. The flashlight beam shot all over. The beating had left him numb, but Billy had the sense that no bones had been broken. Well, maybe a rib. He inhaled deeply and a.n.a.lyzed the pain. To be so a.n.a.lytical at such a time ...

Shouldnt this bother me? Why am I not upset?

He heard a shovel bite into the earth. A clump of sand plummeted onto him and landed with a whump. He spit sand from his lips. Another clump struck his chest and splashed into his eyes. The three men worked in a rhythm, quickly shoveling sand into the hole. They were good at it. Like maybe they had filled a lot of graves.

They are f.u.c.king burying me alive.

Billy struggled feebly, but was knocked back by the rain of sand that fell faster and piled ever heavier on his body and his legs. His hands frantically cleared the sand from his face and he gasped for breath. How will the old man break it to Bo?

At the thought of the boy, Billy screamed into the night, his cry hoa.r.s.e and desperate.

"Something youd like to say, Mr. Povich?" Billy recognized the bearded goons voice. "Were happy to take a break."

"This is tiring," agreed Doe Eyes. "How about we rest while you talk?"

"Oh Jesus!" Billy cried out from beneath a mound of damp earth.

They had broken him.