Billy Povich: Loot The Moon Part 3

five.

The men hitting Kit were not s.e.xists. No, they beat her as hard as they would any man. Kit saw the blow coming and clenched her stomach muscles. Whump! The fist popped off her flat abdomen. She ground her teeth and tried to stay silent to deny them the satisfaction of her pain, but she could not help releasing a low grunt and a puff of air.

Just a bruise, she thought. Nothing more. The two men holding her arms snickered.

Anonymous dance music vibrated through the walls and filled the narrow hallway where the three goons had caught her trying to sneak into the nightclub. They could have had her arrested for breaking and entering. The law citation flashed into Kits mind.

t.i.tle 11, Chapter 8-5.1. Unlawful breaking and entering of a business place.

The monetary fine for B and E was three hundred dollars, which seemed light compared to the possible jail time-three years. Had they called the cops after they had grabbed her, Kit would have argued she didnt break, she had just entered through an unlocked back door. Maybe she could have pleaded down to trespa.s.sing. Not that it mattered; her captors had decided that the police, the lawyers, the judge, jury, and the media would only get in the way of punching her.

"Hey, Robbie," said the hulk holding Kits left arm. "Thats your best?" He laughed. He had sharp fingernails for a guy, and they bit into her bicep. His long goatee, dyed pure white, brushed her shoulder. "Id let her go, but Im afraid shed kick your a.s.s." He squeezed her arm. "Shes been in the gym."

The hulk on her other arm leaned close to Kit. His eyes were dazzling green, the eyes of a movie star or a fairy-tale prince. He smelled like cigars and Old Spice. "You got any skirts our friend Robbie can borrow?" he deadpanned.

"What are you, Rob?" the first hulk asked. "About a size eight?"

The guy throwing the punches was Kits height, five foot five, and by far the smallest of the three thugs. He dressed in a black turtleneck and a Charlie Chaplin derby hat made of shiny felt, with a rolled brim and a red silk band. He wore sungla.s.ses, indoors, despite the late hour and the dim light of the hallway. The gla.s.ses looked like something a poker player would wear to hide his eyes: two round, shimmering, rainbow-colored discs in an invisible nylon frame. Though slim in the waist, his shoulders were mushy and he seemed pitiably out of shape-after just three punches his colorless skin, peppered with freckles, glistened wet, and he pretended not to pant.

He had confined his blows to her midsection. Probably to avoid making marks a prosecutor could examine, she figured. They wont kill me, not tonight. They intended only to knock her about. The revelation gave her new confidence, which burned in her chest like a hot shot of whiskey. I can handle this. She stared at Robbie, the little man in the silly derby, who looked more exhausted for hitting her than Kit did for taking it.

Kit sucked a deep breath and said in a hard whisper, "Hes no bigger than a size six."

The two hulks shook with giggles. Robbies lip peeled up in a snaggletoothed sneer. He drew back his arm as if to slap her face. She flinched and turned away. He did not slap her. Instead, he suddenly rocked back and plunged another uppercut into Kits stomach. Whump! She had not had time to fully tighten her muscles, and the punch wobbled her. She gasped, and was thankful for the hulks holding her arms; if not for them, she would have gone down. Shed rather have taken five ounces of speeding lead behind her ear than let Robbie see her go down.

Its just pain, she reminded herself as she grimaced against the void in her lungs and waited for the air to return. She remembered the runners proverb, the code for her life etched with a knife into her headboard: Pain is weakness leaving your body. She spoke the code out loud every night before she slept. The code had helped her, now at age thirty-three, through twenty marathons and six triathlons. Robbies jab could inflict no pain worse than what Kit regularly inflicted on herself, in training. She thought about the interval workout she had run two weeks before: up a one-mile dry ski slope in New Hampshire, a double black diamond cluttered with boulders, downed trees, and winter wheat. She had run until her legs could no longer support her weight. After she had collapsed on the mountain, she dry-heaved until she thought she might squeeze out her spleen or gallbladder, or maybe something important she might need in a race.

For a runner, Kits legs were a little short of ideal, her hips a little wider than Olympic proportions. Slightly bowlegged, with high arches and a choppy running gait that no film study had ever fixed, she had never beaten a professional marathoner. That was all right with her; she could not control genetics, and was content to condition herself to within a whisker of her theoretical maximum. She had never lost a race to another amateur.

She wheezed a half breath.

Whump!

Pain is weakness leaving my body.

For a shrimp, this guy was whacking a lot of weakness out of her.

The dance club racket bled continuously through the walls of buckling plaster. One song blended into another, mixed by a skilled DJ who knew how to keep a crowd of ravers on their feet. The walls of the hallway were covered with a high-gloss cream paint. The floor had long ago been painted red, though thousands of footsteps had worn a path down the middle to the tan floorboards. At the far end of the hall, the outside door was closed, to not invite attention to Robbies Tae Bo workout. One screw-in fluorescent bulb, curled like a pigs tail, hung from the ceiling. The exit sign above the door was dark. Hmm, a burned-out bulb in the exit sign. Thats a fire code violation, Kit thought. Section 23-28. Somebody needed to write these guys up.

Kit coughed, spat on the floor, and stole a deep breath. One hulk held up his hand to freeze Robbie in place. "Lets see if that was enough," he said. To Kit, he asked: "Want to tell us why you were snooping around back here?" He chuckled. "Dont want to pay the cover charge?"

"I told you ... gentlemen," she said, her voice sounding scratchy in her own ears, "Im here ... to speak to Mr. Glanz."

Robbie suddenly stuck a finger in her face and blurted, "People make appointments to see Mr. Glanz!"

These were the first words she had heard him speak. The outburst, and the thin voice, as colorless as the lines of sweat running down his face, surprised her. The two hulks smiled at each other, sharing some inside joke at Robbies expense. Kit didnt know which thug to address. "I tried making an appointment," she said. "He wont return my calls."

"That," one hulk said, "would be known as a hint." He nodded to Robbie.

The little man reared back and aimed a punch at Kits abdominals. She tightened in time. The blow bounced off with little more force than a slap. Robbie was too tired to put much behind it. He shook his hand at the wrist. Her breath had quickly returned.

"So whats so important," said the second hulk, "that you gotta interrupt Mr. Glanz while hes ignoring you?"

Robbie pointed at her again and shouted, "What you wanna see him for?"

"Im here to talk about Judge Harmony."

Robbie reared back to hit her again, but the first hulk, the talkative one, waved him off. He stroked his silky blond beard in silence for a few seconds. Their grip on her arms slackened, and it was clear the beating was over. "So who are you?" he asked. "Youre too young to be the wife."

"Maybe the judges comatta?" the other hulk said.

Kit wrenched her arms and they let her go. "Im not his mistress," she growled, with a moments glare for each of them. "I was his law clerk."

Robbies lips slowly rolled in on each other, until his mouth was just a colorless slice across his face. He cried suddenly, "That judge put my brother away for life!"

"Easy, Rob," said hulk number one.

His brother? Kit could hardly believe it. So this pipsqueak was the younger son of David "Rhubarb" Glanz?

This was nepotism at its worst-she had been pummeled by the runt son of a mobbed-up nightclub owner who obviously wasnt qualified to be a backstage hooligan. Robbie clutched his sore wrist and panted like a racehorse. If this were a state job, hed probably file for disability. No wonder the two hulks, the real muscle, despised him. Kit clenched her right fist and fantasized about driving Robbies teeth down his throat. Her breathing was still shallow and her abdomen was sore. There wouldnt be much power in the blow, and it would be a shame to be stomped or killed over one mush punch.

Someday, Robbie, she swore.

The four of them stood there in the hall for an uncomfortable moment. There seemed nothing more to say. They were all aware of the criminal conviction of David Glanz Jr., Robbies brother, on two counts of manslaughter, and of Judge Harmonys harsh sentence. n.o.body had expected the judge to hand down the maximum-thirty years for each count, to be served consecutively-but, as the judge had told Kit, he had seen enough of the son that reminded him of the father, and he put junior away.

They were all aware, too, of Rhubarbs threat to get even with the law, and with Gil Harmony.

"A shame what happened to the judge," said the second hulk, his voice flat. "Killed by a trespa.s.ser. That happens sometimes." He stepped closer to Kit, almost touching. She held her ground. He looked straight down at her. Softly, he warned, "Most of the time, its the trespa.s.ser who gets killed."

His gentle smile mocked her. The beauty in his green eyes unnerved Kit. Those were the devils eyes, she thought, the perfect eyes of a fallen angel. She was suddenly frightened by what the beauty had hidden from her-for the first time that evening, she realized she had blundered close to her own funeral in trying to force her way to see Rhubarb Glanz.

Fear attacked her body with electrified jaws; its low-voltage bite shocked her all over.

six.

The rattling of boots up a chain-link fence in the middle of the night was like white noise in this hardscrabble neighborhood of three- and four-decker apartment buildings. People scaled fences all night around here, and n.o.body with any street sense ever gave them trouble for it. Citizens minded their own business, out of fear or indifference.

He climbed the eight-foot fence where it met the wall of the apartment building, beneath the front porch. With a foot atop the fence, he could reach the porch roof.

The slanted roof looked like a raft pitched to starboard in a rolling sea of blackness. The shingles were dry and rough and they shed a tiny avalanche of grit into the tin gutter when he climbed onto the roof. The shades were down in the second-floor windows; not that it mattered much in such darkness, with no working streetlight for two hundred yards.

He lay on his back on the roof and rested. The night was clear. A few stars hung dimly over a cloud of light pollution from the city. A distant car alarm sounded. He watched the stars for a few minutes because he thought it especially important to appreciate whatever small beauty he might find on a night such as this.

Then he climbed the fire escape. The iron rails smeared rust on the palms of his tight rubber kitchen gloves. He stopped at the third-floor landing, a narrow metal grate cluttered with clay pots sprouting greens. He pa.s.sed his nose over the pots and smelled rosemary, overpowering the other garden herbs. The landing was just below a window looking into a small bedroom. Deeper inside the apartment, a light had been left on. He could see the unmade twin-sized bed, and clothing strewn about. His putty knife wiggled easily in the crack above the jamb. The old-fashioned window, counterweighted on a rope and pulley system inside the wall, slid open almost by itself, and he slipped inside, onto the worn-out mattress that squeaked and sank under his weight. The room smelled of dirty laundry and cigarettes. Twisted b.u.t.ts filled a gla.s.s ashtray on a pine dresser, next to a digital clock that glowed red-1:07 a.m. The two dots between the one and the zero pulsed to tick off the seconds. He lost himself in the pulse, until the clock flashed 1:08 and knocked him from his trance.

The narrow closet had no door; that was no place to hide.

Instinctively, his hand went to his belt to feel the pick. The ice pick was a rounded steel shank, ten inches long, with a point on one end and a wooden handle on the other. The handle was grooved with four indentations for fingers, and he liked the shape of it in his hand. The antique tool came from an era before refrigeration, when the iceman sold blocks packed in sawdust from the back of a truck, and customers who forgot to empty the drip pan under the icebox had to mop their floors.

The tools handle had not been oiled in a generation; the wood was dry and splintering, but the picks hardened metal tip had recently been sharpened to a vicious needle.

The hallway to the kitchen was some ten feet wide, and it served as a living room in the efficiency apartment. A plaid fabric sofa had been pushed against the left-hand wall, next to a decorative wooden footlocker dressed up with black iron bands and lumpy round rivets to make it look like a treasure chest. Three pairs of jeans, a half dozen T-shirts, and a pair of sneakers had been neatly stacked on the footlocker. The light in the hall came from a compact bathroom on the right-hand side, opposite the sofa.

He walked past the bathroom, to the kitchen.

Jesus Christ!

Standing alone in the dark by the window, a man.

He grabbed for the pick, a flush of adrenaline momentarily blackening his vision. He fumbled for the weapon ... it slipped from his hand and knocked on the floor. He dove after it.

Wait a second ...

Why hasnt he yelled for help?

What the ... ?

"Oh," he said aloud, then snorted in ironic laughter and pushed himself to his feet.

Just a department store mannequin, thats all. Not even realistic, either-a boyish waif with shiny sand-colored skin, a molded plastic hairdo, and a stiff pose, like a teenager with a bad back waiting for the bus. The figure had been dressed in tan chinos and a white polo shirt with the collar turned up and the price tag dangling from the sleeve. The right arm had apparently once broken off near the shoulder; it was crudely bandaged with blue painters tape.

Feeling his heart slow, and as leftover adrenaline tickled his bowels, he looked around the rest of the kitchen. The room was small and crowded: a white refrigerator and electric range side by side; a giant first-generation microwave consuming most of the counter s.p.a.ce; a deep porcelain sink half filled with gray water, dirty cereal bowls, and stainless tableware. A round butcher-block table and a single white farm chair had been shoved in the corner, in front of the only window, next to the mannequin. The apartment door was beside the refrigerator. His mind pictured the sweep of the door. No, he decided, there was not enough room to stand behind it when it opened.

He tried the bathroom.

What a tiny s.p.a.ce! To the right, a cheap wood-grained vanity held a small oval sink. On the vanity, a toothbrush stood in a pint gla.s.s with crud in its bottom, next to a new cake of soap with the word Ivory still legible on it.

There was no medicine cabinet, just a mirror on the wall, about two feet wide and three high, speckled with toothpaste spatter, and streaked from where a hand had once wiped it clean of fog.

Opposite the mirror and sink, a night blue shower curtain decorated with twinkly gold stars stretched on a rod across a shower stall.

The toilet was tucked in the corner next to the shower, a stack of ten wrinkled magazines piled on the tank. The top one was American Cycle. The ceiling was barely seven feet; his head felt heat from the bright halogen light fixture, which must have been left on for hours.

He pushed past the shower curtain and stepped into the stall, letting the curtain close behind him. The bottom of the stall was wet. A clump of brown hair had settled with soap sc.u.m over the drain. Streaks from a drippy showerhead had stained the wall. The s.p.a.ce was no bigger than a coffin. An uncomfortable pressure built inside his head, filling his sinuses with a sense of fear just short of tangible, like a heavy, odorless gas that was slowly suffocating him.

The shower was the best place to hide. He wiped his nose on the back of his rubber glove.

In an hour, he reminded himself, he would be done here.

But first, practice. He took a dry run in slow motion. The right hand drew the pick from his belt, left hand reached across his body to sweep the curtain aside. His weight shifted nimbly from back foot to front.

One quick upstroke ...

He burst from the stall, saw himself in the mirror, and froze.

Such a familiar face, warped by tension that pulled his mouth into a grimace and bunched the flesh at the hinges of his jaw, as if he had the mumps. How odd to see that face, so ordinary to him, in this strange apartment. He felt like he was looking at something other than his own reflection. Like he was looking at a bad twin, an ugly copy of himself.

Time seemed to stretch, until the reflection seemed more like a snapshot from long ago, on some forgotten night when his ugly twin had done something terrible. His eyes went to the ice pick in the mirror, and he gasped. The sight of the pick attached to his hand-the tool meant to puncture another mans lung-knocked the breath from him. He stood there, as still as a picture, and watched shiny sweat gather on his forehead and the b.u.mps of his cheekbones. Some odd compulsion drove him from the bathroom.

There must be another place to hide.

He leaned against the wall in the hall and pinched the bridge of his nose. With that G.o.dd.a.m.n mirror, hed have to watch himself do it, like seeing real-time video of his darkest thoughts. He must not watch himself. Sticking a man between two ribs was something he would do, but it was not who he was.

Seeing the act would make it too real.

Of course he knew intellectually that the distinction was crazy-if murder you do, a murderer you are, and forever-but he had struck a mental barrier he could not cross.

He fought an irrational fear that his reflection would be able to identify him as the killer.

Or that he would identify it.

He stalked the apartment, the gleaming steel pick in his hand. Behind the sofa? Inside a closet with no door? No, there was no place else to hide. No G.o.dd.a.m.n place. The clock had raced to 1:23. There was not much time.

He ran to the kitchen, rummaged through the cabinets beneath the sink, and found a dark plastic grocery bag, the name of a supermarket on the side. In a nearby drawer, he found scissors and clear plastic tape.

He cut one thin, horizontal rectangle from the bag for his eyes, then a single vertical slit for air. He pulled the bag over his head, wound the tape three times around his neck to secure the hood, and then left the kitchen as he had found it.

Back in the shower, he peeked from behind the curtain, saw some unknown killer in a mask, and was calm.

The fleet feet of the bartender everybody called Scratch had extra bounce that night. He felt like dancing down the streetscape like Gene Kelly in Adidas racing flats. He hummed "Singin in the Rain." With seventy-two dollars of tax-free tips in his pocket, and carrying two bags of stolen treasure from the mall, the part-time bartender/part-time crook had enjoyed a profitable day. He felt like a superhero, except in reverse. Scratchs secret ident.i.ty was his night job, as the mild-mannered mixer of watered-down highb.a.l.l.s in a dive bar in the Jewelry District. During the day, he was Shoplifter Man, faster than a speeding mall cop, who could boost a seersucker suit right off your back and leave you nothing but the wrinkles. He tapped a few happy dance steps on the concrete, hummed louder, and added silent lyrics in his thoughts.

Im singing in my brain

Just singin in my brain

Dadoo dadoo dadoo-do