Loot the Moon

by Mark Arsenault

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

  Billy sighed. “I’m comfortable.”

  The driver pushed his derby hat higher on his forehead, shot Billy a glance in the mirror, and smirked behind his rainbow sunglasses. 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 don’t 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 passed the broadcast headquarters of a local rock station. The station’s call letters glowed in pink neon in a fifth-floor window. The overnight DJ would be awake, Billy thought. Was there nobody else who could help him?

  “Make sure them headlights back there ain’t following,” said the goon sitting on Billy’s right.

  “I know what I’m 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 scrape on his palm with tape and an old T-shirt. That was probably so he wouldn’t 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 goddamn what?

  Escape seemed impossible at the moment. Billy’s 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 passed 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, they’d 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 wasn’t 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 man’s 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 didn’t want to be saved.

  The Cadillac’s 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 Billy’s 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 hell this is about?”

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

  Billy swung his bound feet onto the seat. Fuck them and the upholstery, he thought. From a sitting position, he walked on his ass bones until his feet could touch the ground. The other goon grabbed a handful of Billy’s 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 Billy’s 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 Billy’s shirt and rolled him onto his back. Then the hand pinched Billy’s Adam’s 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.

  Shit, are these guys from the phone company? No wonder they’re so rough.

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

  The bespectacled driver shouted in Billy’s 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 bitch, 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 scraps about Glanz. Oh, God, 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 Glanz’s threat to Judge Harmony: Martin Smothers; Nelida, the judge’s mistress; and Harmony’s clerk, Kit Bass. 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 Billy’s eyelid. The flashlight blinded him. “Got a problem understanding the English language?” the bearded goon asked.

  “What’s wrong with your English?” the driver screamed in Billy’s face.

  They waited for Billy to answer. Billy’s 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 canal, and his own voice so
unded like he was speaking underwater. “But I didn’t get anything so they dropped the project.”

  For a second everything was quiet, except Billy’s panting.

  “Who’s writing this project?” said the talkative goon.

  “Why they writing ’bout my father?” the driver screamed.

  His father … ?

  Uh-oh.

  Billy had assumed 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 Institutions, courtesy of Judge Harmony.

  The big goon squatted beside Billy, grabbed a handful of Billy’s shirt, and pulled him close. “Who’s writing this story?”

  “Nobody. The editors dropped it. They gave up.”

  “What gave them the idea in the first place?”

  “Don’t 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.

  “We’ll 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 scorpion’s 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 Glanz’s 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 cannonballs. 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 Cadillac’s 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 Billy’s 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 analyzed the pain. To be so analytical at such a time …

  Shouldn’t 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 fucking 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 hoarse and desperate.

  “Something you’d like to say, Mr. Povich?” Billy recognized the bearded goon’s voice. “We’re 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.

  Sobbing into the sand, struggling for air, Billy told them in fractured sentences of the judge’s mistress in New York, and of Martin’s meeting with her. He told them of the theory that Rackers was paid to kill the judge, and he confessed that he knew Rhubarb Glanz had made a threat.

  He sold out Martin, the mistress, and the clerk.

  The sand fell no more. Billy never heard the three goons walk away. Just the pop of three doors and the crunch of the tires fading to nothingness in the night.

  fifteen />
  Billy lay still as the silence swept up after the sound of the car. Glanz’s goons had just left him in the pit, under what felt like several hundred pounds of sand. Did they leave him to escape? Or leave him to die? They probably didn’t give a damn. They had not been ordered to kill Billy, or he would be dead. They had been ordered to get information in whatever manner proved effective. Turned out, a kidnapping, a beating, and a premature burial proved highly effective. Mission accomplished, so they went home.

  They didn’t care enough about Billy to free him or even to finish him off.

  He was pinned on his back, twisted slightly toward his left side, under a cone of damp sand several feet high, the point of which looked to be about at his thighs. The sand sloped steeply toward his head and had begun to fill the bottom of the trench, where Billy had frantically cleared space to breathe. The other side of the pile sloped less sharply toward his feet. Billy realized they had intentionally spared his head the worst of the sand to allow him to talk. Had he been fresh, untenderized by a shovel, and not bound hand and foot, he might have wormed his way out of the pile. But for the moment, he was trapped. His hands were near his mouth, and he used an index finger to brush sand from his eyes and to swab inside his nostrils.

  Screaming for help would probably just waste energy, which his injured body would need to survive a cold night. The work crew building this project would arrive in a few hours. Then he could scream, assuming they didn’t have a day off or a union strike.

  The part of his brain that enjoyed torturing the rest of him created an image of Bo and the old man struggling in gray smoke. In this fantasy, Billy could smell charcoal and hear smoke alarms screech. He could see Bo tug at the old man’s arm, but the boy could not move him and the smoke got thicker and their movements … slowed … down … .

  Jesus Christ ! Enough!

  He shook the image away. This scenario was one in a million. Maybe one in ten million. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? He sighed. He obsessed, he figured, because the stakes were infinitely high. My boy’s life. He would talk to Bo. Later today after he was rescued from the trench. Make the kid promise to save himself. Billy thrashed angrily against the prison of sand, and relished the pain that assured him he was alive and awake. He knew talking to Bo was no good—the boy would promise anything, but he’d never leave his grandpa.