Moving Day: A Thriller (33 page)

Amid the smoke and darkness and generator noise, they realize there is a small loft above them—its hollow black entrance just above the generator. They hadn’t thought to look up—why would they? In the smoke and dark, it just seemed like a low ceiling. And there was no ladder. How did he get up there? He must have pulled the ladder up with him. The clever Jew, hiding in the loft.

The dogs are barking and snapping insanely—frothy, leaping, now pawing at the loft above them.

The Colonel and the third skinhead squint up into the smoke, trying to see into the loft’s dark opening.

The third skinhead, Lee, is slower, more deliberate. He pauses a moment longer to comprehend. To take in the suddenness of events. In a moment, he bends down to the generator, finds the emergency shut-off switch, finally turns it off. In the relief from the generator’s loud wail and rumble—despite the barking of the dogs, despite the dark—he can at least begin to think. He and the Colonel can at least communicate. The smoke starts to clear but continues to hang in the corner of the barn.

The Jew put himself up there so the dogs couldn’t reach him, the skinhead realizes. So none of them could.

And for whatever reason, the Jew was able to function in the smoke. The opening into the loft is narrow and low, the skinhead sees. He realizes it might have kept the smoke out. Maybe there’s an opening up there in the siding of the barn that lets in enough fresh air.

So they can’t smoke him out. How will they get him out of there?

They could toss a torch up there, drive him out with fire, but the whole wooden barn could ignite, along with all Nick’s valuables that are stored in here. Nick might actually kill them—although it was maybe worth Nick’s fury to burn the Jew out. Or fire a shotgun up into the floorboards. Although if the loft is full of storage, the Jew could probably get up off the loft floor to protect himself. And if one of them drove off now to find a gun, could the other one hold the Jew up there alone? Because Dustin and Pork are down . . .

These strategies, these fragments of vengefulness crackling through the smallest skinhead’s brain, never occur to Pork, the muscled one, who—face bloodied, adrenaline surging—is up off the floor moments later, screaming furious and raw, and who now leaps blindly, impressively, up at the loft’s opening. He dangles there for a moment, hanging by his fingers.

Jesus fuck! He’s fucking insane!
The black spade will land any second on his fingers and break them, Lee knows.

But, inexplicably, the spade doesn’t materialize to crush his fingers. Miraculously, the muscled skinhead, fueled by the rush of pure rage, has the chance to pull himself up to a crouched position in the dark loft entrance and takes a step into the ominously quiet loft. Has the Jew already moved defensively to the back of the loft? Is he already cowering rat-like, Jew-like, in the corner?

It happens in the next moment. Even from down here, he and the Colonel can see that the attack doesn’t come from the deep blackness in front of the muscled skinhead, where he is looking,
where anyone would look. The spade swings at the muscled skinhead unexpectedly from the side.

He staggers back a defenseless step, then falls out of the loft backward. He lands on the barn’s dirt floor eight feet below. His shoulders and neck hit first. His body bounces once. Then doesn’t move.

The Colonel and the third skinhead stare wordless, paralyzed.

The Jew resisted the temptation of those grasping fingers, Lee realizes. He waited patiently for the skinhead’s moment of maximum stupidity. To inflict maximum damage. He waited until the idiot was standing defenseless in the loft door.

Rage seeps up in the third skinhead, fills him, replacing the caution inside him with its quickness, its darting, manic, random bounce. Though the barn has gone suddenly quieter—minus the generator, the dogs sniffing now amid the clearing smoke, pausing to concentrate, trying to figuring it out—the chaos is generated from within him now. This old Jew who has done this. This old Jew who has done this out of the smoke and dark and from the safety and invisibility of the loft. Sneaky, unfair, cowering in the shadows like a rat. Just like them. Just like he’s always heard about them. So the stories are true. The fury gathers in him, a rage not unfamiliar to him, rage at the injustice and unfairness of the world always in him in a low simmer, but now uncapped. Rage waiting just for this.

He’s up there. He can’t escape. But they can’t get him. God, does he want to pepper the floor of the loft with a shotgun, fire along its length and width.

The dogs continue barking, leaping, frothing.

The beam of the third skinhead’s flashlight finally finds the light switch, then shines on the severed electrical line below it. He shines
the flashlight along the underside of the loft, following it to the darkest corner of the barn, looking for another entrance, a weak point, to find any way to get at the Jew. Nothing.

He needs to get up high enough to at least see in, to see what he is dealing with up there. Here on the floor of the barn, he can see with his flashlight, there is a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, positioned several feet back from the generator. Safely out of range of the swinging spade.

Climbing up onto the chest gives him enough angle to shine his flashlight in.

He sees the old Jew’s eyes glowing like a rat’s caught in the light.

He’s out of range of the rusty spade.

But he’s well within range of the loft’s heavy ladder.

It slides out at him furiously, along the loft floor, at the perfect height to catch him in the neck.

The smallest skinhead is knocked cleanly off the wooden chest, and his head hits the edge of the old generator as he falls.

The ladder is pulled back into the loft several feet. Then it slides down from the loft to the floor. Its top leans against the loft entrance, as it must have originally.

“Christ,” says the Colonel, backing away.

He finally materializes from the loft’s shadows. He steps halfway down the ladder, facing out, the spade still in one hand. The dogs are barking fiercely, snarling, dancing below him as if beckoned.

Which is exactly what the man in the loft has wanted, apparently. Because he swings the spade hard at the first dog and catches it in the flank. The black dog goes flying. The insult stirs it to even higher paroxysms of rage. The same dog lurches back, yelps, paws up at Peke once, and he catches it with the spade again.

The second dog trots, as if leisurely—and with inarguable intelligence—out of the barn and into the night.

The first one limps out after it.

Partly reluctantly, partly ceremonially, somehow inevitably, the Colonel draws the polished, elegant Nazi dagger from its leather sheath. A Third Reich artifact, more ceremonial than useful, he knows, its handle inlaid with semiprecious stones, an oath to the Führer engraved in its glistening blade. But it will be little use in reaching the Jew holding the rusty spade. The garden tool with an impressive record. Like the reaper’s sickle, swung out of the dark. Meting out justice, counting out revenge, in single thudding strokes.

The Colonel holds the dagger up, waveringly, unsure . . .

The Jew takes the last few steps down the ladder, strides toward the Colonel, confident, emboldened, making clear that the Colonel’s dagger is of no consequence. The Jew briskly pulls a fabric kerchief down from his mouth. It must have helped protect him from the smoke. In three quick steps, the spade poised defensively, he is opposite the Colonel.

He holds the spade; the Colonel holds the knife. The Colonel tries to figure out how to lunge for him, but the spade seems to give the Jew the irrevocable advantage, keeping the Colonel at a distance.

“You have tangled with a superior species,” says the Jew, and the Colonel can hear in the ironic tone of voice that the Jew finds both absurdity and truth in the statement, and means for the Colonel to hear that, too. It sends an extra shudder of fury and fear through the Colonel—he can’t separate the two. “Your inferiority will cost you now,” says the Jew.

The Colonel lunges and slashes futilely with the dagger.

Slap.
The dagger is gone from the Colonel’s right hand, and he yelps and grabs at the searing pain in his hand in the wake of its departure. Pain like he’s never known.

“How stupid you are,” says the voice—its detached, calm tone infuriating, humiliating. “Proving your stupidity so quickly . . .”

And with the pain of his hand still throbbing, still primary, the Colonel becomes aware of the spade at his throat.

“Take off your clothes,” says the Jew.

The old Colonel looks at him. He thinks he may not have understood. He is afraid, though, that he has.

“Off. Everything off.”

The spade is pressed harder against the Colonel’s throat. He feels its rusty edge—smells its life of dirt and dung.

“Spades. Shovels. Ropes. These were my weapons. These were my existence. We caught and ate wild dogs. We trapped and roasted cats. We roped a boar once. I remember all the knots. I remember everything. Undress. Faster.” Even being so close, a few feet from the Colonel, it is still a voice in the dark, in the inky barn.

The spade prods the commandant’s ribs forcefully, painfully.

“You have unleashed an animal,” the voice warns. “And you will not get it back in its cage.”

Nick dials the house from his cell phone. Lets it ring.

“Christ,” he says.

“What?” asks LaFarge.

“No answer.” He shakes his head. “Looks like those crazy fuckers couldn’t wait.” He puts the cell phone back on the dash. Looks slightly pained. “I told them to wait.” But he seems only slightly annoyed that they disobeyed his order. It seems he half expected it. “Well,” he shrugs, “makes things easier.”

LaFarge wants to know what he means, but he no longer dares to ask Nick any uninvited questions. He doesn’t want to ponder
the details of what Nick might say. And thinks maybe Nick doesn’t want to either.

The Colonel is roped and taped to a chair near the center of the barn. Naked.

The skinheads are all tied where they fell. Which ones breathing, which ones not, the Colonel can’t tell.

The barn lights are back on. They shine brightly on the Colonel’s naked, white body, soaked with nervous perspiration yet shivering in the cold.