Frustrated, the rat pulled its foreleg out and then scratched absentmindedly behind his ear. Sitting back on his haunches, he licked his front paws and smoothed his whiskers like some ancient Chinese philosopher contemplating a philosophical question. But there was only one answer: he couldn’t reach the meat from any point outside of the cage; if he wanted it, he’d have to go inside.
The risk was too great. The rat turned away, then stopped. Wasn’t he the winner of a thousand territorial fights and another thousand to determine who would have the right to mate and pass his DNA on to countless other generations of urban rats? He wanted that meat, and by God he was going to get it.
The rat stalked toward the entrance of the cage. He stepped gingerly inside, jumpy with the smell of metal and man all around him, but his hunger was now insatiable. His stomach gurgled and he salivated. He was only inches to salvation from starvation in winter and the possibility of living for one more glorious summer.
Then he was standing above the metal plate on which the meat rested. The smell of the morsel filled his nostrils and removed all fear. He placed a paw on the metal and then reached forward with the other.
The metal plate shifted, and he knew in that moment that he was caught. Still, he abandoned his prize and flung himself backward in an attempt to escape. He almost made it, too. Instinctively, he stuck his paw beneath the spring-loaded door as it slammed into place and yanked up. But the lock had already set and his effort was in vain.
However, there wasn’t time to think through his predicament. He whirled at the sound of another animal in the alley. The shadow of a man fell over the cage and trapped animal. The man reached down for the handle but reflexively pulled his hand back when the rat leaped, snarling and with bared fangs.
The man chuckled. “Oh, you’re a nasty one,” he said, smiling as he leaned over to study the rat. “Ooooh, and big. It’s going to be fun to do you.”
The rat backed away from the face of the man. He showed his long, yellow incisors and held his front paws up like a grappler, ready to escape if he could or fight if he must.
The man wasn’t going to allow either. He picked up the cage, grunting slightly in surprise at the unexpected weight of the creature. Chortling, he placed the cage on top of a Dumpster, very pleased with his catch. Sometimes he got an alley cat, which were always fun, or the occasional squirrel when he pursued his “hobby” in Central Park. But there was nothing like a good rat. They were so smart and knew what was coming, yet even afraid they were ferocious and that added to his excitement.
With the cage on top of the Dumpster, the man was face-to-face with the rodent. They looked for a moment in each other’s eyes—the dark brown of the man, the red of the rat. Then the rat hissed and flung himself at the man’s face, causing him to flinch again.
The man was so preoccupied that he almost missed the soft voices and footfalls in the snow from the alley’s entrance thirty feet away. He shrank back behind the Dumpster and peeked around the corner as two New York cops walked past, their breath escaping in clouds from their mouths into the frigid air.
The man’s heart pounded. He liked to think of himself as tough, but in reality he was a coward. That’s what made him dangerous—to rats and anyone else—a type of cowardice that made him angry with self-loathing and hatred for anyone he perceived as “looking down” on him. He shivered with fear and cold and set the cage back down in the snow behind the Dumpster, so he couldn’t be seen from the street if the cops came back. It was early evening, though already dark, and so cold that the sidewalks in that part of East Harlem were nearly deserted as people hunkered down.
He stamped his feet to warm them up. The shoes he wore weren’t the best for snow. He loved cherry red, high-top Chuck Taylor “old school” basketball shoes; loved them so much that he had nearly a dozen pairs so that if one pair wore out, he always had a new pair to replace them. Red, always red, like the anger that burned inside of him. Red like fire.
The man pulled a plastic water bottle from the backpack he’d stashed next to the Dumpster, opened the valve, and pointed it at the rat. He squeezed and a stream of liquid shot from the opening and doused the rat, which responded with outraged squeals. Backing as far into a corner of the cage as possible, the rat shook itself and wiped at the noxious liquid with its paws. But the man continued to spray him until he was soaking wet.
When the bottle was empty, the man stood and placed it in the Dumpster. He looked down at the rodent, which was panting in fear and quivering with rage as it watched him. “You think you’re so tough,” the man sneered. He pulled out a box of wooden matches and carefully removed one before squatting in front of the case. Showing the rat the match, he then lit it, the smell of sulfur momentarily replacing the stench of gasoline. “Let’s see how you handle this.”
Sensing the approach of death, the rat rushed at the man, knowing that he’d never achieve his goal. As such he made it even easier for the tossed match to reach him and ignite the fuel that soaked his fur. The rat shrieked as he exploded into a ball of fire and began leaping about the cage, screeching almost human-like and rolling over to try to reach the snow.
The pain grew so great that at first he didn’t see the man get down on his hands and knees to watch the suffering. When the rat noticed, he rushed up to the side of the cage, extending his paws as if trying to reach the man while biting savagely and futilely at the wire.
“Yesssss,” the man hissed with pleasure. “Burn, baby, burn! Oh, it hurts so good.” He felt the urge in his loins as each moment of the rodent’s torment increased his sexual enjoyment of the spectacle.
The rat died like that, pressed against the side of the cage; still trying to get at his tormentor. Sighing with regret that it was over so soon, the man chuckled to himself. Good show, he thought. It was even better than that puppy he’d taken from a little girl one evening last summer and then set on fire in the park. Rats are always good. Only one thing better.
The last thought brought a pleasant shiver that coursed its way through his body like a stimulant. He gasped as he recalled each exquisite moment of horror he’d inflicted. The terror on people’s faces. The screams. The cries for help. And before that . . . the fear in the intended victim’s eyes when she realized what was about to happen. Sighing, he shook his head sadly. Such a rare treat. And only under orders, so he had to settle for animals in between “missions.”
Pulling his thoughts away from the reverie, the man picked up the cage and tripped the lever to open the door. He shook the cage until the black, still smoldering carcass fell out onto the snow. Stepping around the dead rodent so as to avoid getting any smudges on his red high-tops, the man then walked quickly to the alley entrance. There he looked both ways before stepping out on the sidewalk and scurrying away, the cage dangling from his hand.
“Hey you!” a man’s voice called out from the shadows across the street.
He froze. He’d been careless. He’d looked both ways up and down the sidewalk, but he hadn’t noticed the two cops had crossed and were standing on the other side behind a parked car.
The man considered running, but he’d never been much of an athlete and knew that they’d catch him. Besides, he reminded himself, you’ve rehearsed this a thousand times . . . just in case.
“Yes, sir?” he called out to the cops who were walking across the street toward him. His voice quavered and he hoped they would think it was just the cold. “What can I do for you?”
“Cold night to be out,” said one of the uniformed officers, a large man with a scarf wrapped around his face.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied. He held up the cage. “We have rats in my mother’s apartment,” he said. “Borrowed a cage from a friend.”
“Got rats in my place, too,” the other cop, a short man, said. “But they eventually wise up about the cage and won’t go near it. Get a cat.”
“I like cats,” the young man replied, “but Mother’s allergic to cat hair. So I can’t have one.”
>
“Well, hope you get ’em with your cage,” the second cop said. “Have a good night.”
“Thank you. I’m sure I will . . . get them, I mean.”
As the cops turned away and began walking off in the direction they’d come earlier, the man heard the big one snicker. “ ‘We have rats in Mother’s house,’ ” he said, mimicking him. “And Jesus, Joseph, and Mary . . . you see his face?”
“Yeah, what a freak. And wearing cherry red Chuck Taylors in weather like this; his feet had to be freezing,” he heard the shorter cop reply before their voices faded.
The young man stood still for a moment, clenching his fists. Even the fucking cops thought they were better than him. It’s part of what made him want to burn things. He imagined running up to the cops and squirting them with gasoline like he had the rat. Then it would be burn baby burn, he thought happily.
However, he was powerless to act on his fantasy, so he walked off in the opposite direction. Because of the cold he hadn’t gone too far from his home that night and arrived outside the run-down East Harlem walk-up where he and his mother had moved after leaving Brooklyn several years earlier. He looked up at the second floor, to the window of his mother’s bedroom, and was disappointed to see that a light was still on. She’s up. She’s going to want to talk. I don’t want to talk to her. He considered waiting until she went to sleep, but as the cop had noted to his partner, his high-tops were soaked and he couldn’t feel his feet anymore they were so cold.
He climbed the steps to the landing and pulled four keys on a ring from his pants pocket. There was a strong piece of string attached to the ring and the other end tied to a belt loop so that he wouldn’t lose them. One of the keys he inserted into the door lock and another he used to turn the deadbolt to let himself into the building.
The other two keys were for the locks leading to their rooms on the second floor. He unlocked those and turning the knob as quietly as he could he entered the apartment. Muffled voices from down the hallway meant his mother was watching television. Removing his coat and hanging it on a peg next to the door, he crept toward his bedroom, hoping she might not hear him.
“Son?” his mother’s voice called out. “Is that you? Come see your mother.”
The young man hung his head. There was no escaping it. As he walked down the hallway to her room, he hoped that she was watching something she liked so that the conversation would be short.
“To the moon, Alice,” the fat man on the television screen bellowed just as he opened the door to her room. Good, he thought, she loves old reruns of The Honeymooners. She won’t want to talk long.
His mother was propped up on pillows on her bed. She smiled when he entered the room, and stubbed out her cigarette butt in an overflowing ashtray. She held out her arms. “There’s my sweet boy,” she cooed. “Come give your mother a hug.”
Dutifully he walked over and submitted to her embrace and the kiss on his cheek. “How come you’re not asleep, Mother?” he asked.
“I was waiting for my baby boy to come home. You know I can’t rest when you’re out there. There’s bad people out there; it’s not safe.”
“I was out applying for a job,” he said. “But you go to sleep now. I’m cold and going to go change my clothes.”
“Did you get a job? No? That’s okay, you’ll find something when the time is right. But you go on and change; you’re going to catch your death out there in those basketball shoes; we need to get you some winter boots. And baby, there’s a chicken pot pie for you in the oven.”
“Thanks, I’m hungry,” he said and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “You need to stop smoking in bed.”
The young man left the room and went out to the kitchen, where he located the pot pie, which he took to his room. He walked over to his desk—actually an old wooden door set across cinder blocks—and sat down to remove his wet shoes and socks. Standing, he took the shoes over to where a half-dozen other pairs of cherry red Chuck Taylor basketball shoes were lined up at the foot of his twin bed according to the age and condition of each pair—oldest to newest. He placed the wet pair in their proper spot and then returned to his desk, wondering if he could talk his mother into a new pair as the oldest was looking a bit frayed.
Thinking about his mother, he wondered if other people felt the same way about theirs. On one hand, she was one of the few people who ever treated him nicely and never acted like she was better than him. That was saying a lot as he didn’t really have any friends, and his one sexual relationship was all about physical release and domination and nothing to do with love or tenderness. On the other hand, he didn’t really feel love or tenderness toward his mother either—or anybody else for that matter—and thought of her more as a possession, someone whose attentions he tolerated because it made his life easier.
The young man then turned to the one possession he treasured as much as his collection of shoes—his laptop computer. Reaching for and moving the mouse, he smiled slightly as the computer hummed and the screen sprang to life with the photograph of a burning building from a newspaper article.
Time to do a little trolling, he thought happily as he signed onto Facebook from one of his many aliases—a pretty young woman named Brenda with a photograph he’d downloaded from another internet site—and began searching for a post to comment on. He solicited social media “friends” the way some people collected baseball memorabilia, though not for social purposes. What he enjoyed was causing pain and suffering by inserting himself into the lives of strangers in ways they did not expect.
After a minute, he located a comment from a young woman in Georgia who was describing the events of her bridal shower. He smiled and began to type. “Honey, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your fiancé is cheating on you.”
A few moments passed when there was a reply. “Who is this? Why are you saying this?”
The young man giggled. “You don’t know me, but your fiancé does. Let’s just say I know what I’m talking about.”
“You’re lying,” the other woman replied. “He’s right here and says he’s never seen you before.”
“Of course he would,” the young man typed back. “Ask him about the fraternity party last fall.” He’d, of course, looked at his victim’s photographs and noticed they included her with a young man standing outside a University of Georgia fraternity house.
A couple of minutes passed this time and the young man laughed, thinking about the conversation the woman and her fiancé were having. He decided to add fuel to the fire. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I don’t want him back. He’s okay in bed but nothing special.”
The reply came quickly. “This is Tom. I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but if I find you, I’ll kick your ass.”
“You mean instead of spanking it when you’re calling me ‘baby’? I don’t think so, lover,” the young man typed. “You two have a good night and enjoy your honeymoon. But I do hope you get that little ‘medical issue’ cleared up before then; all it takes is a shot of penicillin.”
Laughing, the young man signed out of that Facebook alias and was about to sign on to another when the computer notified him that he had a new email message. He didn’t get many messages, so he quickly switched over to his email. What he saw made him even happier than tormenting a young engaged couple.
There was no name to indicate who it was from, just “No-Reply” and a computer-generated number. The subject line gave a date and time, and said “Meet me at the usual place.” He knew there would be no other message in the body of the email, so he didn’t bother to look. So the boss wants to see me. The thought made him happy. That meant there was a job, and he did enjoy his work.
4
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT for me,” Zak said to Moishe as the others disappeared into the synagogue.
“I’m not ready to go in,” the old man said. “And it’s been a long time since we’ve talked.”
“I saw you Sunday at the bakery,” Zak rem
inded him.
“Ah yes, your father and his passion for my cherry cheese coffeecake.”
“He says it’s the best in the five boroughs and that means the whole world.”
Moishe laughed. “He is too kind. But it was a busy morning; you and I had no chance to catch up.” They were both silent for a moment, then the old man cleared his throat as he looked up at the golden reflection of the setting sun on the windows of Midtown skyscrapers. “So your father tells me that you’re thinking that you might not go through with your bar mitzvah.”
Zak tensed at the question but then quickly relaxed. He’d known the old man since childhood and he was more like a favorite uncle than just a family friend. “I don’t see the point.” He shrugged. “I’m seventeen. If I was going to do it I should have done it years ago.”
“I’ve known old men who bar mitzvah,” Moishe said with a shrug. “I didn’t go through with it until I was in my twenties and after I had immigrated to America.”
Zak looked over with interest. He’d heard some of the stories about Moishe—the escape from the Sobibor death camp, his time fighting the Germans as a partisan living in the woods. Those were his kind of stories. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “Why did you wait?”
Moishe sighed and shook his head. “At first, I had no choice,” he said. “The Germans had invaded the Netherlands, where I was from, and were rounding up Jews to send to the death camps. We went into hiding, and it was too dangerous to have a bar mitzvah when I turned thirteen. After my family and I were sent to Sobibor it was not possible; most rabbis never made it past the first day of their arrival.”
The old man bowed his head. “Even if it had been possible, to be honest, I wanted no part of God or being Jewish in a religious sense. After all, look where being Jewish got my family and six million others. Persecuted. Murdered. Simply because of who we were.”
Trap (9781476793177) Page 4