Read The Extinction Event Online
Authors: David Black
In his cluttered study at the end of the hall, Shapiro sat at the old walnut kneehole desk. He hit play on his computer video.
Music came on. A song in German.
On the screen, over Shapiro's shoulder, Jack saw happy teenagers playing soccer, couples strolling in a park, kids romping in a kindergarten.â¦
“Theresienstadt,” Shapiro said. “The Nazi's model concentration camp,” Shapiro said. “Where they sent the intellectuals. The artists. Like Kurt Gerron.”
Shapiro explained: In the Thirties, Kurt Gerron was one of Germany's most accomplished and successful actors and directors.
Gerron played Police Chief Brown in the original stage and film versions of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's
Die Dreigroschenoper
. He was one of the stars of Josef von Sternberg's
Der blaue EngelâThe Blue Angel
.
“He acted in or directed around seventy films,” Shapiro said.
Unable to work in Germany after April 1, 1933, when, due to the boycott of Jewish businesses, Gerron was replaced by an Aryan director in the middle of a day's shooting, Gerron moved around Europe, each move a step down the economic and theatrical ladder. In 1942 he ended up in Amsterdam performing cabaret with one of his former leading ladies, Camilla Spira, at the Jewish Theater and, finally, as part of the
Entjudung
âthe Jew-cleansing process of the Netherlandsâat the transit camp Westerbork, where the camp commandant, SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Lieutenant Colonel Albert Konrad Gemmeker, instituted a Monday-night cabaret on a stage made from a demolished synagogue to entertain the deportees who were to leave eleven o'clock Tuesday morning for the death camps in the east.
“Gemmeker opened the cabaret in honor of the forty thousandth inmate to be deported to the death camps,” Shapiro said.
In all, over 104,000 Jewsâalong with Gypsies and Communistsâwere shipped out of Westerbork.
“On February 25, 1944, Gerron was shipped out in a cattle car along with Spira and her six-year-old daughter,” Shapiro said. “In the cattle car, Gerron held his coat to shield the daughter when she had to use the bathroom, a single bucket in the corner.”
At Theresienstadt, Gerron resumed the cabarets. As the Allies landed at Normandy and fought their way east, the Nazis had Gerron direct a propaganda film
The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City
.
Jack nodded at a stack of printouts, CDs, art catalogs, books.â¦
Music in Terezin, 1941â1945
,
Theresienstadt: The Town the Nazis Gave to the Jews
,
I Never Saw Another Butterfly ⦠Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp â¦
Books on concentration-camp memoirs, concentration-camp culture, concentration-camp humor.
Laughter in Hell
.
“Something you're working on?” Jack asked.
Shapiro gave Jack a wry sidelong look.
“You might say that,” he said.
“A little out of your field,” Jack said.
Silently, they watched the images from Theresienstadt.
“Sixty or so years ago,” Shapiro said. “Not so long ago.”
On-screen, the documentary explained that on July 23, 1944, Red Cross observers visited the camp.
The observer was so impressed by the inmates' chorus, he made the camp commandant Karl Rahm promise never to separate themâa promise Rahm kept: After the Red Cross left, Rahm sent everyone in the chorus to the gas chambers at Auschwitz together.
On-screen, hundreds of marching Nazis made up a choreographed swastika.
“Busby Berkeley, right?” Shapiro said. “It's all show biz.”
The marching swastika turned like the gear of a great machine.
“I'm beginning to understand why you were fired,” Jack said.
2
An ancient woman shimmered into the doorway. Shapiro's grandmother.
She still has sex appeal, Jack thought. Star power.
“
I wants to be an actor ladyâ¦,
” Shapiro's grandmother sang in a surprisingly robust, husky alto, “
be in a play up on Broadway⦔
She wore a wrapper with big orange flowers. When she swayed her hips, the cloth flowed.â¦
“Ms. Lucas!” Shapiro called his grandmother's nurse.
“I heard that song when I was five years old,” Shapiro's grandmother was saying. “On the Boardwalk.”
“Ms. Lucas,” Shapiro called, “could you come and get Bubbe?”
“At Atlantic City,” Shapiro's grandmother was saying.
Jack expected a large, imposing nurse to appear in the hallway behind Shapiro's grandmother. But Ms. Lucas turned out to be a sexy young woman in her early twenties, with flame-red hair and catlike eyes.
“Come on, Sadie,” Ms. Lucas said to Shapiro's grandmother.
“You should have seen me when I was young,” Sadie said. “I was the girl on the Carolina Cigar band.”
“I saw a picture,” Jack said. “In your grandson's office.”
“My tits were beginning to sag,” Sadie said, “but I still had the best ass in the business!”
“Dr. Shapiro has work to do,” Ms. Lucas said.
“You got a pretty good caboose, yourself,” Sadie said to Ms. Lucas.
“Who,” Ms. Lucas said, “would've ever thought I'd consider bringing sexual harassment charges against a hundred-year-old woman?”
“Tara-ra-ra-boom-de-a!” Sadie sang, giving a grind and bump.
“We'll watch a movie,” Ms. Lucas said.
Ms. Lucas started to lead Sadie out, but Sadie stopped. Turned coyly back to Jack and said in a very uncoy voice, “Watch your back, mister. They think getting old means getting simple.”
“The world's a concentration camp,” Shapiro said. “We try to mock up a civilization. Like Gerron's movie. For show.”
3
“When I was fired,” Shapiro said, “I tried to explain to everyone it was because I was going to testify about electrical pollution.”
“A conspiracy, huh?” Jack said.
“Everyone said I was crazy. Said conspiracies don't exist. But sometimes conspiracies exist. Sometimes they're big. Sometimes they have awful consequences.”
“You're just trying to make what happened to you bearable by making it part of something bigger?” Jack said.
“The world is filled with conspiracies,” Shapiro said.
“Don't tell so-and-so we're having a party after work, just the three of us are getting together, no one else
âbut conspiracy is just another tool. A compass. Let's you tell where you are in the wilderness.”
Jack looked out his window at the corduroy sky.
“You think I'm paranoid?” Shapiro asked. “You think I've got a persecution complex?”
“Things just don't happen that way,” Jack said.
“Then why did Flowers get me fired when I got involved in the lawsuit about electrical pollution?” Shapiro said.
“Why would Flowers care?” Jack asked.
An hour later, Caroline arrived and told Jack, “Keating is on the board of Mohawk Electric.”
1
“There are no coincidences,” Jack once had told Caroline.
“Try this,” Jack said.
Jack was talking to Caroline from across the top of the clunker Bix had moved to Jack's shackâJack's demolition derby car, which Jack was painting.
“Frank finds out Jean's suffering from electrical pollution. Thinks there may be money in this.”
“A class-action suit against Mohawk,” Caroline said.
“He finds out about Shapiro's research,” Caroline said. “About why Shapiro attacked Keating. He had the docket number.”
Abruptly, Jack fell silent.
“Which would explain why Frank visited Keating,” Caroline said.
Jack dipped his brush into green paint and started painting lightning bolts on the car's right fender.
“To blackmail him,” Caroline said.
Jack painted starbursts.
“Blackmail's easier than going to court,” Caroline said.
On the car's roof, Jack started painting a night sky.
“Are we saying Keating had Frank killed?” Caroline asked.
Jack painted a star. Part of Orion's belt.
“And Jean?” Caroline said under her breath. “Jean's his own daughter.”
2
Dixie drove up to Jack's shack in his '63 dark-blue Oldsmobile. As he was still coming to a stop, Nicole jumped out of the passenger side.
“Dixie guessed you'd be here,” Nicole said.
She was dressed in baggy khaki shorts with oversize pockets and a man's white shirt knotted in front, exposing her tanned belly.
With a belly button that looked like a Celtic knot.
“The office called, Sweetpea,” Dixie explained. “Urgent, they said.”
From her pocket, Caroline pulled her cell.
“No juice?” Nicole asked.
Caroline stuck the cell back into her pocket.
“No juice,” Nicole confirmed, adding, about Caroline's face, “Just look at that puss. Hey, Caroline, no juice, it's no big deal.”
“I told them I'd get you the message,” Dixie said.
“And I wanted to see Jack's place,” Nicole said, surveying the shack. “The lap of luxury, Jack. What'cha doing?”
“It looks as if you're getting ready for the demolition derby,” Dixie said, slipping out from the driver's side.
Dixie wore a three-piece white suit, white shirt, baby blue bow tie, off-white socks, white shoes, and a crushable white fedora.
“Nicole,” Dixie said, “you were born and bred in this county and you don't recognize a demolition derby car when you see one?” He shook his head. “I have neglected your education. Give me a brush, Jack. It's been a long time since I've helped prepare a clunker like this.”
Noticing Nicole's look, Dixie added, “When I was your age, I came close to winning a demolition derby. You driving at the county fair, Jack?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Jack said.
“Friday night?” Dixie said. “I'll be there.”
Dixie took a brush out of a pail of paint thinner and inhaled deeply.
“I love the smell of turpentine,” Dixie said.
He studied the colors in each of the six gallon cans of paint. Daintily, he dipped his brush in black and with a few deft strokes outlined a reclining nude.
“You're such a dirty old man,” Nicole said.
“She only says that,” Dixie told Jack, “because last night, while we were watching a Doris Day movie on TV, I told her Bob Hope used to call her JB. For Jut Butt.”
“I want a brush, too,” Nicole said.
She grabbed a brush from the can of paint thinner and plunged it up to the handle in red paint.
“You're going to ruin your suit, Dixie,” Caroline said.
Jack could tell she was making an effort to sound casual.
SoâJack thoughtâcould Dixie, who shot her a glance.
3
“You're really going to drive?” Nicole said.
She flipped her brush at Jack, spattering wildflowers behind him: hollyhocks, lilies, asters.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked about the demolition derby.
A mutt trotted over to check out the paint-spattered flowers, then sniffed a tree.
“He's checking his e-mail,” Dixie said.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked.
Another, larger dog came to check the spattered flowers. The first dog sniffed the second dog's rear.
“Now,” Jack said, “he's checking the canine Facebook.”
Nicole made a face and attacked the clunker with red paint, which dripped from her brush down the back of her hand and wrist.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked.
Jack tilted his head and appraised Dixie.
“You've been around for a while,” Jack said.
“You're not old,” Dixie said, “until you have trouble pulling on your own socks.”
“What have you learned from living so long?” Jack asked.
Dipping his brush, Dixie said, as if it was confidential between the two of them, excluding his nieces, “Life is simple. You go from keeping the bathroom door locked when you're a teen so you won't be caught jerking off, to keeping it unlocked when you're my age in case you have a heart attack.”
Jack laughed and said, “Dixie, you're okay.”
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline shouted.
Jack, Dixie, and Nicole turned to her in unison.
“Not usually,” Dixie said.
“I don't want you driving,” Caroline told Jack.
But Jack was staring past her shoulder.
Caroline turned just in time to see a man disappear into the trees at the top of a hill.
From Jack's face, she knew it was the man who had tried to kill him on the train.
1
Jack hobbled up the hill into the trees, leaving Caroline to improvise an explanation: “A neighbor Jack's having trouble with.”
“What kind of trouble?” Nicole asked.
“Property rights,” Caroline said.
Halfway up the slope, Jack stepped in an animal burrow. Opening up the wound in his leg. Jack felt the bandage get moist. Felt blood sliding down his leg.
Where the dirt slope was almost vertical, Jack used a row of birches as handholds, pulling himself up to the road on the crest above his shack.
Jack found footprints in the soft earth. Tire tracks where the Cowboy must have peeled out when he realized he was noticed.
Why did the Cowboy bolt?
Jack was with three witnesses.
Maybe the Cowboy wanted to keep his job simple. Not out of any humanitarian motive, but out of efficiency.
One corpse is easier to explain away than four.
After Dixie and Nicole left, Caroline told Jack, “Get me a gun.”
2
“Don't forget to call your office,” Jack said as he was using a screwdriver handle to tap on the cover of a paint can.