The Destroyer Moth

Gerry McNab always maintained to his fellow criminals that no prison could ever hold him, no matter how thick its walls were, or how trigger-happy its guards might be. He seemed genuinely convinced by his own malarkey, amusing to his fellow inmates, first in New Jersey, and then, Louisiana. Even though he mostly, by the age of twenty-four, answered to the name Giraldo Moschella, he had a rare quality, a kind of plausibility about his phoniness.

It was the assumed name that had bought him a degree of camaraderie — respect, even, that made him almost a figure of trust. As much as a half-Irish gun thug could ever be trusted, by a cluster of Sicilian-Americans, who employed him in sordid enterprises in the late nineteen-sixties and early -seventies.

Ironic, really, for his assumed identity, an essential component of his thuggish occupation, was in some ways the least deceptive aspect to his character. If his criminal activities forced him to lie, to the law, then his membership in the ultimate secret Society forced him to lie to his fellow outlaws, too. A shapeshifter was a born liar — had to be one, in a world where people were keen to burn witches.

One incredible summer during his sixteenth year, at the local Boys’ Club, he had made the acquaintance of a local coach, who informed him that they shared a membership in Society. Gerry sneered at the suggestion that he was a member of regular civilization, but the mystic clarified that Society referred to those decidedly irregular folks who were not sentenced to a full life in one skin: We’re all the same, under our skins, the guy whispered, as if it were some kind of hypnotic spell. We’re all citizens, in Society. The guy stressed the extreme importance of never divulging his abilities to those who did not possess them, as though Gerry were not an accomplished liar already, about practically every aspect of his life, by that time.

He knew that he was a disappointment to his Italian-born mother and his Irish-born father: good law-abiding Catholic immigrants, who had settled in New Jersey in the fifties, toiled and prayed and voted for Republicans. Their boy wasn’t moved by either their politics or religion. There was not enough time, sadly, for them to teach him any better. A drunk, whose car smashed into theirs, as they drove home from a rare night out on the town, made sure of that.

Money and respect: those moved him — he had little further use for their values, with his parents having perished before he had reached his twelfth birthday, leaving him a ward of the Garden State. A series of foster homes, and an inevitable stint in juvenile hall, followed. He beat a random guy into a hospital bed when he was nineteen, presumably for taking a shine to the girl he was trying to pick up in a bar. The guy had a strong will to live, and a good memory for faces — earning Gerry twenty-two months’ room and board in a state penitentiary. It would not be his last time behind bars.

^^^^

He was not delusional in claiming that no prison could hold him. He had only to decide to shed his human trappings, and out the door, or window, he could fly — literally. The great hoodlums of the past were all mortal, and confined to human form at all times. McNab suffered no such liability; he had but to think of a small animal, and he was liberated: from his man-frame, and the clothing, weapons and other items that a “mere” man was compelled to carry.

Al Capone might have wished he could have turned into a seagull, to leave his cell at Alcatraz — but Gerry McNab, a relative nobody, could do it with ease! If only he had remembered to flee, in an animal's shape, from the FBI sting operation that had shut down his local crew!

He had had more than enough of Louisiana prison food. Nobody knew how to make proper pasta in the South, in his considered opinion; even when he was, er, “useful” to the owners of a New Orleans restaurant that fronted a local unit of the Jersey crew, he suffered the lack of what he considered authentic grub. Overlooking the fact that he was not, in fact, Italian in full, he wanted more of its goods than the world was prepared to just offer him without his use of force, the same old story.

Gerry had kept his mouth shut, refused to name names, to turn state’s evidence, at his second criminal trial. He was expected to do his time, without moaning about it, but he knew: he was not going to abide by his parole conditions — there was no way he wasn’t going to skip across the state line on his first free day outside.

Not even a weird visitor named Lévesque seemed able to convince him to play by the rules. This was a tallish black fellow, what the locals called a Creole. He advised Gerry to keep his abilities to himself, and he was not talking about all the ways he knew to steal a car or work a locked door open. We have people in here, looking out for our own, the black dude said, and they want you to remain on your best behavior. We’re all the same, under our skins.

Gerry sneered at the implied threat — but a few weeks later, it was no longer a laughing matter. He had beaten a fellow inmate into a prison hospital bed, for claiming that this Bruce Springsteen guy was the greatest singer to come from Jersey. Gerry had considered it his professional duty to pummel anyone found "disrespecting" Francis Albert Sinatra in his presence, even in jest, which was, in fact, the case — the inmate was just trying to get his goat; he didn’t care for the rocker types, either, being a Nashville fan himself. Gerry had served the major portion of his nickel inside — four years and seven months — but now, looking at a possible manslaughter charge if his victim were to die, he decided to throw both caution and common sense to the wind. We’re all citizens, in Society…

Gerry waited, until lights-out, to Express his major form, what was once called a Gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar dispar, and he simply flew out of the building, once an electronic door was opened for someone to enter or exit.

^^^^

Gerry changed into and out of his moth form, dozens of times, during his voyage, not realizing that this Lévesque character was on his trail. During their prison chat, the Creole had “neglected” to mention, because he wasn’t stupid , that his day job was that of United States Marshal. Gerry couldn’t make a claim to be of equivalent brilliance, because he asked a number of contacts in his old crew to help him out.

Miles away, a tired Gerry changed his form back to his human shape. Being naked meant, of course, that a little B&E was required of him, to steal some man-sized clothes, and his trek north, to a patch of true civilization, began.

It was summer’s end, 1981, when he stepped back into the great state of New Jersey, for the first time in almost a decade. He would turn twenty-nine in another month, if Lady Luck favored him with her pearly whites.

For his troubles, he got a couple of loyal hitters following him around, waiting to see what he was going to try next. He recognized one of them, a guy called Red-Shoe Lou something, but not the other — an out-of-town talent, probably. Gerry needed a new suit of clothes and possibly, just possibly, a place to lay his weary head, so in his hometown, which was neither Newark nor Trenton, he looked up an old girlfriend's father.

He picked his moment, when the traffic was getting congested — oh, how he had missed the honking horns and traded insults on Jersey’s crowded streets! — to give Red-Shoe and his “girlfriend” the slip: Dashing across the street, as fast as his human legs could propel him, he fled the entrance to a movie theatre, which had been showing the new hit, Raiders of the Lost Ark, all summer. He had not seen it in his Louisiana prison, and had no plans to see it in his home state.

Gerry ducked into an back alleyway, and raced along the rear entrances of buildings for three blocks, until he found his way to the rear entrance of a tailor shop he knew quite well. He granted himself permission to enter the establishment from behind and spied on the proprietor, Saul Krantz, whose major claim to fame, in Gerry’s eyes, was in his having fathered a delicious daughter named Ruth, who had spurned Gerry in high school, sensing the criminal turn he would soon take — she had never left his thoughts for too long. All he knew was that she had taken a degree of some kind at Rutgers, and was married to some law-abiding peon who worked in a tall office. He figured she was probably ready to trade him in on a more exciting partner.

The last time Saul had seen young Gerry in his store, he had chased the boy out with a broom handle, ready to swing it, like a battle axe, if need be, the fool. Gerry was eager to continue that discussion — this time, on terms more to his own liking. He risked a peek from the back room, and spied Red-Shoe and the other hitter, entering through the front of the store.

They leaned on old Saul a bit, but did not get their chance to get physical with him, because the front entrance swung open with a jingle of its bell, and this time, the new arrival was on the proper side of the law. Just as Red-Shoe was about to apply some “incentive” of a bare-knuckled variety to Saul’s face, Gerry heard a deep man’s voice he had hoped never to hear again, speaking in the patois native to Creole territory.

Gerry wasted no time deciding upon his strategy, Expressing himself into his moth form and landing upon the collar of a dinner jacket, which hung from a rack. He could hear the ordinary sounds of human speech, but with a moth’s instincts, could only catch differences in volume, and in pitch, not speech per se.

The two hitters got one look at the Marshal and decided to make the grand mistake of threatening him with some racial slurs. Lévesque smiled at that; he drew his service revolver and took a practiced aim, directing Red-Shoe and his confederate to surrender immediately. They must have figured that their stay, visit, call it what you like, in the gray-bar hotel would be a few hours, at most, so they didn’t offer much resistance. He handcuffed Red-Shoe’s left wrist to his coworker’s right one, and with another pair of cuffs, he linked Red-Shoe to a water pipe.

Saul expressed, lower-case E, his relief at the Marshal’s timely appearance — he was only too happy to cooperate. Once local coppers had taken Red-Shoe and his fellow scofflaw away to a local police precinct cell, Lévesque, showing Saul a wanted-poster image of Gerry, inquired: Have you seen this man?

He got a disappointing answer; Saul did say he was gratified not to have seen the rotten McNab punk in almost a decade, and quite glad the punk was no longer in a position to date his Ruthie. Saul agreed to let Charlie — that was Lévesque’s given name — search the back of the tailor shop. As they walked back to the racks, Saul grumbled about a moth sitting upon one of his hanging jackets and said, I should pay the exterminator to live back here, I can never get rid of these little sunavabitches.

Marshal Lévesque looked around the place, until he noticed an edition of Forbes under Saul’s arm. Let me help you, Mister Krantz, said Lévesque, reaching a hand out for the magazine. Rolling it up with both hands, the Marshal swung it with unexpected force and speed, smashing the moth flat, against the nearby wall — and just like that, Gerry McNab’s criminal career was ended!

© Eric Wolf 2021.

[Learn more about the Society: https://vocal.media/fiction/the-finch-and-the-sparrow.]