Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (165 page)

The fact that he doesn’t bother to shake my hand tells me he’s in no mood for small talk.

“Mr. Moonlight,” he says, “please follow me.”

“Gladly, Detective,” I say. “I’m familiar with the layout of this fine establishment of law and odor … Oops, I mean order.” Moonlight the jokester.

He leads me to a small interview room located to the right of the booking room. He opens the door for me, and together we sit down directly across from one another at a metal table under the bright light that spills down from an overhead fixture. His manila file is already sitting out on the table.

“Get you any coffee, Moonlight?” he asks, opening the folder, pulling out some glossy eight-by-ten color photographs. “That beer breath can stop a freight train.”

“I had a couple just before you called. In the safety of my own home.”

“You always drink alone in the middle of the night? Or is that your first lie since you were no doubt cruising the city?”

“Am I being interrogated about my drinking habits, Detective?”

He sits back, exhales.

“Let’s not get off on the wrong foot, shall we?”

“Indeed we shall not.” I smile.

“He comes forward again, chooses one of the photos and holds it up for me.

I try not to look too shocked, but I’m not sure I can help it what with the way my mouth goes immediately dry and my pulse starts pounding in my temples. I wonder if Miller can make out my knocking knees.

“You know this woman, Moonlight?”

He holds the picture of Sissy up so close to my face I can practically smell the ink on the digitally printed photo. In the picture she’s lying on her bed, face up, her mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide, and lifeless. She’s clearly dead.

“She’s the wife of Roger Walls. Sissy.”

“Very good,” says Miller, as if I’m a first grader reading off spelling words. He drops the picture and begins to show me the rest of them, one after the other, which it turns out, are just different versions of the same dead body. Naked, dead body, I should say.

“How’d she die?”

“By the looks of it,” he says, “catastrophic cardiac arrest. Perhaps exacerbated by a suicidal overdose or perhaps by asphyxiation.”

“Asphyxiation,” I say. “You mean like somebody put a pillow over her face and held it there until her heart gave out?”

He smiles. “Jeeze, what a deduction, Moonlight. What a loss you are to this department.”

“Thanks. Kind of you to say so.”

“Were you by any chance with Sissy today or tonight?”

I sit back in my chair, inhale a calming breath. I think about pulling one of the cigarettes from the emergency pack I keep in my leather coat should I suddenly need to quit quitting–but then think better of it. It will make me look too nervous. Like I’m hiding something.

“Time out, Detective,” I say making the familiar referee
T
with my two hands. “Mind if I ask you a procedural question?”

“You gonna ask for a lawyer, Moonlight?” he says. “Because if you are, then screw you. Ain’t gonna change anything from my point of view.”

“Have you managed to contact the husband yet?”

“We still can’t get ahold of him.”

“He’s a tough one to track down. Take it from me.”

Miller gives me a look like he has no idea what I’m talking about. I feel the pounding in my temples grow louder, more forceful while the detective reaches into the file again, only this time he doesn’t pull out a photograph. He pulls out a business card. My business card, it turns out.

“This belong to you?”

“Jeepers, isn’t that my name written on it?”

He slams the card down, stands. Dramatically, I might add.

“Laugh it up, Moonlight. It doesn’t take a brilliant homicide detective to know that you spent some time with Sissy this afternoon. That you drank and did coke with her. And when we find your DNA sample up inside her pussy, we’re going to prove you fucked her too. Your prints are all over the house, and the snot from your nose is all over the dollar bill you were using to suck up that white powder.”

The pulsing in my head is so intense that I can feel myself on the verge of blacking out. That’s the trouble with my damaged brain. Too much pressure can reduce me to a pile of passed out rags and bones. No choice but to breathe in and out, easily and steadily. Evenly.

“Can I go now, Detective? I have this condition with my head.”

“I know all about your little, ah, condition, Moonlight. We all do.”

“Then you know the seriousness of the situation. I wouldn’t want it to get out that you were holding a handicapped man behind closed doors without his formally being charged with anything.”

“Should we be charging you with something?”

“I’m not sure. Sissy lived in Chatham which is a million miles away from Albany.”

He sits back down, palms pressed down flat on the metal table.

“We’re at present working in cooperation with the Columbia County State Police. Chatham is too small to support its own police department. Which is none of your business it turns out.”

“Jeepers, as a tax paying citizen, I feel that I’m owed an explanation.”

“Give me the truth, Moonlight, and you can go. Did you spend time with Sissy tonight?”

“Her husband has gone missing. Or,
was
missing that is, until I located him tonight at Ralph’s Bar. His agent, Suzanne Bonchance, hired me to find him. Thus my comment about him being a hard man to find.”

He nods, like I’m suddenly making sense.

I add, “I started by heading out to Chatham to ask his wife some pertinent questions. Simple as that. Routine procedure for a private Dick like
moi
.” Turning to the one-way mirror that makes up a good portion of the painted cement block wall to my left. “You get that?
Moi
is French for me, moron.”

I turn back to Miller.

“Is it standard operating procedure for you to engage in sexual activity with your interviewees?” he poses, a slight smirk forming on his face.

“You’d be surprised, Miller, especially when it comes to two consenting adults who wish to perform a sexual act together in the privacy of their chosen residence.”

The place goes silent for a few beats. It tells me that our interview, such as it is, is over. For now. I should know. I used to be the one sitting across the table from me in Miller’s chair. I know the drill.

Pushing out my chair, I stand, turn back to the one-way glass and, raising my left hand and middle index finger high, flip off the audio-visual techie doing the recording.

“Yah, and fuck you too, head-case,” comes a muted voice from the great beyond.

I can’t help but laugh. Even Miller cracks a hint of a smile.

“Just like old times, huh Moonlight?”

“Let’s hope not.”

The detective leads me out of the interview room, back across the booking room, and to the door.

“Listen,” he says, before the guard sergeant hits the lock release, “if all print and DNA evidence at Sissy Walls’s home points to you, and you alone, you’re gonna need to grab yourself some professional counsel.”

I stare up into Miller eyes.

“You trying to tell me I’m suspected of murdering Mrs. Walls, Detective Miller?”

“You know how this works, Moonlight. We find out she didn’t die of natural causes exacerbated by drug use, you will become suspect number one. And until we eliminate suspect number one as a viable candidate for the title of crazy-ass murderer, you will indeed remain as such. Clear?”

“Gosh, I’m trembling with fear. I might have to lie down.”

He smiles.

“Good to see you maintain a good sense of humor. I like that coming from a dishonorably discharged cop.”

“I’m a glass half-full kind of guy,” I say.

He nods at the guard sergeant. The solid metal door buzzes, unlocks, and opens automatically.

“Enjoy the rest of your night, Moonlight,” Miller offers. “Don’t forget to pick up your gun on the way out. And by the way, we got a DWI sweep going on tonight. So I were you, I’d plan on heading straight home to sleep off your little alcohol and drug problem.”

I step on through the door praying that Roger Walls still has no idea his wife is dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

BACK IN THE HEARSE I make a quick check of my cell phone. When I see that no one has called or texted, I turn the engine over and pull out of the precinct lot onto Central Avenue in the direction of Suzanne Bonchance’s townhouse. But shouldn’t I be trying to break the sad news about Sissy to Walls? Doing it to his face before he finds out from some strange cop that I was the last man to be with her before she died? Should I come clean with everything in order to avoid his wrath later on? A wrath that just might involve a firearm discharged in my general direction?

Okay, here’s the truth: While my conscience tells me to head straight back to Ralph’s Bar for the four a.m. last call in which Walls will no doubt be participating, I make the executive decision to stick with my original plan and make a beeline for my employer. To try and get a handle on the shit storm I’ve ventured into and to see how I might gently exit from it without being accused of murder, starting with Bonchance agreeing to provide the police with a rock-solid alibi for having met with Sissy this afternoon in the first place.

At this hour, Central Avenue is nearly devoid of automobile traffic. Just the occasional blue and white cruiser speeding past, no doubt prowling for drunken drivers. It’s late in the month. Time for the APD boys and girls in blue to make up their monthly quotas. I can only assume Miller wasn’t lying about the DWI sweep. I’m more than conspicuous in my big black hearse. Plus I’m more or less still drunk. But I’m not speeding, nor am I taking any more chances now that I’m solidly on Detective Miller’s radar. Last thing I need is a DWI.

When I reach Bonchance’s address on a side street that parallels the Madison Avenue hill in the city’s far-east end which is in sight of the Hudson River, I find an empty space across the street and park the hearse there. The entire street seems to be asleep.

Sleep. What a concept.

But when I get out, I can see that Suzanne is still up, at least judging by the light on in what looks to me like the living room. There’s a small stone and concrete staircase leading up to the front door, like the kind you might find attached to a townhouse in Brooklyn heights. Pretty soon I’ll have been up for twenty-four hours straight. But that doesn’t stop me from taking the stairs two at a time. Standing on the landing, my pulse pounding in my head, I thumb the doorbell three times, the sound of an electronic gong coming through the black six-panel wood door.

Suzanne answers the door as if she were expecting me for dinner some eight hours ago. She’s dressed in a sheer, white, satin nightgown which supports her substantial cleavage. Her hair is long, dark, lush, and parted neatly over her right eye. In one hand she holds a glass of champagne, and in the other, a lit cigarette—the butt end of which has been fitted into a long, black, plastic filter device. Add to this her fire engine-red lipstick, black eye shadow, and a perfect strand of white pearls wrapped around her neck, and I might confuse her for the return of Yvonne Dicarlo.

“Moonlight darling,” she says, just a hint of slur marring her words, “whatever took you so long?”

Without a word, I step inside the door, slam it closed behind me, making her eyes go wide. I grab the glass of champagne from her hand, drink down what’s left in it. Then I toss the glass to the floor so that it shatters.

“Yes, Moonlight,” she says, “you may have a drink.”

That’s when I take hold of her arm, pull her into the living room, and toss her down on the couch.

“You are hurting me!” she shouts.

“Tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Whatever do you mean?” She goes for the cell phone set on the coffee table. “I’m calling the police.”

I step forward, snatch the phone from her hand, toss it to the opposite end of the couch.

“You’ve been hiding the truth from me from the start,” I say, holding tight to her wrist with my right hand. “Now the police think it’s possible I had something to do with Sissy’s death.”

“How do you know?”

“Where do you think I’ve been for the past hour? Partying until the wee hours with your star literary client? I was being interrogated by the APD. Detective Miller to be precise.”

“Was Sissy murdered?”

“It’s possible somebody tried to kiss her a permanent goodnight by stuffing a pillow in her mouth. And if Albany’s finest arrest me for it, you can bet I’m going to let them in on your little cocaine scam. The same cocaine that Sissy was doing when her heart stopped.”

Her face goes pale. She tries to pull away.

“Please let go of my arm,” she insists.

I do it.

Her cigarette has burned down to nothing—a gray, worm-like length of ash about to drop onto the white shag carpet. “Who told you about the coke?”

“I just told you. Sissy.”

“So you
were
with her today.”

“Yes, I paid her a visit to see if she had any idea where her husband might have run off to. Nothing unusual about that. In fact, I recall telling you I was going to interview her. We ended up doing a little partying together since by the time I got there she was already on her way to blotto. Nothing unusual about that either if it gets her to loosen up her lips.”