Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (10 page)

CHAPTER 27

WE HAVE THE PISTOL back and we have the nurse who is sufficiently passed out. The Obamas have taken a ride for now, and we have our relative health. What we don’t have is transport.

“Ideas?” I query Georgie.

“Yah, stay as far away from her as you can possibly manage.”

“What she says is true. About me having uncontrollable sexual desires due to my most recent head injury.”

Georgie nods and concurs.

“Back when I was working the basement of AMC,” he explains, “a woman came in who was involved in a head-on car wreck. Her front lobe was injured when her forehead collided with the windshield, shattering it. She was hospitalized in ICU for days and eventually moved to the head trauma unit. In there she masturbated almost every minute of every day. Didn’t matter if the door was open or who was walking in and out of the room or down the hall. Child, man, woman, priest, doctor. Didn’t matter. She couldn’t fill the day with enough orgasms. Her appetite was insatiable. They eventually had to inject her with Dopamine in order to control her.”

We both stare down at the knocked out blond beauty.

“So what we’re saying is I can now look forward not only to the occasional blackout, or wrong decision, but I can expect uncontrollable sexual urges. Can my life become any more complicated?”

Nurse moans, shifts.

“I’m not sure if your being caught up in her spell is a result of your head injury or you simply being you.”

We stand silent for a moment, while Nurse comes back around.

“Georgie,” I say, after a time. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve also found you completely sexy.”

“Cut that trash talk out, Moon. And give me the gun. I don’t trust you with it.”

I relinquish the hand cannon.

“Just seeing if you’re paying attention,” I say.

Back to where we started.

No ride, no mobile phone, no visible means of getting the hell out of that dark no-man’s-land while in the process of kidnapping a beautiful blond nurse moonlighting as a thug. Doesn’t matter that she’s a criminal working with the same people who want to kill me, kidnapping is still a capital offense in New York. That means no calling the police. Besides, the police hate me anyway. Detective Clyne’s driver, Beefy Super Cop Mike and his middle finger are proof enough of that.

Behind us, in the far distance, a commercial jetliner taxies for takeoff. A glance over my shoulder reveals what looks like a 737. USAir. Nurse is awake now, trying to push herself back up from the pavement.

“Easy, Blondie,” Georgie says, holding the barrel on her.

“Blondie?” I say. “You can’t come up with something better, Georgie?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps, her voice groggy. “Now what?”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say. “Got your cell phone on you?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Two headlights cut white parallel tubes out of the thick night.

“Christ,” Georgie says. He drops down on one knee, the 9.mm gripped in his right hand, left hand wrapped around the shooting wrist, combat position.

I take hold of Nurse’s arm, hold it tight.

“If it’s the Obamas come back for the blonde, I say we shoot her in the back and make a run for it.”

“Agreed,” Georgie says, shooting me a wink of his right eye.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” she poses.

“Sure,” I say. “Let’s absolutely talk this thing out.”

Behind us the jet screams as it lifts off from the runway.

The vehicle comes closer until it’s fully visible in the road. It stops and a door opens. Georgie stands up, thumbs back the hammer on the automatic, stuffs the barrel into the waist of his jeans.

“Lola,” he grins. “Freaking, Lola. I don’t know how it’s Lola, but what a goddamned sight.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” my girlfriend says. “They’re coming back . . . For her.” Her eyes on our blond prisoner. “Let’s move.”

I don’t bother to ask how she knows we’re here or how she’s aware of the Obama-masked thugs coming back for us or having kidnapped us in the first place. The questions can wait. I just drag Nurse over to Lola’s Humvee, and stuff her up into the back seat. Behind me, the sound of the airliner is fading as it climbs up into the friendly skies. Reminds me of how unfriendly things can get down here on the solid ground.

CHAPTER 28

LOLA PULLS A FAST u-turn that takes the Hummer up onto the grassy shoulder. Crazy illegal driving maneuvers don’t matter at that point. The suburb has been bulldozed into a concrete nothing. No one will see us out here. She burns off some serious fuel motoring us down the empty street.

Georgie takes the shotgun seat while I sit in the back with Nurse.

I see Lola’s eyes framed into the rearview.

Nurse locks onto them. “Do I tell him, or do you tell him?” she says, voice still groggy.

Georgie holds a gaze on Lola over his left shoulder.

I hold a gaze on blond Nurse over my right.

“You two know each other,” I say feeling my heart drop into my left boot.

“Surprised?” Nurse poses.

“Richard,” Lola exhales. “Meet my little sister, Claudia.”

Claudia holds out her hand.

I refuse it.

“I have some explaining to do,” Lola says like a question, hooking a left away from the dark airport perimeter road and onto the main drag.

“You have to ask?” Georgie says.

My girlfriend glares at me in the rearview. I know those eyes like I do my own. But somehow, the person behind them is becoming stranger and stranger by the second.

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I mumble. But it’s such a gross understatement I find myself shaking my head.

“There’s a lot you
don’t know
about me, Richard,” Lola admits.

“Ain’t that the truth,” I say.

Claudia just laughs.

CHAPTER 29

WE DRIVE INTO THE city, and soon we’re entering into the state university campus. I ask Lola why she’s driving us there. No one will think of looking here, she offers. That’s encouraging. But I’m still a little numb over her apparent involvement in all this.

“As in those masked bastards Claudia here chose as her friends,” Georgie says.

“I’m right here,” Claudia responds. “You can say that shit to my face.”

Georgie rears around, points a pistol barrel at her precious mug.

“And I’m right here,” he barks. “We’re not done talking about that little Conair electrocution game you people played with my chest.”

“Get over yourself,” Claudia snaps. “I did you a favor by convincing them to use the hair dryer. Left up to those meatheads they would have cut your nuts off and fed them to you with a six pack of Budweiser.” She snorts. “Con-fucking-Air! College frat boys do a hell of a lot worse for initiation ceremonies. Wasn’t even drawing a charge, dumb-ass big baby.”

Georgie holds his ground with the pistol.

“Still felt like hell. And I don’t like being scared. I was scared in ‘Nam sometimes. I accepted that. But here, I cannot accept it.” He grows a smile. “Even if you do own pair of the nicest looking breasts I’ve ever seen.”

Lola hits the brakes.

The hummer stops on a dime.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” she barks. “Georgie, you’re not going to shoot my sister, and you’re not going to comment on the size, shape, and appearance of her breasts. No matter what trouble she’s got herself involved in, she’s still my little sister. Got it?”

Georgie’s smile fades into a pout. He retracts the pistol, turns back around. Judging by the slight trembling in both his hands, I know that he’s dying for a joint. I can only hope that he isn’t in any pain from the come-and-go cancer; that it all has to do with being poked with an electrical wire.

“Yes ma’am,” he says under his breath. “Always got to do it a woman’s way.”

Lola’s eyes back in the rearview.

“Claudia,” she says, “I don’t know what you’ve done with these men, but Richard is my boyfriend, and Georgie is his best friend.”

“I know who they are!” Claudia, rolling her eyes.

“If any further harm comes to them, you’ll have to answer to me. Understood?”

“Sure thing, sis,” Claudia says, acid in her voice. “But if it weren’t for me, you’d be introducing them as your dead boyfriend and even more dead best friend.”

We drive for another half mile or so into the center of the campus, until she pulls into a faculty lot, parks in her designated space.

“My office,” she orders. “And keep your heads down. You might not see them, but there’re surveillance cameras all over the damn place.”

“Then I’ll be sure to smile,” I say, “even if my heart is about to break.”

CHAPTER 30

LOLA UNLOCKS THE DOOR to the lab building, and we all slip inside. The hall lights are on, but since it’s so late at night, the place is empty, other than the sound of the caged monkeys. And the smell. Monkey droppings mixed with monkey urine.

For the first time since she rescued us from that empty roadside by the airport, I can see that Lola is wearing tight black jeans, a black sweater, and boots. She also has a black leather jacket on, her long hair tied back tight. Even under the circumstances . . . even though I’m more convinced than ever that the person I’ve been sleeping with for a bunch of years is not the person I thought she was . . . just the sight of her robs me of precious oxygen.

The four of us waste no time heading to Lola’s office, Georgie behind us the whole time, the .9mm tucked in his jacket pocket, Lola curiously not complaining about it, as if she doesn’t trust her quote, “little sister,” unquote, any more than we do. Between the muted screams and yelps of the monkeys, their feral smell, the bright lights, and the strange company, the moment seems at best surreal.

I remember the first time I met Lola in my backyard. She arrived unannounced on a fact-finding mission. She and my then wife, Lynn, belonged to the same gym, and Lola wanted to find out about some private lessons a personal trainer was conducting there. Lynn and I were not only on the skids at the time, but I had already reserved a date for a moving van to come and pick up what little stuff I could truly call my own inside our North Albany home.

Up until that time, I’d spent the better part of my day chasing down bad guys as an APD cop. But I’d spent the darkest part of the nights chasing down Jack Daniels.

I stood stone stiff and looked into Lola’s big brown eyes like they weren’t really eyes. Like they were magnets that pulled me in. She was wearing a red bandana over her head, and her long dark-brown hair was tied into pigtails. She was dressed in farmer’s overalls and she wore black Adidas flip-flops. She was also smoking a cigarette.

She was taken aback by my gaze which remained locked on her for more than a few seconds. Finally she smiled.

“I’m Lola,” she said, shooting me a quizzical look that was neither inviting nor offensive. “Is, ah, your wife at home?”

“I’m Richard,” I answered. “Are you, ah, married?”

She giggled, but I think it was the result of shock, not levity.

“Lynn,” I added after a beat, “she’s in the back.”

I opened the gate and Lola walked through, giving me a whiff of her rose petal scent. I wanted to tell her my wife and I were no longer going to be a couple in matter of days. But then, I knew that would be pushing it. What I did know however, was that as soon as it was humanly possible, I was going to find out Lola’s last name and her phone number. Then I was going to call her as soon as I stepped foot inside my new home, even before I pulled the tape off the first box. My only hope was that she wasn’t married.

Turns out she wasn’t married.

Married anymore, that is. She’d had a brief marriage to a copywriter who was the single father of a little girl from a previous relationship. It all went bad when he started communicating with his ex-girlfriend, who was also the mother of his child.

She agreed to see me for coffee not because she liked me or even felt sorry for me. She’d known for quite a while that Lynn and I were breaking up, and she also knew what a hard bitch my head-nurse wife could be. During coffee, she even revealed that part of the reason she came to my home that evening wasn’t to see Lynn at all, but maybe to get a glimpse of me. We sat across from one another at a
Starbucks
and her face turned as red as that bandana she’d been wearing just the other day.

We went back to my place that afternoon, and despite what the pros will tell you about first dates, we made love right there on the floor of my dad’s old West Albany funeral home on top of a blanket I’d pulled out of a moving box. Later on we switched from coffee to wine and we ate Chinese right out of the containers with chopsticks and listened to music on a portable stereo by candlelight. And then we made love again.

She revealed that she grew up in a house with a rich dad who was a self-proclaimed entrepreneur and that her parents too were divorced. That she’d had enough of marriage and if I had marriage in mind, our little relationship, as pleasant as it was, was probably going to be brief. I told her I couldn’t even contemplate marriage for the moment, and with a little boy to think of—a toddler—I was a million miles away from tying the knot again.

We spent the night together on that floor and when I woke up in the morning, Lola was gone. Like the great John Lennon once sang,
“This Bird had Flown!”
No note explaining where she’d flown off too, no voicemail or text on my cell. No evidence she’d been there or that she was even real for that matter. I called maybe ten times that week, emailed at least as many times, and never heard another word from her. After a couple of weeks, I figured it for a one night stand. Sad as it sounded.

Then one late evening the doorbell rang. I was just about ready to head to bed. It was Lola, and she was dressed in her university lab coat. Turned out, that’s all she had on. We spent another night just like our first, and then in the morning, it was the same thing. She simply disappeared.

Later that month I got hit with divorce papers from my wife, and a notice that she would pursue full custody of our then three-year-old boy. I also found out for the first time that she’d been sleeping with my partner at the APD, Mitch Cane, for more than a year and that my brother in arms was about to move into my old home—the home I was still paying for under New York State law.

That night I called Lola. And called, and called. But I got no response other than her answering service. I was in a hell of a way, and I needed her like no man ever needed a woman. But she refused my call and never called back. In my mind, it was official: I’d been dumped by two women, and stabbed in the back by a man I thought I knew better than myself.

By the time the morning came, I’d filled up an ashtray with cigarette butts, and finished off an entire quart of Jack. I sat at the table in the kitchen where I’d breakfasted on Cheerios and milk with my dad as a little boy. I put the barrel of a .22 caliber sub-nose to my head, and pulled the trigger.