Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (13 page)

CHAPTER 40

“FUCKERS WERE WATCHING US!” Georgie spits, right foot flat on the gas, the tires spitting dirt and gravel. “Kiss the rubber mats, Moon!”

I drop down as far into the well as I can, the cold gunmetal on the .9mm pressed against my right cheek. I’m not a big guy. But I’m not Yoda either, and I immediately begin to cramp up in the tight space.

Georgie’s right on.

They . . . the Russians . . . must have been watching us scope out Czech’s crib, hoping that we’d uncover what they apparently could not: a box filled with something important.

Georgie’s speeding down the private drive unaware of what awaits him at the end. That much I know for sure. I poke my head up enough to get a shot off and at the same time make out a big black GMC with tinted windows, a single hand exposed out the passenger-side window, a good old-fashioned silenced Uzi attached to the hand.

The Uzi spits fire and a couple of rounds take out the back windshield. I drop myself flat onto Georgie’s lap.

“Faster!” Me shouting.

“Fuck do you want me to go?!”

He starts spinning circles on the lawn at the end of the drive.

Another burst of fire and my driver’s side window explodes.

“Twenty years of tender loving care!” Georgie shouts. “Not another Beetle like this in the world except for on the Abby Road album cover.”

I can tell he’s furious.

He pushes me off, reaches for his piece.

“Fuck are you doing?!”

Another burst of rounds sink into the flat, metal VW dash.

“Enough,” Georgie exhales. Crazy old bastard stops the Beetle in the middle of the lawn, that big black soccer-mom GMC bearing down on us like one of Rommel’s Tiger Tanks. Georgie pulls back on the emergency brake, opens the door, gets out. What he does next is nothing short of miraculous and suicidal.

With only the open door to protect him, he stands his ground.

“Fuck with me, but not my ride!” he shouts, rounds pinging against the door, and churning up grass and dirt.

He then proceeds to raise his Smith & Wesson slowly, calmly, left hand clutching his right wrist, combat position. Finger pressed against the trigger, he empties the entire clip into the GMC, stopping it dead in its tracks.

When it’s over, a heavy quiet fills the air.

Off in the distance can be heard the sound of cruiser sirens. I know the sound well. I was a cop once. A good one. Before my head got scrambled. Someone must have reported the exchange of gunfire. I know it means we have to haul ass out of there. I know it means we have to do it now.

I crawl out of the Beetle, stand up. Maybe too fast. My head starts spinning. I’ve experienced that same sensation before. The world spinning at my feet, the feel of my body lifting off the ground. The feeling of utter weightlessness. Not exactly my soul leaving my body again, but more like I’m about to lose consciousness. My brain, it isn’t right. There’s a piece of .22 caliber bullet lodged inside it. It causes me to pass out in times of stress. When my brain swells just a fraction above its normal size from the blood speeding through the veins and capillaries.

I raise up my automatic to try and give Georgie some backup as he approaches the now quiet GMC on foot.

It’s the last thing I remember before passing out.

CHAPTER 41

IN THE DREAM I’M
dead.

Big surprise there.

I’m floating over a mechanical bed inside a private hospital room. The room is white and brightly lit with angelic rays and bursts of brilliant sunlight. My body is laid out in the bed on its back. I have this smile on my face like I’m happy to finally get the hell out.

Standing by my side is Lola. She’s dressed in a long white gown, her long, lush dark hair draping her face like a black veil. Covering her eyes are those round Jackie O sunglasses. Tears are streaming down her face, and she’s holding tightly to my hand.

When the door opens, a second person enters the room. It’s Some Young Guy. He’s faceless again, his face not really a face, but an oval-shaped blur or a mask. He stands on the opposite side of me, looking down upon my prone, motionless body. Until he reaches out with his right hand as if offering it over to Lola. She, in turn, drops my hand and takes his hand in hers. That’s when Some Young Guy reaches into pants pocket with his free hand, pulls out a big white diamond engagement ring. He slips the ring onto Lola’s finger.

“Will you marry me?” he poses.

“I do,” she answers, her face lit up like a glowing moonbeam. “I do. I do. I do.”

Together they consummate their new vow with a long, slow kiss directly over my dead body.

When I come to, there’s a man lying on the grass beside me. Guy’s kicking up a storm, and trying to scream, but Georgie’s stuffed a rag in his mouth. The rag he uses to check the Beetle’s oil level with.

Subdued Guy is dressed in black and his ankles and wrists are bound behind his back with the same plastic portable Hefty Bag cuffs that I used to apply to drunk and rowdy perps back when I was still a cop. The guy is about average height but big. Stocky. Maybe five-nine or ten. Two hundred-twenty pounds if I have to guess. Big enough that I can’t imagine how all one-hundred-sixty pounds of skin-and-bones Georgie managed to subdue him. But when I see the old pathologist kneel down and zap the man with the stun gun, I’m no longer kept in the dark.

Georgie spots me.

“Moon! You blacked out.”

Oh yeah, I blacked out.

Cop sirens off in the distance. Getting louder by the half second.

A big guy lying beside me.

Stun guns and real guns.

Oh, yeah, a shootout. I was in a shootout. Just a minute ago. Behind a house. Peter Czech’s house. Shootout, behind the house. A black GMC with tinted windows. Russians. Russians who want something. A box.

Sirens.

The cops getting closer. Lying there on the grass, I estimate their ETD to be no more than one minute. It tells me I’ve been passed out for only a few seconds at most.

“Can you get up, Moon?”

I lift myself up, feel that familiar resettling sensation that my brain always experiences after an episode. Kind of like the weights drawing back on a doll’s eyes when you stand her upright, while your brain reboots all of its memory programs. Let me try and remember, did I save my settings before logging off? Or did my brain save my settings for me?

“What are we gonna do with him?” I pose in a groggy voice.

“He’s our leverage and our direction finder,” Georgie answers. “Help me stuff the son of a bitch into the back of the Beetle.”

“We can’t just take the GMC?”

Georgie shoots me a look.

“There’s a dead driver in there and blood and brain matter, and the freaking police are on their way. Any more questions?”

I know better than to argue with my big brother, even if this is my show.

Me being the physically bigger man, I grab hold of the goon’s shoulders, while Georgie grabs hold of his legs. Somehow we manage to stuff him into the back seat of the Beetle without bruising or cutting him up too badly.

Not!

Before we bolt the scene, Georgie grabs the thug’s Uzi, aims it directly at the windshield of the GMC, fingers off the remainder of the clip. The entire glass plate explodes, along with what’s left of the driver’s head. He then wipes the weapon of prints, and brings it back with him to the Beetle. Lifting up the still catatonic goon’s hand, Georgie presses the guy’s fingers and palm against the weapon, making sure to leave some noticeable print impressions. Then the old pathologist tosses the still smoking weapon to the ground.

Hopping back behind the wheel, Georgie revs the engine.

I barely make it into the passenger seat before the tires resume spitting grass and gravel.

CHAPTER 42

GEORGIE DOESN’T OPT FOR the easy, take-the-long-way-home, kind of smooth mobile escape. Instead he motors the Beetle through a small patch of woods located on the opposite side of the private drive. The car rocks and rolls and scrapes and pounds its way through the thick brush until we come to the other side, which amounts to some poor suburbanite’s backyard.

Georgie never pauses to contemplate going around the yard. Instead he throws the tranny into fourth gear and motors right on past the swing set and the clothesline.

Who the hell still uses a clothesline?

He makes for the front yard, speeding across the manicured lawn and then jumping the curb back onto the quiet suburban street.

My head is still reeling.

I’m not feeling dizzy any more. I know the danger of passing out again is all but gone. But I also recognize something else happening inside me. It isn’t a physical sensation, so much as a transformation. A temporary loss of bearing. Like a captain piloting a rudderless boat in thick fog.

What’s just happened?

A gunfight . . . .Roger that . . . Check.

Outside Peter Czech’s house . . . Check.

Dead people inside a black GMC . . . Dead Russians . . . Check.

Russians want a box . . . Check.

Cops chasing us . . . Check and double check.

I look down at my lap, at the .9mm gripped inside it. I have no idea how it got there. I only know that it’s mine, and that it’s a good thing that I’m it holding it.

We head north on Route 9 towards the city, Georgie not speeding, but taking it easy, to not attract unwanted attention.

No more sirens.

No sign of the police behind us, beside us, or ahead of us.

Check and triple check.

“Georgie,” I say, after a time, “who exactly is the dude in the back seat again?”

“Oh shit,” he says. “You don’t remember do you? Short term memory kicking out on you.”

Short term memory. Let’s review today’s headlines, shall we?

Russians want a box . . . Roger that and check.

Gunfight in back of a house . . . Check.

Who’s house?

Shit, whose house?

Wheelchair, Blackberry in hand, thin mustache, one pint Jack and Coke . . .

Peter Czech. Czech’s house…Check.

Gun in my hand. Oh yeah. Gunfight. Check.

OK Moonlight, get your shit together.

I’m not sure how to put this delicately, but beneath my gun, my lap has grown stiff and full. I’m sporting an erection . . . a boner . . . a road boner . . . and damn if it isn’t in some painful need of relief.

Concussions . . . Check.

Multiple concussions . . . Check.

Concussions on top of a bullet frag lodged in brain . . . Check.

Declared dead just days ago . . . Check.

Brought back to life. Double and triple check.

“Take a breath,” Georgie insists. “It’s the concussion. Your memory will come back to you. Trust me.”

My memory. It always comes back to me. So do these erections.

Behind us, the guy laid out in the back seat squirms like a gut-shot rabbit. He starts kicking the seat, and screaming into his oil-rag gag.

I feel like the erection in my pants is getting huge. Too big for my skin. Too big for the Beetle. What’s happening is entirely physiological. Something to do with a short circuit in my brain exacerbated by series of concussions and the wires connected to my manhood. I can’t say I’m turned on by anything in particular. Quite the opposite. The blood-filled hard on, as hard as it is, is just something that’s happening. Naturally. And it’s as innocent as a child’s balloon being filled up with helium.

But that doesn’t stop the need for immediate relief.

“Listen,” I say, “you gotta stop off at the gas station or something. I mean it.”

I nod down at my lap, lift the cold hard steel of the .9mm just enough to reveal the hot hard flesh that’s happening under my pants. Meanwhile, the guy in back is pounding on the interior of the Beetle. Reaching into his leather jacket, Georgie pulls out the stun gun. While keeping his eyes on the road, he thrusts the business end of the stun gun against the big man’s ribs. The electrical jolt puts him back out.

Now it’s me who’s squirming, feeling like I’m about to explode. Georgie has to notice what’s happening. He’s a doctor after all. An M.D. He’s trained to notice these things.

“What you’re experiencing,” the retired pathologist explains. “In your head. In your pants. It’s temporary.” He can’t resist a giggle.

Cops are on our ass, and me, a forty-eight year old man, is sporting a huge road boner like I used to get on the school bus as a pubescent kid.

He pulls into a Mobile gas station, pulls around back near the dumpster to hide the Beetle.

“Go do what you gotta do,” he insists. “Make it quicker than quick.”

“Maybe they’ll let me borrow a
Playboy
off the rack,” I say opening the door.

“
Penthouse
is better. Go!”

I get out of the car, head for the inside of the station and the privacy of the bathroom.

How do you spell relief?

Just ask Richard “Dick” Moonlight, Captain Head-Case.

CHAPTER 43

WHEN I RE-EMERGE FROM the gas station bathroom, Georgie has the radio on. I get in, sit down, pull the seatbelt around me, buckle it. The news report on the radio speaks of a shootout inside a suburban neighborhood. A man was discovered dead inside a GMC, the result of severe gunshot wounds. That’s when it all starts coming back to me in a less fuzzy, less punch-drunk way. The bits and fragments of short term memory start making some sense.

“Four orchard Grove,” I recall. “Peter Czech’s house.”

Georgie smiles.

“That’s the great thing about the left brain,” he offers up. “It wants to remember things the way they happened. It’s the right brain that messes everything up.”

“Our friend in back. He’s got to be working for Rose. He’s got to be a part of the same outfit that flipped Czech’s house, maybe kidnapped him. The Obamas who killed me, made my head screwed up more than it already is.”

The fog is lifting rapidly. I can see the sun breaking through. I’m remembering again.

I say, “If this asshole laid out in back is after Czech, and he’s after him for the box, does it make sense he might go after Lola?”

“Call her,” Georgie says. “Now.”

I pull out the cell phone, dial the number for her North Albany terrace apartment. No answer. I call her school line. I get her answering machine. I hang up, call the secretary in the psychology department. She tells me Dr. Ross has yet to report to school. I ask her what time it is, like I can’t just find out by looking at my watch. She says it was 8:35 in the morning. She says that usually Dr. Ross would be on site by now, in her office working. Perhaps she had a doctor’s appointment, she adds hopefully. Maybe a hair appointment. But I know better inside my gut. My newly rebooted built-in shit detector is hounding me.

The goon in the back seat is still out. He’s moaning up a painful storm however.

“How fast can you make it to Lola’s?” I beg of Georgie.

“Lightening,” he answers.

We speed off.