Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (16 page)

CHAPTER 51

I SHOOT UP, GRAB Rose by the neck, put a choke hold on him, forearm against Adams apple. He’s taller than me, but far weaker. All skin and bones to which a small round pot belly is attached. The physical makeup of your average paranoid shut-in. He feels like a tall bird in my arm.

The remaining goon draws his piece.

I make like I’m fisting a pistol with my free hand, poke at my forehead with extended index finger.

“Plant your bead asshole,” I insist. “A little above and between the eyes. That’s your target. But before your bullet enters my brainpan to join the other one that’s in there, I’m gonna snap your boss’s neck.”

I expect Rose to be trembling in my arms. But he’s still and silent. Almost like he
wants
his neck to be snapped. Crap, maybe he does.

“Shoot Ivan,” he demands in a soft, low tone. “Shoot him, and if need be, shoot him through me.”

Ivan . . .

“Ivan?” I repeat. “You serious? Ivan and Theo. Jeez, you can’t make this shit up.”

“Fucker’s got a death wish,” Georgie says standing, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You pull that trigger, Ivan, I will kill you. Just so you know, I got ya covered like a Minute Man missile.”

Ivan the Russian goon holds his aim on me. I’m staring down the barrel of a .9mm. A situation that sadly, I am all too familiar with.

“Separate,” Georgie says.

I begin to drag Rose to one side of the room, and Georgie goes to the other, closing his distance between him and Ivan with each step.

Ivan becomes confused, now shifting his aim from Georgie to me, and back to Georgie.

“Do! Not! Move!” He shouts, accent thick, voice wavering, verging on panic.

“Shoot us!” Rose screams.

The gun back on me. The whole thing feels like a fucked-up version of Russian roulette.

Georgie dives, the stun gun held out before him like the tip of a spear.

Ivan’s automatic explodes.

Rose goes limp in my arms.

Ivan drops dead-weight to the floor.

“Get his gun!” I shout.

Georgie snatches it up. How he’s able to make himself sick and then move so fast and do it all through waves of full-body pain is beyond me. But it all has to do with a survival instinct he’s retained from the jungles of Viet Nam where he was once held captive for a full week by the Viet Cong before making his escape.

I lay the dead-weight Rose down on the floor.

He’s been hit in the lower neck, maybe a half-inch away from his carotid artery. The bullet must have taken a nosedive into his lungs because it never exited into me.

“Fuck!” Georgie spits. “Now what?”

Rose is mumbling something. Something about Lola.

“Lola,” he’s saying. “My . . . little . . . girl . . . Lola. I’m. So. So. Sorry.”

The door opens. A man walks in, followed by Lola. I’ve never met the man before. But I feel like I already know him. And I
do
know him, in a way. I recognize him as the man from my out-of-body experience. The man who came to Lola when I died for five minutes.

He’s Some Young Guy.

CHAPTER 52

LOLA, DRESSED IN WHITE smock, sweat-stained white mask hanging down on her chest, the matching white cap still sitting on her head, runs to her injured father. She kneels down over him, takes hold of his hand. She’s weeping.

“Get a doctor!” she screams. “One of the surgeons!”

But no one’s listening.

The two goons, Ivan and Theo, who’ve been stung with Georgie’s stun gun, are still laid out on the floor, even though both of them have regained enough strength to prop themselves up onto one elbow apiece. But by all indications, the angry Russian bear has been zapped out of them. I can only imagine their regret in not having patted us down before leading us into this room.

Georgie has the .9mm gripped in his right hand and he’s shifting his eyes from me to Lola and Some Young Guy who stands a few steps inside the doorway. Some Young Guy is the lead man before an entourage of men and women all wearing navy blue windbreakers, the letters FBI emblazoned upon them in big gold letters.

Entering close behind them, a team of blue-uniformed APD, Detective Clyne out in front of them. Clyne and I make eye contact. He nods, his face white and withdrawn, like he hasn’t slept in days or been far away from the bottle.

I nod back.

Standing beside him is his driver, big Officer Mike.

Mike also purses his lips and nods. Friendly this time, as opposed to the hospital where he flipped me off. I guess my willingness to put myself into the shit all for the cause of right over wrong makes me much more likeable in his eyes. But I’m not so sure if I’m willing to place myself in the shit, so to speak, so much as I possess an uncanny knack for getting myself
into
shit. A head-case who’s no stranger to shit or train wrecks.

Some Young Guy immediately makes his way to Lola, kneels down beside her.

“You need to get back to Peter, Lo,” he says. He puts his fingers to Rose’s jugular, then looks up at his people. “Not getting a pulse. Need EMTs. Those docs in there can’t do this. Call it in now!”

“Already on it, Chief,” informs a small woman, who has a cell phone clutched in one hand, her service automatic in the other. As she holsters her weapon, she shoots me a look and a warm smile.

“Thanks,” she offers. “For all your help. Any idea how long we’ve been after Rose and his grandson?”

I’m rendered speechless. How have I possibly helped the FBI?

I turn back to Some Young Guy. He stands up from Rose, and takes Lola in his arms. He’s her man now, and it makes my stomach drop to down around my ankles.

Both Clyne and his men, and the FBI special agents spread out. They remove themselves from the doorway as a team of EMTs burst through and go to work on Rose.

Lola spots me then.

She looks at me while still clutched in the arms of Some Young Guy.

“Oh Richard,” she whispers. “You have no idea, do you?”

“No,” I swallow. “You’re wrong. I’ve known for days. When I died, I floated over my body. And I saw you and him, together. I couldn’t see his face. But I know it was him.”

Lola bears so much sadness and bitterness in her smile there’s no room left for irony.

Standing there with the FBI cuffing the goons, reading them their rights; with sirens blaring outside the building; with God only knows what going on outside that plastic-enclosed operating room; and with Rose clinging to life or already dead; with my brain fucked up and my heart breaking, my significant other, Lola, has no other choice but to smile.

Some Young Guy turns to me, approaches.

He holds out the hand that isn’t holding a hand cannon.

“I’m Christian Barter. I’m Peter Czech’s biological father.”

I feel the floor go soft. I’m not going to pass out, but I’m having trouble keeping my balance nonetheless.

“Are you with Lola?” I ask.

“It’s not what you think, Mr. Moonlight . . . Not entirely.”

“So what am I supposed to think?”

He’s got these wide blue eyes, a mustache, and a goatee sprinkled with gray hairs. He isn’t all that young. But he has a young way about him. Even an optimistic way, despite the circumstances.

“My son is being operated on in the next room.” Glancing at Lola over his shoulder. “
Our
son. And right now, with Rose in custody, our son is our priority.”

Lola goes to him, takes hold of his hand.

“We should go back in.”

I watch my girlfriend walk towards the door with the man who fathered her son. Biologically speaking.

Before they reach the open door, I stop them.

“Barter!”

He stops, turns, Lola’s hand tightly held in his.

“Are you going to arrest your own son?”

His smile dissolves then, his youthful look of optimism disappearing.

“If he lives,” he nods.

CHAPTER 53

DO YOU KNOW WHAT it’s like living every minute like it’s your last?

It’s not as surreal as you might expect. I’m not afraid. I’m not sad. I’m not paranoid. I grew up surrounded by death as if it were as ordinary as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You grow up like that, you learn to accept mortality as a normal course in life’s grand feast of events. Not something to be ignored or feared. And I live my life like it could end at any minute, that bullet frag shifting inside my brain causing total paralysis and stroke and eventually death.

But I also live my life like I’m going to live forever.

It’s not all that different from the way we all live. Because who knows how long we’ve got? How many times have we heard the story about the man who crossed the road and got hit by a bus? Or the woman who walked into the corner bodega for a Diet Coke and was shot by the guy holding up the store? Or the family that hopped a flight to Buffalo on a cold winter’s night, only for the ill-fated flight to take an unexpected plunge? Or even the middle-aged man who sat down on a calm Sunday afternoon to read a newspaper, fell asleep, and never woke up?

Death happens to all of us. It’s always chasing us, and just because you got a better shot at having it happen to you sooner than later doesn’t make it right for you to skip out on life. And as for me, I want to spend that life in search of the truth, regardless of whether I do right or wrong in the process. As a P.I., it’s what I do. As a human being, it’s what I obsess about.

In this case, I do right.

As Rose’s goons are carted away by the APD-accompanied FBI personnel and the near-dead Harvey Rose is rushed to the Albany Medical Center for emergency surgery, I stand beside Georgie, while Barter and Lola stand by their son whose own surgery is nearly completed.

I could leave the building, my job done, my contract with Czech null and void, my girlfriend lost in the arms of another. But something’s keeping me there.

Back to Lola.

It’s the way I feel about her; the way my gut feels about her. I guess I love her more than I thought. I haven’t confronted her about her conducting an affair these past few days. Not because I’m angry or hurt, but because I’m afraid that if I utter even a single word about it, I’ll lose her forever. As the surgeons step away from the table, speak something softly in Spanish to Lola and Barter, that’s precisely what I realize.

The surgeons never do lay their hands upon Peter Czech again.

They abandon the table, shaking their heads in disgust, ripping their sweat-soaked masks from their faces. It’s the cue then for the half-dozen FBI personnel still hanging around inside the loft to flash their badges at them, explain that they are to be questioned.

My eyes lock on Lola and Barter as they approach their son.

I see Lola take hold of his limp hand. I hear her begin to weep, and then I hear Special Agent Barter begin to cry. He wraps his long arm around Lola’s shoulder. She’s trembling in his arms. Maybe they don’t exist as real family, but at the same time, they are family.

Blood family.

The surgeons are allowed to take their white smocks off, and to wash in a makeshift sink that’s been set up in a corner beside several fifty-gallon blue medical waste bins. They aren’t being arrested or charged as far as I can tell, but they and their cameraman are about to be rounded up and hauled downtown for questioning.

Out the corner of my eye, Detective Clyne is chomping at the bit in the far corner of the loft space, hands stuffed inside the pockets of his trench coat, his eyes shifting from the makeshift surgery to me and back to the surgery again.

I make my way quietly to one of the surgeons. He’s a tall, thin man, and his brow is still beaded with sweat.

“Do you speak English?”

He nods.

“The young man you were operating on,” I swallow. “Is he dead?”

He nods once more, bites his bottom lip, eyes peering at the floor.

“The man suffered a massive coronary on the table. He bore the heart of an alcoholic, despite his tender age. If we had been operating inside a true medical center he might have lived. But we were not prepared for something like that. Not inside a warehouse. Not with portable equipment. We just could not make something like that happen.” His voice may be heavily accented, but you can’t mistake the tone of utter defeat and disappointment sprinkled with fear.

The same, small female FBI agent who thanked me before approaches us, takes hold of the surgeon’s arm.

“That’s all for now, Mr. Moonlight,” she says. “I’m going to have to ask you and your partner to exit the building along with us. Considering your involvement in this case, I will ask that you follow us to FBI headquarters. Or you can ride with us now.”

“I can give you a lift,” a man says from behind me. It’s Clyne. Not far behind him, his ever-loyal Officer Mike.

I tell them both that I’ll take care of carting Georgie and me downtown.

“We’ll be right behind you,” I assure them, the trust beaming forth from my eyes like headlights.

The agent looks at me, into my eyes. I can tell she’s questioning her own judgment by trusting me. She shifts her gaze at Clyne as if to get his blessing.

“He’s O-K,” Clyne says with a nod.

Over his shoulder, I see Officer Mike nod in agreement. Funny how things can change so rapidly.

“Don’t worry,” I add. “I want to see this thing through as much as you guys do.”

“OK then,” the special agent says. “See you in a few.”

I make my way back over to the operating theater. Lola is still desperately clutching onto her son, and Barter is still clutching to the both of them. You can’t help but hear the crying coming through the heavy plastic. For a brief second I think about going to her. But then I think better of it.

That’s when I turn and head for a freight elevator that will take me down. But I’m not entirely sure how much more down I can possibly go.

CHAPTER 54

GEORGIE AND I DRIVE to the FBI headquarters as promised in downtown Albany on lower Broadway, not far from the alley where I first took a beating by Rose’s Obama-masked Russian support staff. But not without first making a pit stop at Georgie’s townhouse where we retrieved a much-needed medicinal joint for him and four Advils for me.

We’re hustled into a glass-walled room that contains that same dark-haired FBI woman, whose name it turns out is Lombardi, and Detective Clyne. They’ve been working with Peter Czech for more than a year, she explains. They were going to arrest him for treason unless he agreed to give them Rose. But in the meantime, he wanted the use of his legs again. That was the deal. If Rose would put up the money, the FBI would agree to allowing him the operation.

“But that operation took his life,” Lombardi says bitterly. “Now if Rose dies, the entire operation will be in jeopardy and most likely, dead too.”

“You knew about Czech all along,” I point out to Clyne.

The sad cop pulls his hands out of his trench coat pockets, crosses arms over chest. The pursed lip look on his face is like,
Gotta do what you gotta do even if it means lying . . .

“My apologies,” he offers. “I wasn’t at liberty to divulge the APD’s cooperative efforts in this FBI-led case. I could only try and perhaps get you to reveal what you might know as an independent working for Czech. But client confidentiality sealed your lips.” He smiles a little when he says the thing about sealed lips. Makes him look soft and almost loveable. I wonder if his wandering wife knows what she’s missing out on by doing the wild thing with her personal trainer. Probably not.

“This is a terrifically complicated case, Mr. Moonlight,” Lombardi says after a beat.

“Naturally it goes deeper than just grandfather and grandson.”

“Naturally. We also assumed through the course of your investigation you might end up latching onto some of the other players. Turns out you nearly did.”

Georgie sits up.

“Everyone’s interested in some sort of zip or flash drive,” he offers.

Lombardi steals a glance at her partner.

“Do you have any idea where it could be?” she begs, eyes wide. “Be the one thing that will keep this case a case.”

“You too, huh?” I say. “Everyone wants that drive. But no one can begin to find it. Least of all me.”

The door opens then, and Barter walks in. His face looks drained, and there’s a small bloodstain on his white button-down shirt. He must have been listening in on the conversation through the one-way glass. He and an entire FBI team no doubt. I’ve been the subject of an interrogation before. I’m no stranger to how the process works.

He nods at Clyne and Clyne nods back. Then he sits himself down hard in the one remaining chairs left inside the square-shaped room.

“How long have you known you had a son?” I ask.

“Forever,” he answers.

“How long did you know he was working with Rose to sell nuclear secrets to the Russians for cash?”

“Only this past year when he contacted me for the first time.”

“How long had Lola known that the son she’d given up from an adoption arranged by her own father lived here in Albany?”

“Like me, since last year.”

“How long did she know about her father’s illegal activities? Her sister?”

“She’s always known about him. That he was alive, I mean. She just had no idea that his business was so illegal.”

I look at Georgie. He looks back at me. I want to believe that Lola had no idea about her father’s business, but my built-in shit detector tells me different.

“Faking one’s death and living inside an abandoned department store warehouse isn’t exactly legal either,” I point out, “especially when the whole plot is financed by the former Soviet government.”

Barter shrugs his shoulders. “Blood and water, pal,” he sighs. “Blood and fucking water.”

“I’m not your pal, Barter,” I say. Then, “Is Lola going to be indicted too?”

He slams his fist on the table, stands.

“I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions, Moonlight!”

Lombardi’s eyes go wide. But Clyne doesn’t blink an eyelash.

Barter shoves his hands in his pocket as if to reign himself in, exhales a deep breath.

“OK, fair enough,” he says, calming himself down. “No, she’s not suspected of anything. Truth is, she rarely saw her father if at all. They hadn’t spoken in ten years. She also hadn’t spoken to her half-sister in over ten years. Not until Czech came back in their lives.”

“Your son,” I say.

He nods.

“My son,” he whispers, voice cracking.

Silence fills the room like the gas inside a death chamber.

Until Barter breaks the silence once more.

“That’s it for now, Moonlight. You and Mr. Phillips can leave. We’ll be in touch for more questioning later on.” He turns, looks over his shoulder at Clyne. “You good, Detective?”

Clyne purses his lips.

“Yeah,” he says. “No further questions.”

I get up. So does Georgie.

We go for the door.

I open it. But before I walk out, I have one more question.

“Barter,” I say, “do you still love Lola?”

He looks at me, makes hard eye contact, but then looks away with the most defeated expression I’ve ever seen on one man’s face, save Detective Clyne.

It’s answer enough.