Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (18 page)

CHAPTER 58

WHICH LEAVES ME PRETTY much alone to face Detective Clyne.

I hold the zip drive up for him so he can see it.

“I thought about handing this over to the Feds,” I say. “But somehow giving it to you seems more honest. Besides, you might use this as leverage over the course of your investigation. My experience is that the feds can be pretty bossy. They suspect you’re in possession of the flash drive, they might buy you lunch now and again. Or even a cocktail.” But what I’m not telling him is that I’d rather my girlfriend’s new boyfriend be denied the Holy Grail of their investigation. Just because.

I toss it to him.

He snatches it out of the smoky mid-air.

He takes a reflective moment to gaze upon the small device resting in the palm of his hand.

“This
is
the investigation,” he offers with a nod. “Fifty years’ worth of documents, letters, photos, cancelled checks, rogue warhead locations, nuclear sub specs, prices, names of sellers, names of buyers, transactions, Swiss bank account numbers, safety deposit box locations, cash drops . . .” He stares down at the drive and smiles, even giggles. “Jesus, it’s all in here, making this thing worth more than Fort-fucking-Knox.” Cocking his head. “To the right buyer, of course.”

“It also must prove that Rose was selling secrets to the Russians. First as a federal government accountant employed by the Department of Military Affairs and later through his grandson, a nuclear engineer in the employ of the Knolls Atomic plant in Schenectady.”

“That it does,” Clyne says, staring into what’s left of the fire, as the remainder of the building begins to cave in slowly, like a dying, gut-shot deer collapsing under its own weight. “Peter Czech was a traitor. But he was also burning with optimism’s flame. He hired you thinking you’d keep his flash drive safe while you exposed his grandfather, and at the same time, regained the use of his legs. And when all was said and done, he’d use the flash drive and the evidence you gathered up against Grandpa Rose as his get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“I guess that about sums the grand plan up,” I say. “But sometimes optimism isn’t enough, is it? In the end the bastards still find a way to nail you to the cross.”

I shoot a glance at the cop’s left hand. At the ringless finger.

“You miss her, don’t you Clyne? Even though she was unfaithful.”

He turns to me, nods.

“Yah,” he says, above the crackling noise of the fire. “Even though she was unfaithful.”

I remember Barter standing beside Lola in my hospital room. Her old lover come to be by her side and console her in her grief on the day I died. Turns out he’ll be consoling her again. But not over me . . . my life
or
my death. He’ll be consoling her over the death of their own flesh and blood.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I say, but the words are like pissing in the Hudson River and about as pathetically poignant.

He lets out a small laugh again.

“Do you?” he says, once more staring down at the flash drive.

I don’t know how to answer that one. Because maybe I truly have no idea how he feels about being cheated by the one person he must have loved more than himself. No idea, other than he’s suffering from the pangs of a broken heart. And who hasn’t suffered one of those before?

Tossing the drive up into the air like he’s flipping a coin, he catches it again with the same hand. Then he shoves it into the pocket of his trench coat.

“All’s well that ends well, or not so well,” he says. “Gotta get this thing tagged and bagged and stored away safely in evidence.” Tossing me another teddy bear smile he adds, “I’ll be seeing you Moonlight.”

“Sure thing,” I say, but as I watch the brokenhearted detective walk away from the smoldering remnants of Moonlight’s, my built-in shit detector pokes me against my ribs, and speaks up loud and clear.

It says,
You might never see Detective Clyne again.

Nor will his cheating wife.

CHAPTER 59

HE DISAPPEARS OF COURSE.

A week after Moonlight’s burns to the ground and the zip drive that proves Rose and his grandson Peter Czech are traitors is discovered stuck to the underside of my own barroom table, APD Officer Dennis Clyne is declared officially missing and WANTED by the FBI for absconding with evidence crucial to a federal and state investigation, or whatever the official term for it is.

But in unofficial terms, Clyne is wanted for turning traitor and for disappearing from US soil with the intention, no doubt, to sell the flash drive to the highest bidder on the black market.

So in the end, it’s Clyne who gets his face plastered up on the wall of every post office from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. I have to admit, I can’t help but picture the stocky, sad-faced man sitting inside a café, maybe in Paris. Drinking a solitary coffee, staring out at no one in particular, but remembering the wife he loved and lost so tragically to another man.

Maybe he has every intention of selling the zip drive, or maybe he’ll hold on to it for a while. Just long enough for the feds to give up on finding him and for Interpol to toss in the towel.

I haven’t known Clyne for very long, or really at all for that matter. But what I do know of him tells me that he’s a pretty smart cookie, and that if he has any flaw at all it’s being sensitive enough to agree to leave his job in the Bronx to raise a family up here in the country, as it were.

Albany.

I imagine him losing some weight, maybe shaving his head, growing a beard that he’ll keep trimmed. He’ll dress in black and perhaps take up smoking. He’ll blend in with the surroundings, maybe refer to himself as an artist at work, or something like that. He’ll have access to those Swiss accounts and secret cash drops, and once he unloads that zip drive he’ll have more cash than he ever dreamed about. Certainly enough to live on. Enough to pay for a new identity, a new passport, a new soul altogether.

Maybe he’ll even be able to afford a black-market cadaver that he’ll then arrange to have dropped into the Seine and fished out by the police, who will then have no choice but to declare APD Detective Dennis Clyne dead. Only then will his investigation be called off. Only then will Clyne declare himself the ultimate winner in the matter of Harvey Rose and Peter Czech and one very wayward wife.

But he’ll be wrong.

Dead wrong.

He won’t be the winner. Because I doubt he’ll be very happy in the long run. I doubt that as the years pass, he’ll ever truly know happiness again. No matter how hard he works at his new identity and his new home, he’ll always be left with the heartache of knowing his wife was bedding down with another man. And the bitterness in that pill never goes away.

Still, I can’t help but be happy for Clyne.

Maybe I’m a little envious even.

Who doesn’t wish they can escape their life and become somebody else from time to time? Who doesn’t sometimes wish to flee their broken heart? Who can ever truly blame a brokenhearted man for wanting to disappear?

So as the night gives way to the early morning hours on the day after Detective Dennis Clyne of the APD is declared WANTED by the FBI, I get undressed and slip under the covers of my bed alone, and I contemplate those very questions. Who hasn’t imagined themselves escaping from it all at one time or another? Who hasn’t thought about disappearing at least once in their lifetime?

As I begin to drift away, I see Lola, and I feel my heart ache. I see her tan face, her deep-set eyes, and her long thick hair draping her shoulders. I can even smell her lavender scent.

I wonder if I’ll be able to live without her. I wonder if I’ll ever get over the pain of her having left me for her old lover. The father of the son she never got a chance to love like a mother. I wonder if I’m the true loser in all of this, and somehow Barter the absolute winner-take-all, even if he has lost his son in the process. I wonder if in the final analysis, that’s the underhanded reason behind Czech hiring me: to expose Lola’s affair with the man who should have been his father. Or maybe I’m just a fool for thinking so. A train wreck of a head-case.

But I also can’t help but wonder, as a whiskey-infused sleep takes over, and my soul begins to slip away, if I’ll ever get Lola back. My Lola. I wonder if she’ll ever need me again. If she’ll ever want me. Desire me. Trust me. I wonder if I’ll want her again. Wonder if I can trust her. Or if our love is just too badly broken and beyond repair.

Inevitably we are all dead men and dead women. But until that time comes, we all become the victims of love, slaves to our most painful memories, jesters to our desires. Or maybe I’m just better off dead and buried.

I might drift off to the wetness of my tears dropping onto the pillow one by bloody one. But tonight, as darkness consumes me, and all consciousness flees my fragile brain, I begin to sleep the sleep of the dead.

And I cry for no one.

TO BE CONTINUED…

BLUE MOONLIGHT

Vincent Zandri

“This bitter earth can be so cold.”

-- Will Grosz

I’M AWAKE.

I know I’m awake because my eyes are open and I’m looking down at my hands, which are handcuffed. Funny how I don’t remember going to sleep in the first place.

Turns out I don’t remember boarding a plane either.

But I know I’m on a plane because when I shift my eyes from my handcuffed hands to over my left shoulder, I see nothing but friendly blue sky resting atop an endless sea of the fluffiest white cotton-ball clouds you ever did see.

I’m flying all right.

Thirty thousand feet above the solid ground inside what looks to be an Airbus. A USAir owned and operated Airbus, or so says the safety color-coded, impervious-to-puncture, sudden impact, water and/or fire damage, plastic-coated, safety manual stuffed in the seatback in front of me.

Or maybe I’m just dreaming.

Tell you what. I’m gonna close my eyes now. Go back to sleep.

I open my eyes.

Wide.

Still flying.

I’m not dreaming.

Fuck me.

Ok. Recap thus far.

I’m awake. I’m handcuffed. I’m flying. And it isn’t a dream.

Far as I can tell, I’m seated in the final row of the plane. The
bouncy bouncy
seat my ex-wife, Lynn, used to call it whenever we’d take a trip together, which wasn’t very often. The cheap seat. What’s strange is that the half dozen rows of seats up ahead of me are unoccupied, as are all the middle and starboard rows to my right. A thick gray curtain is draped across the entire mid-section of the cabin, as if to offer me the utmost privacy. Or maybe the back rows have been closed off to the general law-abiding public due to my presence. But I can’t imagine why in the world that could be.

I’m not a criminal. I’m just a head-case. A suicide survivor with a small piece of .22 caliber hollow point lodged inside his brain. By all that’s right in the world, I should be a dead man.

The seat directly beside my own however, is not empty.

Far from it.

To say the guy occupying it is bigger than me would be like saying Ernest Hemingway used to like the occasional chilled glass of Chablis.

He’s so big he fills the narrow seat entirely, some of his excess bulk oozing over onto me. The hand that’s attached to the wrist to which my wrist is cuffed is bigger and thicker than both my hands put together. And I’m no lightweight. I’m a weightlifter. I can bench press two-hundred-sixty-five pounds five times in a row. Clean. None of this bouncing it off your chest-cavity shit like all the high school kids do. But this Sherman tank of a man makes me feel about as rough and tumble as the Dali Lama on a starvation diet.

I’m flying and I don’t know how I got here.

The plane dips and lifts and dips again, the entire fuselage rattling and shaking. An overhead light clicks on, along with a gentle chime.

PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS.

You ain’t gotta tell me twice.

But then, I’m already strapped in.

A tinny voice emerges from over the P.A. asking us fliers to return to our seats and fasten our seatbelts until the Captain decides to turn off the warning light or we crash. Whichever comes first. We’re about to encounter a patch of severe turbulence that simply cannot be avoided.

Severe Turbulence.

It rings a bell. No, it more than rings a bell. Just the sound of those words sends my balls on a vertical rise up though my colon, through my stomach and up into my throat where they settle like two concrete lumps.

I tap into my memory banks. What’s left of them.

I’m flying.

I don’t like to fly.

I hate flying.

I’m afraid to fly.

No that’s not right.

I’m afraid of crashing.

We hit the promised patch of turbulence.

The plane rocks like boat on a choppy sea. A wave of cold fear rushes through my body. But the big guy next to me, he’s smiling.

Correction.

He’s laughing. Laughing like flying through severe turbulence is the most fun you can have with and without your clothes on. What’s even worse is that every time we hit a wave of bad air, he yanks on the cuffs, the sharp end of the bracket digging into my wrist. I’m beginning to think he’s drawing blood.

“Dude,” I say, my voice a full octave higher than the good Lord intended. “Dude, sir, dude.”

He turns to me. He’s got this big ass smile that’s centered in a bowling ball round face, thick red lips surrounded by a goatee and mustache that’s far thicker than my own. His hair is thick too but sprinkled with gray, and balding in the middle. I peg him for maybe forty-nine or fifty, but going on sixteen. You know the type.

“Well look who’s awake, Jake!” he barks. “And just in time too. We’re in for a ride. Turbulence. Makes things interesting don’t you think? My three marriages were chuck-full of turbulence. Never a dull day.”

He laughs, shaking his belly which protrudes up tight against a Hawaiian print shirt that must have been specially woven for one of those huge ass Samoan motherfuckers. He’s opening and closing the fingers on his left hand, the middle digit of which bears a thick ring with a stone embedded inside it. The stone is bigger than my right eye. Even from where I’m sitting, I can see the letters N.F.L. embossed into the gold ring.

Football.

Pro football.

I love football.

But this guy’s a dick.

Situation check.

I’m flying.

I’m handcuffed to a big dude who enjoys turbulence. Handcuffed to a big dude who likes turbulence and who plays, or used to play pro ball. Attached at the wrist to an NFL dude and flying through some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced and I have no idea how I got myself into this little predicament.

Which of course, begs the question…

“How did I get here?”

“You mean like…here?” NFL dude says yanking on the cuffs, sending a wave of pain up my right arm. “Oops, my bad….You mean
here
on this plane? You ask me, Mister…what is it again…?” Reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a slip of yellow Post-A-Note. “Mr. Richard Moonlight, Date of Birth 7-2-62; Social Security number: 050-62-3028, height: five-feet-nine inches, weight: one-hundred-seventy-six pounds.” Staring down at me. “Little guy…you are.”

“One-seventy-even,” I say. “Five-nine and a half.” I wanna bust his ass for talking like Yoda but I’m afraid he’ll yank on that cuff chain again. And besides, the plane is bouncing and I’m too frightened for idle chatter.

“Excuse me, Moonlight?”

“Your scale must be off…I’m one-seventy.”

Another jolt of turbulence. I feel my heart stop for the briefest of seconds. Until it starts up again.

“We get the info from the computer,” he laughs. “We don’t actually weigh you. And besides, you wouldn’t have cooperated anyway. Not in the condition you were in.”

“What. Condition?”

NFL Dude just looks at me, into my eyes.

“You don’t remember do you? You truly don’t remember?”

“My head,” I say. “I have this problem with my brain. There’s a small—“

“—piece of .22 caliber bullet inside it, pressed up against you cerebral cortex….Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it. You wouldn’t shut up about it on the drive all the way to the airport.”

“What drive?”

“From your crib to the airport. Plane didn’t very well pick us up in front of your loft, Moonlight.” Another belly laugh.

“Ok, I give up. Who are you?”

Reaching back into his chest pocket, this time pulling out a wallet. When he does it, his unbuttoned shirt opens up enough to reveal a hand-cannon stuffed inside a black shoulder holster.

Guns on a plane.

Cop on a plane. Or hijacker on a plane.

I’m putting my money on the cop. If I had any money.

He opens the wallet quickly revealing a laminated picture ID. There he is, all smiles and wavy black hair that isn’t yet sprinkled with gray. Dude’s got to get a new pic. I try and catch the name printed in between the photo and the letters FBI, but only catch the last name.

Zumbo.

Now if that doesn’t sound like a pro ball player, I don’t know what does. And turns out I recognize the name.

Zumbo.

Bob “Zump” Zumbo, fullback for the New York Football Giants from 1987 through 1994 when a knee injury sidelined him for good.

I might be flying on the verge of crashing, but things are definitely looking up.

“Giants,” I say.

Now the smile is so wide I fear it might split his entire face in half.

“You a fan Moonlight?”

I nod.

“Never miss a game,” I tell him. “You were great.”

“Bad knees,” he says cocking his head down towards his lap. “I had to retire with half pension.”

“That why you’re a fed agent now?”

“The FBI is my hobby. Keeps me out of the bars.”

“Mr. or is it, Agent Zumbo? Listen, I gotta pee something fierce. My back teeth are floating.”

He purses his lips.

“Ah jeeze, really?” he says with more disappointment than annoyance. Like I’m his five year old kid. He says, “Ok, but you gotta make it quick. Lot’s of turbulence.”

Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a key, uncuffs my wrist.

I feel immediate relief. The skin isn’t broken, but it’s scratched. I run the fingers on my left hand over it.

Zumbo pushes himself out of the seat, stands up, shifts himself onto the aisle. His body fills out the entire back end of the plane.

“Ok, Moonlight up and at ‘em. And don’t try anything funny. We’re on a commercial flight and I have a gun, and by the looks of things, you don’t need anymore trouble added to your pedigree.”

Behind him, a female flight attendant approaches.

“Do you think it’s wise taking his cuffs off, Agent Zumbo?” she poses.

She’s an attractive, brunette, her long dark hair parted neatly over her right eye. She also looks familiar to me. Like I might have met her in a bar once not to long ago, but was too drunk then to remember her name now.

The plane buffets and rocks again so that Zumbo has to grab the seatback to stay on his feet. Meanwhile, the flight attendant seems entirely unaffected by the sudden motion. She’s got her sea legs.

“Terrorists gotta pee too,” he laughs, a little under his breath. “Constitution grants the right for a suspected criminal to water his hog.”

Back stepping the attractive brunette shakes her head in disgust and retreats into the back galley.

I know what she’s thinking:
“Men!”

Zumbo picks me up by the arm, leads me the two or three feet around to the area behind our seats where the lavatory is located. He opens the door and shoves me inside.

“One minute,” he says. “Or I come in after you, guns a blazin.”

“Yeah I got it.”

He goes to shut the door.

“Wait one second,” I say. “What did you just refer to me as?”

The look on his round face has gone from glee to confusion.

“What?” he barks. “Come on, Moonlight. Pee already.”

“Just a second ago when you were talking with the attendant. You called me something.”

Back with the smile.

“Oh, yeah, I called you a terrorist. Well, suspected domestic terrorist to be truthful. You haven’t been arrested for anything quite yet. You’re merely being detained under suspicious circumstances. Think of it as being waitlisted for a spot in a federal pen.”

“So where are we going and why have I been handcuffed?”

“We’re on our way to DC, for an interview.”

“I don’t understand…I’m not a terrorist. In fact, I used to be a cop.”

“Hey man,” he says, “a Mrs. Doris E. Walsh of the Internal Revenue Service of these here United States of American disagrees entirely. And she can prove it.” Pulling out a folded sheet of paper from the back pocket on his husky size Levis 501s. Unfolding it, he glances at it quickly. “Where’d you learn to construct pipe bombs, Moonlight?”

He shoves me further into the bathroom, closes the door behind me.

“One minute,” he repeats from outside the door.

The plane shakes again. Dips.

I feel like I’m about to crash.

Crash and burn and die a tragic violent death.

But then that would be the best news I’ve heard all day.