Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (8 page)

CHAPTER 19

About a half hour later, Georgie and I are parked across the street and down a ways from Czech’s Orchard Grove crib. The place is a featureless, just-add-water, single-story ranch. It looks identical to the thousand-plus others that surround it in a quiet neighborhood that appears to have sprung up immediately after World War Two. That sleepiness means it won’t be long before someone calls the cops on Georgie’s F5 Ford Extend Van. Which makes it all the more important that I try and catch sight of Czech sooner than later, see if there’s anything about him that appears to be different from the young man he portrays himself to be.

Thus far however, it doesn’t look like he’s home.

We wait another hour, with the occasional car passing us, the driver almost always slowing up to get a good look at the two men dressed in black and parked on the side of the road opposite Czech’s. For all I know, the Neighborhood Watch Committee is already on to us.

“Time to take a drive-around, Georgie,” I suggest, after a time.

“Sure about that?” He sips on coffee kept warm from his thermos.

“It’s either that or have the APD pull up on our asses.”

I recall Detective Clyne’s business card still stuffed inside my pants pocket. Should I call him, alert him to what we’re up to? Better not to open that Pandora’s box.

Georgie slips the coffee into one of the console cup holders, turns over the engine.

“I hear you, Moon,” he says. “Just a quick drive around the block. Break things up.”

It’s exactly what we do.

When we get back, Czech’s house is still draped in blackness. Some of the other surrounding homes have also gone black. It’s after ten o’clock at night. I can’t be sure if people go to sleep before the eleven o’clock news in this neighborhood, or they’re all getting a good look at us through their living room picture windows.

Flashlight.

A circle of blinding white light.

“Oh crap.” Georgie, barking under his breath.

“Be cool. And pull that rubber-band out of your hair.”

Shooting me a look.

“Just do it, G.”

He does it.

“Come close,” I insist.

“Moon—“

“Georgie, we are not going to be reported to the cops.”

He scooches closer. That’s when I grab him by the shoulders, pull him into me, run my hands through his long, shoulder-length hair, and lay a big fat kiss on him. No tongue, of course.

A tap on the driver’s side window.

“What the fuck!” Georgie pulls back. I think he’s going to spit in my face.

“Don’t turn around, or this is shot.”

Another wrap on the glass, the flashlight lighting up the cab. I reach out, roll down the window, keeping Georgie close to me. Like he’s my embarrassed girlfriend.

“Excuse me,” a balding middle-aged man says. “But this is a private neighborhood and we strongly discourage people like you from using it for illicit purposes.”

I work up my best Moonlight smile.

“You mean like kissing your upset girlfriend you mean.”

“Whatever,” the man says.

“Listen buddy, I completely understand. I live in a suburb myself across the river in Troy. But as you can see, my girlfriend here is upset. She’s here visiting her parents and this is the only place we can grab some peace. So maybe just give us a few minutes and we’ll be on our merry way.”

The man shines the light on Georgie’s long gray hair.

“Her parents must be pretty old. What are their names? I’m sure I must know them.”

My smile dissolves.

“Here’s an idea, pal. Maybe dispense with the disparaging ‘old’ people commentary. My girlfriend happens to be prematurely gray.”

He pulls the light away.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. Merely trying to be neighborly. Who did you say her parents are?”

“I didn’t.”

“Ma’am,” the man pushes. “Would you mind telling me who your parents are so I can alert our friendly Neighborhood Watch Committee?”

Georgie straightens up, but keeps his back to the man.

“Please just leave us alone!” he screams in a voice that sounds like I’ve just grabbed hold of his nuts. Then he buries his face in his hands.

“Now look what you’ve done!” I snap.

The man is so rattled, he starts backing away.

“Listen,” he exhales, “my bad. Take the time you need. Sorry if I bothered.”

“We’ll be gone in a few minutes,” I say, then reach back around Georgie to crank the window closed.

Middle-Aged Man walks away, fading back into the night.

Georgie shoots back over to the other side of the van.

“Kiss me again,” he grouses, “and you die for real.”

CHAPTER 20

NIGHT DRAGS ON.

As convincing as our boyfriend-upset-girlfriend act might have been, the time is closing in on midnight. I know it won’t be long until the real cops arrive. But then two Halogen headlights break through the darkness. They belong to a four-door sedan that passes us by and pulls into Czech’s driveway.

Score.

Czech guns the car up the driveway incline. At first I think he might plow right through the garage door. But then he hits the brakes only foot or so from the door. The boat of a modified car rocks and bounces on bad shocks, just like dad’s old black Cadillac hearse. The headlamps shine bright on the overhead garage door, until the door suddenly starts raising up and the light fills the garage interior.

The car jolts forward once more and then skids to a stop inside the echoey garage.

“Your client likes his cocktails,” Georgie chuckles.

“Go easy on him. He’s handicapped . . . I think.”

By now I have my binoculars out. They aren’t equipped with night vision like you see in the movies. But they are UV-coated. I purchased them on clearance for fifteen bucks at my local drugstore. But with the garage light on, I have no trouble making Czech out. I see him swing his legs out and plant his feet firmly on the floor of the garage. Then he reaches into the back seat, opens the back door. It opens in the opposite manner a door will usually open, the hinges mounted towards the trunk rather than at the midpoint of the cab. The same way the doors work on an old fashioned limo. Like the kind my dad used to hire out on occasion for a client willing to pay up for the A-level funeral procession package. A custom body job no doubt designed specially for his handicapped.

I see him reaching for something, which I assume is a wheelchair. When he pulls himself out of the car by his arms and sits down hard into something, I know I’m right. He closes the driver’s side door, then closes the back door, and begins to wheel himself around the back side of the car.

I keep my vision on him the entire time. But when he stops about midway across the back of the car and spots the van, I can’t help but think that he’s spotted me too. His employer spying on him. Even from that distance I can feel him looking right into my eyes as if he can somehow make up for his paralyzed condition with exceptional if not superhuman eyesight.

“Start the van, Georgie. But leave the lights off.”

Georgie starts it. Czech turns back to the garage, wheels himself inside. The garage door comes down. Maybe ten or fifteen seconds later, the lights go on in the house. I aim the spyglasses at the living room window which is covered in drapes. When I see them open just a crack, I know Czech is eyeing us again.

“Let’s go,” I insist.

My girlfriend Georgie drives.

CHAPTER 21

WE’RE DRIVING BACK TOWARDS my loft.

“So tell me, Moon,” Georgie says after a time. “What was the point of that little exercise?”

“You gotta ask?”

He turns to me while driving, that long gray-white hair still draping his face like a guitar dude from
ZZ Top,
sans the Santa beard.

“You thought he was faking his paralysis, didn’t you?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“You don’t trust your client.” His right hand shoots up, index finger pointing at the van ceiling. “Correction, you
never
trust your clients.”

“Jim Rockford’s rule number one in the private detective’s handbook: Never trust your client, especially if she’s a woman . . . .Didn’t you ever watch the
Rockford Files
?”

“You’re dating yourself. And apparently for you and Jim Rockford, a handicapped person falls under the female category. What are you a fucking caveman?”

“Jim Rockford’s rule number two. Never trust a handicapped client who can pound two pint-sized Jack and Cokes in about twenty minutes and still drive a straight line out of your drinking establishment.”

“Hmmm,” he mumbles, pulling up outside my two-story building. “Out of curiosity, what’s Rockford’s rule number three?”

He comes to a stop, kills the engine and the lights.

“Never trust a client who’s willing to spend good money to hire a head-case like me. That’s actually my personal rule. Jim Rockford was worth the money. After all, we’re talking James Garner here . . . In his prime.”

“Doesn’t say much for me.”

“This ain’t about you. ’Sides, when it comes to that body of yours, it’s the mileage, not the years.”

I open my door. Georgie opens his.

I have no idea what hits me before my world turns black.

CHAPTER 22

HERE’S THE DEAL: I’M
dead again.

Or, at least I’m pretty sure I’m dead. Because just like last time, I’m floating over my body in the far corner of a room with no windows. Looks a lot like a basement with concrete walls and a concrete floor. In the backdrop, a garden variety Sears boiler, and a hot water tank with the ductwork and piping ripped out.

I’m laid out on some sort of gurney or table. Duct tape covers my mouth. My legs and arms are duct taped together at the wrists and ankles. In fact, my whole body is duct taped to the table. I can’t move anymore. Not with the blood that covers my chest and neck. Not with the blood that’s pouring off the table, pooling onto the concrete floor. Not with my heart no longer beating, my brain no longer functioning.

It’s the same with Georgie.

He’s been duct taped to a second table directly beside my own. While my eyes are closed, his are wide open while the three Obama-masked men-in-black clasp the business ends on a pair of jumper cables to his nipples.

Like me Georgie’s also bleeding from numerous lacerations and scrapes. He’s in so much pain I can see him thrusting his chest out in great heaves of agony as the electrical charges are applied. While the men standing on either side of him do the torturing (the one on the left holds the red cable; the one on the right, the black one), the third one stands at the foot of the table, and presses that voice machine against his throat.

“Where is the zippy box?” he demands in that foreign electronic voice. “Your partner . . . he has box, yes? We need box.”

From where I’m looking down on these three motherfuckers, I want to tell them I don’t have their precious box . . . whatever the fuck a zippy box is. That I never had a box. That I don’t even remember looking at the box. That I have no recollection of looking at it. That they have the wrong man. It’s Czech they want. Not me. Not Georgie.

As much as it pains me to see Georgie being tortured for something that’s my fault, I’m feeling kind of glad that I’m dead again. I’m starting to like this out-of-body-no-pain thing. I’m just waiting for the little spec of bright white light to reappear and for that roller coaster ride through the wormhole. I’m looking forward to seeing the old man again. I’ll miss Lola, but I’m not sure she’ll miss me. Not with Some Young Guy to keep her company now.

But then something happens.

I feel myself drifting. Only not in the right direction. I feel myself drifting back down towards my bloody, beat-up, sweat-soaked body. It’s slow at first, and I do my best to resist the movement south. But how can you resist when you are no longer flesh and blood?

It only takes a few seconds and like a foot slipped into a well worn boot, I’m back in my body.

CHAPTER 23

OK, MAYBE I DIDN’T die again after all.

Maybe I was only dreaming. Maybe I was delusional after having been knocked unconscious for the second time in a few days, my already fragile brain screaming, Uncle!

When I open my eyes I feel more pain pressing up against my eyeballs than I can possibly comprehend. Imagine Conan the Barbarian shoving his sausage thick thumbs into both your eye sockets until they pop out the back end of your skull? So much pain, I’m
wishing
myself dead. I know it’s difficult to stay alive sometimes, but is it really that hard to fucking die?

Turning my head, I manage a quick glance over my shoulder.

Georgie’s laid out on the table beside me. I try to scream through my duct tape-covered mouth. Whatever I’m doing, it must be working. Because I manage to catch the attention of the Obama-masked leader; the one with the cancer machine now pressed up against his throat. He glances at me while the other two Obamas are busy applying exposed electrical wires that are attached to what looks like your common everyday hair dryer up to Georgie’s mams. While the bigger of the two Obamas holds my big brother down, the far smaller one keeps trying to shift the hair dryer from slow to rapid air, and at the same time increasing the electrical charge in the wires. Or so I assume.

But something seems to be the problem.

The hair dryer is plugged in, but it doesn’t seem to be working, so they have to be content with sticking Georgie with the sharp end of the wire.

“What kind of torture you think this is?” says the smaller Obama, revealing his voice without the synthesizer. Russian. The voice is most definitely Russian.

“I cannot work under such conditions,” says the other. He’s talking without his voice machine also. Another Russian. “In mother country, we can count on reliable Russian nuclear reactor to provide power. Here, in U-S-of-A, the fucking Bambi lovers won’t have nuclear reactor. Except in bombs. America is soft and fat and stupid, yes?”

The smaller Obama keeps poking Georgie with the wire anyway. He keeps flicking the switch like he’s convinced the power is about to come back on at any moment.

Georgie’s face is beet red, and tighter than a tick. I’m not sure how much pain he’s in. But if they could tap the anger in him right now, they’d generate one hell of a charge.

The head commander-in-chief Obama keeps demanding to know where the box is. Correction . . . something called a “fleshy” or “zippy box.” That is, if I’m hearing him correctly. Since Georgie has less of a clue than I do, the little Obama keeps tapping him with the exposed wires, hoping for a charge. And with each prod, Georgie is growing more and more pissed off. Dude already has a painful skin condition in the form of frequent and recurring malignant melanoma.

But then Commander Obama sees that I’m conscious. Thrusting his free hand out, he orders his sick Obama underlings to put a stop to their torture session. Such as it is.

“Moonlight . . . He is awake, yes?” he says in electronic monotone. “Moonlight, he is trying to tell us all something.”

He steps over to me, careful not to trip over the long electrical extension cord attached to the modified Conair hair dryer. He pulls the tape off my mouth. I suck in a breath. The damp basement air tastes like worms. It’s possible I’ve soiled myself. It’s possible Georgie has too. Torture isn’t pretty, even if it does come from an uncharged everyday hair dryer most teenage girls own.

I try to speak, but no words will come out.

Commander Obama moves in closer to me, leans the side of his head into me, so that I can whisper into his ear. Pressing the voice box against his neck, he says, “Speak to me, Mister Moonlight. Where is the zippy box?”

“I. Don’t. Have. It.”

He stands up fast as if once more making for Georgie and more hair dryer torture.

“Wait!” I’m trying to scream. But it comes out like a whisper.

He turns back.

“I do. I do. I do know where it is!” It hurts to speak. Feels like chunks of skin tearing off the back of my throat. But what choice do I have?

He’s interested now. All three of them are interested, while they plant their gazes on me through those silly presidential masks.

“It’s in my home.”

“Where in home?” Commander Obama insists.

“I’ll show you. But first you have to un-tape us, stop prodding Georgie with that Conair.”

Commander Obama glances at the others.

“Unbind them.” Then his eyes back on me. “We will do this your way for now, yes? But if box isn’t there Mister Moonlight, we will torture you for real. We know how to torture you. We do good torture. Tricks we learn in Chechnya and Gori. Torture that is so slow, and agonizing, you will
dead wish
inside this concrete hole.”

“He
would wish he died
, you mean,” chimes in the smaller Obama, the Conair still gripped in his right hand. “You learn nothing in English school.”

“I learn how to say, ‘fuck’ and
‘
you’!” barks Commander Obama. “Do not correct me when I speaking the English.”

“I get it,” I interject. “Yes, yes, yes, I very well get the point.”

“See ass pie?” Commander Obama says to the short Obama.

“Ass! Hole!” small Obama corrects again. “Word is Ass! Hole! Yes?”

I’m fearing an all out brawl, which might not be a bad thing. But I also want to get the hell out of that basement. I decide to lay on some Moonlight charm.

“Wow you really know how to frighten somebody, Barack. Your English is excellent and you really know what you’re doing. In that whole torture-the-guy-in-possession-of-the-important-information kind of way. I’m gonna have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I feel Commander Obama actually smiling proudly under his rubber mask.

“I can do well in this country of the brave Bambis and the soft belly, yes?” Commander Obama adds.

“Yes, Mr. Obama,” I say. “Only in America can a man like you grow up to be President.”