Bad Moon Rising

by Tom Shepherd

  “Kids!” a woman’s voice called. “Remember me? Blondes have more funds.” She laughed. “So, where’s mine?”

  April Eddington waited in line at the checkout desk. She tugged on the seam of her blue-and-yellow flower dress and adjusted the white belt.

  “Ain’tcha leaving?” she said. “Whole island has been ordered to evacuate by midnight. Your bags already gone?”

  “We can’t leave yet,” Tanella said.

  “Honey, a Category Five hurricane is coming. Know what that means?”

  “Yes,” Tanella said.

  “I’m sure your parents will get you off the island in time.”

  “Where’s Stevie Wonder?” I said.

  “Tony? He’s packing. We’re splitting up.” April unzipped her purse and withdrew a bronze tube of lip gloss, painting as she talked, which gave her voice a funny peanut-butter-in-the-mouth sound. “He got an offer to do impressions at a club in Vegas. Club managers would rather hire you to sound like Stallone than to sing like Beyoncé.”

  “He is very funny,” I said, smiling.

  Tanella snapped her fingers. “Elmer Fudd!”

  “I dated him once,” April said. “Or was it Porky Pig?”

  “Can Tony McClure do Elmer Fudd?” Tanella asked.

  “Everybody does Elmer Fudd. I do Elmer Fudd.”

  Tanella was bouncing on her tiptoes. “Did Mr. McClure have a bruise on his face this morning?”

  “How did you—? He didn’t try anything funny with you, did he? Tony’s a little weird, but I never figured—”

  “What’s his room number?” Tanella said.

  “Three-fourteen, but—”

  “Thanks, April.,” Tanella marched for the elevator.

  “He didn’t try anything with you, did he?” April called.

  I waved and ran after her.

  The elevator door rolled wide and I was looking at a big water stain shaped like Michigan on the wall below a high window. Tanella strode down the hall, counting off room numbers. I had to ask.

  “Why did you ask if Tony’s face was bruised?”

  “Last night, while Beaumont was washing his eyes in the sea, whoever imitated Elmer Fudd knocked aside the gun hand of the third man.”

  “Yeah! I remember—the third druggie pistol-whipped him. Jeez, you’re so smart!”

  “Here it is—room 314.” She raised her hand to knock, but I grabbed her wrist.

  “Do you really think we should do this alone?” I said.

  “Good idea. Let’s get a small army. Whom shall we recruit?” she said. “Inspector Borkowski thinks Daddy killed Clancey Beaumont and we imagined last night.”

  “Uncle Bob?” I said.

  “Dr. Thornburg is tied up with the negotiations. We’re it.”

  “Uff-dah! I hate being it.”

  “Let’s do this.” She reached for the door, but I stopped her again.

  “What if he’s got a gun?”

  “God is on our side,” she said.

  “God ain’t knocking on the door of a drug pusher.” I muttered a few well-chosen profanities.

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Tanella, I can’t believe you’re preaching at me when we’re about to get shot.”

  “McClure kept us from getting shot last night, remember?”

  “That don’t mean he’s switched sides.”

  Tanella crossed the hall and leaned on the wall, cocking one foot behind her for support. “What do you want me to do?”

  I shrugged. “You’re the smart one.”

  She pushed off the wall. “I am sick of everybody telling me how smart I am! If I were so smart, I’d figure out who killed Clancey Beaumont and Carsten O’Malley and get my daddy out of handcuffs!”

  “I never said you knew everything.”

  “You act like it.”

  “We gonna fight, or find the real killer?”

  Tanella raise her hand to knock, but the door opened first. Tony McClure peeked out at us over a chain lock. All I saw was an eye and cheek, and they were perfectly healthy.

  “What do you want?”

  “May we please speak with you, Mr. McClure?" Tanella said.

  “Go away.”

  He slammed the door.

  I pushed her aside and kicked the door three times, hard. This loser was going to talk!

  “Stop that!” he said from behind the door.

  “Look, McClure, we know you played Elmer Fudd last night. We know you’re into all kinds of crooked crap. Now, open this door and talk, or we’re going straight to Inspector Borkowski.”

  Tanella’s mouth was wide, but no sound emerged.

  “Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop,” I whispered. Love those oldies.

  “Don’t do that,” McClure said through the door.

  “Open up!” I said.

  Minutes passed. Nothing. Finally Tanella said, “Let’s go.”

  “Eddie Murphy wouldn't leave yet.”

  She frowned. “Eddie Murphy is an actor.”

  I heard a latch slide and click. The door swung wide revealing a smallish room with twin beds, one with the covers thrown back and crumpled, separated by a night stand with a smoking ashtray where a cigarette had just been crushed out. On the undisturbed bed was a suitcase, split open like a disemboweled leathery beast. Socks and T-shirts trailed across the mauve bedspread like spilled guts. Someone had peppered the bed stand with white talc, best visible between the lemon drop lamp and beige telephone, where McClure had streaked the table with his fingertips.

  The room reeked of cigarette smoke. He closed the door and locked it, so I moved close to Tanella until our arms touched, then edged slightly behind her.

  “Well?” He sat on the bed. “What do you want?”

  Tanella looked at me, as if to say Okay, fool, you got us in the room—take charge! I cleared my throat.

  “Uh, we want to know who killed O’Malley and Beaumont.”

  “No, you don’t.” He pulled a metal flask from the suitcase, unscrewed the cup, poured something clear into the lid, and chug-a-lugged.

  Tanella flipped her hand at me. I shrugged, so she said, “Why did you save our lives last night?”

  “Don’t you want to know how a good-looking white boy like me got snared by drugs? Didn’t my teachers tell me—Users are Losers?” He laughed bitterly, poured another drink and swallowed it. Then a third. We waited while he screwed the cap back in place.

  “Never wanted anybody hurt,” Tony said. “Just seemed an easy way to make a little cash on the road. Living in hotels is expensive as hell. Sure, they give you room and board. But your bar bill adds up, laundry costs you a fortune, and your clothes have to be stylish. These shoes. Look at these shoes. Eighteen hundred dollars. In Savannah, not Manhattan. How am I supposed to compete with big name entertainers when it costs a week’s pay for a pair of shoes?” He dropped into a string of four-letter words.

  Tanella flinched, and he smirked. “What, you ain’t used to language like that? I thought most black kids talked like gangsta rappers.”

  “Do most whites talk like Duck Dynasty?”

  McClure laughed. “Good comeback, kid.”

  “Who killed Carsten O’Malley?” Tanella said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about Clancey Beaumont?” Tanella said. “You were there.”

  He lay back on the bed, pushing the suitcase onto the floor and scattering unopened packages of Fruit-of-the-Loom jockey shorts and white socks across the rug. Tony McClure stared at the swishing ceiling fan for a long moment.

  “Look, I’ll tell you what I know, okay? Only you gotta promise you won’t go to the cops.”

  “No deal,” Tanella said. “You’ll have to testify to clear my father of the charges.”

  He covered his eyes with his forearm, then laughed bitterly. “God! Why am I even talking with you? You’re just kids!”

  “We’re adolescents,” Tanella said. “As a Christian, I pledge to keep your name out of our report, if
possible.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  I slapped the side of the dresser with an open hand. “Mister, I don’t give a hoot if you believe her or not! If it was up to me, I’d call Borkowski right now. But if she says keep quiet, I’ll do it. For my friend.”

  Frankly, I thought I’d blown it, but was so ticked off, I didn’t care. Tanella says I have a typically adolescent emotional response mechanism. I think that means my mouth runs ahead of my brain and pukes all over whoever happens to be standing nearby.

  He took a deep breath, then blew it out. “You were right. I knocked the gun away when—when the other person was aiming at you. I didn’t want anybody to get hurt. Believe that?”

  Tanella nodded. Smoothing the covers, she sat on the edge across from McClure. Outside the rain returned, and I listened to big drops splattering on the window while the second-rate comedian lay on his back staring at the ceiling. I suspected he was searching for words.

  “I went to Dr. Blake’s suite this morning. Wanted to see if you recognized me on the beach last night. Had this speech all rehearsed. ‘Hello, Doctor. I met your daughter and her friends in the lounge yesterday. Heard they ran into some trouble on the beach and I wondered if they were okay.’ Figured he’d growl at me if he knew I was one of the pick-up men at the drop.”

  “So, it was drugs?” she said.

  “A hundred twenty keys of coke. Tiny drop. We usually get ten times as much, but the hurricane’s tearing up the pipeline from South America.”

  “Drugs come by pipeline?” I said.

  “Be quiet, Sally Ann,” Tanella said.

  “I knocked on the door but nobody answered. Figured it might happen, so I’d gotten a pass key from a friend in housekeeping—well, really a customer. I unlocked the door, thinking, ‘I’ll kick back, wait for Dr. Blake.’ Instead, I found him cold-cocked on the rug. Gun in his hand. Beside him on the floor was a toaster. On the balcony Clancey Beaumont is lying on his back on the table, arms dangling, dead as road kill. Bullet hole where his nose oughta be, blood dripping on the floor.”

  He sat up and looked at Tanella. “Your dad must’ve fired just as Beaumont ripped the toaster off the breakfast table and threw it at him. Toaster nails Dr. Blake, his thirty-eight slug whacks poor Clancey.”

  Tanella stood, moving away from the beds. “You faked a fight between Dad and Beaumont, imitating both voices. Why?”

  “I panicked. Didn’t want to get blamed for somebody else’s crime. Look, Miss Blake, I’m sorry, but your father shot him.”

  Tanella paced the carpet at the foot of the twin beds. I perched on the dresser, and it felt like I was sitting in the jury box listening to a prosecutor go after a hostile witness.

  “You broke into Daddy’s room just to wait for him, just to tell him you were worried about us?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You found him unconscious on the floor and Mr. Beaumont dead on the table? You must’ve thrown him out the window.”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “You single-handedly picked up Beaumont—a big man—and threw him over the breakfast table, shattering a wood-frame storm window?”

  I snickered. “Thinks he’s Superman.”

  “I told you what happened!”

  “You’re lying, Mr. McClure.” Tanella wagged a finger in his face. I’d never seen her like this. “You, Mr. Beaumont and another person came to our suite—probably the third man from last night. You let yourselves in with a pass key because you wanted to surprise Daddy. He was shaving, running water in the bathroom sink, so he never heard the door when you came in.”

  McClure’s put his hand over his eyes. “How’d you know that?”

  “His face was smooth when I kissed him goodbye. Earlier, it was covered with stubble. My guess is you and the third man hid on the balcony and Beaumont sat on the love seat waiting for Daddy to finish shaving.”

  “All right! Beaumont wanted to bribe him. But your dad got so angry he pulled the gun from a drawer and shot Beaumont.”

  She crossed her arms. “Wrong again.”

  “You think you know everything? You tell me what happened.”

  Tanella resumed pacing. “When Daddy came to the balcony, the other man hit him with the toaster. He found the pistol and shot Clancey Beaumont, probably on impulse. Maybe the killer figured too many people knew Beaumont was involved in drug smuggling.”

  “You’re sure it wasn't me—why?”

  “Daddy never keeps his gun in a drawer. Brief case or jacket pocket only. His jacket was hanging over a chair. You didn’t know that, because you were checking to see if he was badly hurt. That’s when the killer found it.” She tucked her thumbs in her belt bag. “Besides, saving our lives last night and committing murder to protect your identity today would not be logically consistent.”

  “You’re a helluva kid.”

  “You faked the voices, then both you and the real killer tossed Mr. Beaumont’s body through the glass.”

  “Why didn’t anybody hear the shot?” I said.

  “The murder happened during the mock battle.”

  “Wow! Eric must’ve just missed the action.”

  “Eric was the reason they staged the fake fight. They knew he was upstairs.” Tanella went to the bedside table and touched a streak of white dust. “Mr. McClure, why do you use cocaine?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She wiped her fingers on the bed sheet. “Eventually, it rots your brain. Sucks the life from your soul.”

  “When I’m on coke, I’m not a small-town comic doing happy hour at the El Cheapo Inn. I’m, Steven Colbert, John Stewart. I sing like Justin Timberlake, impersonate like Jimmy Fallon. I feel good about myself, because I believe I’m the best.”

  “If you work hard to become the best,” Tanella said, “it won’t dissipate when the drug wears off.”

  “What if I never make it big? What if I spend my whole life doing three-week stands in Georgia beach towns? How do I feel good about myself without coke?”

  I watched Tanella’s lips open, then she turned to the window and stared into the driving rain. I could only guess at the currents rushing around that brain. Finally she drew a fish symbol on the rain wet window glass, a sideways eight, flat at the tail.

  “Life has a wholeness to it. If your world is out of balance, putting on a blindfold won’t help.”

  “You gotta tell us who the third guy is,” I said. “He’s the real killer. Probably whacked O’Malley, too.”

  Tanella raised an eyebrow. “Whacked?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” McClure said. “You promised to keep me out of it.”

  Tanella said, “You know my daddy is innocent.”

  “I don’t know anything. I told you, Dr. Blake shot Clancey Beaumont and I found—”

  “Bullshit!” Tanella said.

  I almost fell off the dresser. Hey—I’m pretty gullible. If a priest told me a statue of the Blessed Virgin came to life and cussed him out—that I’d believe. But Tanella, swearing?

  “Get out of here!” McClure snapped. “I gotta pack for Vegas.”

  “The killer will come after you,” Tanella said. “That’s why you’re packing. You don’t have any bookings in Las Vegas.”

  “The hurricane—”

  “Hagar won’t shoot you dead,” Tanella said.

  I hopped off the dresser. “We’re going straight to the cops.”

  “No, you’re not.” He pulled a gun from the drawer of his night stand. Small and shiny, with a white enamel grip, the pistol looked like a toy in McClure’s hand, but I knew it fired real bullets. He opened the closet and gestured with the gun. “Get in.”

  “You’ll have to shoot us,” she said.

  “No you don’t!” I grabbed Tanella’s arm and dragged her into the walk-in wardrobe. She clung on the door frame with her fingertips, but McClure rapped her knuckles with the gun barrel. When she jerked her hand away, he slammed the door.

&n
bsp; Fourteen

  I heard a latch click, followed by a scraping sound, like McClure was dragging something across the floor to prop against the door and seal us in the closet.

  “Sally Ann, you complete idiot! Why did you tell him we were going to the police?”

  “Because we were going to the police.”

  “You didn’t have to tell him!” Tanella yanked an empty coat hanger, but it was one of those ring top hotel hangers that never leaves the rack so it didn’t budge. She batted a row of them with both hands. Hangers flared like piano hammers.

  I’d never seen her like this. Tanella was always cool as a peppermint patty in January. When somebody lit a toilet paper fire in the girls’ bathroom—smoke clouds billowing down the hallway, fire alarms howling—everybody else bounced off the walls until Mrs. Paschal let us file out of the building. Not Tanella. She kept her seat, hands folded on her desk. Now she was slapping hangers and kicking the closet wall and—is this Tanella?—cussing again!

  “Girl, are you okay?”

  “My dad is in jail, I’m locked in a closet with you, and a hurricane is coming. No, I am definitely not fucking okay!”

  That knocked the breath out of me. Who was this wild woman? The Tanella I knew was like a Protestant nun. I wasn’t even aware she knew that word, even with her college-graduate vocabulary. She kicked the wall so hard the drywall cracked.

  “Wow! Do it again, girl.”

  She did, thrusting a heel into the panel at the back corner.

  “Think about your dad, rotting for life in a cell. And you are never, ever, getting back together again.”

  She was kicking and swearing and kicking and crying and kicking. I flattened myself against the opposite wall and watched Tanella crush plaster and curse like a gang-banger. Suddenly she stopped. Breathing heavily from the wall-bashing, she said, “‘Never ever…’ You’re quoting Taylor Swift at a time like this?”

  “Jeez, girl, forget it—kick, kick!” I flashed to the wall and drew my leg back to punt. The force of my stroke ruptured the wallboard and I punched through to my crotch. Out there, nothing. Foot, leg and thigh dangled over an abyss. “Pull me back, Tanella!”

  “Push harder!” She shoved my shoulders.