Moonlight Rises

by Vincent Zandri

But when it comes to driving, the surviving Obamas are presidential material. The damaged Beemer burns rubber, and like Air Force One on takeoff, disappears into the thick black night.

  Chapter 25

  Dizziness sets in.

  I want to collapse onto the pavement. But the pain won’t allow it. Instead I slowly lower myself to the ground as carefully as old people having sex. I don’t pass out this time, but I’m aware of that little piece of bullet lodged inside my brain and for the briefest of moments, I feel myself drifting off to Never-never land. It isn’t exactly like an out-of-body experience because I’m not dying. But it’s close enough, and I feel like my soul is once again trying to escape the blood, bone, sweat, and tears.

  And who can blame it.

  The three of us lie in the middle of an empty road.

  Behind us in the distance I am able to recognize the fenced-off perimeter of the Albany International Airport. Civilization has all but abandoned this end of the mammoth facility. Or should I say eminent domain evicted the residents a long time ago, when the airport authority bought out entire neighborhoods in order to lengthen the runways. Evidently the houses were all torn down, but not all the basements were filled in. I’m guessing our Obama friends know all about these basements.

  I somehow manage to grip the 9mm in a trembling hand.

  Georgie and the small female Obama on the ground are struggling to get up. So am I. But I make it to my feet first.

  Georgie follows me. When the masked woman raises herself up onto her knees, I press the pistol barrel against her head. She witnessed me put a cap into her teammate’s head just a minute ago. She knows now that I won’t hold back from shooting just for the sake of making a new friend.

  “Stay there,” I order.

  Then I pull off the mask.

  The face that’s revealed is a real beauty.

  It also nearly causes me to pass out.

  This time for real.

  Chapter 26

  The face belongs to a woman I’ve been seeing a lot of in the past few days. The nurse from the Albany Medical Center. The pretty one with the cleavage and the push-up bra who most definitely got a concussion-induced rise out of me as soon as I was revived from the beating her partners gave me in that downtown back alley.

  I guess that explains how the Obamas were able to sneak into my hospital room. She no doubt arranged it.

  “My head,” she says, her words slurred. “You hit me over the head with that gun. You head-case son of a bitch.”

  “You’ve got reason to complain,” I say. “You tortured my friend with a Conair hair dryer. And you had a gun pointed at me first before I walloped you with it. Makes us even.”

  She’s still on her knees, but she’s trying to get up. “That hair dryer was meant to put more fright into you two idiots than actual electricity. It’s U.L. tested and safety certified for scatter-brained teeny boppers.”

  “Oh, my bad. I take it all back. I definitely do owe you an apology. You were just doing your job. How’s this for I’m sorry?” I raise my right leg, press my boot heel against her forehead, shove her back down onto the street.

  Georgie comes up on me from behind. He draws back his right leg like he wants to punctuate my remarks with a kick to her face.

  “Not while she’s down, Georgie. She’s as good as dead anyway.”

  I keep the pistol on her. It’s dark. But the halogen lamp-lit airport casts enough luminescence for me to still make out her face.

  “You really work at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Then how come nobody saw through your act?” And what an act it was. I seemed to recall tears streaming down her face after I was revived. Fake tears, to be more precise.

  “It’s not an act,” she says from down on her back on the pavement. “I’m a registered nurse.” Cocking her head, rolling her eyes. “OK, some of it was an act.”

  “You’re a registered nurse who volunteered for the job at AMC just because some Albany PI with a bad brain was ambulanced there after your Obama friends tried to kill him.”

  “Nurses work for a lot of different hospitals, Moonlight. The hospitals don’t employ us. Agencies do. I’m employed by the Ferguson Nursing Agency in Manhattan, believe it or not. The staff at the Albany Medical Center just assumed I was a fill-in for somebody for the day. They’re always understaffed.”

  “OK then, who do you work for when you’re not nursing? Are they political, religious, or criminal? And why did they want me dead?”

  “They don’t want you dead.”

  “What is it they want then?”

  Still flat on her back, she looks up at me, her face not so pretty anymore, her long blonde hair pulled back tight and hidden under the wool cap, her once-pert breasts somehow pressed flat under her black turtleneck sweater.

  “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Moonlight?”

  “The what is, I guess. Leave Peter Czech alone, and hand over a box. Size, make, and shape unknown. But the why of any of that loses me.”

  She sits up and reaches over her head with both hands. I thumb back the trigger on the automatic.

  “Take it easy,” she says. “I’m just letting my hair down.” She pulls away the rubber band and her thick blonde hair falls down against her shoulders. She reaches up into her sweater, unclasps something, works her hands busily for a few seconds and out comes an Ace bandage, breasts popping up under her sweater like two plump magician’s rabbits.

  “Oh God, yeah,” she says. “That feels so much better.” She issues me the sweetest pout you ever did see. Just like that she has her looks back, and along with them, some leverage.

  As she slowly gets to her feet, her face gravitates toward my face, her lips looking all the more full, red, and luscious all the time. Her blue eyes, veiled with that blonde hair, look good enough to swim in.

  “Easy does it, Moon,” I hear Georgie warn. “This little tart did a slam dance on your head inside a back alley.”

  “That wasn’t me,” she shoots back. “I had nothing to do with those goons. I wasn’t even there.”

  “You’re just a torture consultant,” Georgie snaps.

  “I wasn’t torturing you,” she says. “I never even had hold of the hair dryer. And even if it had worked, a shock from rubbing your feet on the carpet would’ve given you more of a jolt.” Her blue eyes wide. “It wasn’t throwing off any shock at all, since I’d made sure to throw the switch on the ground fault interrupter. What you felt was the prick of the wire. That’s all, big baby.”

  Georgie gives her a look like he’s insulted. If he was going to be tortured, she should have had the common courtesy to do it right. Or else, yeah, he looks like a big baby. “So, what are you trying to do?” he says after a beat, “work up sympathy for the devil?” Crossing arms over chest. “That freakin’ wire still hurt plenty.”

  “I’m merely telling you I don’t get into that kind of torture crap and what I did, I did because the sadistic Russian morons would kill me if I didn’t at least go through the motions. Get it?”

  Georgie looks at me like, you believe her?

  She was nice to me in the hospital, so I do sort of believe her. So long as she isn’t the one who fucked with that incision on my right side with a scalpel tip. And she’s definitely not that man.

  She moves in closer to me, her lips almost touching mine, her breasts pressed up against my chest. I feel what’s become an all too common tight sensation in my midsection in the wake of my new concussions. Holy crap, if I don’t almost lay one on her. If the circumstances were different, I would wrap her in my arms, haul her off into some dark corner.

  But what the hell am I doing? Am I that much of a head-case? Why can’t I control myself when it comes to beautiful women? Dangerous women?

  “Moon,” Georgie repeats, his voice taking on the tone of a schoolmaster.

  I’m hearing him but I’m not hearing him.

  Her lips are touching
mine now. I feel myself growing inside my pants. And then, the automatic is snatched from my hands, the barrel now pointing in my face.

  The tables, they have turned.

  She takes a step back, the piece now gripped in her right hand.

  “Little-known fact about the head trauma you suffered in that alley,” she says. “Your concussion…the damage it does to the frontal lobe…it will make you so horny, so greedy for sex, you won’t be able to exercise even the most basic good judgment. Remember that erection you raised for me when you were first brought back from the dead?”

  I’m already fully aware of my little sexual problem.

  “He’s got a small fragment of .22 caliber bullet pressed up against his cerebral cortex,” Georgie comments from behind me. “His judgment is already messed up. Or maybe you couldn’t tell.”

  I feel a wave of shame wash over me. Maybe the Obamas are right. Maybe I should stay the hell away from Peter Czech. Maybe I should just stay inside the closed confines of my new bar, just like Lola wants. But it’s too late for all that. They are convinced I’m hiding something inside a box somewhere. A box that was apparently delivered to me but for which I have zero recollection.

  Nurse starts stepping away into the darkness, that piece aimed at my face the whole time.

  “What’s your name?” I insist. “At least tell us your real name.”

  “You think I’m that stupid, Moonlight? Come now. I wouldn’t have revealed my identity at all had you not removed my mask.”

  I’m slowly shifting to the right, into my own patch of darkness.

  “Easy, Moonlight,” she warns, that now-repatriated pistol barrel following me. “I haven’t quite figured out what to do with you yet.”

  I keep moving, while Georgie begins shifting himself in the opposite direction.

  “Do. Not. Test. Me,” she says, flipping back from one of us to the other. “I’m a perfect shot.”

  “You’re not about to cap us both,” I insist. “Not even Clint Eastwood is that fucking good.”

  “Try me head-case—” she starts to say. But that’s when Georgie lunges at her legs, taking her down with a form tackle that would make Vince Lombardi proud. I surge forward, kick the pistol out of her hand.

  Georgie and me: teamwork.

  “You prick!” she screams at Georgie.

  He rears back with his right hand, makes a fist.

  “This is for your pals poking me with a Conair,” he says, a split second before belting her between the eyes.

  Chapter 27

  We have the pistol back and we have the nurse, who is sufficiently passed out. The Obamas have taken a ride for now, and we have our relative health. What we don’t have is transport.

  “Ideas?” I query Georgie.

  “Yeah, stay as far away from her as you can possibly manage.”

  “What she says is true. About me having uncontrollable sexual desires due to my most recent head injury.”

  Georgie concurs. “Back when I was working the basement of AMC,” he explains, “a woman came in who was involved in a head-on car wreck. Her frontal lobe was injured when her forehead collided with the windshield, shattering it. She was hospitalized in ICU for days and eventually moved to the head trauma unit. In there she masturbated almost every minute of every day. Didn’t matter if the door was open or who was walking in and out of the room or down the hall. Child, man, woman, priest, doctor. Didn’t matter. She couldn’t fill the day with enough orgasms. They eventually had to inject her with dopamine in order to control her.”

  We both stare down at the knocked-out blonde beauty.

  “So, what we’re saying,” I say, “is I can now look forward not only to the occasional blackout or questionable decision, but uncontrollable sexual urges. Can my life become any more complicated?”

  Nurse moans, shifts.

  “I’m not sure if your being caught up in her spell is a result of your head injury or you simply being you.”

  We stand silent for a moment, while Nurse comes back around.

  “Moon,” Georgie says after a time. “Give me the gun.”

  “What…you don’t trust me with it?” I ask.

  “Trust is for assholes,” he says.

  I relinquish the hand cannon. No arguments. “You’re no asshole, Georgie. You’re my brother.”

  Back to where we started.

  No ride, no mobile phone, no visible means of getting the hell out of that dark no-man’s-land while in the process of kidnapping a beautiful blonde nurse moonlighting as a thug. Doesn’t matter that she’s a criminal working with the same people who want to kill me, kidnapping is still a capital offense in New York. That means no calling the police. Besides, the police hate me anyway. Detective Clyne’s driver, Beefy Super Cop Mike, and his middle finger are proof enough of that.

  Behind us, in the far distance, a commercial jetliner taxies for takeoff. A glance over my shoulder reveals what looks like a 737. USAir. Nurse is awake now, trying to push herself back up from the pavement.

  “Easy, Blondie,” Georgie says, holding the barrel on her.

  “Don’t call me that,” she whispers, her voice groggy. “Now. What?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say. “Got your cell phone on you?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Two headlights cut white parallel tubes out of the thick night.

  “Christ,” Georgie says. He drops down on one knee, the 9mm gripped in his right hand, left hand wrapped around the shooting wrist, combat position.

  I take hold of Nurse’s arm, hold it tight.

  “If it’s the Obamas come back for the blonde, I say we shoot her in the back and make a run for it.”

  “Agreed,” Georgie says, shooting me a wink of his right eye.

  “Don’t I get a say in this?” she poses.

  “Sure,” I say. “Let’s absolutely talk this thing out.”

  Behind us the jet screams as it lifts off from the runway.

  The vehicle comes closer until it’s fully visible in the road. It stops and a door opens. Georgie stands up, thumbs back the hammer on the automatic, stuffs the barrel into the waist of his jeans. “Lola,” he grins. “Freaking, Lola. I don’t know how it’s Lola, but what a goddamned sight.”

  My girlfriend’s standing beside her Humvee. “We don’t have a lot of time,” she says. “They’re coming back…for her.” Her eyes on our blonde prisoner. “Let’s move.”

  I don’t bother to ask how she knows we’re here or how she’s aware of the Obama-masked thugs coming back for us or having kidnapped us in the first place. The questions can wait. I just drag Nurse over to Lola’s Humvee, and stuff her up into the back seat. Behind me, the sound of the airliner is fading as it climbs up into the friendly skies. Wonder if anybody in that plane has any inkling of how unfriendly things are getting down here on solid ground.

  Chapter 28

  Lola pulls a fast U-turn that takes the Hummer up onto the grassy shoulder. Crazy-illegal driving maneuvers don’t matter at this point. The suburb has been bulldozed into a concrete nothing. No one will see us out here. She burns off some serious fuel motoring us down the empty street.

  Georgie’s taken the shotgun seat while I sit in the back with Nurse.

  I see Lola’s eyes framed into the rearview.

  Nurse locks onto them, too. “Do I tell him, or do you tell him?” she says to Lola, voice still groggy.

  Georgie holds a gaze on Lola over his left shoulder.

  I hold a gaze on blonde Nurse over my right.

  “You two know each other,” I say feeling my heart drop into my left boot.

  “Surprised?” Nurse asks.

  “Richard,” Lola sighs. “Meet my little sister, Claudia.”

  Claudia holds out her hand.

  I refuse it.

  “I have some explaining to do?” Lola says, hooking a left away from the dark airport perimeter road and onto
the main drag.

  “You have to ask?” Georgie says.

  My girlfriend glares at me in the rearview. I know those eyes like I do my own. But somehow, the person behind them is becoming more and more of a stranger to me by the second.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” I mumble. But it’s such a gross understatement I find myself shaking my head.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Richard,” Lola admits.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I say.

  Claudia just laughs.

  Chapter 29

  We drive into the city, and soon we’re entering the state university campus. I ask Lola why she’s driving us there. No one will think of looking here, she replies.

  “As in those masked bastards Claudia here chose as her friends,” Georgie says.

  “I’m right here,” Claudia responds. “You can say that shit to my face.”

  Georgie rears around, points a pistol barrel at her precious mug.

  “And I’m right here,” he barks. “We’re not done talking about that little Conair electrocution game you people played with my chest.”

  “Get over yourself,” Claudia snaps. “I did you a favor by convincing them to use the hair dryer. Left up to those meatheads, they would have cut your nuts off and fed them to you with a six-pack of Bud.” She snorts. “Con-fucking-Air! Frat boys do a hell of a lot worse for initiation ceremonies. Wasn’t even drawing a charge, dumb-ass big baby.”

  Georgie holds his ground with the pistol.

  “Still felt like hell. And I don’t like being scared. I was scared in ’Nam sometimes. I accepted that. But here, I will not accept it.” He grows a smile. “Even if you do own a pair of the nicest looking titties I’ve ever seen.”

  Lola hits the brakes.

  The hummer stops on a dime.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” she barks. “Georgie, you’re not going to shoot my sister, and you’re not going to comment on the size or shape of her breasts. No matter what trouble she’s got herself involved in, she’s still my little sister. Got it?”