Moonlight Rises

by Vincent Zandri

  Georgie’s smile fades into a pout. He retracts the pistol, turns back around. Judging by the slight trembling in both his hands, I know he’s dying for a joint. I can only hope that whatever pain he’s feeling has to do with being poked with an electrical wire and not his come-and-go cancer.

  “Yes ma’am,” he says under his breath. “Always got to do it a woman’s way.”

  Lola’s eyes back in the rearview. “Claudia,” she says, “I don’t know what you’ve done with these men, but Richard is my boyfriend, and Georgie is his best friend.”

  “I know who they are!” Rolling her eyes.

  “If any further harm comes to them, you’ll have to answer to me. Understood?”

  “Sure thing, sis,” Claudia says, acid in her voice. “But if it weren’t for me, you’d be introducing them as your dead boyfriend and his even more dead best friend.”

  We drive for another half mile or so into the center of the campus, until she pulls into a faculty lot, parks in her designated space.

  “My office,” she orders. “And keep your heads down. You might not see them, but there’re surveillance cameras all over the damn place.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to smile,” I say, “even if my heart is about to break.”

  Chapter 30

  Lola unlocks the door to the lab building, and we all slip inside. The hall lights are on, but since it’s so late at night, the place is empty, other than the sound of the caged monkeys. And the smell. Monkey droppings mixed with monkey piss.

  For the first time since she rescued us from that empty roadside by the airport, I can see that Lola is wearing tight black jeans, a black sweater, and boots. She also has a black leather jacket on, her long hair tied back tight. Even under the circumstances…even though I’m more convinced than ever that the person I’ve been sleeping with for a bunch of years is not the person I thought she was…just the sight of her robs me of precious oxygen.

  The four of us waste no time heading to Lola’s office, Georgie behind us, the 9mm tucked in his jacket pocket, Lola curiously not complaining about it, as if she doesn’t trust her quote, little sister, unquote, any more than we do. Between the muted screams and yelps of the monkeys, their feral smell, the bright lights, and the strange company, the moment seems at best surreal.

  I remember the first time I met Lola in my backyard. She arrived unannounced on a fact-finding mission. She and my then wife, Lynn, belonged to the same gym, and Lola wanted to find out about some private lessons a personal trainer was conducting there. Lynn and I were not only on the skids at the time, but I had already reserved a date for a moving van to come and pick up what little stuff I could truly call my own inside our North Albany home. From there I would play the sad son-of-a-bitch prodigal son and move back into the old man’s funeral home.

  Up until that time, I’d spent the better part of my day chasing down bad guys as an APD cop. But I’d spent the darkest part of the nights chasing down Jack Daniels.

  I stood stone stiff and looked into Lola’s big brown eyes like they weren’t really eyes. Like they were magnets that pulled me in. She was wearing a red bandana over her head, and her long dark-brown hair was tied into pigtails. She was dressed in farmer’s overalls and she wore black Adidas flip-flops. She was also smoking a cigarette.

  She was taken aback by my gaze, which remained locked on her for more than a few seconds. Finally, she smiled. “I’m Lola,” she said, shooting me a quizzical look that was neither inviting nor offensive. “Is, ah, your wife at home?”

  “I’m Richard,” I answered. “Are you, ah, married?”

  She giggled, but I think it was the result of shock, not levity.

  “Lynn,” I added after a beat, “she’s in the back.”

  I opened the gate and Lola walked through, giving me a whiff of her rose petal scent. I wanted to tell her my wife and I were no longer going to be a couple in a matter of days, but I knew that would be pushing it. What I did know, however, was that as soon as it was humanly possible, I was going to find out Lola’s last name and her phone number. Then I was going to call her as soon as I stepped foot inside my new home, even before I pulled the tape off the first box. My only hope was that she wasn’t married.

  Turns out she wasn’t married.

  Married anymore, that is. She’d had a brief marriage to a copywriter who was the single father of a little girl from a previous relationship. It all went bad when he started communicating with his ex-girlfriend, who was also the mother of his child.

  She agreed to see me for coffee not because she liked me or even felt sorry for me. She’d known for quite a while that Lynn and I were breaking up, and she also knew what a hard bitch my head-nurse wife could be. During coffee, she even revealed that part of the reason she came to my home that evening wasn’t to see Lynn at all, but to get a glimpse of me. We sat across from one another at a Starbucks and her face turned as red as that bandana she’d been wearing just the other day.

  We went back to my place that afternoon, and despite what the pros will tell you about first dates, we made love right there on the floor of my dad’s old West Albany funeral home on top of a blanket I’d pulled out of a moving box. Later on, we switched from coffee to wine and we ate Chinese right out of the containers with chopsticks and listened to music on a portable stereo by candlelight. And then we made love again.

  She revealed that she grew up in a house with a rich dad and that her parents, too, were divorced. That she’d had enough of marriage and if I had marriage in mind, our little relationship, as pleasant as it was, was probably going to be brief. I told her I couldn’t even contemplate marriage for the moment, and with a little boy to think of—a toddler—I was a million miles away from tying the knot again.

  We spent the night together on that floor and when I woke up in the morning, Lola was gone. Like the great John Lennon once sang, “This bird had flown!” No note explaining where she’d flown off to, no voicemail or text on my cell. No evidence she’d been there or that she was even real for that matter. I called maybe ten times that week, e-mailed at least as many times, and never heard another word from her. After a couple of weeks, I had accepted it as a one-night stand. Sad as it sounded.

  Then one late evening the doorbell rang. I was just about ready to head to bed. It was Lola, and she was dressed in her university lab coat. Turned out, that’s all she had on. We spent another night just like our first, and then in the morning, it was the same thing. She simply disappeared.

  Later that month I got hit with divorce papers from my wife, and a notice that she would pursue full custody of our then three-year-old boy. I also found out for the first time that she’d been sleeping with my partner at the APD, Mitch Cane, for more than a year and that my brother in arms was about to move into my old home.

  That night I called Lola. And called…and called. But I got no response other than her answering service. I was in a hell of a way, and I needed her like no man ever needed a woman. But she never called back. In my mind, it was official: I’d been dumped by two women and stabbed in the back by a man I thought I knew better than myself.

  By the time the morning came, I’d filled up an ashtray with cigarette butts and finished off an entire quart of Jack. I sat at the table in the kitchen where I’d breakfasted on Cheerios and milk with my dad as a little boy. I put the barrel of a .22 caliber snub-nose to my head and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 31

  So, what do you do when you discover that your lover’s sister is directly involved with the men who have been trying to kill and torture you? Correction: Russian men who have actually killed you already once before and who’ve tortured you. Technically speaking.

  You ask for an explanation, is what you do.

  Which is precisely what I do as we pile into Lola’s cramped, square-shaped academic office.

  I stand by the closed door, my back pressed up stiff against the solid wood slab. Lola takes her chair behind her desk, as
if she’s about to conduct a meeting with her colleagues. Claudia sits down in the one available chair left over, and Georgie sits on the metal desk, one foot hanging off of it, the other planted firmly on the carpeted floor.

  Outside the door, you can still make out the squeals of the monkeys, something I never seem to notice as much when I visit Lola during the school day when the building is full of students and profs.

  “Let’s hear it, Lo,” I say, after a strained beat. “Come to Jesus.”

  She exhales a long breath, places both hands over her face, and runs them slowly down her cheeks as if removing some sort of invisible mask.

  “Don’t say a word, Lola!” Claudia spits. “You know the deal.”

  Lola’s head springs up. “Don’t you ever try and tell me what to do,” she hisses without raising her voice. “Maybe we share the same father, but my world is entirely different from yours. You don’t have to play by my rules, but I sure as hell don’t have to play by yours, either.”

  “So, what’s going on then, Lola?” Georgie chimes in, crossing wiry arms over his bandaged chest. His hands are trembling even more than before. I can tell he’s agitated and trying to hide it. Constant pain will do that to a man. So will pride.

  “Claudia is my younger half-sister,” Lola says. “That much you already know. I’ve never mentioned her, Richard, because we don’t share much in common other than a biological attachment to my father.”

  Claudia snorts. “Got that right,” she laughs.

  “But family is family,” Lola goes on, “and recently, our family, has been experiencing some…well, let’s call it difficulty.”

  “What kind of difficulty?” I press. “And why did you feel like you couldn’t tell me about it? Me, your sig other, of all people.”

  “Don’t tell them, Lo,” Claudia insists. “Gonna bite you in the ass. You know how Dad feels about this.”

  You know how Dad feels about this…I take that as a less than soft warning. I also recall the speed-dial number logged into her mobile phone with the ominous tag: “My Father.” Behind me, the monkeys bang on their metal cages, and screech at the tops of their lungs.

  Lola shoots a glance at her sister, then focuses her eyes back on me. “Someone has come back into our lives unexpectedly,” she explains.

  “What kind of someone?” Georgie presses.

  “Someone I never thought I’d ever see again for as long as I lived.” Her eyes well up, her voice becomes thick. “Someone I saw only for a brief few moments a long, long, time ago. Someone whom I’ve thought about every day of my life since our separation. But also, someone I never wanted to see again.”

  I shake my head while I watch a teardrop fall down Lola’s left cheek. “What are you talking about, Lo?” I say, softly.

  Claudia bursts out laughing. “Your girlfriend Lola got herself good and knocked up. Back when she was a teeny-bopper.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck rise to attention.

  Claudia sits back in her chair, long blonde hair draping her smiling face.

  “When I was sixteen,” Lola proceeds, “I got pregnant. Abortion was not an option for me. I had the baby. But since I was a minor at the time, my father insisted I immediately put the child up for adoption upon his birth. My dad found the adoptive parents himself.”

  Georgie locks eyes with me. I know we’re both thinking of that twisted family photo my client handed over to me.

  I’m just not ready to go there yet. “But you’re Lola…Ross,” I say, my stomach tightening into a knot. “It is Ross, isn’t it? So, if it’s not, then what’s your real name?”

  Tears falling down both her cheeks now. “Lola…Rose,” she says. “Get it?”

  I feel the air escape my lungs. Yeah, I get it…Ross…It looks a lot like Rose.

  “And your baby’s name?”

  “Peter,” she says. “His name is Peter Czech.”

  Chapter 32

  There have been times in my life when I suspected that someone close to me was not being open about something. What comes to mind more than any other memory is when I first suspected my wife, Lynn, of cheating on me. There are the subtle hints. You’ve heard them all before. The coming home late after work. The strange smells on her skin and on her clothes. The distant watery stare in her eyes when she got up the courage to look me in the face. The calls and the hang-ups. The “Caller Unknown” when I checked the caller ID. The sudden end of our sex life together. The distancing, the hatred-filled stares coming at you from across the dinner table on those few nights a month we still couldn’t avoid having dinner together. Or, she couldn’t, anyway.

  A drinking buddy of mine once said that there are two kinds of fucking that occur in a marriage. In the beginning you fuck everywhere: in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the dining room table. But later on, when the honeymoon is long over, a different kind of fucking occurs. Whenever you pass by your wife in the hallway, she cuts into you with a heart-of-ice glare and quietly barks, “Fuck! You!”

  That’s how it was for Lynn and me not so long ago, but not for Lola and me. Lola was distant from the start. Loving, caring, in tune with me, but still distant. Her need for space and secrecy took some serious getting used to. But after a few years of this, I knew what to expect from her and what not to expect. What I did know was this: despite her independent nature, I still would’ve trusted her with my life.

  And now, as I stand inside her university office, I realize there is very little I know about the woman who, more often than not, shares my bed. I think about the woman I saw when I was dead…the woman who was so close to embracing another man it almost looked like they were about to start undressing in front of me. And I know I’m about to hear the truth, and that I need to hear it.

  But I’m not sure I want to hear it.

  Lola begins to explain about a high school boy to whom she lost her virginity. She speaks of getting pregnant and not telling the boy, not wanting to tell him, and being even more afraid of telling her father. He was the only one she could go to, though, since her mother had long ago passed away. When she finally worked up the nerve to tell him, he never yelled, and he never raised a hand to her. She would have the baby, he told her, and she would put it up for adoption. But before that, she would leave her school while the baby came to term. Then, when all was said and done, he would send her away to a boarding school. Which is precisely the way everything played out.

  “Now all these years later,” Lola continues, “I receive an e-mail from a man who calls himself Peter. He found my university e-mail address after having heard I was a clinical psychologist who often wrote papers on the subject of ‘the only child.’” Making quotation marks with the fingers on both her hands. “More specifically, ‘the adopted child as the only child.’ He sounded somewhat knowledgeable about the subject, even if only for an amateur, and we e-mailed back and forth several times. Until one day he asked me how my father was.”

  “You found this strange?” Me, posing the question. “A red flag maybe.”

  “It just didn’t sound right to me. An engineer whose hobby was clinical psychology revolving around the only child, who also happens to be an adopted child, and who also wants to know how my father is.” Pausing, collecting her thoughts while the monkeys down below bang on their cages. “It just felt strange when he wrote that to me. ‘How’s your father?’ I felt like I was living in a fishbowl and he was looking at me. But the truth of the matter is that he had found me.”

  “He came to me looking for his father,” I chime in. “He said his mother…his biological mother…was dead. Why would he say that?” I shoot a glance at Georgie. Without speaking we both know that I’ve been had. Czech didn’t hire me to find his old man after all. He hired me for a different reason. Something that most definitely had to do with a secret box that I either don’t recall receiving, or that I never received in the first place.

  Lola spills more: “He must have said that his mother…me
…was dead out of anger, I guess. For me giving him up, even if I was only sixteen. I don’t know. Why do these people even seek out the people who rejected them in the first place?”

  “Oh, come off it, Lola,” Claudia chimes in. “You didn’t reject Peter. Dad did. Dad made you give him up. It’s what Dad wanted.” Then looking at me with that pouty face. “You see, Mr. Moonlight, Dad had an agenda.”

  Georgie slides off the desk. “Spill, Claudia, spill.”

  Lola sits back in her chair. She gazes at her sister who by now is gazing back at her.

  “You gonna do it, Lo?” Claudia says. “Or shall I enlighten them?”

  “Enlighten us with what?” I say.

  Coming through the door, the shrill sound of screaming monkeys.

  “About how Lola’s son and our father are traitors and enemies of these great United States of America.”

  Chapter 33

  The monkeys are really making a racket.

  Louder now, and more violent than when we first entered the academic building. I picture wiry, furry bipedal primates lunging at the cages, fangs exposed, fists banging on leathery chests. They sound like they’re about to escape the cages, climb the stairs, and burst through Lola’s door.

  Lola notices it, too. She stands. “Something’s not right,” she says, her brown eyes peeled on her half-sister.

  “Dad,” Claudia says. “Those stupid-ass Russians. Could be they got in through the basement windows. Or the vent system. Or maybe the maintenance crew left a door open.”

  “They know we’re here.” Then at me. “We’ve got to get out of here, Richard. Go. Now. Go.”

  “Where exactly shall we go to, Lola, except out through this door?”

  She turns. There’s a window behind her desk. The big double-hung window is slightly cracked open already.