Moonlight Rises

by Vincent Zandri

  Now, instead of driving up to that wondrous, red-white-and-blue-lit, white ten-story concrete and plaster-sided building with attached warehouse, Georgie and I approach a gated and boarded-up haunted castle, long abandoned and all but forgotten. Now instead of happy shoppers coming to and fro from the parking garage next door to the old building, feral dogs and cats patrol the grounds in search of their next meal while rats scamper across the old parking spaces and crow’s nest in the eaves.

  If the razor wire-topped chain-link perimeter fence screaming KEEP OUT doesn’t make you want to stay away from the building, the ever-present threat of a psycho crack addict who won’t hesitate to cut your belly open with straight razor for an hour’s worth of high will.

  According to Boris, this is the place the officially dead but unofficially alive Harvey Rose calls home-sweet-home. Also, the place where I hope to find Lola and Peter Czech alive.

  God willing.

  Since the parking garage isn’t fenced off, Georgie pulls onto the first level ramp, drives slowly up, parks in a spot that sends some crows flying off into the black night and rats scampering for cover. He kills the lights. Reaching over me to the glove box, he opens it, pulls out a small black Maglite.

  He flicks it on, shines it on the goon’s knee. The one that’s no longer there.

  “One of us has to be Boris’s legs,” he points out.

  It’s Georgie’s way of saying, You’re it!

  We both get out, face the razor-wire topped perimeter fence.

  “Wonder if it’s electrified,” I pose.

  “Count on it. Only way we’re getting in is him.”

  We begin the inevitable: dragging the bleeding Boris out of the Beetle. It’s about as much fun as Georgie and I used to have pulling a crushed corpse from out of car wreck prior to Dad hauling it away for autopsy and embalming, but we get him out and wobbling on his one good leg. While I act as his human crutch, Georgie keeps a close eye on his back with both the Maglite and his 9mm.

  “Let’s have it, Boris,” I say. “How do you normally gain access to a dead man’s castle?”

  I’m fully prepared for a fight. But all the fight, along with half his blood, is drained out of him. “We call first, yes?” he groans. “On our cellular mobiles. We are then let in through a side gate. That gate leads to a door and a vesti…vesti…”

  “Vestibule,” Georgie interjects on the Russian’s behalf.

  “Da. Ves-Ti-Bule. English language is ball-sack hard to learn, yes? Inside Ves-Ti-Bule, electronic handprint is required.”

  “Thank God they don’t need knee prints,” Georgie says. It’s a joke. But nobody laughs. Especially the goon.

  I reach into his pockets, find his cell. It’s an iPhone. Expensive. Rose knows how to treat his Russian employees.

  I hand him the phone. “Call! I’m telling, not asking.”

  Boris uses his thumb to maneuver the touch pad. He thumbs a number contained in his speed-dial list. That’s when Georgie presses the barrel of his piece against the back of the goon’s head.

  “You’d better hope you dialed the correct number and haven’t called out your Cossacks,” he warns. “Because guess who takes the first bullet?”

  “Do not worry,” Boris moans. “And you don’t know Slavic Cossack from Jewish Cossack.”

  OK whatever. But I am worried. Worried he won’t make it to the vestibule. We need his handprint, or we aren’t going to gain access to the fortress. Easy access, anyway.

  It’s slow going with me acting as a living pair of crutches, but we make our way down the concrete ramp, out the garage. We maneuver ourselves toward a gate located on the side of the mammoth facility. Truth be told, I’m also concerned about the surveillance cameras Rose has no doubt installed somewhere. To our advantage, however, there are none mounted on the fence. None that are plainly visible, anyway. Makes sense, too, for a guy bent on remaining dead in the eyes of the law and the public.

  “Side trouser pocket,” Boris says at the padlocked gate. “There is key in there, yes?”

  Georgie reaches inside for it. He pulls it out. There’s blood on it. He wipes the blood off on his pant leg, then inserts the key into the padlock and twists. It opens.

  We make our way through the open gate, try for the side door as fast as Boris’s moan-and-hobble allows. When we come to the metal door, Boris tells me to take hold of a certain brick that appears to be a part of the normal course work. He points the brick out.

  “Pull on it,” he insists.

  I do it.

  An entire brick panel opens, exposing a dimly lit reader screen.

  “Do us proud,” I say.

  When he lacks the strength to raise his hand, I do it for him, pressing his palm against the screen. There’s an abrupt mechanical click that signals something releasing, like a lock, and the metal panel door opens by a few inches. Georgie grabs hold of it and opens it wide.

  “We’ll take it from here,” I say to Boris, dragging him inside and releasing him.

  He drops down in the corner between the wall and the door, issuing a moan. Georgie applies more tape to his ankles and wrists. Then he asks him, “Where would Rose be right now? His ivory tower?”

  Boris just glares at the old pathologist.

  “Come on, man,” Georgie pushes. “At this point you might as well just tell us.”

  Boris the Russian goon hawks something slimy up into his throat, spits it out onto the floor. “Mr. Rose, he is always up in the tower. Ten floors up. Then another four floors after that.”

  “What’s the easiest way to get up there?” I ask.

  “No stairs past floor number ten. Only the freight elevator will take you up from there.” He cocks his head in the direction of the elevators. “It is where you’ll find dead-or-alive Mr. Rose, yes?”

  “Someone takes a shot at us, Boris,” Georgie warns, “or if this is a setup, we’ll come back for you and kill you. Understand?”

  “If I am not already dead yet, dude,” he says. “Already I am seeing angels.”

  I’m feeling a little gypped. I don’t recall seeing any angels when I died.

  Georgie tapes the goon’s mouth.

  Then we head for the freight elevator.

  Chapter 47

  There’s something surreal about the rapid rise in the dark freight elevator. A straight vertical shot up ten stories toward the tower portion of the old Montgomery Ward castle to confront a living Russian spy who’s supposed to be dead. There’s something very Batman and Robin about the experience.

  It also seems just a little too easy.

  Rose has himself locked away inside a fortress and all it takes is one electronic palm print to get us inside the walls? As if reading my mind, Georgie has his 9mm out and at the ready. I do the same while the old elevator approaches the top floor.

  Until it stops.

  The machine just shuts down in between the ninth and tenth floor. There’s a disturbing pause that makes my throat close in on itself and my brain buzz from an adrenaline injection. A series of ceiling-mounted bright lights flash on. Lights so bright they blind me. The lights are followed by an incredible noise that screams and vibrates. The noise comes at us like a physical wave. A wall of crushing sound. It rattles the fillings inside my teeth. Both Georgie and I can’t help but drop our pieces. We can’t help but collapse, incapacitated, to the hard elevator floor, a couple of sad sacks of beat-up bones and flesh.

  Chapter 48

  When the noise finally stops, I lie on the floor of the freight elevator feeling myself go in and out of consciousness. I fight to stay alert, but I know that if the noise sounds again, I’ll be out cold. My fragile head won’t be able to bear it.

  While the blinding white lights continue to shine down on us, the elevator once more starts up. It lifts us up to the one remaining floor. I still can’t move. From what I can make out from the corner of my left eye, neither can Georgie.

  When the elevat
or stops again and the doors slide open, I can’t help but raise my head, as painful as the effort is. And what I witness not only empties my lungs of all their breath, it provides the reason Peter Czech tried to blackmail his grandfather.

  It all has to do with his severed spine.

  Chapter 49

  Inside a mammoth loft space exists a room constructed inside a room.

  The room’s walls, ceiling, and floor are created by a thick layer or layers of perfectly translucent plastic held rigid and tight by an intricate stainless-steel framing system. The room is isolated atmospherically with its own ducted HVAC system, which is located right beside it. Placed inside the plastic room’s center is an operating table. Surrounding the operating table is a series of bright lamps. Portable monitoring equipment is stacked to the right side of the table, not far out of the way of the half dozen or so people who are standing around the table, and the man who’s laid out upon it. Face down. A man is filming the operation with a shoulder-mounted video camera, leaning in to get as close to the operating action as he can.

  The people are all wearing surgical scrubs. Not the usual hospital pea green scrubs, but white, as if this homespun operating theater were somehow far more special than the usual everyday medical surgery.

  And it is. Everyone wears masks, but that doesn’t prevent me from recognizing all of them. Or, all the people I should recognize, that is.

  As the shock of the noise subduing system wears off, and I somehow collect myself enough to prop myself up onto one knee in the open elevator, I recognize Lola, and her half-sister, Claudia. The man to their left is someone I’ve never met before, but whose crazy-assed devil brows I know immediately.

  It’s Harvey Rose.

  The “dead” man issues me the slightest of glances, like Georgie and I are nothing more than the pizza delivery crew, then returns his attention to the operating table action. “Security system spotted you inside the parking garage,” he explains in a low, matter-of-fact voice. Then he shouts out, “Boys!”

  Two monster goons are on us, dragging us inside the great room. Leaving our automatics where we dropped them on the elevator floor. Just as well—we’re a long way from being able to make a fist, much less lift a gun. Behind us, the elevator doors close. The goons pick us up by our jacket collars, and they force us to stand, however wobbly.

  Lola peers at me from where she stands by the operating table. Even from a distance of maybe twenty feet, I can see that her brown eyes are glassy, filled with tears. “Richard, why?” she sobs. “Why on God’s earth did you come here?”

  Before I can answer her, she turns back to the table.

  The man doing the operating is being assisted by Claudia. He slams down an instrument. “I cannot work in this way,” he grumbles. “Not if you want me to get this right!” He also speaks in a foreign accent. One which isn’t Russian, however. More like Spanish.

  Rose takes a step back from the operating room table. “Not another word. Anyone!”

  I glance at Georgie over my shoulder. He glances back at me.

  Behind us stand the goons, ready to pounce on us if we move or speak or fart. In front of me is my longtime lover. On the operating table is a man.

  It’s Lola’s son, Peter Czech.

  Chapter 50

  We’re quickly ushered out of the loft and into an empty, windowless room. The room reminds me of a sterile, concrete APD interview room, only without the comfortable amenities. Like a metal ashtray for instance, or those concrete floor-mounted metal rings meant to secure one’s shackles. My head is still ringing, and the hardwood floor beneath my feet still feels like mush. But I’m managing to keep it together. More or less.

  Georgie doesn’t seem to be faring as well. On the surface anyway. He isn’t speaking, for one. That has me worried. Usually Georgie can’t stop talking. Especially when he’s angry, which he surely must be at this point. His face is pale and withdrawn, like that shot of severe noise and blinding white light has more than rattled his brain. Like it’s shaken loose his skin cancer, made it spread all throughout his body in a single instant.

  The goons tell us to “sit” in their Russian-accented tough guy voices.

  They don’t have to tell us twice. Georgie and I drop into the two available metal chairs.

  The goons exit out of the room then, close the metal door behind them, lock it from the outside.

  I turn to my big brother. “Can you talk?”

  He nods, swallows. “Jesus H,” he mumbles, “I think I soiled myself.”

  I try to laugh. But I can’t work up the energy.

  “That siren in the elevator,” he goes on after a breath-catching beat, “that’s one of the newest in army tactical weapons. It can render an entire army defenseless. Yet it leaves them very much alive. Read about in Pop Sci.”

  “I think my fillings are loose.”

  “Say a prayer your brain didn’t pop, Moon.” Pausing to catch his breath. “By all rights, you should be experiencing a stroke-induced coma by now.”

  “The night is young. Tell me what the fuck you think is going on out there, and why my girlfriend is involved in it.”

  “That was Czech on the table. Upside down, damaged spinal column exposed.”

  “So I noticed.”

  “Truth revealed. Your man is everything he pretends to be, at least as far as his paralyzed condition goes, Moon. Rose must be putting up the cash for some kind of experimental surgery.”

  “Why? I mean, why do anything for Czech if he’s trying to expose the old man for what he is?”

  Georgie sucks in another breath, releases it. I’m wishing he had a medicinal joint on him. His hands are beginning to shake as the pain of his condition settles in.

  “If what’s being done to him is a surgery that can make him walk again, it might be costing millions of dollars. So, you know what I think, Moon? I think Czech issued his old granddad an ultimatum. Put up for the operation, or I expose you. Simple as that.”

  “Why doesn’t Rose just kill him, instead?”

  “Czech is still his grandson, Moon. His blood. Maybe Devil Brows is a softy deep down inside.”

  “Or maybe Czech has something that Rose wants, and the only way he can get at it is by agreeing to the surgery, keeping him alive.”

  “—PRECISELY, GENTLEMEN!” barks the deep voice from behind us. “Because there’s the matter of a flash drive containing thousands of pages of documents and photographs that detail my dealings with the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union for more than four decades.”

  I never heard the door open. Never heard Rose walk in, or the two Russian meatheads who stand at the ready behind him.

  Georgie and I turn to get a good look at Lola’s dad. I notice a distinct resemblance, especially in the eyes, under their wild, now-silver devil brows. Deep, passionate dark pools that don’t look at you, but look into you and through you. Cut into you.

  He moves closer to us, which triggers the meatheads to pull out their weapons—9mm Glock automatics. Like Georgie and I are any kind of danger at this point. We’re unarmed, still rattled by the siren, and just plain fucking old and worn out.

  “Let me guess, Rose,” I say. “This the part where you tell us precisely what we want to know since you’re going to kill us anyway.”

  The tall, seventy-something man laughs. His metallic silver eyebrows are so thick and unruly, they curl up at the ends much like a cartoon devil, like the Grinch who stole Christmas.

  But he isn’t the devil and he certainly ain’t the Grinch.

  He’s Lola’s father, and he’s a spy. A traitor. He’s somehow managed—most likely with Russian government assistance—to live as a dead man in an era where spy satellites can focus in on how and where you part your hair from three miles up. No wonder he chooses to live a self-induced exile inside this old abandoned white castle. The same building that used to bring me so much happiness as a child but that now makes me sick to m
y stomach.

  “You see, gentlemen,” Rose goes on, “it does me no good not to try and give Peter the gift of a healed spine, if the cost of such a miracle is within my means.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “You didn’t always share in that sentiment. Or you wouldn’t have ordered me beaten me so badly I actually died for five minutes.”

  He smiles, like my death is reason for levity.

  “I really must apologize for how my men treated you.” Glancing over his shoulder at the Russian goons. “My associates are born of a different culture and they sometimes can get carried away. Their orders were to frighten you, not kill you.” His eyes back on me. “And as for the operation, I resisted at first because ten million dollars unmarked cash presented a challenge to even a man of my resources.”

  “Ten million,” I repeat. “That’s what you’re spending on your grandson’s back.” It’s a question.

  “For starters,” he admits. “And nothing is guaranteed. Not initial surgery, not stem cell injection, not rehabilitation, not follow-up surgeries. Not by a long shot. These doctors were flown in from Brazil. Their English is somewhat limited, but not their skills. They are pioneers at spinal cord surgery, especially for a man like Peter, whose backbone was severed cleanly. He’s proving the ideal candidate for surgery and stem cell regeneration. But no one knows if it will last. And of course, this is all highly illegal in both the eyes of the global medical community and the law.”

  “Black market stem cells,” Georgie mumbles out the corner of his mouth. “Cells lifted from unborn fetuses. No wonder the under-the-table ten million price tag. Christ, they could ask one hundred million and get it.”

  “You brought Lola into this,” I point out. “Far as I’m concerned, Rose, you’re a criminal who should be incarcerated in federal prison to serve the first of two or three life sentences. You and Peter. I don’t care if he’s Lola’s son, and I don’t care if he can’t walk.”