Moonlight Rises

by Vincent Zandri

  We stand in a circle, feeling the heat of the fire on our faces, with EMT-provided towels covering our shoulders. Me, Georgie, Agent Barter, Clyne, and several FBI agents, including Special Agent Lombardi. For a time, we all look on like happy campers at a bonfire as the firemen hopelessly stand around the still-burning remains of Moonlight’s.

  “Don’t suppose you took out an insurance policy on the joint,” Georgie says after a time.

  I cock my head. “You need cash for that.”

  He smiles.

  Barter shoots me a glance. He still seems very sad.

  “How’s Lola?” I ask.

  “Lost her son and her old man today,” he exhales. “Not great. But she’s strong. I forgot just how strong she was until we came back into one another’s life.”

  His words lodge themselves inside my stomach like so many stones. He’s done his share of crying today, too. For a son he never got the chance to know. A son he would have been forced to arrest had he lived. But also, a son who might have been spared a life sentence due to his willingness to cooperate with the law. I can’t imagine the internal conflict Barter’s experiencing right about now.

  “Take care of Lola for me, will you?”

  He exhales. Then, “Did you really see me inside that hospital room? When you died for a few minutes?”

  I nod. “It’s the truth.”

  The corner of his mouth rises up just enough to offer the hint of a smile. “So maybe there’s something to the afterlife thing after all,” he says.

  Takes me a beat, but I see what he’s getting at. His dead son somehow having a life beyond the earthly life.

  “You can count on it, Barter,” I offer. What the hell else can I say to him?

  He holds out his hand for me. I look down upon it for a moment, but then I take it in mine and give it a squeeze. He starts to say something as he gently pulls his hand away, but in the end, he just closes his mouth and shakes his head. It looks like his chin is about to drag on the ground when he walks away from me toward his ride.

  I pull off the towel, toss it back to one of the EMTs.

  Georgie does the same. “Think one of your people can give us a lift home?” he asks Agent Lombardi. “Assuming you wanna impound my bloody Beetle.”

  “I’m on it,” she smiles warmly. A little too warmly. Together, she and Georgie start walking like they’re about to head out on their first date together. Fucking Georgie. “Coming Moon?” he asks over his shoulder.

  “Be there in a minute,” I say.

  But as they walk away, I see someone coming up on me from over my left shoulder. At first, I can’t help but think it’s my old man. But that’s impossible because he’s dead. As the four-by-four of a man approaches through the haze of the fire and the black smoke emerging from it, I see that it’s Uncle Leo, my most loyal customer.

  “We’re closed, Uncle Leo,” I say. It’s a joke. He doesn’t laugh.

  He comes close, looks up at me with his always teary eyes. “Did you save it?” he says, voice gravelly with worry, his still-thick head of gray hair slicked back against his skull with Brylcreem.

  “I’m not reading you, Uncle Leo,” I say, suspecting that he’s already tipped a few beers at home. But when he motions with his hands for me to lean down in close to him, I don’t smell even a hint of booze on his breath.

  He brings his lips close to my ear. “The box,” he says. “Did you save the computer box?”

  I stand upright. “How…” It’s all I can get out.

  “That nice young fella in the wheelchair,” he offers. “He waited for me that night, when he came in to see you. He waited inside his car for me. He called me over and he told me that he stuck a small plastic computer thing-a-ma-jig to the underside of your private table. He said it was very important; that it contained secrets that those goddamned Russian commies want. It was up to him to find a place to hide it where no one would think of looking for it. So that’s when he thought about sticking it under your table, for just a few days. He paid me two thousand dollars cash to keep an eye on it, from morning till night, so long as you were open. He said you knew all about the plan, but that I was forbidden to talk with you about it.” He laughs suddenly, his voice mixing with burning timbers. “Made me feel pretty damned good to be fighting the war again, even from a barstool. And when you closed up early a couple of times, I nearly worried my seventy-nine-year-old ass off that come morning, the computer box would be gone.”

  I find myself nodding. Because all this time, my one and only, perpetually-buzzed client knew of the exact location of that flash drive. The box that cost me considerable pain and even my life. So, just like Uncle Leo, I begin to laugh. Laugh out loud. Laugh so hard, the firemen and APD and local TV reporters milling about the scene start shooting us glances.

  “Sorry about your bar, Uncle Leo,” I say, finally. “We’ll have to find you a new one.” Then reach into my pocket and produce the flash drive in the palm of my hand. “And don’t worry. Job well done. Our secret computer thing-a-ma-jig is perfectly safe. And so is the United States of America.” Holding my hand up to my forehead in military salute fashion. “Uncle Leo, you have fought your final battle in the war against communist aggression. You are hereby relieved of duty.”

  He reflexively goes to return the salute, then settles for patting me on the back. “Jeez, Moonlight, there’s spies all over the goddamned place,” he warns. “No saluting. And that computer thingy, take good care of it. The entire freedom-loving world depends on the information stored inside it, however the hell they’re able to stuff it all in there.”

  “Aye, aye, Uncle Leo,” I assure him. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

  He turns then, takes one last look at the fire and starts walking the opposite way, back across the rear parking lot toward his home. “I’ll be drinking at the house from now on, case you need me,” he mutters. “I’ll be with the wife. She has no idea how much James Bond and I have in common.”

  The swagger in his walk is unmistakable as he leaves the scene of my burning bar.

  Chapter 58

  Which leaves me pretty much alone to face Detective Clyne.

  I hold the flash drive up for him so he can see it.

  “I thought about handing this over to the feds,” I say. “But somehow giving it to you seems better. Besides, you might use this as leverage over the course of your investigation. My experience is that the feds can be pretty bossy. They suspect you’re in possession of the flash drive, they might buy you lunch now and again. Or even a cocktail.” But what I’m not telling him is that I’d rather my girlfriend’s new boyfriend be denied the holy grail of their investigation. Just because.

  I toss it to him.

  He snatches it out of the smoky mid-air. Takes a reflective moment to gaze upon the small device resting in the palm of his hand.

  “This is the investigation,” he offers with a nod. “Fifty years’ worth of documents, letters, photos, rogue warhead locations, nuclear sub specs, prices, names of sellers, names of buyers, transactions, Swiss bank account numbers, safety deposit box locations, cash drops…” He stares down at the drive and smiles, even giggles. “Jesus, it’s all in here. This thing’s worth more than Fort-fucking-Knox.” Cocking his head. “To the right buyer, of course.”

  I’m staring at the drive, too. “Proves Rose was selling secrets to the Russians, too, I imagine. First as a federal government accountant employed by the Department of Military Affairs, and later through his grandson, a nuclear engineer in the employ of the Knolls atomic plant in Schenectady.”

  “That it does,” Clyne says, looking off into what’s left of the fire. Together, we watch the remainder of the building cave in slowly, like a dying, gut-shot deer collapsing under its own weight. “Peter Czech was a traitor,” he says, “and one hell of an optimist. Hired you, thinking you’d keep his flash drive safe while you exposed his grandfather, all while he went to work regaining the use of his l
egs. And when all was said and done, he’d use the flash drive and the evidence you gathered up against Grandpa Rose as his get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “I guess that about sums up the grand plan,” I say. “But sometimes optimism isn’t enough, is it? In the end the bastards still find a way to nail you to the cross.”

  I shoot a glance at the cop’s left hand. At the ringless finger.

  “You miss her, don’t you, Clyne? Even though she was unfaithful.”

  He turns to me, nods.

  “Yeah,” he says, above the crackling noise of the fire. “Even though she was unfaithful.”

  I remember Barter standing beside Lola in my hospital room. Her old lover drawn to her side to console her in her grief on the day I died. Turns out he’ll be consoling her again. But not over me…my life or my death. He’ll be consoling her over the death of their own flesh and blood.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” I say.

  He lets out another small laugh. “Do you?” he says, once more staring down at the flash drive.

  I don’t know how to answer that one. Because maybe I truly have no idea how he feels about being cheated by the one person he must have loved more than himself. No idea, other than he’s suffering from the pangs of a broken heart. And who hasn’t suffered one of those before?

  Tossing the drive up into the air like he’s flipping a coin, he catches it again with the same hand. Then he shoves it into the pocket of his trench coat.

  “All’s well that ends well, or not so well,” he says. “Gotta get this thing tagged and bagged and stored away safely in evidence.” Tossing me another teddy bear smile, he adds, “I’ll be seeing you, Moonlight.”

  “Sure thing,” I say, but as I watch the brokenhearted detective walk away from the smoldering remnants of Moonlight’s, my built-in shit detector pokes me against my ribs, and speaks up loud and clear.

  It says, You might never see Detective Clyne again.

  Chapter 59

  He disappears, of course.

  A week after Moonlight’s burns to the ground and the zip drive that proves Rose and his grandson Peter Czech are traitors is discovered stuck to the underside of my own barroom table, APD Officer Dennis Clyne is declared officially missing and wanted by the FBI for absconding with evidence crucial to a federal and state investigation, or whatever the official term for it is.

  But in unofficial terms, Clyne is wanted for turning traitor and for disappearing from U.S. soil with the intention, no doubt, of selling the flash drive to the highest bidder on the black market.

  So, in the end, it’s Clyne who gets his face plastered up on the wall of every post office from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. I have to admit, I can’t help but picture the stocky, sad-faced man sitting inside a café, maybe in Paris. Drinking a solitary coffee, staring out at no one in particular, but remembering the wife he loved and lost so painfully to another man.

  Maybe he has every intention of selling the flash drive, or maybe he’ll hold on to it for a while. Just long enough for the feds to give up on finding him and for Interpol to toss in the towel.

  I haven’t known Clyne for very long, or at all well, for that matter. But what I do know of him tells me that he’s a pretty smart cookie, and that if he has any flaw at all it’s being sensitive enough to agree to leave his job in the Bronx to raise a family up here in the country, as it were.

  Albany.

  I imagine him losing some weight, maybe shaving his head, growing a beard that he’ll keep trimmed. He’ll dress in black and perhaps take up smoking. He’ll blend in with the surroundings, maybe refer to himself as an artist at work, or something like that. He’ll have access to those Swiss accounts and secret cash drops, and once he unloads that zip drive, he’ll have more cash than he ever dreamed about. Certainly, enough to pay for a new identity, a new passport, a new soul altogether.

  Maybe he’ll even be able to afford a black-market cadaver that he’ll then arrange to have dropped into the Seine and fished out by the police, who will then have no choice but to declare APD Detective Dennis Clyne dead. Only then will his investigation be called off. Only then will Clyne declare himself the ultimate winner in the matter of Harvey Rose and Peter Czech and one very wayward wife.

  But he’ll be wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  He won’t be the winner. Because I doubt that, as the years pass, he’ll ever truly know happiness again. No matter how hard he works at his new identity and his new home, he’ll always be left with the heartache of knowing his wife was bedding down with another man. And the bitterness in that pill never goes away.

  Still, I can’t help but be happy for Clyne.

  Maybe I’m a little envious, even.

  Who doesn’t wish, from time to time, that he could escape his life and become somebody else? Who doesn’t sometimes wish to flee his broken heart? Who can ever truly blame a brokenhearted man for wanting to disappear?

  So as the night gives way to the early morning hours on the day after Detective Dennis Clyne of the APD is declared wanted by the FBI, I get undressed and slip under the covers of my bed alone, and I contemplate those very questions. Who hasn’t imagined himself escaping from it all at one time or another? Who hasn’t thought about disappearing at least once in his lifetime?

  As I begin to drift away, I see Lola, and I feel my heart ache. I see her tan face, her deep-set eyes, and her long thick hair draping her shoulders. I can even smell her lavender scent.

  I wonder if I’ll be able to live without her. I wonder if I’ll ever get over the pain of her leaving me for her old lover, the father of the son she never got a chance to love like a mother. I wonder if I’m the true loser in all of this, and somehow Barter the absolute winner-take-all, even if he has lost his son in the process. I wonder if, in the final analysis, that’s the underhanded reason behind Czech hiring me: to expose Lola’s affair with the man who should have been his father, to bring them into the light so they could be together. Or maybe I’m just a fool for thinking so. A train wreck of a head-case.

  But I also can’t help but wonder, as a whiskey-infused sleep takes over, and my soul begins to slip away, if I’ll ever get Lola back. My Lola. I wonder if she’ll ever need me again. If she’ll ever want me. Desire me. Trust me. And if she does, I wonder if I’ll want her again. Wonder if I can trust her. Or if our love is just too badly broken and beyond repair.

  Inevitably we are all dead men and dead women. But until that time comes, we all become the victims of love, slaves to our most painful memories, jesters to our desires.

  Maybe I’m just better off dead and buried.

  I might drift off to the wetness of my tears dropping onto the pillow one by bloody one. But tonight, as darkness consumes me, and all consciousness flees my fragile brain, I begin to sleep the sleep of the dead.

  And I cry for no one.

  Back to TOC

  Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for Moonlight Weeps, VINCENT ZANDRI is the New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon Kindle No.1 bestselling author of more than 30 novels including The Remains, Everything Burns, Orchard Grove, and The Detonator. His list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, and Polis Books. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, his work is translated in the Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese. Having sold close to 1 million editions of his books, Zandri was also the subject of a recent major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and the Fox News network. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri’s The Shroud Key as one of the “Best Books of 2014.” Recently, Suspense Magazine selected When Shadows Come as one of the “Best Books of 2016”. A freelance photojournalist and the author of the popular lit blog The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, Romantic Times, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Mag
azine, MudTribe, and many more. He lives in Albany, New York and Florence, Italy. For more go to VinZandri.com.

  Back to TOC

  BOOKS BY VINCENT ZANDRI

  Stand-Alone Psychological Thrillers

  Paradox Lake

  Sleeper

  The Girl Who Wasn’t There

  The Caretaker’s Wife

  The Concrete Pearl

  The Detonator

  Everything Burns

  When Shadows Come

  Orchard Grove

  The Scream Catcher

  Permanence

  The Jack “Keeper” Marconi PI Thrillers

  The Innocent (formerly As Catch Can)

  Godchild

  The Guilty

  Dressed to Kill (novelette)

  Arbor Hill

  The Corruptions

  The Sins of the Sons

  The Damned

  The Dick Moonlight PI Thrillers

  Moonlight Falls

  Moonlight Rises

  Blue Moonlight

  Full Moonlight (short story)

  Murder by Moonlight

  Moonlight Breaks Bad (novelette)

  Moonlight Sonata

  Moonlight Falls (Editor’s Cut Edition)

  Moonlight Weeps

  Moonlight Gets Served (short story)

  Dog Day Moonlight (novelette)

  Moonlight Goes Viral (novelette)

  Moonlight Kills

  The Steve Jobz PI Thrillers

  The Embalmer

  The Flower Man

  The Extortionist

  The Plumber

  The Chase Baker Action/Adventure Thrillers

  The Shroud Key

  Chase Baker and the Golden Condor

  Chase Baker and the God Boy

  Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse

  Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity