Moonlight Sonata

by Vincent Zandri

  “His real name is Harrison, but I call him Bear. He’s a good-natured, bushy-haired, ten-year-old. Lives in Los Angeles with his mom. Visits frequently, but not enough.”

  “I’d love to meet him someday.”

  Abruptly she pulls away from me, her smile dissolving. She shifts her laser-beam focus from me to one of the many cars parked along the curb.

  “What’s got you suddenly possessed?”

  She turns to me.

  “I almost hate to say this,” she says. “I’ve been having so much fun. But I think our search is over, Moonlight.”

  She takes a few steps forward, raises up her right arm, points with an extended index finger to a silver convertible Porsche Carrera. The parking job is so cobbed the front driver’s side tire is resting up on the curb. A drunk driver, I’m guessing. Moonlight the Deductive.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “That’s Roger Walls’s car,” she adds. “I’m sure of it. I remember it from when he came to the university a few months ago for his reading. A silver Porsche Carrera with the back bumper dented in.”

  Stepping forward, I crouch and take a good look at the rear bumper. Sure enough, there’s a dent. Like Walls backed into a telephone pole when trying to escape a crowded parking lot, maybe after hitting on a jealous man’s wife.

  “Nice work, depute,” I say. “Guess it never occurred to me to ask his wife what kind of car he drives.”

  “See,” Erica says, turning to me, grabbing hold of my hand. “You need me, Dick Moonlight.”

  “Question is, kiddo,” I say, taking my hand back, “what does a girl like you need with a head-case like me?”

  Chapter 16

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE bar within the immediate vicinity of the parked Porsche. It was a bar called Ralph’s. A local juke joint. Place inhabited by state university and medical students mostly looking for cheap draft beer, good hot Buffalo wings, and a game of darts. The joint took up the ground floor space of a four-story brick building set on the corner of Madison and New Scotland Avenue not far from the Albany Medical Center.

  “Ralph’s,” I say. “It’s got to be Ralph’s.”

  “That just seems too damned easy, boss man,” Erica says.

  “Trust me, it always seems too easy. But in the end, it never is.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means, it really doesn’t matter where Roger went to hide. That’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is that he might want to remain hidden. That’s where the job goes from easy to downright difficult. Especially if he wants to fight us.”

  “I’m guessing we need a plan.”

  “Yup.”

  “Any idea what kind of plan you’d wish to implement, boss?”

  “How’s this: he resists my request to escort him back home, you take immediate measures to prevent physical injury to either party.”

  “And what would constitute actual resistance and, specifically, what measures might I take?”

  “He starts beating the living shit out of me, you hit him over the head with a blunt object.”

  “Can I use your gun?”

  “No.”

  She paints a false pout on her face.

  “Ready for some action, Deputy Beckett?” I pose.

  She raises her right hand and salutes me.

  “Ready and willing, Moonlight.”

  I open up the door to Ralph’s Tavern and cautiously enter.

  Chapter 17

  TEN MINUTES LATER I’M down on my knees in a filthy bathroom stall, Walls’s bear-like claw gripping the collar on my leather coat. My head is ringing from a quick pistol-whipping, my face and scalp soaking wet now that the literary genius has decided to use my head as a human toilet brush.

  He yanks me up and onto my feet.

  “Holy crap, Moonlight,” he barks. “You passed out on me.”

  “Pistol-whipping someone in the head will tend to do that. Especially someone who’s got my head.”

  “Sorry about that,” he says, making a weak attempt to straighten up the collar on my jacket. “I only meant to scare you, not harm you. I don’t know who to believe these days. Who to trust. How do I know you’re really working for Suzanne?”

  “Trust,” I mumble. “It’s like faith. Believing in something you can’t see or feel.”

  “Indeed. Well said. You’re no dummy, Moonlight. Even for a PI.”

  I run my right hand over my head, do my best to ring out my cropped hair. There’s a small lump on the back of my cranial cap where Walls hit me with his six-gun. At least he didn’t shoot me. It feels tender to the touch. My poor, bullet-riddled head.

  “You got a license for the six-gun?” I pose.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Oh, I forgot,” I say. “You shot someone already.”

  “Convicted felons rarely are granted pistol permits. But don’t worry. It’s not always loaded. It’s more for show, ʹcase somebody backs me up into a corner.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of getting snagged with an unlicensed piece? It would mean immediate prison time. Bullets or no bullets.”

  “Never shall I be touched by the filthy hands of the man in blue. Never again, believe me, believe you.”

  More silly poetry.

  He opens the stall door so hard it slams against the side panel. The knocking on the dead-bolted door goes from bare-knuckle taps to outright pounding.

  “Dude!” shouts the man from outside. “I’ve got to fucking go!”

  Walls shifts his stocky body over to the door, unbolts it, and opens it. An overweight college-aged young man barges in. He’s a wearing a tight black T-shirt that says, “COLLEGE” in big bold white letters stained with beer and chicken wing sauce. He doesn’t bother to look at us while he barrels his way to the toilet I just occupied with my face. Slamming the stall door shut, he drops trou and slams his ass down onto the toilet. The violent noises that follow remind me of the D-Day barrage on Omaha Beach.

  “We’d better get the hell out of here, Moonlight. Get us a drink. Before we pass out from asphyxiation.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I say, following him out. “You’re buying, asshole.”

  Chapter 18

  “WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT, Mr. Walls?” I ask over a bottle of cold beer paid for out of the pile of greenbacks set on the bar in front of the writer. “Why you running when you should be writing?”

  “Who says I’m running?” Walls answers, while sipping on a toddy of vodka over ice. A double. “And what business is it of yours, private dick?”

  Walls is clearly wired. Tired and wired, not unlike myself, probably due to the same cocaine I’ve been snorting with his…um…wife. I’ve already introduced him to Erica, but an introduction wasn’t necessary, since he recalls her from the many readings and signings he’s done at the university for the MFA program. Truth be told, I was a little taken aback when he first caught sight of her, the big man stopping in his tracks and swallowing a breath. Like she was his mother come back to life and not some kid learning to write poetry. Makes me wonder why she didn’t explain the extent of her relationship with Walls in the first place. Why not just come out and tell me she knew him? But for now, I just welcome an excuse to have a couple of calming drinks while trying to get Walls to talk and make some sense out of this goose chase.

  “You’re right, Mr. Walls—”

  “—Roger,” he insists. “Putting a ‘Mister’ in front of my last name makes me feel all literary and snooty. Like Erica’s MFA advisor. What’s his name again, Erica?”

  “Professor Oatczuk,” she reminds him, smiling that beaming smile of hers. She’s clearly getting a rise out of this whole adventure. And who can blame her?

  “Ah yes,” Walls says, in between sips of his toddy. “Professor Upchuck. Uptight man if I ever did meet one.”

  “He claims to be your best friend.” Makes
me feel kind of warm and fuzzy knowing that Walls and I came up with the same Upchuck nickname independent from one another. Moonlight the Genius.

  Walls bursts out with a belly laugh that seems to light the tavern right up. The bartender and the two kids playing darts over beers in the back stop what they’re doing to grab a quick look at the bearded writer, who has no doubt been belly laughing the afternoon and night away in the place.

  “So, I take it he’s not your best friend,” I add, already knowing the answer to my question.

  “I’m better friends with my ex-wives, Moonlight, and they hate my guts.”

  “That’s not true, Roger,” Erica chimes in. “I know how generous you are to them. Generous to a fault.”

  He nods, drinks, sets the glass right back down perfectly onto its own condensation ring.

  “Indeed,” he says contemplatively, “I feel a responsibility to keep them safe and dry, even though they have moved on from my life. Even Sissy, God bless her, is a hare’s breath from moving on, making room for Mrs. Walls number nine. Any takers?” He grabs Erica around the waist, pulls her into him.

  “Must cost you a pretty penny in alimony and support payments,” I say. “Which leads me back to my original question. How come you’re drinking and not writing?”

  “And again, my dear Mister Moonlight, how is that any of your business?”

  I drink down the rest of my beer, raise up my hand to grab the bartender’s attention. He catches my gesture and heads to the cooler under the bar, retrieving me another one. Placing the new beer before me, I tell him to take the money for the beer from the same pile of Walls’s pretty green.

  “You’re right,” I say. “You don’t owe me any explanation. I’m getting paid to find you and, now that I’ve found you, I’m just curious why a man of your talents and responsibilities wouldn’t always be putting ass to chair and fingers to keys.”

  Walls works up a smile, downs his vodka and immediately calls for another one.

  “You have a way with words, Moonlight.”

  “Richard just wrote his first book,” Erica adds, sipping on her still full beer, her slender body cozied up to the late middle-aged writer.

  The literary lion lights up like a Christmas tree.

  “That so, Moonlight?” he barks, his grin turning suspicious. “You looking for me to help you with a book? That’s what this is about? That why you been chasing me down like the onset of a stroke?”

  “Not at all,” I say. “Your agent has already agreed to look at it for me.”

  “She did? That’s very white of her.”

  “From what I hear, she can use the business. That is, if it’s any good.”

  “Yes, the Iron Lady has had a tough time of it lately. She’s starting over. Something poetic in that, don’t you think?”

  “From what I gather, that tough time could have been avoided.”

  Walls’s new drink arrives and he doesn’t allow the ice to settle to the bottom before he takes a swig off of it.

  “She fucked up and got too greedy, even for her,” he says wiping his bearded mouth with the back of his meaty hand. “We all fuck up from time to time, or so sayeth the good Lord.”

  “You shot a man,” I say, having no idea in the world why I would say it, other than my brain isn’t always right.

  You would think I just punched the stocky man in the gut by the way his face goes rock hard, eyes wide and unblinking, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, jagged purple vein popping out of his forehead.

  “Thou shall not refer to me as a killer,” he whispers. “That man was trespassing and threatening my life. Or should I say, death? Besides, he survived the shooting with a small flesh wound.” Now looking away, toward the back of the bar, but obviously seeing something very different inside that complicated head of his. “Son-of-a-bitch trespasser probably doesn’t even boast a scar at this point.”

  I calmly take a drink of my new beer, even though I’m preparing to make a run for it should Walls spring up and go after my throat with both hands, or worse, threaten me with another pistol-whipping.

  “Easy does it, Walls,” I say. “You did what you had to do. I might have done the same thing, in your shoes.”

  I sense a nervousness coming from Erica. She takes a drink of her beer and adds, “Mr. Moonlight almost blew his brains out once.”

  There it is. She had to go and say it.

  Walls assumes a gentle smile again.

  “That true, Moonlight?” he asks. “You tried to off yourself?”

  “Like you just said, we all fuck up now and again. My fuck-up almost cost me my life, and my son his dad.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Roger,” Erica bursts in. “I don’t think Mr. Moonlight—”

  “—It’s okay, Erica,” I say, holding my free hand as if to say stop. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

  “So, how did you do it?” Walls presses.

  “Twenty-two caliber revolver to the temple.” I make like a pistol with my right hand, press extended index finger to the scar beside my right ear lobe.

  “I don’t get it,” he says. “Why aren’t you dead right now?”

  “At the very last second, as I was about to pull the trigger, a vision of my little boy entered into my head. I began to move the pistol away from my head. But I was drunk and I hit the trigger. It went off. Most of the hollow-point bullet shattered against my skull. But a small piece buried itself inside my brain, directly beside the cerebral cortex, making my present life a tiny bit insecure at best.”

  “I get it,” he says, clearly fascinated. “If that bullet decides to migrate, you’d fall off that stool and be dead before you hit the floorboards.”

  “Something like that.” I nod.

  Walls is slowly drinking and, at the same time, soaking up my story. It’s not the man who just shoved my head into a toilet bowl who’s listening right now. It’s the writer. I know this for certain when he removes a small notebook and pen from the chest pocket on his bush jacket, and jots down a note.

  “What are you doing?” I pose.

  “Hey Moonlight,” he says, “didn’t you just get through telling me I should be writing?”

  “Yah, but I didn’t mean about me. I’m writing about me.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says, returning the notebook to the jacket pocket, “I didn’t say I was going to write a book about you. Just that I’m going to write a book. That is, I can settle on an idea, much less a bloody plot.”

  I drink a little. “So maybe that’s what this little escape is about, Roger. Not being able to write. Writer’s block.”

  He inhales, exhales, his beefy chest rising and lowering like the chest on a bull. Running his free hand down his face, over his thick beard, he says, “Another brawny writer more famous than me once said, ‘When it feels like you’re typing with boxing gloves on, it’s time to get out of the house. Sometimes for weeks at a time.’”

  I find myself nodding.

  “Suzanne needs you,” I say, remembering what Sissy told me about her having to resort to selling cocaine in order to maintain the lifestyle to which she’s grown accustomed. But then, considering the source, maybe that was just the lie of a very angry, and even jealous, young and jilted wife. The type of wife Walls seems to pathologically attract. For a brief second I think about confronting him about the cocaine issue and his wife’s accusations. But then considering the bear of a man sitting before me, and his inebriated state, and the fact that he’s already come close to deliberately killing another man who got on his nerves, I think twice about it.

  I slide off my stool.

  “I suppose I could ask you to come with us, Roger,” I say. “But I’m guessing you’re not going to cooperate.”

  Another one of his beaming smiles.

  “Got that right, Moonlight,” he says. “And I’m bigger than you. Or, stronger anyway.”

  “Will you at lea
st call Suzanne, tell her I found you?”

  “So you can get paid.”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll call her tomorrow. It’s late.”

  I think about her lying in bed, reading my novel. Naked.

  “Much appreciated,” I say.

  “Sorry about the toilet dunking,” he says. “If I’d known about your…ah…cerebral condition, I might have thought twice about messing with you.”

  “No harm done that hasn’t already been done.”

  “Good luck with your book. And, say, would you be opposed to having a drink with me sometime? Under better circumstances? You’re an interesting character. I might like to interview you further.”

  “I just told you, I’m already writing about my character.”

  “Hey, what’s the difference? You have your take and I’ll have mine. Besides, my book will sell better.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. But it’s a lie. My story is my story and that’s that.

  “Don’t think too hard. Or you’ll end up like me.”

  “You seem to be enjoying life.”

  “But underneath this joyous and adventurous exterior, Moonlight, exists a tortured and lonely artist.”

  “My work is done here, tortured artist.”

  I turn to Erica.

  “Shall we?” I say.

  I fully expect her to accompany me back to my ride, and maybe even to my loft. But the MFA student does something that makes my heart sink. She shifts her body even closer to Roger’s than it already is.

  “I think I’ll hang out with Roger,” she says.

  “Yah, we can talk poetry,” he says, tossing me a wink of his right eye.

  My heart dragging on the floor behind me, I exit Ralph’s, to go home alone.

  Chapter 19

  I SLIP BACK INTO Dad’s hearse.

  It’s dark, cold, and black inside and out. Like my mood. Imagine me, Dick Moonlight, Captain Head-Case, getting jilted by a girl young enough to be my daughter for a famous drunken writer old enough to be my dad?

  Life ain’t fair.