Moonlight Sonata

by Vincent Zandri

  Before I turn over the eight-cylinder, I extract my cell phone from the interior pocket on my leather coat. The little flag that indicates the arrival of a text message appears on the screen. I don’t recall hearing the chirpy chime or the gentle vibration that indicates the receipt of a text message. But that’s not unusual, considering I was inside a noisy bar. I press my index finger on the flag and am surprised to see the message is from Suzanne.

  I open the message.

  Sissy Walls is dead

  I read it again.

  Sissy Walls is dead

  No matter how many times I read those four words, the message doesn’t change.

  I spent the afternoon with Sissy.

  I drank with Sissy.

  I snorted coke with Sissy.

  I had sex with Sissy.

  Sissy Walls. The wife of Roger Walls. A man who just beat the crap out of me inside a rancid bathroom stall and who shot someone for trespassing on his property.

  Now I’m the trespasser, and the territory I trespassed upon is dead.

  Fuck me.

  Chapter 20

  MY HEART PULSING IN my throat, I thumb the dialer and call Suzanne. It’s almost two in the morning, but I don’t care if she’s asleep. We need to talk. She answers after the second ring.

  “What the hell happened?” I say in the place of a hello.

  “Suicide,” she says, not a hint of sleepiness in her voice. “By the looks of it. Or maybe not suicide.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Some men who work for Roger. They called me.”

  In my head, the rednecks chasing down my tail in their blue Freebird 69 pickup. “Maybe it wasn’t a suicide attempt. Maybe she just overdosed.”

  “Does it matter at this point? Why are you so concerned, Moonlight?”

  The thought of telling her the truth about how I spent my afternoon just doesn’t seem appealing at the present moment. So I just decide to play the concerned client routine.

  “Look-it, Suzanne, I found Roger. He’s drinking in a bar called Ralph’s on the corner of Madison and New Scotland, across from the park. Should I go tell him?”

  I make out some shuffling going on in the background. Then, the distinct sound of a snort, maybe the metallic sound of a razor blade being dropped down onto a gilded mirror.

  “No, no,” the agent insists, sniffling.

  “Everything okay over there, Suzanne?”

  “Despite the circumstances, yes.”

  I fire up the engine.

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Now? That means I’ll have to put on my face.”

  “Your face is fine the way it is. We need to talk.”

  “Fine. So be it.”

  I ask for her address. She gives it to me.

  I hang up and pull away from the curb, picturing the cops who are no doubt scouring the Walls’ home as I speak. Cops looking for clues, evidence, prints.

  Prints and fluids with my genetic imprint on them.

  Chapter 21

  THE RED AND BLUE neon tubing that cuts through the darkness to spell Ralph’s Bar isn’t entirely out of view of my rearview when my cell rings. Sliding it back out of my pocket, I glance at the now lit-up screen. I can’t say I recognize the number right away, but I peg the prefix as an Albany number. Downtown Albany.

  Then it comes to me. The Albany Police Department. My former employers.

  I answer the phone.

  “Moonlight,” I say, trying to hide the alcohol that’s no doubt swimming in my voice.

  “Richard Moonlight?” the man says on the other end.

  “That’s me,” I say.

  “You don’t know me, but my name is Detective Nick Miller. I’m fairly new with the Albany Police department. I was wondering if I could get you to pay me a visit at the South Pearl Street precinct. Or I’d be happy to come to you.”

  “When should I come to you, and for what?” I say, knowing precisely what it’s for, a vision of the young, red-haired bride of Roger Walls lying in bed beside me flashing through my brain.

  “It’s regarding the death of a woman by the name of Sissy Walls.”

  The tiny town of Chatham comes to mind. All the way across the river and into the trees.

  “Chatham is a little out of your jurisdiction isn’t it, Detective Miller?”

  “That’s funny, Moonlight, I don’t recall telling you where Sissy Walls resides.”

  Me. Snagged. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “Now then, Moonlight, since I obviously haven’t woken you from a sound sleep, why don’t we get together for a chat right now?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” I say.

  He hangs up.

  I slam my phone down on the empty passenger seat.

  Chapter 22

  I TEXT SUZANNE, TELL her I’m going to be about fifteen minutes late when I know full well it might be about an hour or more before I can make it to her house. Maybe two. Maybe never. I’m a former detective. I know how these things go. I also know that if these cops suspect me of fucking with Sissy’s life, I’m pretty well screwed until I can prove myself innocent. That might take a lawyer. A very expensive lawyer. But instead of getting ahead of myself, I decide to take a chill, and simply listen to what Miller’s got to say. I haven’t done anything wrong, after all.

  So why should I be worried?

  The interior of the Albany Police Department is like the inside of a mortuary and just as pleasant. I know the place like the back of my callused hands. Even the smell that hits you in the face the second you walk through the front doors brings you back to a time when your brothers in arms were closer to you than your wife. So close in fact, that your jealous wife felt the need to find comfort in another man who happened to be one of those brothers in arms I just mentioned. My partner, and best friend at that time.

  As I walk the narrow corridor to the reception window, I have no choice but to inhale the combination disinfectant and body odor, and I begin to feel a sick queasiness in my stomach. A nausea that has little to do with the drinking I’ve been doing or the cocaine I snorted or even the sickening smell of this concrete block and glass building. Instead, it has everything to do with a suicidal past I would rather forget. I hand my ID and .38 to the guard sergeant who is manning the window.

  She buzzes me in.

  “Welcome home, Dick,” she says, not without a snort. Most of the Albany cops aren’t very happy with me, not since I brought down half their house some years ago when I uncovered an illegal organ harvesting operation some of the head cops were running. Everyone knows cops watch one another’s backsides, even when their frontsides are up to no good.

  Detective Miller is standing at the far end of the wide-open booking room as I enter. He’s not necessarily a tall guy, but he is taller than my five foot nine, which is nothing unusual. He’s maybe two or three years younger than me but ten years older around the eyes and, no doubt, in the liver, since most detectives in Albany tend to become prolific drinkers by the end of their first few months on the job. Clean-shaven, dirty blond-gray buzzed hair, and a necktie that’s still raised up past his buttoned collar tells me he’s all spit and polish, even at two thirty in the morning.

  The fact that he doesn’t bother to shake my hand tells me he’s in no mood for small talk.

  “Mr. Moonlight,” he says, “please follow me.”

  “Gladly, Detective,” I say. “I’m familiar with the layout of this fine establishment of law and odor…oops, I mean order.” Moonlight the Jokester.

  He leads me to a small interview room located to the right of the booking room. He opens the door for me, and together we sit down directly across from one another at a metal table under the bright light that spills down from an overhead fixture. His manila file is already sitting out on the table.

  “Get you any coffee, Moonlight?” he asks, open
ing the folder, laying out some glossy eight-by-ten color photographs. “That beer breath can stop a freight train.”

  “I had a couple just before you called. In the safety of my own home.”

  “You always drink alone in the middle of the night? Or is that your first lie, since you were no doubt cruising the city in an automobile while under the influence?”

  “Am I being interrogated about my drinking habits, Detective?”

  He sits back, exhales. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot, shall we?”

  “Indeed we shall not.” I smile.

  He comes forward again, chooses one of the photos and holds it up for me.

  I try not to look too shocked, but I’m not sure I can’t help it, what with the way my mouth goes immediately dry and my pulse starts pounding in my temples. I wonder if Miller can make out my knocking knees.

  “You know this woman, Moonlight?”

  He holds the picture of Sissy up so close to my face I can practically smell the ink on the digitally printed photo. In the picture, she’s lying on her bed, face up, her mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide, and lifeless. She’s clearly dead.

  “She’s the wife of Roger Walls. Sissy.”

  “Very good,” says Miller, as if I’m a first grader reading spelling words off the blackboard. He drops the picture and begins to show me the rest of them, one after the other, which it turns out, are just different versions of the same dead body. Naked, dead body, I should say.

  “How’d she die?”

  “By the looks of it,” he says, “catastrophic cardiac arrest. Perhaps exacerbated by a suicidal overdose, or maybe by asphyxiation.”

  “Asphyxiation,” I say. “You mean like somebody put a pillow over her face and held it there until her heart gave out?”

  He smiles. “Jeez, what a deduction, Moonlight. What a loss you are to this department.”

  “Thanks. Kind of you to say so.”

  “Were you by any chance with Sissy today or tonight?”

  I sit back in my chair, inhale a calming breath. I think about digging out one of the cigarettes from the emergency pack I keep in my leather coat should I suddenly need to quit quitting—but then think better of it. It will make me look too nervous. Like I’m hiding something.

  “Time out, Detective,” I say making the familiar referee T with my two hands. “Mind if I ask you a procedural question?”

  “You gonna’ ask for a lawyer, Moonlight?” he says. “Because if you are, then screw you. Ain’t gonna’ change anything from my point of view.”

  “Have you managed to contact the husband yet?”

  “We can’t get ahold of him.”

  “He’s a tough one to track down. Take it from me.”

  Miller gives me a look like he has no idea what I’m talking about. I feel the pounding in my temples grow louder, more forceful while the detective reaches into the file again, only this time he doesn’t remove a photograph. He pulls out a business card. My business card, it turns out.

  “This belong to you?”

  “Jeepers, isn’t that my name written on it?”

  He slams the card down, stands. Dramatically, I might add.

  “Laugh it up, Moonlight. It doesn’t take a brilliant homicide detective to know that you spent some time with Sissy this afternoon. That you drank and did coke with her. And when we find your DNA sample up inside her, we’re going to prove you fucked her, too. Your prints are all over the house, and the snot from your nose is all over the dollar bill you were using to suck up that white powder.”

  The pulsing in my head is so intense I can feel myself on the verge of blacking out. That’s the trouble with my damaged brain. Too much pressure can reduce me to a pile of passed out rags and bones. No choice but to breathe in and out, easily and steadily. Evenly.

  “Can I go now, Detective? I have this condition with my head.”

  “I know all about your little, ah, condition, Moonlight. We all do.”

  “Then you know the seriousness of the situation. I wouldn’t want it to get out that you were holding a handicapped man behind closed doors without his formally being charged with anything.”

  “Should we be charging you with something?”

  “I’m not sure. Sissy lived in Chatham, which is a million miles away from Albany.”

  He sits back down, palms pressed down flat on the metal table.

  “We’re at present working in cooperation with the Columbia County State Police. Chatham is too small to support its own police department. Which is none of your business, it turns out.”

  “Jeepers, as a tax paying citizen, I feel that I’m owed an explanation.”

  “Give me the truth, Moonlight, and you can go. Did you spend time with Sissy?”

  “Her husband has gone missing. Or, was missing, that is, until I located him tonight at Ralph’s Bar. His agent, Suzanne Bonchance, hired me to find him. Thus my comment about him being a hard man to find.”

  He nods, like I’m suddenly making sense.

  I add, “I started by heading out to Chatham to ask his wife some pertinent questions. Simple as that. Routine procedure for a private Dick like moi.” Turning to the two-way mirror that makes up a good portion of the painted cement block wall to my left. “You get that? Moi is French for me, moron.”

  I turn back to Miller.

  “Is it standard operating procedure for you to engage in sexual activity with your interviewees?” he poses, a slight smirk forming on his face.

  “You’d be surprised, Miller, especially when it comes to two consenting adults who wish to perform a sexual act together in the privacy of their chosen residence.”

  The place goes silent for a few beats. It tells me that our interview, such as it is, is over. For now. I should know. I used to be the one sitting across the table from me in Miller’s chair. I know the drill.

  Pushing out my chair, I stand, turn back to the one-way glass and, raising my left hand and middle index finger high, flip off the audio-visual techie doing the recording.

  “Yah, and fuck you too, Head-Case,” comes a muted voice from the great beyond.

  I can’t help but laugh. Even Miller cracks a hint of a smile.

  “Just like old times, huh, Moonlight?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  The detective leads me out of the interview room, back across the booking room, and to the door.

  “Listen,” he says, before the guard sergeant hits the lock release, “if print and DNA evidence at Sissy Walls’s home points to you, and you alone, you’re gonna’ need to grab yourself some professional counsel.”

  I stare up into Miller eyes. “You trying to tell me I’m suspected of murdering Mrs. Walls, Detective Miller?”

  “You know how this works, Moonlight. We find out she didn’t die of natural causes exacerbated by drug use, you will become suspect number one. And until we eliminate suspect number one as a viable candidate for the title of crazy-ass murderer, you will indeed remain as such. Clear?”

  “Gosh, I’m trembling with fear. I might have to lie down.”

  He smiles. “Good to see you maintain a sense of humor. I like that coming from a dishonorably discharged cop.”

  “I’m a glass half-full kind of guy,” I say.

  He nods at the guard sergeant. The solid metal door buzzes, unlocks, and opens automatically.

  “Enjoy the rest of your night, Moonlight,” Miller offers. “Don’t forget to pick up your gun on the way out. And by the way, we got a DWI sweep going on tonight. So I were you, I’d plan on heading straight home to sleep off your alcohol and drug problem.”

  I step on through the door, praying that Roger Walls still has no idea his wife is dead.

  Chapter 23

  BACK IN THE HEARSE I make a quick check of my cell phone. When I see no one has called or texted, I turn the engine over and drive out of the precinct lot onto Central Avenue, in the direction of Suzanne Bonchance’s townhou
se. But shouldn’t I be trying to break the sad news about Sissy to Walls? Doing it to his face before he finds out from some strange cop that I was the last man to be with her before she died? Should I come clean with everything in order to avoid his wrath later on? A wrath that just might involve a firearm discharged in my general direction?

  Okay, here’s the truth: while my conscience tells me to head straight back to Ralph’s Bar for the four a.m. last call in which Walls will no doubt be participating, I make the executive decision to stick with my original plan and make a beeline for my employer. To try and get a handle on the shit storm I’ve ventured into and to see how I might gently exit from it without being accused of murder, starting with Bonchance agreeing to provide the police with a rock-solid alibi for having met with Sissy this afternoon in the first place.

  At this hour, Central Avenue is nearly devoid of automobile traffic. Just the occasional blue and white cruiser speeding past, no doubt prowling for drunken drivers. It’s late in the month. Time for the APD boys and girls in blue to make up their monthly quotas. I can only assume Miller wasn’t lying about the DWI sweep. I’m more than conspicuous in my big black hearse. Plus I’m more or less still drunk. But I’m not speeding, nor am I taking any more chances now that I’m solidly on Detective Miller’s radar. Last thing I need is a DWI.

  When I reach Bonchance’s address on a side street that parallels the Madison Avenue hill in the city’s far-east end, which is in sight of the Hudson River, I find an empty space across the street and park the hearse there. The entire street seems to be asleep.

  Sleep. What a concept.

  But when I get out, I can see Suzanne is still up, at least judging by the light on in what looks to me like the living room. There’s a small stone and concrete staircase leading up to the front door, like the kind you might find attached to a townhouse in Brooklyn heights. Pretty soon I’ll have been up for twenty-four hours straight. But that doesn’t stop me from taking the stairs two at a time. Standing on the landing, my pulse pounding in my head, I thumb the doorbell three times, the sound of an electronic gong coming through the black six-panel wood door.