Vanessa holds up a phone.
“Smile, Moonlight,” she says. “You’re on Candid Camera.”
Georgie rises up onto his knees.
“Get the hell back down, skinny,” Tall Redneck shouts.
“Oh fuck you, you dumb ass Okie,” Georgie says. “Go ahead and shoot.”
Short Round Redneck raises up his rifle, fires. The bullet hits the wall behind Georgie. I rise up onto my knees, take a look at Georgie’s face. It’s tight and red. I’ve known him nearly my whole life and I know when he’s scathing mad. Like now, as he raises up his .9mm while thumbing back the hammer.
“Don’t do it!” screams Short, Round Redneck as he aims for Georgie’s head.
I get ready to spring myself in the direction of the Rednecks when a second shot rings out and a body drops.
Chapter 45
SHORT ROUND REDNECK’S FACE disappears a split-second before his body hits the kitchen floor.
The twins drop down onto their stomachs and scream.
Suzanne pulls out her gun, aims it at me.
Why me?
I reach out, grab the .44 as a shot is fired and brushes the short hair on my head. Raising up the Magnum, I fire at Suzanne, and hit her in the chest. She’s gone before her knees even begin to buckle.
I just killed the world’s best literary agent.
That’s when the canister of tear gas plops onto the floor by my feet and explodes.
Chapter 46
THE TEAR GAS IS followed by an entire SWAT team plowing through the busted windows and broken doors. I try and cover my eyes to prevent the gas from stinging them, but it’s a futile effort. I can hear Georgie coughing up a lung, along with Tall Bearded Redneck. The twins are down on the ground. They’ve gone from screaming to outright weeping and wailing. They’ve become victims in their own game of seduction. As for the two Russians duct-taped to one another, they aren’t making a sound. Maybe they’re dead.
One of the SWAT officers bends over, looks me in the eye with his oxygen-masked and clear-shielded face. “You okay, buddy?”
I nod.
He holds out his arm and points to the open door of the kitchen.
“Go!” he demands. Then at Georgie. “You too, Dr. Phillips!”
I go for the door, Georgie on my tail.
Outside, I cough and weep, weep and cough.
It takes a couple of minutes for the tears to stop falling and my breathing to return to some semblance of normal. When I can finally see straight, I spot Detective Miller making his way through the throngs of cop cars, EMT vans, and a couple of black armored SWAT vehicles in my direction. There’s a woman walking beside him. She’s tall, slim, wearing a windbreaker and jeans. Even with my tear-gassed eyes still stinging and somewhat blurred, I can tell she’s crying. Or has been crying, anyway.
Miller directs me to a place on the lawn that isn’t in earshot of the police or anyone else, but that is in plain eyesight of the van containing Sissy’s body.
“How’d you know we’d be here?” I say after a time.
“I’m a cop, Moonlight,” he says. “Didn’t take a whole lot of deductive reasoning once we found out that Sissy was missing from the morgue.” Then turning to the woman. “And I had some help from Erica and Vanessa’s mother. Moonlight, meet Mrs. Alice Beckett.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I say. “Pardon me if I don’t shake your hand.”
“No worries,” the woman says in a soft, low voice.
“Mrs. Beckett has been aware for some time the arrangement her daughters struck up with Suzanne Bonchance for the publication of their book project. But it wasn’t until Sissy died that she uncovered the extent of the illegalities involved.”
“Ms. Beckett,” I say, my stinging eyes planted on Georgie’s van, and the now closed back-bay doors. “Did your daughters kill Sissy?”
The woman starts to cry again. In her right hand, she’s holding a cloth handkerchief. As quickly as the tears fall from her eyes onto her flush cheeks, she wipes them away.
“I overheard Vanessa talking to Erica on the phone last night. Vanessa was upset. She was crying. Sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering. But crying. She had done something. Something bad. Something she didn’t mean to do.” Beckett takes a moment to dry more of her tears. “And then she said the name, Sissy. In the same breath, my daughter said the word dead. That Sissy was dead, and it was all a big mistake.”
“Sissy didn’t OD on her own?” I say, wiping my own tear-gas produced tears from my face.
“She had…let’s call it…assistance,” Miller says.
My eyes back on Beckett.
“My Vanessa did something bad to the drugs,” she says.
Miller takes a step forward. “Vanessa laced the drugs with something. Heroin. She must have gotten it from Suzanne. Suzanne from the Russians. By now you’ve no doubt figured out the food chain in this thing, Moonlight.”
“Why would she do that?” I say. “Why take a chance on killing Sissy?”
“The girls were playing a game of manipulation. It was pure fun for them. Tease Roger and see what happens. Follow him, see what happens. Take him to bed, see what happens. Steal his money or, in this case, the Russian’s money. Haunt him so that he can’t write even if he tries. See what happens. Get it all on video. Write a book about it. Strut your twin tits and ass. Smile a lot. Say funny, mindless things. Make a fortune.”
“You knew about this, Ms. Beckett?”
She nods, sniffles. “Some of it. A lot of it. Does that make me an accomplice in a murder?”
“It’s possible Sissy had an existing heart condition,” Miller adds. “Anyway, she overdosed on a drug she didn’t realize she was ingesting.”
A uniformed police officer approaches us.
“Excuse me, Detective,” he says, handing Miller an iPhone. The same iPhone Vanessa held up inside the kitchen of the Walls home and announced, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.” He thumbs a few commands until he comes to the application he wants. He holds the phone at an angle that allows Ms. Beckett and myself to see the screen. It’s a video. He depresses the triangular play button. It’s Sissy, lying in bed, naked. She’s snorting a line from the mirror. She’s singing and slurring her words. Some Lindsay Lohan song. Her eyes are going in and out of focus while Vanessa zooms in on them.
“Do you love your husband, Sissy?” Vanessa asks.
Sissy issues a laugh. A long drawn out, pain-filled exhale that is as far away from happiness as hell is from paradise.
“I want to die when I hear his name,” she says, grabbing hold of a beer bottle she has set on the nightstand, spilling half of it before she can get it to her mouth. She’s not finished taking her drink, when the bottle falls onto her lap, beer running out in a sea of white foam. Her green eyes roll up into the back of her head and her mouth begins to froth, her body cascading into a fit of trembling.
“Oh shit! Oh shit!” Vanessa can be heard saying while she continues filming. “Shit. Fuck me. Sissy. Don’t die. Sissy, don’t die.”
But it’s plain to see that the eighth wife of Roger Walls is already gone.
Miller stops the video. “She must have filmed the whole thing,” he says. “She wanted to see what happened next instead of calling for help.” He shakes his head and pockets the phone.
Just then we see the girls being led out of the house, both of their wrists handcuffed behind their backs, their hair veiling their tear-gassed faces like funeral shawls.
Ms. Beckett begins to openly sob, while Miller begins making his way back across the side lawn to where they are being escorted to an awaiting police cruiser. Not knowing what else to do, I follow. When he comes to within a few feet of them, the tall, short-haired detective shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, plucks out a pack of cigarettes. He pops one between his lips and lights it with a BIC butane.
The same uniformed cop who handed Miller the iPhone opens the back cruiser door for Er
ica. He places his open hand on her head and pushes down so she doesn’t get smacked on the door rim as she enters into the vehicle. He does the same thing for Vanessa when she stumbles into the car, joining her twin sister.
When the girls are safely inside, Miller reaches out with his free hand, grabs hold of the door in order to prevent the cop from closing it. The detective, cigarette pressed between his lips, leans his head into the car. He says something to the girls, something indiscernible to me. They respond, which is just as indiscernible. Popping his head back out, he tells the cop to take them away.
Turning to the girl’s mother, he says, “Ms. Beckett, you can follow them in one of the other cruisers. The officer here will assist you.” He gives me a look, and together we walk back across the lawn to Georgie’s van.
Chapter 47
WE STAND BY THE white van in heavy silence, my eyes no longer burning or tearing. Miller reaches back into his blazer pocket, produces that same pack of smokes. Marlboro Lights. My brand, it so happens. He offers me one and, since my life hangs in the balance anyway, I accept it. He fires it up for me and for a few long moments, we simply stand there, quietly smoking to the soundtrack of arguing cops, busy EMTs, tinny radios, ringing cell phones. Even laughter.
“Do I dare ask you what you wanted with Sissy’s body, Moonlight?” Miller speaks after a time.
“I think you know why.”
“DNA.”
“Yup.”
He smokes. Contemplatively. “Georgie Phillips. He cleaned her out. So to speak.”
I smoke. Reflectively. “So to speak.”
“Perhaps you replaced the sample with another. Thus the reason for bringing her on this field trip.”
“All things are possible.”
“Will the DNA we find inside her match that of a living human being?”
I smoke a little more, exhale. “Do we ever really die, Detective?”
He shakes his head. “If you deliver her body back to the Albany Medical Center within the hour, I will make certain no one is the wiser. But it has to be within the hour.”
“Understood. Why you being so nice?”
He flicks the half-smoked cigarette onto the gravel drive, where it lands and smolders in the fresh oxygen.
“You’ve helped me out. Helped your fellow man out, I should say. Whether you realize it or not, Moonlight, you’ve helped bust up a Russian mob-run coke operation and did away with one of their operatives while seriously wounding two of their soldiers. It’s too bad Suzanne Bonchance had to die, but I understand you were acting in self-defense. You were a cop once. You were trained when to shoot and when not to.”
“I don’t like taking lives, even when they’re trying to take mine. But it always seems to happen.”
“One day, when you least expect, your life will be taken, too.”
“Sudden death. It’s something I have to live with.”
“Ain’t that truth,” Miller says. Then, tossing a thumb over his shoulder at the van and the body it contains. “Within the hour. I mean it, Moonlight. Or all bets are off.”
“Roger that, Detective,” I say.
He steps past me and begins making his way around the back of the house. Until I call out, stopping him. He turns. “What is it?”
“What did you say to the twins back there inside the cruiser? Or you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
He nods, runs his right hand through his closely cropped, almost white hair.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“So, what did you say?”
“I asked them why they did it. Why they tried to ruin Roger’s life?”
“And what did they say?”
“They said it was fun.”
I flick away what’s left of my cigarette so that it lands on the gravel drive not far from the detective’s. “It was fun? That’s it?”
“Oh, and they also said he deserved it, for what he did to their mom thirty-seven some years ago.”
I picture a destroyed Ms. Beckett. Picture her crying the entire length of the trip to the Albany Police Department, sobbing in the back of some wormy smelling cruiser. My pulse picks up at the thought of her and Walls somehow coming together three decades ago. “What did he do?”
“He slept with her while visiting her college in Boston for a reading. Got her pregnant. She was forced to give up the child.”
“Did she connect with the child later on?”
“Yup. But Roger never did. Rather, Roger has no idea who his son is. But I have a feeling now might be the time for him to find out.”
He stands there staring at me.
“Well, don’t keep me in the dark, Miller.”
He tells me the name of Roger Walls long-lost son, and Erica and Vanessa Beckett’s older, half-brother. And it all makes perfect sense.
Chapter 48
YOUNG PROFESSOR OATCZUK WILL probably be pleased to know he is the proud offspring of one of the world’s most gifted writers. Or maybe he already knows. Maybe he’s known for a long time and that’s why he portends such a sentimental affinity to someone who was such a condescending asshole to him. It would explain why he wanted to work with Suzanne so badly, and why he refused to even consider working with another agent. If he’s known all along that Roger is his true father, he would want to make his dad proud. It would be a way for Oatczuk to be noticed, to be praised, to be a success in his daddy’s eyes, even if said daddy had no way of knowing the writing prof was his long-lost son.
I can only wonder if Oatczuk knew about his true connection to Erica and Vanessa. Has he known for some time that he is their half-brother? That they share the same mother? Or did Alice Beckett manage to keep the lid on the complicated family secret until very recently? As recently as today? As recently as this very hour?
If I have to guess, I would say the truth about Oatczuk and his sisters has only now been revealed, while the truth about his biological father was revealed a long time I ago. Why he never confronted the bestseller with the truth, I’ll never know, but I can bet it has something to do with being his own man. After all, who really wants to be the kid of a superstar novelist like Roger Walls? Who wants to be buried in his wake? Who really needs the pressure of measuring up? Measuring up as both a writer and a man? A man’s man?
My spell is broken by the sound of shouting.
“Give that back, you son of a philandering bastard!” barks Roger Walls. He’s chasing Georgie Phillips across the lawn, toward the van. Georgie has a bottle of Jack Daniels gripped in his hand by its neck.
“Don’t just stand there, Moon!” the pathologist screams. “Help me!”
I run, jump in between them, praying Roger doesn’t mow me down like a Sherman tank versus a dandelion.
“What’s going on?” I ask, grabbing Roger’s thick right arm, trying to hold him back with both hands.
“That thief has stolen my whiskey!” Roger shouts.
Georgie stands by the van, panting, the bottle of whiskey still held tightly in his hand.
“Listen, Moon,” he says, “our literary friend here is suffering from loose lips. He’s babbling on about my secret arrangement at the AMC morgue. Before he got too far, I made like a rabbit and stole his drink right out from under him. I knew he’d give chase if so provoked.”
“And here we are, asshole. Now give it back.”
“Boys, boys,” I say. “No one calls the other an asshole.” Me, turning back to Roger, looking him in the eyes. “Roger, apologize to Georgie.”
Roger just stands there, panting.
I turn to Georgie, while holding back Roger. “Georgie, hand him back his booze.”
Georgie does it. Roger uncaps it, takes a deep drink.
“That’s more like it. Sorry I called you an asshole, Doc. But getting in between a man and his booze is a dangerous business.”
“There’s another reason I took that bottle, Roger,” Georgie says. �
��I love your books, man. I’m a real fan. And you know how many diseased livers I’ve examined in my life by men who would have lived another twenty productive years if they just decided to slow down a little? I just want the big guy here to keep on living and to write the great books I know he’s got in him.”
Roger stands there in shock, the bottle gripped in his hands.
“Georgie,” he says, “that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.” Lifting the bottle of Jack, he stares into it. For a split-second I think he’s about to toss it to the pavement. But, instead, he takes another sip, and passes it on to me. “Have a shot, Moonlight. You look like you lost your best friend.”
I take hold of the bottle and steal a drink. I’d pass the bottle to Georgie, but he’s already rolling a joint and both his hands are occupied. I can’t say everything is back to normal. Not by a long shot, but I can tell the worst of this disaster is over. Now all that has to be done is to return Sissy to the morgue. Which is what I convey to Georgie in detail.
“Then we’d better get a move on,” he says, deeply inhaling his medicinal weed.
“Mind if I get a hit of that?” Roger says.
“Inside the van,” I insist. “You’re going to need it after the news I’m about to lay on you.”
“News,” Roger says, climbing into the van’s shotgun seat. “What news?”
“You’re going to be a daddy, Roger.”
Georgie turns over the engine and, together, the three of us plus one dead body begin making our way back to Albany.
Epilogue
WE SIT AROUND THE table in the 677 Prime steakhouse like one big happy family. Me, Roger Walls, and his lost-but-now-found son, Gregor Oatczuk. A fourth person chooses to stand while he raises up a glass of champagne to make a toast.
Moonlight Sonata Page 16
