The Moonlight

by Nicholas Guild

  “I didn’t know George Patchmore had any family left.”

  “Owings seems to be it, and it came as a surprise to him too. The lawyers were a long time finding him—all the way out in California.”

  “From California, is he? What did he do, drive out?”

  Spolino hoped the question didn’t sound as artificial to Jack as it did to him, but the answer came back smoothly enough.

  “No, he flew. But he’s got a car now.” Jack laughed with good natured contempt. “He’s even managed to dimple the fender. Like I said, he’s a fast worker.”

  Spolino’s heart was racing. He had to swallow hard before he could manage an off-hand, “Well thanks, Jack. I’ll drop around and see if he’ll let me in.”

  So Philip Owings had dimpled his fender. It was clear that the Lord loved His detective lieutenants.

  It was now eleven fifteen in the morning. Spolino decided he would wait until the early afternoon, on the theory that people are more cooperative and less on their guard after lunch. He considered taking an arrest warrant with him but decided he hadn’t established sufficient probable cause—after all, what did he have except a dented fender? He hadn’t arrested Jessica Wilton.

  “Amy, the guy turns out to be from California. Call them first.”

  . . . . .

  Computers were wonderful. Within an hour, Spolino had reports on his desk from the FBI, the Department of Defense, the California Department of Justice and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, and they all came to precisely the same thing. The guy was clean. He seemed thus far to have passed through the world without a black mark against his name.

  Four years in the Navy after a year in college, and no brig time. The California police couldn’t even find a parking ticket on him.

  If there was one thing Detective Lieutenant Thomas Spolino had learned to mistrust, it was a model citizen.

  So. Philip Owings, with no ties to the area and no apparent connection with organized crime, inherits the Moonlight from an unknown relative, comes out by plane, buys a car, and tops Leo Galatina. It made no sense whatever.

  Still, that had to be the way it had happened.

  The drive to Brookville was always pleasant because it took you through some of the older parts of town, dating back to the period when the gentry from New York first started to build their country houses in what was then still the country. The Rockefellers had always had their great estates in the back country, but it wasn’t until the 1920s that ordinary garden-variety millionaires began to think of putting up humble little fifteen-room cottages on just an acre or two of carefully manicured lawn surrounded by, say, an eight-foot stone wall. After all, the Common Man had to have his weekend place when he wanted to get away from Manhattan for a little of the simple life and maybe some tennis.

  Lieutenant Spolino liked such areas, less for their aesthetic qualities than for the reassuring conviction they inspired that the people who lived behind these gracious if slightly inauthentic façades were never going to give him any trouble. This was not a place where anybody was ever murdered, except perhaps at bridge, and if the children got caught with the wrong kind of candy in their pockets they were invariably shipped off to discretely expensive rehabilitation centers in Vermont. Things simply were not allowed to get messy, and it was only when things got messy that anyone thought of the police.

  Brookville itself, however, was different. Brookville, with its supermarkets and its second-story apartments, was on the fringes of real life, where anything was possible.

  And the Moonlight, not two hundred yards from the New York state line, was a place where crime enjoyed the respectability of ancient tradition.

  In conformity with long established habit, Spolino parked in front of the garage—suspects tended to be more susceptible to pressure when they knew they didn’t have immediate access to their cars. Of course in this case it hardly made any difference, since the garage was padlocked. He slammed his door shut to give everyone fair warning of his arrival, but he knew from the settled quiet of the place that no one was home. He rang the bell and waited for the answer that wouldn’t be coming, and then he went around to the back.

  Owings apparently hadn’t gotten around to the garage yet, but the paint on the main house still had that shine that never lasts past the first rain storm. The lawns were cut and green, and there were no leaves on the gravel. Somebody had been sprucing things up.

  On the back patio Spolino found an old wooden stepladder and some painting paraphernalia covered by a plastic dropcloth. There was no paint spattered on the concrete and there was still some masking tape around the edges of the windows. Owings, it seemed, was the careful type.

  Which was a pity. Nothing about this case, it seemed, was destined to be easy.

  Spolino had driven by the Moonlight dozens of times over the years, but he had set foot on the property only twice in his life. Now he looked at the old roadhouse, shining like a harlot’s smile under its fresh paint, and remembered the day, twelve years before, when they had found the little Hoffman girl in the cellar, her arms and legs tied with bailing wire and her face already half covered with fine gray mold. They might not have found her for years if a neighbor’s dog hadn’t been irresistibly drawn by the smell of decay. The men who went in to bring out the body had had to wear gas masks.

  And then, five years ago, he had come to search the premises after Harve Wickham hanged himself. He had spent perhaps twenty minutes in that little third-floor apartment—just time enough to determine that Harve hadn’t left a note and that there was nothing on the premises that would upset his ex-wife when she came to clean out his effects. But twenty minutes was enough. He never wanted to go inside that house again.

  He had still been in the N.Y.P.D. during the sixties, when that guy had carved up his girlfriend in a bedroom of what was then the Moonlight Motel, but he had read about it in the local papers, sitting at his widowed mother’s breakfast table, about four blocks from where he lived now. The case hadn’t made much of an impression on him, because in New York he saw worse things every week.

  But his two times inside the Moonlight had left him with an understanding that there are places on this earth where violence and death are as inevitable as sex in a bedroom. The Moonlight was a bad place. The Moonlight had an atmosphere of evil—indefinite but real. And it would have been a good thing, he had thought then, as he thought again at this moment, standing on the patio, inspecting Philip Owings’ paint job, if someone just burned the place to the ground.

  He heard the sound of a car pulling up out front, so he walked back along the gravel path to see if Philip Owings had decided to come home.

  He had. He was driving his wine red Lincoln, and Spolino noticed two things almost simultaneously—there was a woman with him, and he had had the left front fender repaired.

  Owings and his lady friend remained seated in the car, and the Lincoln’s engine was still running. Perhaps they expected that Spolino to stop blocking the garage door. Instead, he went around to the driver’s window, took his badge out of his pocket, and held it up for Owings to see.

  By then Spolino had placed the woman. He didn’t know her name, but she was one of the waitresses over at the Lobster Pot. He had long since abandoned the observances of his Catholic upbringing—he wasn’t even very fond of seafood—but sometimes, on a Friday, he would take Alice and the kids there. Alice felt like Gloria Vanderbilt if she had a plate of lobster in front of her, and it was the sort of place he could afford on a policeman’s salary. He usually had their stuffed flounder, on the theory that garlic covers a multitude of sins.

  Jack had been right about Owings being a fast worker. Or maybe the woman was.

  Owings’ door popped open and he stepped out into the sunlight.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  Spolino smiled his wintry, lips-only smile, which he knew scared the hell out of people, and put his badge back in his pocket.

  “No problem. Just a routine
inquiry.” He fixed the woman with a hard stare, as if he couldn’t figure out what she was doing here. “I just need a few minutes of your time.”

  The passenger door opened and the woman got out. She was wearing a pair of tan trousers and a sleeveless rayon blouse, and Spolino observed, quite dispassionately, that she made a nice handful.

  “I’ll just go into the house then,” she said, rather quietly, as if trying to cover someone’s grave social error. The two men waited in silence until she was gone.

  Spolino, who had long since mastered all the policeman’s little arts, let the silence build a trifle longer. He watched Owings begin to quail before the authority of the law, and he knew at once that the San Mateo Country Sheriff’s Office hadn’t missed anything. This guy was a civilian. Hardened criminals never looked that guilty.

  “This your car?” he asked finally, letting his eyes narrow slightly, as though he were measuring Owings for the gallows—for a split second he had the impression the guy might actually try to deny it.

  “Yeah, it’s mine, as of last Thursday. Why?”

  Spolino looked as if he might not have heard the question. He let his gaze drop to the fender.

  “Seems like you’ve already had a little body work.”

  “Just got it home,” Owings shot back. You would have thought he had been waiting all his life to make this explanation. “Wouldn’t you know it? I don’t have the thing more than a couple of hours, and some idiot puckers my fender for me in the Grand Union parking lot.”

  “They break the headlamp too?”

  “Yeah. How did you . . ?”

  And then, of course, Owings was able to figure it out. All he had to do was look—the sticker was still on the glass.

  Spolino rather admired the detail about the Grand Union parking lot. He liked the fact that the fender was already repaired, thus obliterating any physical evidence of what might actually have happened. He thought Owings made quite a creditable villain of the talented amateur type.

  “You report it to your insurance company?”

  “Yeah. Right away.”

  “On a Friday?”

  Owings merely nodded. His restraint was remarkable.

  “Am I allowed to know what this is about?” he asked finally.

  “Just a routine inquiry,” Spolino repeated in his bland policeman’s voice. “There was a hit-and-run Thursday evening, and we’re checking all cars that match the description. I suppose you can account for your movements.”

  “Not really.” Owings managed a flustered smile, as if the joke were on him. “I don’t have an alibi, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Something like that. Where were you?”

  “I went for a drive—I was alone.”

  “You see your lady friend Thursday night?”

  “Sure.”

  “What time?”

  “Around eleven.”

  Spolino made a little agreeing noise. He had decided it was time to let the guy off the hook.

  “Well, I guess we’ll catch the guy eventually,” he said. “I don’t suppose we’ll have to trouble you again. I wonder, though, if you could give me the name of your insurance company and your policy number. It’s just to close you out.”

  Owings went inside to get his insurance policy and Spolino waited beside the wine red Lincoln until he was out of sight. Then he opened the door and had a look in the car ashtray. He found three cigarette butts and slipped one into his coat pocket without looking at it. Then he got out of the car and closed the door soundlessly.

  About a minute later Owings came back with a slip of paper.

  “This is everything you asked for,” he said. “I’ve written down my telephone number in case you need anything else. I just had it installed a couple of days ago.”

  “Thank you.” Spolino took the paper and put it into the pocket of his shirt. “I’m sure there won’t be anything else.”

  The two men shook hands and then Spolino got into his car to leave. As he reached the road he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Owings was opening his garage door to put the Lincoln away. He seemed to like that car a lot.

  He was either very clever or he was innocent, and Spolino didn’t think he was innocent. Then why had he used his own car to run down Uncle Leo? Why hadn’t he just stolen a car, like any thug with half a brain.

  It was as if he wanted you to know that he had done it.

  Spolino knew perfectly well that he didn’t have enough for a conviction. The evidence was suggestive but nothing more—any good defense attorney would turn it all inside out.

  If this were just a regular hit-and-run, some random accident that had gone terribly wrong, he might have a chance, but it was not. Leo Galatina had been murdered, and that meant the prosecution had to establish motive. And there simply was no motive.

  At least, no motive that made any sense.

  He took the cigarette butt out of his pocket and looked at it. A Bensen & Hedges 100, just like the ones they had found at the crime site.

  But there again, how many men smoked Bensen & Hedges 100s? And think of the fun the defense would have with the lack of saliva traces—Is it possible that someone is attempting to frame my client? It

  just wouldn’t play for a jury.

  When he got back to the office, he phoned the claims office of Owings’ insurance company and explained the situation.

  “It’s just a routine inquiry. I wonder if you could give me an approximate time for his call last Friday?”

  “I can do better than that,” said the woman, who sounded as if he was about fifty and looked upon this as a welcome break in the routine. “Our answering machine time stamps all incoming calls—just a minute.”

  Actually, she took about thirty seconds.

  “Three forty-six in the afternoon. Does that help?”

  “Clever bastard,” Spolino thought to himself, and then answered, “Yes, that’s a big help. I wonder, do you still have the tape?”

  “Oh sure. We keep them for about two weeks and then re-use them.”

  “I wonder if you could send this one to me? We’ll return it when we’re finished with it.”

  He gave the lady his name and the office address, thanked her again and hung up, feeling as if he had just walked into a booby trap.

  Clever bastard.

  Chapter 16

  July 1, 1990

  The weekends were always slow, and Sunday evening was the worst. The business travelers were back home with their families—every John in the world was home with his family—and so you couldn’t count on referrals from the hotel people. Mandy probably wouldn’t even have opened shop except that some of her girls really needed the work.

  Things would probably begin to pick up after about nine thirty, when the restaurants began to empty out and the first show in the movie houses was over. Then a few stragglers who had been carrying a number around in their wallets all week might work up enough nerve to use the phone. By midnight they might have all five rooms in use and maybe a couple of girls making out-calls.

  But at eight fifteen the place was dead. Most of the girls realized they would be wasting their time and hadn’t even shown up for work yet. The two who were already in the back were both air-head kids from the Great American Heartland, who couldn’t be expected to know better. One was busy painting her toenails, and the other was taking care of Sal.

  Sal Grazzi—another thing Mandy hated about the weekends. With the possible exception of her ex-husband Waldo, she had never known a man she disliked as intensely as Sal, who would show up during the slack time on a Saturday or Sunday night, just to check the receipts and to make a nuisance of himself. And he would always expect a couple of free fucks before he would disappear down the elevator and leave them to get on with their business. Miss Toenails probably wouldn’t even have a chance to dry before she too was called into service.

  But he was the boss, so nobody could object. At least, he said he was the boss. Mandy suspected that he was ju
st a messenger boy with gold chains and a white Cadillac—she found it hard to believe that this crude, self-indulgent slob who liked to have the girls lick the insides of his thighs while he watched dirty movies on the VCR would ever have been put in charge of a Galatina Family enterprise.

  There wasn’t anybody to complain to, however, and without the Family’s blessing and protection they would be closed down in an hour, so she supposed Sal Grazzi would go right on scooping out her cash drawer and getting his rocks off compliments of the house. But if he came out here and tried to maul her again, Mandy thought she just might cut the bastard’s dick off, even if it meant getting put out of business. She hadn’t had to let a man put his filthy paws up her dress in over four years, and she wasn’t about to break her fast just to flatter some panting guinea hood who thought he was God’s Gift.

  Anyway, for the moment she had her peace. Sal would be inside for another half hour at least—he liked to take his time and, from what the girls reported, he needed to—and the phone hadn’t rung since seven thirty. There wasn’t anyone around, no Johns, no girls, no Sal Grazzi, so she didn’t have to pretend to anyone. She was free, for the moment, to be no one except herself. She could sit in her swivel chair behind her desk and look out the big picture window as dusk faded into night and, one by one, the city lights of downtown Stamford began to click on.

  By six o’clock tomorrow morning, when she would turn the phones off and leave this apartment to return to her own lonely bed on the other side of town, she would probably have cleared four or five hundred dollars. She hadn’t taken a night off in so long she couldn’t remember the last one—who the hell else was she supposed to trust with the cash drawer?—and in five years she would have enough squirreled away to quit this business forever. She had it all planned: she would be forty-two years old and she would buy a small, white frame house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and spend the rest of her days feeding the seagulls. She would swear off makeup and wear cotton undies and baggy wool sweaters and just let herself degenerate into an eccentric old frump. And she would go back to using her real name, which was Agnes Funsel. It was as close to the ideal existence as anything she could imagine.