The Moonlight

by Nicholas Guild

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, letting Sonny feel the weight of his cold stare. At that moment, more than at any other time in his life, he was Lucio’s grandson.

  “I’m going to ask you again, Bob, and this time you’re going to tell me. What happened to Charlie Brush?”

  . . . . .

  It was a long story, and Sonny appeared to take a peculiar kind of pleasure in telling it—if only because it was part of his inheritance, something handed down to him from his grandfather, Don Enrico Galatina.

  “You remember Enrico’s house down on the Sound in Riverside, Tom? You remember the screened-in porch in back, where you could see the water through the pine trees? After he retired, he liked to sit out there. He had two rocking chairs, one for him and one for company, and there was a plain wooden table that always seemed to have a pitcher of lemonade on it—best lemonade I ever tasted. To this day I never drink anything but lemonade.

  “My father was a good Don, but Enrico was a kind of genius. When I became underboss, I used to go visit him whenever I had a chance. I wanted to learn from him.”

  A peculiar look came into Sonny’s eyes. It was the look of a man, full of ambition, who has at last taken the full measure of his failure.

  “Anyway, he liked to tell stories. I think he wanted to give me the benefit of all the experience he knew I would never get on my own. One day he told me about Charlie Brush.

  “You know the career.” The Don shrugged his shoulders in dismissal. “I’ll just tell you about the end. They got Frank Marcello, who was handling narcotics for the Luciano people, to arrange a truce, to guarantee Charlie Brush’s safety if he would sit down and talk business, but even Marcello knew it was a setup. The guy was crazy. Everyone agreed, he had to go.

  “The meeting was supposed to be at the Moonlight, because Charlie had been George Patchmore’s partner and trusted him—he didn’t know that we owned George’s liquor license, that we provided protection for his gambling operation, that he had dropped a bundle on some hare-brained real estate deal and was into us for heavy points. They only way clear for George was to sell us Charlie, and that’s just what he did.

  “It was late in June, 1941, and everything went exactly as planned. George was putting in that outdoor dance floor of his, and the cement trucks were coming the next day, so it was perfect.

  “The Don and Uncle Leo were there with three of their men, and they braced Charlie even before he had a chance to get out of his car.

  “It wouldn’t have been enough to just kill him then and there, because Enrico was really steamed and he wanted him to know fear as well as death. He told me that Charlie Brush was the only man in his life he had ever hated like that. So they worked him over real good, and then they tied him to a chair in the big dining room and told him just exactly what they planned to do.”

  It played back in Spolino’s head like a tape recording—Jerry Reilly on the Devere woman: “She’s said a few things that don’t make a lot of sense . . . Like the guy was bleeding from his ear, but the blood was already dried.”

  “Like the guy was bleeding from his ear.”

  “What did they do to him, Bob?” he asked, knowing the answer already because it sat in his gut like a lead weight. “Did they stab him in the ear, to show lack of respect?”

  Sonny Galatina didn’t move for a minute and then he wiped his hand on his red bathrobe, leaving a stain of sweat.

  “That’s just exactly what they did,” he said. “They used an ice pick, and they weren’t in any hurry about it. Charlie Brush died a quarter of an inch at a time.

  “And when it was over, they took him outside, out to where the boards were already up to mark off the area for the dance floor, and they dug a grave. Enrico said he was buried in a hole that wasn’t more than two feet deep.

  “After that it was simply a matter of getting rid of the traces. Somebody got a rake and blended in the earth so nobody would notice any signs of digging. The next morning the contractor showed up and poured the concrete for George’s dance floor. It was just a routine construction job to him. He had no idea he was building a tomb.

  “Charlie’s car was taken over the state line, given a paint job and then driven down to South Carolina to be sold. He just vanished, like he’d never existed.”

  But no one dies that quietly, and certainly not Charlie Brush. There was more—Spolino could see it. The words were still ringing in Sonny’s ears.

  “A guy gets crazy when he knows he’s got five minutes to live.” Sonny looked away, as if ashamed. “Enrico said that Charlie Brush shouted vengeance, claimed it wouldn’t end until each of them had paid him a life for a life, cursed him even as the ice pick went into his brain. It made a big impression on the Don—I think he was as just as afraid of Charlie after the guy was dead.

  “But Enrico Galatina passed away in his sleep.” Sonny managed a wan little smile. “I was at his bedside when he took the final sacrament—he even beat the devil, so I guess he beat Charlie Brush too.”

  “Who else was there?”

  Sonny frowned, as if he didn’t understand the question.

  “Where?”

  “At the Moonlight.”

  “I told you.”

  “You told me the Don and Uncle Leo—who were the other three men?”

  “Tom, you really want me to tell you that?” Sonny shook his head, as if to warn him that the answer should be no.

  “I really do.”

  “Okay—there was Vito, and Eduardo Grazzi, and Lucio Spolino. Now you know.”

  Tom Spolino couldn’t account for the little thrill of horror that ran through him at the mention of his grandfather’s name. Because who else would have been there? Who else would Enrico have trusted with something like this?

  Who else would have held Charlie Brush’s head in the crook of his arm while he made a long job of pushing the point of an ice pick into his ear?

  “Don’t worry about it, Tom.” It was impossible to tell whether Sonny was angry, or impatient, or just scared. “It was fifty years ago, and Charlie Brush is dead. He’s under the concrete back at the old Moonlight, and he’s dead. No doubt about it. Whoever got Vito and Uncle Leo, it wasn’t Charlie Brush.”

  “Let’s hope so, pal. Because whoever it was seems willing to settle for grandsons, and that just leaves you and me.”

  Chapter 30

  Beth looked at the illuminated face of the clock radio on her dresser and discovered with something between horror and outrage that it was three fifteen in the morning. The whole apartment seemed to be filled with noise. Somebody was pounding on the front door like they wanted to break it down.

  On the second try she managed to heave herself out of bed and grabbed out of the closet the housecoat that served her for a bathrobe. She was half asleep, so that when she put on her slippers she had to brace one hand against the wall to keep from falling over.

  Millie kept a baseball bat leaned up against her night table, which, considering some of her boyfriends, was probably a reasonable precaution, but it never occurred to Beth to fetch it. Whoever it was out there, she was going to kill him with her bare hands, and she wasn’t worried about intruders. Intruders didn’t make that much noise.

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming,” she shouted, knowing perfectly well that nobody would be able to hear her over the racket from the front door. She didn’t so much walk as stumble out into the living room.

  There was a peephole, but she forgot it was there. She just threw the bolt and opened the door. She was surprised and annoyed when the safety chain rattled taut. The knob almost slipped out of her hand and she had to peer outside through a two-inch crack.

  It was Phil.

  He was standing there in his shirtsleeves, his shoulders hunched in an attitude of the most extreme misery, dripping wet from the rain she could hear beating down outside on the street. His eyes looked as if he might have been sobbing, but he was so drenched that it was impossible to know. He looked so pathetic th
at she even forgot to be mad at him.

  “You’d better come in,” Beth said. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  While she dried his hair, he sat in the middle of the living room floor trying to unbutton his shirt, but without much success. His fingers didn’t seem to know how anymore. He was trembling, and his skin felt like ice.

  Beth got up and looked out the window at the parking lot behind Feenie’s Hardware. Phil’s car was nowhere in sight. Even in the rain there was a dense haze of humidity over the asphalt. Four hours ago, when she had gotten off work, the temperature had still been in the low eighties.

  “How long has it been raining?” she asked.

  “About ten minutes, I guess. It caught me when I was about halfway here.”

  “You walked?” She turned around to look at him. “Where’s your car?”

  “In my garage. It won’t start.”

  “What are you doing here, Phil?”

  All he could do was to look at her. He seemed to be trying to find the words, but they would not come. His eyes began to fill with tears—it was terrible to see him like this.

  She dropped down on the floor beside him and put her arms around him.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she murmured, as if to sooth a frightened child. She laid her hand on his wet hair and smoothed it into place. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

  But after a moment he pulled away from her. With what was obviously a tremendous effort of will, he jammed his fists into his lap and forced himself to stop shaking.

  “It’s not okay,” he said finally. “It’s never going to be okay again. Nothing will ever be the same again.”

  He was calm now, even if it was only the calm of utter despair. One got the impression that by merely pronouncing the words he had somehow broken the spell of his misery. He took a deep breath and wiped his face with both hands.

  “Have you got some tea?”

  “Sure,” she answered, getting up from the floor. “It’ll only take a second.”

  Beth went into the kitchen, which was just a little alcove off the front entrance, and put about an inch and a half of water in the kettle. She got down a pair of mugs and a couple of tea bags and waited for the water to boil. Even though there wasn’t so much as a door separating it from the kitchen, she didn’t go back into the living room until everything was ready because she suspected that Phil probably needed a minute or two alone more than he needed the tea.

  “Okay, here it is,” she called out, giving him those few seconds before she returned. “Do you want milk and sugar?”

  “No—nothing.”

  He was still sitting on the floor, but he had gotten his shirt off and was drying his chest with a towel. He took the mug she offered him and, without tasting it, wrapped his hands around the sides as if to warm them. Beth didn’t know how he could stand it, because her own mug was too hot to touch.

  Still, he sat there holding it, seeming not to notice.

  “I didn’t just throw you out,” he said abruptly, not looking at her. “It wasn’t like that. You had to be out of there, but not because I didn’t want you. It’s not something I can explain.”

  Beth didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything she could say, so she waited.

  Then all at once he did look at her.

  “I hate that fucking house.”

  The words seemed torn out of him, as if against his will. And there was an edge of suppressed, whispering fury of his voice that made her believe he really did hate the Moonlight. His hatred seemed to torment him, like a guilty secret—like fear.

  “Something happened tonight,” he went on. “Somebody died. It wasn’t my fault. I hardly even knew what was going on. I hardly know now. Can you understand that?”

  “No.” Beth shook her head. “Maybe I don’t need to understand it.”

  But if he had even heard her, he gave no sign.

  “I’ve got to get away. I’ve got to.”

  At last he set the tea mug down on the floor, and then stared at the palms of his hands with kind a dumb astonishment. They were lobster red, as if at any second blisters might begin to press up from their surface.

  After a moment the redness faded to a lifeless white.

  “I’ve got to get away,” he repeated.

  “Are you in trouble?” Beth asked, resting a tentative arm upon his shoulder. “That policeman. . .”

  “I’m not worried about the police.” He actually laughed for an instant, although the sound had almost the quality of a groan. “It’s not the police who do these. . . these terrible things.”

  He reached up and took her face in his hands—hands that were already once more cold as ice. His eyes, as he looked into hers, were wild with anguish.

  “You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said, the words stumbling over one another in their rush to get out. “I couldn’t stand to lose you, Beth. You’re all I have left, all that makes me human—all that makes me want to be human. That house, Beth, there’s a part of me it owns.”

  “You’re talking crazy, Phil.”

  She started to take his hands down from her face, but instead, in a rush of tender pity, she took his head in her arms, cradling it against her breast.

  “You have to tell me what’s wrong, Phil.”

  “I can’t . . . You wouldn’t believe me.” He was weeping now, sobbing like a child even as she held him.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t,” she murmured, somehow making it sound like a promise, if only of forgiveness. “I don’t know what I’d believe by now. But you have to try.”

  It seemed to be a lot to ask because he kept shaking his head, denying mutely that such a thing was even possible—denying it, perhaps, even to himself, as if not to say the words was somehow to banish the thing itself from existence.

  But in her own unspoken way Beth was insistent. I can protect you, she said, with her arms, with the soft pressure of her body, I can disarm the truth of all its terrors. I can make it all right to speak it.

  And finally, when he was quiet, but with his head still buried against her, he could make at least a beginning.

  “The Moonlight has never been empty,” he said, his voice drained and hollow. “He’s always been there, waiting, all the time.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Yes.”

  He lapsed into another silence, as if to absorb in private this strange new fact—that she knew already. But perhaps he had lost the capacity to be surprised by anything, because he appeared to accept it without challenge.

  “He made me get you out,” he went on. “I never wanted you to go. He would have killed you. . .”

  “I know, baby. I understand.”

  “He’s stronger than I am, Beth. He draws me to him. He’s the devil.”

  “He’s the devil.” She could not know in what sense he meant it, and there was no way she could ask. But on some level, he knew, it was the simple truth. “Charlie”—whoever or whatever he was, whether or not he had any reality except in Phil’s mind, inhabited the old Moonlight as his private hell.

  “I’ll be okay again if I can just get away from him.”

  “What do you want to do, Phil?”

  It was such a simple and obvious question, but it had the effect of light breaking into a shadowed room.

  Slowly, gently, Phil disengaged himself from Beth’s embrace. He pulled himself erect and wiped his face again with his hands. Then, as if just discovering its existence, he picked up his mug and drank off the tea with a greedy eagerness. Then he set it back down on the floor and smiled, with seeming embarrassment.

  “I want you to come away with me,” he said. The idea seemed to fill him with happiness. “There’s an airport in White Plains, not fifteen minutes from here. We could take a plane out, to anywhere. Just disappear, to where no one could ever find us.”

  “And leave Charlie behind?”

  “Yes—forever.”

  Beth stood up and went to look out the window. It h
ad stopped raining and the parking lot, visible in the yellowish glow from the floodlight—inexplicably, never turned off—over Feenie’s back door, was a smooth, glistening black. The haze, mysteriously, had departed.

  She had to decide. She could pack a suitcase and go with Phil, or she could abandon him to whatever fate the Moonlight had in store for him. One thing she knew, he would never have the courage of go without her.

  But would anything change if they did leave? Was this terror which seemed to surround them really something in the atmosphere of an old house, or had Phil carried it in the door with him when he took possession? Was he haunted, or was he just insane?

  “Stay away from that place,” Millie had told her. “Bad things happen at the Moonlight.”

  Beth didn’t believe in ghosts or auras or any of the rest of it. All that crap was just for frightening school children on Halloween. Yet her skepticism felt slender and uncertain against the weight of everything she herself had seen and felt and known within those walls.

  And if she abandoned Phil she knew she was consigning him to destruction. Flight, after all, was his only chance.

  Someone died, Phil had said. It wasn’t my fault. She would have to take his word for that, and not inquire any further. She would have to trust him. It was perhaps best if she didn’t know.

  And suddenly she understood that she had made up her mind—or, perhaps more accurately, that there had never really been any decision left for her to make.

  “If that’s what you want, I can be ready to go in an hour,” she said, still looking out through the window. When she did turn around, the expression on his face was that of a man reprieved at the last possible moment.

  “You’ll really come?”

  She nodded, and then smiled. “Yes, I’ll really come. What did you think?”

  . . . . .

  “We’ll need money,” he said. “We won’t get very far on what I’ve got in my wallet.”