Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls

by Vincent Zandri

  Midway along the corridor, my eyes running over the numbers tacked to the wood doors, I heard a rustling sound. Looking down at my feet I saw a rat sneaking its greasy black head out from under a pile of crumpled-up newspaper. I jumped back when the cat-sized rodent scurried over the tops of my boots.

  I moved faster then, reaching out and grabbing hold of the occasional brass doorknob along the way, turning each one, surprised to find them all locked.

  Then I found Room 657.

  Like all the others, it too was locked.

  Taking two steps back I raised my right leg and kicked the door in. Both hands grasping the pistol, I stepped into the open doorway. I waved the barrel from one side of the dark room to the other—crouched, taking short rapid breaths not caring about the smell, feeling the hot blood rushing in and out of my brain.

  “Joy,” I called out, surprised at the sound of my own voice. “Nick Joy.”

  The room was thick with sweat and darkness.

  I couldn’t see the pistol in front of my face.

  Nothing other than the outline of the city lights that shined in through the square-shaped window behind the thin shade that covered it.

  I became convinced then that Joy wasn’t coming. That he’d lied to me; that this whole thing was some kind of bizarre setup.

  But then a flashlight popped on.

  My throat closed in on itself, mouth dry.

  I recognized Joy’s puffy scarlet face in the severe white light. I could tell by his wet, wide-open eyes and shaking lips that he was just as afraid of me. Maybe more so.

  I held a bead on his face, in the very spot where he was shining the flashlight. But he didn’t seem to care.

  He was crying.

  The tears told me that Joy was definitely more afraid than me.

  I said, “What is this?”

  But before he could answer, the bathroom door opened and out stepped a pale face.

  61

  THE WOOD DOOR OPENED and the Albino man showed himself.

  This little grin was forming on his face. The grin grew wider as he raised a sawed-off shotgun to chest height, fired at Joy’s head, pointblank.

  The whole thing could not have taken more than a half-second from start to finish, so that Joy’s body had not even hit the floor before the man turned the weapon on me, pumped a second round into the chamber, pulled the trigger.

  What can I say?

  That there was a blinding explosion and a screaming pain in my chest?

  What I can describe for you is the quick flash of white light, like a lightning burst, and then the force of the blast against my chest and the driving nail feeling of all that buckshot and the back of my head bouncing off the wall. But then there was the soothing warmth of the blood that began to soak my left arm as I gradually slid down onto the floor.

  That’s when the .22 cal. bullet fragment suddenly shifted inside my brain.

  I started to drift.

  All pain disappeared.

  I just sat there on the rancid floor, felt my body drifting farther and farther into black space. I went away from this bright light as it got smaller and smaller, reduced to the size of a pinhead. Until even that disappeared and everything all around me went very dark and very alone.

  Then came the cold.

  I felt so cold and alone, knowing there was nothing I could possibly do about it. In the darkness I tried lifting my arms and legs, but they would not budge. I was a dangling man, paralyzed and cold. Naked, left out in the deep freeze.

  My body began to fall, fast and faster through the pitch darkness.

  But just before I hit bottom, the warmth returned to my body along with the pain in my head.

  I opened my eyes …

  … and I was awake.

  White streetlight poured in through the yellowed window shades in the bathroom to my right. The light reflected off what was left of the mirror that was attached to the wall-mounted medicine cabinet above the old porcelain sink.

  It also reflected the man’s white face as he pulled the fighting knife from a sheath attached to his ankle, extended it to my neck at the precise moment I raised the 9 mm with my good hand, jammed it against his head.

  “Motherfocker,” I heard him whisper.

  “This is for Scarlet,” I said, before I squeezed the trigger.

  I touched the small pellet wounds on my left arm with the tips of my fingers.

  The wounds were stinging, bleeding. For some reason, there was no paralysis to speak of in my right arm—no pins and needles that tingled the extremities.

  I slid myself up along the wall. The pain shifted from the front of my skull to the back. It latched onto my spinal column like a pair of vice grips, and then bolted all the way down my back to my toes. My chest felt crushed, as if I’d dropped three-hundred pounds worth of Olympic weights upon it.

  I managed to get back up on my feet, pausing for a few beats to regain my balance.

  Using the back side of my t-shirt, I wiped the 9 mm clean of my prints and shoved the grip into the Albino man’s left hand, his index finger wrapped around the trigger.

  The deception complete, I stood back for a minute, viewed the scene.

  A classic murder-suicide gone bad. Sort of.

  My little hoax—such as it was—would have to do.

  But then, I wondered what the Stormville P.D. would make out of the whole thing. That is, if they ever thought to search this rattrap in the first place.

  I stood over Joy.

  His skull was gone, vaporized by the shotgun blast. Only his lower jaw was left, the loose skin on his forehead flapped over at the hairline so that it looked more like the hide of a furry animal than the skin of a human being.

  I had to wonder why he slipped me that key, called me out here in the first place. Maybe this one room had served as some kind of safe house for him. A place only he knew about—a place apart from his coconspirators. Somewhere he could go to escape the heat of Jake’s illegal operation. He would have slipped me the key because this would have been the only safe place where we could meet in all of Stormville. With the entire city on my tail, this wretched place made perfect sense. As for the kid’s motivation, maybe he wanted to turn himself in to the F.B.I. with me by his side. Or maybe he wanted to kill me, shut me up before my trial began for Scarlet’s murder and I spilled the beans about everybody, including himself. Or maybe he was just a confused kid who was way over his head in the deep shit.

  One thing had become painfully evident: the Albino man had somehow beaten him to the punch. The Albino man must have suspected that the kid was up to something and tracked him here. And as for the second painfully evident reality: there would be no fact-finding interview with the white-skinned man now. Not in his condition. No names or places that might shed light on the specific nature of his associations with Scarlet, the heroin, and the body parts operation.

  My mouth was parched and pasty. It tasted of blood and gunmetal. The bleeding in my left arm had slowed. But I knew I had to get myself to a doctor. Do it soon before infection set in. Which meant I had two choices: either get a hold of Dr. Mary Ellen Lane or Dr. Robb.

  Didn’t make sense to implicate Dr. Lane in this mess. If word got out that she’d assisted a fugitive, her license would be pulled. Not that George Robb’s wouldn’t be if he got snagged. But then, he was already in on things, which meant I had to make an appeal to him whether I liked it or not. Rather, whether he liked it or not.

  Bending, I padded the pockets of Joy’s size thirty-eight uniform. I was searching for something—anything I could use to give me some solid indication about why he chose the abandoned Wellington for a meeting place and precisely what it was he intended to do with me. But in the end, I didn’t come up with anything other than a key ring that contained maybe a dozen keys. Not car keys, but the kind of keys that might go to your average household locksets.

  Pocketing the key ring, I walked to the nearest window. A window that accessed an alley.

  I
pulled back the shade. There was an old fire escape mounted to the brick exterior. Exactly what I hoped for.

  But before I took off, I thought about checking to see if the Albino man had any I.D. on him. Of course he wouldn’t. He was a professional after all. Just what the hell did I expect to find on him anyway, a calling card?

  Russian Murderer for hire!

  But turning to get one more good look at him, I got something far different from a calling card.

  His shirt—the tails were pulled up around his chest. Violent reaction. The bottom of his torso, it was exposed. Along with it, a thick purple scar that circumnavigated his lower right side where the kidney should be and a jagged depression in the flesh, as if a shark had taken a bite out of the poor son of a bitch.

  Jesus God, I thought, a chunk of his torso is missing.

  Pulling my eyes away from the mutilated flesh, I reversed my earlier decision and searched his pockets. As expected, I discovered no I.D. But what I did find was an envelope full of cash and a plane ticket. I pulled the items out of his pockets, stuffed it inside the tattered Kevlar vest and backed away.

  Standing up straight, I took a quick glance around the place like I normally do before checking out of a hotel room. For a quick second I thought about doing a better job of wiping the place clean of prints. But then, what the hell was the use?

  My blood was all over the place for Christ sakes.

  My blood, Joy’s blood and the blood of this white-skinned man—this buyer of body parts; this heroin pusher.

  Our separate genetic calling cards.

  At this point, I knew Cain would take great pleasure in nailing me with both their deaths, whether it looked like a murder-suicide or not. Because that’s the way things had been going for me.

  Just one more nail in the coffin for old Richard Divine—Captain Head Case.

  I walked back over to the window, tore away the shade. Taking a deep, painful breath, I raised up my right leg, kicked out the glass pane. Then I crouched my way through the opening, stepped out onto the metal grate.

  From up there on the landing, I looked out onto the dead city of Stormville.

  Nothing moving in the abandoned alley of the Hotel Wellington, other than the falling rain.

  - - -

  We face one another, each of us occupying opposite ends of the long table. As usual the tall witnessing agent stands silently in the brightly lit room’s far corner.

  “This man you killed,” the stocky agent says. “Did he ever give you a name?”

  “No, he did not.”

  Stocky, short-haired agent looks up at the thin man.

  “Get me the sheet,” he says.

  The thin man walks out of the room and after a brief few beats comes back in. He hands his partner an Eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch poster with front and side mug shots of the Albino man on it besides a list of vitals. At the top of the sheet is the word WANTED printed in large bold black letters. Just below that are the words IN CONNECTION WITH DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL SMUGGLING ACTIVITIES printed in the same bold print, only smaller.

  I stare at the poster, recall jabbing the 9 mm against the man’s head, recall pressing the trigger and the sudden dead body weight pressed against my bruised ribs. I recall the purple scar that wrapped around his kidney area. Did the motherfucker actually have one of his own kidneys cut out to pawn off on the black market, all for the sake of a quick buck? I read the man’s name off the sheet: Joseph Surikov. I roll the name around in my brain for a few seconds, until I spit it back out. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

  “Did you know that we had been tracing this piece of shit for more than four months?” stocky agent says. “Do you know what Joseph’s untimely death did to our operation?” He pronounced Joseph like Yoseph.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “One less Russian mobster is going to get away.”

  “Keep wisecracking,” the agent explodes, slapping the sheet onto the table, bounding up from his chair. “We wanted him alive. You made him dead. We could make you do time for putting a cap in his ass.”

  I look up at him while pulling another smoke from my chest pocket.

  “The son of a bitch tried to kill me,” I insist, going for the Zippo laid out onto the tabletop. But not before the stocky agent snatches it up first.

  “Kill or be killed, is that your defense, Divine? I wonder what a federal judge would have to say to that.”

  The unlit cigarette dangles from between my lips.

  “I’ve been near dead and I’ve been very alive,” I say. “Believe me, alive is better. So yes, I would indeed plead self-defense … now, may I please have my lighter back?”

  “It’s your life,” stocky agent offers while striking up a flame. “Now why not use it to give me some real information before I book you right now.”

  62

  I CALLED GEORGE’S NUMBER from a pay phone at the bottom of the State Street hill. A pole-mounted Verizon that had no light shining down upon it.

  He said, “The whole city is looking for you, Divine.”

  Nothing but dead air on the line and the rain that strafed the concrete sidewalk.

  I made a tight fist with my right hand, looked all around me. Not a soul on the street. Just the occasional taxi flying past, the drivers either not bothering to give me a second look or not seeing me at all in the darkness and the rain. Thus far, no cops, no Marshals. But I knew my luck wouldn’t last.

  “Tell me what to do?” George said.

  I looked over my shoulder, at the red lettered neon sign that was mounted to the bar on the corner of State and Broadway.

  “Get your car,” I said. “Meet me outside Justin’s in ten minutes.”

  “The whole town is buzzing with cops,” he said. “And you want me to pick you up outside a bar?”

  “Pull up and wait. You won’t see me but I’ll see you.”

  63

  I WAS SITTING ATOP the dissecting table.

  George had brought in a television, set it on the plywood slat shelf beside the stereo system, run a cable to it from outside his office window. It was tuned to one of the local early morning news programs. They were showing some video footage shot the previous afternoon. The scene of the car crash that had resulted in my escape from county authorities who’d been assigned to escort me to jail.

  There was the banged up Chevy Suburban, its front end smashed in and the large gouge it put in the concrete meridian. There was the shattered windshield and the kicked-out side window that I squirmed out of immediately after the collision. Standing bewildered beside the smashed-up Chevy were the two sheriff’s deputies who’d been fighting over the childproof lighter.

  Bobby and Timmy, if I remembered correctly.

  The two brainiacs were being bandaged up by a couple of E.M.T.s. Their faces were wide eyed, filled with shock. According to the reporter on the scene, they’d been brutally attacked by yours truly.

  “It’s a miracle we’re still alive!” Timmy Spiak was quoted as saying.

  Conveniently he left out the part about firing up the joint.

  In a moment the video feed shifted to Mitch Cain. He was dressed in his blue blazer and pressed white shirt. He was wearing sunglasses in the cloud cover and the rain. He said he was putting all other duties aside to concentrate on one task and one task only: “The apprehension of Richard Divine.”

  When the news went to another story, George turned off the set.

  For maybe the fourth time since he’d escorted me into the autopsy room, he was checking the double doors to make sure they were locked. We both knew it was only a matter of time until Cain came sneaking around. Meanwhile, the good pathologist wasn’t taking any chances.

  The white t-shirt I had taken from the port locker room was lying on the floor besides the damaged Kevlar vest. The money-filled envelope I’d stuff into the vest was now stuffed into my pants pocket, along with the plane ticket.

  Destination?

  There wasn’t one listed. By the looks of it
, the Albino man was about to skip town as soon as he cleaned a little house. I wondered if Cain had been on his list of “things to do.”

  My ribs had been wrapped with gauze and surgical tape while the dozen stitches George had sewn into my left arm were already beginning to itch. Resting inside a small stainless steel bowl to my immediate left in a tiny pool of blood were three steel BBs.

  Knock on stainless steel, my head felt relatively okay. The bullet frag hadn’t shifted after all.

  George stood beside me with his long, mostly gray hair hanging over the collar of his white smock. For a change, the stereo was turned off while we kept eyes and ears open for any trouble that might come our way in the form of the S.P.D. For the past twenty minutes, I had managed to fill George in on everything that went down on the sixth floor of the Hotel Wellington while he patched me up.

  The only thing that remained were questions. Lots of questions.

  “If you think Cain killed Jake,” he said, picking up the bloodied shirt and vest off the floor, stuffing them into the bio-waste can, “might we also assume Cain killed Scarlet?”

  “We might assume it,” I said. It hurt when I breathed.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s take a look at Jake. He’s in a drawer on ice, right next to Scarlet.”

  “The funeral people don’t have her yet?”

  “It took a little doing,” he said. “But I held Fitzgerald off. Just like you told me to.”

  “I knew you were my man, George,” I said, my heart suddenly lifted. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “I think I do. Not one body of evidence, but two.”

  “And guess what? Ain’t no way in hell anybody else is gonna get their hands on them but us.”