Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller)

by Zandri, Vincent

  Georgie wrestles with Commander Obama. I cock back the hammer on the .9mm, press it up against his brain and blood-spattered head.

  “The piece. Give me the piece!”

  But the driver swings the wheel hard to the right, making the car fishtail to the left, sending me and the woman in my lap against the door. Georgie falls back, and Commander Obama takes a shot that shatters the rear glass. With the tires squealing the BMW still spinning circles, I know this is our only shot at getting out.

  “Bail!”

  Georgie opens his door, falls on out.

  I open my door, and both I and the woman fall out. I stand up as quickly as I can, plant a bead on the Beemer, trigger off three quick rounds that explode what’s left of the rear and front glass.

  But when it comes to driving, the surviving Obamas are presidential material. The damaged Beemer burns rubber, and like Air Force One on takeoff, disappears into the thick black night.

  CHAPTER 25

  DIZZINESS SETS IN.

  I collapse onto the pavement. I don’t pass out this time, but I’m aware of that little piece of bullet lodged inside my brain and for the briefest of moments, I feel myself drifting off to never never land. It isn’t exactly like an out-of-body experience because I’m not dying. But it’s close enough, and I feel like my soul is once again trying to escape the blood, bone, sweat, and tears.

  And who can blame it.

  All three of us lie in the middle of an empty road.

  Behind us in the distance I am able to recognize the fenced-off perimeter of the Albany International Airport. Civilization has all but abandoned this end of the mammoth facility. Or should I say eminent domain evicted the residents a long time ago when the airport authority bought out entire neighborhoods in order to lengthen the runways. Evidently the houses were all torn down, but not all the basements were filled in. I’m guessing our Obama friends know all about these basements.

  I somehow manage to grip the .9mm in a trembling hand.

  The small female Obama on the ground is struggling to get up. So am I. But I make it to my feet first.

  Georgie follows me. When the masked woman raises herself up onto her knees, I press the pistol barrel against her head. She witnessed me put a cap into her teammate’s head just a minute ago. She knows now that I won’t hold back from shooting just for the sake of making a new friend.

  “Stay there,” I order.

  Then I pull off the mask.

  The face that’s revealed is a real beauty.

  It also nearly causes me to pass out.

  This time for real.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE FACE BELONGS TO a woman I’ve been seeing a lot of in the past few days. The nurse from the Albany Medical Center. The pretty one with the cleavage and the push-up bra who most definitely got a concussion-induced rise out of me as soon as I was revived from the beating her partners gave me in that downtown back alley. I guess that explains how the Obamas were able to sneak into my hospital room. She no doubt arranged it.

  “My head,” she says, her words slurred. “You hit me over the head with that gun. You head-case, son of a bitch.”

  “You’ve got reason to complain,” I say. “You tortured my friend with a Conair hair dryer. And you had a gun pointed at me first before I walloped you with it. Makes us even.”

  She’s still on her knees, but she’s trying to get up.

  “That hair dryer was meant to put more fright into you two idiots than actual electricity. It’s U.L. tested and safety certified for scatter-brained teeny boppers.”

  “Oh, my bad,” I say. “I take it all back. I definitely do owe you an apology. You were just doing your job; doing what was expected of you. How’s this for I’m sorry?” I raise my right leg, press my boot heel against her forehead, shove her back down onto the street.

  Georgie comes up on me from behind. He draws back his right leg like he wants to add insult to injury by kicking her in the face.

  “Not while she’s down, Georgie. She’s as good as dead anyway.”

  I keep the pistol on her. It’s dark. But the halogen lamp-lit airport casts enough luminescence for me to still make out her face.

  “You really work inside the hospital?”

  “No”

  “Then how come nobody saw through your act?”

  And what an act it was. I seemed to recall tears streaming down her face after I was revived.

  “It’s not an act. I’m a registered nurse.”

  She’s claiming legitimacy. Maybe that explains the tears.

  “You’re a registered nurse who volunteered herself for the job at AMC just because some Albany PI with a bad brain was ambulanced there after your Obama friends tried to kill him.”

  “Nurses work for a lot of different hospitals, Moonlight. The hospitals don’t employ us. Agencies do. I’m employed by the Ferguson Nursing Agency in Manhattan, believe it or not. The staff at the Albany Medical Center just assumed I was a fill-in for somebody for the day. They’re always understaffed.”

  “OK then, who do you work for when you’re not nursing? Are they political, religious, or criminal? And why did they want me dead?”

  “They don’t want you dead,” she explains with a shake of her head.

  “What is it they want then?”

  She looks up at me, her face not so pretty anymore, her long blond hair pulled back tight and hidden under the wool cap, her once pert breasts somehow pressed flat under her black turtleneck sweater.

  “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Moonlight?”

  “Leave Peter Czech alone, and hand over a box. Size, make, and shape unknown.”

  She reaches up over her head with both hands. I thumb back the trigger on the automatic.

  “Take it easy,” she says. “I’m just letting my hair down.”

  She pulls away the rubber band and her thick blond hair falls down against her shoulders. She reaches up into her sweater, unclasps something, comes back out with an Ace bandage, her sweater immediately filling out with her breasts.

  “Oh my,” she says, “I’ve been feeling so confined.”

  She issues me the sweetest pout you ever did see, while lifting herself onto one foot and then the other. Quite suddenly she has her looks back, and along with them, some leverage.

  As she slowly rises up, her face gravitates towards my face, her lips looking all the more full, red, and luscious all the time. And her blue eyes, veiled with that blond hair, look good enough to swim in.

  “Easy does it, Moon,” I hear Georgie remark. “This little tart did a slam dance on your head inside a back alley.”

  “That wasn’t me,” she shoots back. “I had nothing to do with those goons. I wasn’t even there.”

  “You’re just hired as a torture expert,” Georgie adds.

  “I wasn’t torturing you,” she says. “I never even had a hold of the hair dryer. And even if it worked, a standard shock from rubbing your feet on the carpet gives you more of a jolt.” Her blue eyes wide. “It wasn’t throwing off any shock at all since I’d made sure to throw the switch on the GFI. What you felt was the prick of the wire. That’s all, big baby.”

  Georgie gives her a look like he’s insulted for her having thrown the GFI. If he was going to be tortured, she should have the common courtesy to do it right. Or else, yeah, he looks like a big baby.

  “So what are you trying to do?” he says after a beat, “work up sympathy for the devil?” Crossing arms over chest. “That freakin’ wire still hurt plenty.”

  “I’m merely telling you I don’t get into that kind of torture crap and what I did, I did because the sadistic Russian morons would kill me if I didn’t at least go through the motions. Get it?”

  Georgie looks at me like, You believe her?

  She was nice to me in the hospital, so I do sort of believe her. So long as she isn’t the one who fucked with that incision on my right side with a scalpel tip. And she’s definitely not that man.

  She moves in closer to me,
her lips almost touching mine, her breasts pressed up against my chest. I feel what’s become an all too common tight sensation in my midsection in the wake of my new concussions. Holy crap, if I don’t almost lay one on her. If the circumstances were different, I would wrap her in my arms, haul her off into some dark corner.

  But what the hell am I doing? Am I that much of a head-case? Why can’t I control myself when it comes to beautiful women? Dangerous women?

  “Moon,” Georgie repeats, his voice taking on the tone of a schoolmaster.

  I’m hearing him but I’m not hearing him.

  Her lips are touching mine now. I feel myself growing inside my pants. And then, the automatic is snatched from my hands, the barrel pointing me in the face.

  The tables, they have turned.

  She takes a step back, the piece now gripped in her right hand.

  “Little known fact about the head trauma you suffered in that back alley,” she says. “Your concussion . . . the damage it does to the frontal lobe . . . it will make you so horny, so greedy for sex, you won’t be able to exercise even the most basic of good judgment. Remember that erection you raised for me when you were first brought back from the dead?”

  Just what I need to hear. But I’m already fully aware of my little sexual problem.

  “He’s got a small fragment of .22 caliber bullet pressed up against his cerebral cortex,” Georgie comments from behind me. “His judgment is already messed up. Or maybe you couldn’t tell.”

  I feel a wave of shame wash over me. Maybe the Obamas are right. Maybe I should stay the hell away from Peter Czech. Maybe I should just stay inside the closed confines of my new bar, just like Lola wants. But it’s too late for all that. They are convinced I’m hiding something inside a box somewhere. A box that was apparently delivered to me but for which I have zero recollection.

  Nurse starts stepping away into the darkness, that piece aimed at my face the whole time.

  “What’s your name?” I insist. “At least tell us your real name.”

  “You think I’m that stupid, Moonlight? Come now. I wouldn’t have revealed my identity at all had you not removed my mask.”

  I’m slowly shifting to the right, into my own patch of darkness.

  “Easy Moonlight,” she warns, that now repatriated pistol barrel following my every movement. “I haven’t quite figured out what to do with you yet.”

  I keep moving while Georgie keeps shifting himself in the opposite direction. Until I hear him exhale as he lunges at her legs, taking her down with a form tackle that would make Vince Lombardi proud.

  I surge forward, kick the pistol out of her hand.

  “You prick!” she screams at Georgie.

  He rears back with his right hand, makes a fist.

  “This is for your pals poking me with a Conair,” he says, a split second before belting her between the eyes.

  CHAPTER 27

  WE HAVE THE PISTOL back and we have the nurse who is sufficiently passed out. The Obamas have taken a ride for now, and we have our relative health. What we don’t have is transport.

  “Ideas?” I query Georgie.

  “Yah, stay as far away from her as you can possibly manage.”

  “What she says is true. About me having uncontrollable sexual desires due to my most recent head injury.”

  Georgie nods and concurs.

  “Back when I was working the basement of AMC,” he explains, “a woman came in who was involved in a head-on car wreck. Her front lobe was injured when her forehead collided with the windshield, shattering it. She was hospitalized in ICU for days and eventually moved to the head trauma unit. In there she masturbated almost every minute of every day. Didn’t matter if the door was open or who was walking in and out of the room or down the hall. Child, man, woman, priest, doctor. Didn’t matter. She couldn’t fill the day with enough orgasms. Her appetite was insatiable. They eventually had to inject her with Dopamine in order to control her.”

  We both stare down at the knocked out blond beauty.

  “So what we’re saying is I can now look forward not only to the occasional blackout, or wrong decision, but I can expect uncontrollable sexual urges. Can my life become any more complicated?”

  Nurse moans, shifts.

  “I’m not sure if your being caught up in her spell is a result of your head injury or you simply being you.”

  We stand silent for a moment, while Nurse comes back around.

  “Georgie,” I say, after a time. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve also found you completely sexy.”

  “Cut that trash talk out, Moon. And give me the gun. I don’t trust you with it.”

  I relinquish the hand cannon.

  “Just seeing if you’re paying attention,” I say.

  Back to where we started.

  No ride, no mobile phone, no visible means of getting the hell out of that dark no-man’s-land while in the process of kidnapping a beautiful blond nurse moonlighting as a thug. Doesn’t matter that she’s a criminal working with the same people who want to kill me, kidnapping is still a capital offense in New York. That means no calling the police. Besides, the police hate me anyway. Detective Clyne’s driver, Beefy Super Cop Mike and his middle finger are proof enough of that.

  Behind us, in the far distance, a commercial jetliner taxies for takeoff. A glance over my shoulder reveals what looks like a 737. USAir. Nurse is awake now, trying to push herself back up from the pavement.

  “Easy, Blondie,” Georgie says, holding the barrel on her.

  “Blondie?” I say. “You can’t come up with something better, Georgie?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snaps, her voice groggy. “Now what?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say. “Got your cell phone on you?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Two headlights cut white parallel tubes out of the thick night.

  “Christ,” Georgie says. He drops down on one knee, the 9.mm gripped in his right hand, left hand wrapped around the shooting wrist, combat position.

  I take hold of Nurse’s arm, hold it tight.

  “If it’s the Obamas come back for the blonde, I say we shoot her in the back and make a run for it.”

  “Agreed,” Georgie says, shooting me a wink of his right eye.

  “Don’t I get a say in this?” she poses.

  “Sure,” I say. “Let’s absolutely talk this thing out.”

  Behind us the jet screams as it lifts off from the runway.

  The vehicle comes closer until it’s fully visible in the road. It stops and a door opens. Georgie stands up, thumbs back the hammer on the automatic, stuffs the barrel into the waist of his jeans.

  “Lola,” he grins. “Freaking, Lola. I don’t know how it’s Lola, but what a goddamned sight.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” my girlfriend says. “They’re coming back . . . For her.” Her eyes on our blond prisoner. “Let’s move.”

  I don’t bother to ask how she knows we’re here or how she’s aware of the Obama-masked thugs coming back for us or having kidnapped us in the first place. The questions can wait. I just drag Nurse over to Lola’s Humvee, and stuff her up into the back seat. Behind me, the sound of the airliner is fading as it climbs up into the friendly skies. Reminds me of how unfriendly things can get down here on the solid ground.

  CHAPTER 28

  LOLA PULLS A FAST u-turn that takes the Hummer up onto the grassy shoulder. Crazy illegal driving maneuvers don’t matter at that point. The suburb has been bulldozed into a concrete nothing. No one will see us out here. She burns off some serious fuel motoring us down the empty street.

  Georgie takes the shotgun seat while I sit in the back with Nurse.

  I see Lola’s eyes framed into the rearview.

  Nurse locks onto them. “Do I tell him, or do you tell him?” she says, voice still groggy.

  Georgie holds a gaze on Lola over his left shoulder.

  I hold a gaze on blond Nurse over my
right.

  “You two know each other,” I say feeling my heart drop into my left boot.

  “Surprised?” Nurse poses.

  “Richard,” Lola exhales. “Meet my little sister, Claudia.”

  Claudia holds out her hand.

  I refuse it.

  “I have some explaining to do,” Lola says like a question, hooking a left away from the dark airport perimeter road and onto the main drag.

  “You have to ask?” Georgie says.

  My girlfriend glares at me in the rearview. I know those eyes like I do my own. But somehow, the person behind them is becoming stranger and stranger by the second.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” I mumble. But it’s such a gross understatement I find myself shaking my head.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Richard,” Lola admits.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I say.

  Claudia just laughs.

  CHAPTER 29

  WE DRIVE INTO THE city, and soon we’re entering into the state university campus. I ask Lola why she’s driving us there. No one will think of looking here, she offers. That’s encouraging. But I’m still a little numb over her apparent involvement in all this.

  “As in those masked bastards Claudia here chose as her friends,” Georgie says.

  “I’m right here,” Claudia responds. “You can say that shit to my face.”

  Georgie rears around, points a pistol barrel at her precious mug.

  “And I’m right here,” he barks. “We’re not done talking about that little Conair electrocution game you people played with my chest.”

  “Get over yourself,” Claudia snaps. “I did you a favor by convincing them to use the hair dryer. Left up to those meatheads they would have cut your nuts off and fed them to you with a six pack of Budweiser.” She snorts. “Con-fucking-Air! College frat boys do a hell of a lot worse for initiation ceremonies. Wasn’t even drawing a charge, dumb-ass big baby.”

  Georgie holds his ground with the pistol.

  “Still felt like hell. And I don’t like being scared. I was scared in ‘Nam sometimes. I accepted that. But here, I cannot accept it.” He grows a smile. “Even if you do own pair of the nicest looking breasts I’ve ever seen.”