Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

  “It’s not necessary for you to call me every time you make some progress, Mr. Moonlight.”

  “I’m sorry. Thought you might like to know.”

  “Agents never … and I repeat … never like to be called. We do all the calling. Not the other way around.”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Know what?”

  “About my lead?”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “I just happened to run into a very attractive young lady at the Barnes & Noble who is, at present, an MFA student at the state university and Upchuck’s private secretary. She also just happened to be cruising through some of Roger Walls’s poetry titles. In fact, she’s the woman you spoke to when you called Oatczuk’s office earlier.”

  “Oatczuk. And yes, thank goodness for serendipity. And is this going to be a long story?”

  “Yes, thank goodness for serendipity. That’s what I said. Because it also so happens that Oatczuk just might have some idea of where we can locate our wandering writer.”

  “No shit, Moonlight!” she barks. “We’ve been over this already, which is why I made the phone call to his office in the first place.”

  “Just doing my job, Good Luck.”

  “Excuse me, Moonlight?”

  “Your last name. Bonchance … it means ‘good luck’ in French. Get it?”

  “Yes, it’s my name. And I prefer the French spelling and pronunciation.”

  I picture the sharply dressed brunette agent seated in her black swivel chair, rolling her eyes, while checking the cuticles on her full-masted fingers for any imperfections in the weekly manicure. A crack, a chip, a smudge.

  “Well my guess is anyone who knows where Walls ran off to,” I say, “it will probably be him.”

  Silence. Heavy, foreboding, oozing through the connection like mustard gas.

  “Moonlight, I’m fully aware of your reputation as a ladies’ man. Promise me you won’t go near the young lady in question while working for me. If something unsavory or illicit should occur, I would also be held responsible and that is simply not acceptable in my profession. I have a stable of authors and their careers to think of.”

  “Well, the young lady I speak of is over seventeen and in fact over twenty one, and what she does with her body is her business, especially if she can’t help herself when it comes to falling under my spell. I’m sure you’re already familiar with said spell.”

  More silence. Mustard gas laced with cyanide. I tend to have that kind of effect on women.

  “Mr. Moonlight, before we go any further, I am delighted to maintain a professional relationship with you and only a professional relationship. And as for Professor Oatczuk, he is most definitely not Walls’s best friend. He only wishes he was.”

  “You know him personally?”

  “Tragically, I do. He’s been asking me to represent him for years. I don’t go a single year without one of his train wrecks landing inside my inbox.”

  “Bad writing?”

  “His craft is excellent. It’s just that the man and his work are a positively insufferable yawn. And can you imagine me trying to sell a novel by an author named Oatczuk?”

  “He can change his name. Take on a nom de plume.”

  “Yes, but the writer must be willing to do so. Which Oatczuk most definitely is not.”

  “You talked over the possibility with him then. Must be you liked something about his work.”

  “No, I didn’t. And he’s not a writer. He’s a teacher. And you know what they say about teaching.”

  “Yah,” I say recalling my conversation with Erica, “he who can’t do, teaches.”

  “Exactly,” she agrees, sighing. “Now is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Moonlight?”

  My pulse picks up, just a little.

  “You haven’t um, started my, um …”

  “No, Moonlight. I’m not that fast. And besides, I read at night in bed. I told you that.”

  “Ah yes, I remember. Books in the place of a real man.”

  “I don’t feel I need to remind you of that again.”

  “Not necessary. I read you loud and clear, Good Luck. One more thing. I’m alone for dinner tonight. I was wondering if you might like to have a quiet drink and something to eat?”

  “Are you asking me out on a date, Moonlight?”

  “Actually, I’m seeing someone. It would be purely professional.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “About what part? The dating someone or the purely professional thing?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, at least think about it. You might want to get to know the author if you’re going to represent his book.”

  A laugh. Loud enough to make me pull the phone from my ear.

  “Do you know how many writers who would slice off their manhood to have a shot at me being their agent?”

  “Let me guess. A lot.”

  “Yes, a lot. More than a lot. I will let you know if I want to take you on or not.”

  “Okay, Good Luck, have it your way. But I can tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not about to cut off my Johnson for you. That’s where I draw the line.”

  “We’ll see about that, Moonlight. We’ll just have to see.”

  She hangs up.

  I feel a dull pain in my midsection, as if Suzanne Bonchance, the Iron Lady of the literary industry, has just managed to emasculate me not with a blade, but with only her words. I get out of the hearse, head into the Seven Eleven for a six-pack of beer while contemplating that very disturbing notion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BY THE TIME I get back to my loft inside the abandoned Port of Albany, I’ve already got an email from my new friend, Erica. Standing at the island counter in the kitchen area of the riverside brick building that once housed the offices of a shipping company, I click on the email:

  Hi again, Mr. Moonlight. I spoke to Professor Oatczuk and he said that he would have no problem if you stopped by as early as this afternoon. He had no idea Roger Walls was “missing in action,” as he put it, and he wants to help. Here’s my number: 555-2354 … Give me a call soon as you get this and we can go see him together if you like. ;)

  Erica

  “Go see him together,” I whisper, staring at the little green, winking smiley face posted at the end of her sentence. “Me likey.”

  I pull my mobile from my thin black leather coat, dial the number she gave me, wait for a pick up.

  “Mr. Moonlight?” she answers, instead of a generic “Hello.”

  “You recognize my number already?”

  “I put it in my list of contacts after you slipped me your card. I’m your deputy remember?”

  “How could I ever forget? Where do you want to meet?”

  “Do you know how to navigate the state campus? It’s just beyond the bookstore where we first met this morning.”

  “Where we first met. How romantic, Ms. Beckett.”

  She giggles. “So do you know the campus?”

  “It’s been a while. I used to do a little partying there with friends back in my day.”

  “Meet me at the front gates. Washington Avenue entrance. Two o’clock sharp.”

  “How will I recognize you?”

  “I’ll be the sexy hottie in the lipstick-red Porsche convertible.”

  “Expensive ride. Thought you were a writing student?”

  “I’m a woman who gets what she wants, Mr. Moonlight.”

  “That’s funny. I’m a guy who gets what he wants.”

  “We’ll see about that, old man.”

  “Who you calling old?”

  I’d wait for an answer. But she’s already hung up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I LOOK AT MY WATCH.

  Ten-fifteen on a bright Monday morning in the early spring. I’ve already had my coffee and it’s too early for lunch and way too early for one of those cold beers that I bought. I could take E
rica up on her offer of looking at my manuscript, but then my built-in shit detector tells me to back off on that notion. I once heard a well-known writer say that he never read another person’s writing in progress. Why? Because if it was good, he’d hate it because it would mean more competition. But if it was bad, he’d hate it even more for wasting his time. What all this means is that I’ll have to continue working. And since Bonchance is paying a buck-fifty an hour, I figure I’d better get started right away. Whether I like it or not. Moonlight the Barely Self-Employed.

  My laptop is sitting out on the island counter.

  I open it up, enter in my security code, and allow it to boot up. When it’s up and running, I click onto the Google homepage. In the search space, I don’t type in “Roger Walls.” Instead I listen to my gut and what comes out instead is, “Suzanne Bonchance.”

  Sure, Walls is my only concern at the moment. Or should be my only concern. But I’m curious about Bonchance. Why would a powerful literary agent like her decide to hire a head case like myself when she could obviously afford a much better one who doesn’t have a bullet lodged inside his brain making dying on the job a real possibility? Not to mention my habit of taking the wrong turn now and again, and getting myself into more trouble than anyone bargained for. But then, it isn’t up to me to uncover her reasoning. Maybe she doesn’t have a reason for hiring me other than she likes the name.

  Moonlight Private Detective Services.

  Kind of poetic when you think about it. Slides off the lips and tongue like nectar from the poetry Gods. The tonal opposite of Oatczuk.

  I click on the enter key and observe the Suzanne Bonchance search results.

  The top entry is from the William Morris Agency. Even I’ve heard of them. Mega agents for the world’s mega bestsellers. I click onto it. Bonchance is listed as one of their top agents. The site must not be updated since I know for a fact that she is now working for herself. Working for herself up in Albany, to be precise, one hundred forty miles from the ground zero of literary fortune and glory.

  I keep browsing.

  There’s a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account, which I skip over. An article from the New York Observer on Manhattan’s Top Ten Agents, of whom you-guessed-it resides at the top. I click onto it, and the perfect Ms. Bonchance is standing sandwiched in between punk poet Goddess, Patti Smith and Anthony Bourdain, the travel writer/cook superstar. They’re dressed to the nines and each of them are holding glasses of red wine and looking plenty drunk. But fashionably drunk. The date on the article is November 15 of last year. It’s March in the new year and Bonchance seems to have left the glitz and the limelight of Manhattan for little old Albany. Doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does. She claims to have a full list. Maybe she’s looking to kick back in our little sleepy backwater. Give her more time to read. In bed. Alone.

  I continue with the search.

  More photos of Bonchance hanging out with the rich and famous.

  I decide to click on the “News” option. An article from the New York Times appears. It’s dated December 24th. This past Christmas Eve. There’s yet another photo of the attractive agent, but it’s just a head shot. And she’s not smiling. Instead, she’s sneering at the camera, half her outstretched hand blocking the lower portion of her face, as if she were trying to block it from the paparazzi completely. I gaze at the headline.

  Power Agent Pilfers Client’s Story!

  “Bingo!” I say aloud in the loft.

  I read the article.

  It describes the uber-agent of having been accused by a New York City-based writer by the name of Ian Brando of having stolen his story. According to the piece, Brando penned an urban thriller called The Chased and The Dead. It was about a punk rocker and his girlfriend who engage in a cross country run after a bank heist and get into a shit storm of trouble. Apparently Brando submitted the book to Bonchance, who inevitably rejected it, but then at the same time stole the story and sold it as the basis for her first personally penned screenplay which she called Ninth Life.

  The article goes on to say that Bonchance making the jump from agent to writer was big news since that kind of thing rarely happens. Although she refused to give in to accusations of plagiarism, she did in the end agree to settle with Brando out of court for a half a million dollars in damages. From that point on, Suzanne Bonchance’s reputation as the Iron Lady in NYC turned rusty. The top agent fell hard and her competitors enjoyed kicking her while she was down.

  I sit back in my chair and think things over.

  No wonder Bonchance is so concerned about getting Walls back. If he is, at present, her only client, she’s probably desperate. Still, we have a problem now, Ms. Good Luck and me. The problem is one of trust. My dad might have been a mortician, but he taught me a thing or two about business, and one of his major rules was to always establish a trust between you and your client. Otherwise the professional relationship will always be marred by suspicion and animosity. That in mind, I pick up the phone, dial Bonchance’s number.

  “You aren’t telling me the truth,” I say when she answers.

  “Who the hell is this?” she barks.

  “You know who it is. I’m sure my number comes up on the caller ID.”

  “My assistant must be out having coffee for you to have gotten right through to me, Moonlight.”

  “Bullshit, Suzanne. Who you trying to kid? I thought she was out for the day? Fact is, you don’t have an assistant. You can’t afford one. I’m surprised you can afford the rent in that building. No wonder you hired me. I’m the cheapest PI in the city.”

  “You came highly recommended.”

  “By who? The cops? They hate me and I haven’t had enough satisfied clients for you to come up with a personal reference. I don’t have a website either.”

  “Okay, you’re cheap. Are you proud that we’ve established that?”

  “You stole a book, put your name on it, and sold it to Hollywood.”

  Bonchance exhales a sigh so profound, I feel it more than hear it.

  “Tell you what, Moonlight, let’s stop and reverse the direction of this conversation.”

  “Brakes officially applied. What is it you have in mind, Good Luck?”

  “It’s almost lunch time. Why don’t you meet me at Prime for lunch in a half-hour? I’ll come clean and then you can get on with the business of finding Roger Walls. Agreed?”

  “So long as you’re paying, Fancy.”

  “Of course I’m paying.”

  “Just making sure you still have room left on your Amex.”

  “See you in thirty, wise-ass.”

  She hangs up.

  I go to my closet, pick out a clean shirt for my fancy lunch with my future literary agent.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “THE TRUTH, MR. MOONLIGHT, is that I do not have an assistant whom I can afford. Nor a secretary to answer my phones. Nor to bring me a bagel and cappuccino every morning. But make no mistake, I do have the money to pay you.”

  Bonchance is speaking to me from across a small, white tablecloth-covered table at Mario’s 677 Prime Steakhouse, Albany’s most expensive and trendiest eatery. The type of place that serves thirty-dollar lunch entrées with cloth napkins and where you use proper words like “nor” and “whom.” The management requires you to wear a tie and a jacket when lunching in their establishment, neither of which I anticipated when choosing my usual wardrobe of black leather coat over Levis, worn-in combat boots, and a blue button-down. Un-ironed. Luckily the maître d’ proved to be a real Johnny-on-the-spot upon my arrival by supplying me with the necessary house tie and jacket. In the meantime, Suzanne is still dressed in the same ravishing gray skirt and matching jacket she was wearing only a few hours ago when we first met, her perfect shoulder-length hair even more perfect now that she is exposing her famous face to the general public.

  “Why didn’t you level with me from the beginning, Good Luck?” I say, pulling a thick jumbo shrimp from a stainless steel bowl set on the middl
e of the table and dipping it into a pool of spicy blood-red sauce located in the bowl’s center.

  “Stop calling me that,” the literary agent insists, an expression of scorn painting her face. “And be careful not to get any of the sauce on your tie or they will charge me for that too.”

  Setting my shrimp back down, I stuff the tie into my shirt. I follow with a small sip of my Budweiser beer. I’m probably the only patron of this establishment to order a Bud. I’m surprised they even carry it. I’m definitely the only one who is drinking beer from the bottle and not a nice tall, chilled pilsner glass.

  “Better?” I say.

  “Much,” she says, that scornful look now replaced with a fake smile. I liked the scorn look better.

  “So back to my question,” I say, picking the shrimp back up and drowning it in the red sauce. “Why not level with me? We need to trust one another if we’re going to work together.”

  “I didn’t feel my past was any of your business. Simple as that.”

  I take the shrimp in my mouth, bite down. Sweet, succulent, textural, the tang and heat of the horse radish-laced red sauce the perfect compliment. If only lunch were like this every day, instead of burgers, fries, and Diet Cokes.

  I proceed to tell her what I know about her past and the book-stealing incident while finishing up my shrimp and wishing I could order another round without appearing uncouth for such a high brow establishment. Moonlight the socially conscious.

  “Reports were greatly exaggerated. I would never willingly compromise my reputation for a single book or a quickie sale.” Bonchance is nibbling on a toothpick-speared olive that came with her clean martini. Nibbling sexily, I might add. “I merely used the gentleman in question’s title. Something I was perfectly in my right to do since titles can’t be copy written.”

  “Then you didn’t use any of the story.” It’s a question.

  She bites the olive off the toothpick, and washes it down with a gulp of martini.

  “Okay, I might have borrowed certain elements,” she sighs after a beat. “Look, Moonlight. I’ll level with you further. I fucked up. I used the bulk of his story for my own and in doing so exercised a serious lack of judgment. I also ostracized myself from my colleagues, my agency, and my friends. Happy?” Her eyes filling up. “I lost almost my entire list of clients, not to mention that horrible lawsuit you speak of. For a while, it looked like my career was finished.”