by Diane Capri
That’s when my dad nearly scared the pajamas off of me by issuing a loud belly laugh.
“Not that!” he exclaimed, his mouth full of ham and egg. “My coffee!”
The body lying on the gurney in front of me now couldn’t be more different from that mutilated construction worker from forty years past. The naked Sissy Walls looked just as beautiful and sexy as she did when I shared a bed with her less than twenty four hours ago. Only difference now was that her skin was cold and pale, with some marbleization having taken effect, mostly in the legs. SOP for the newly dead, especially for women whose skin is somewhat thinner than a man’s.
I watch while Georgie makes a cursory examination of her body, careful not to make any lasting marks on her skin while he pokes and prods at her flesh with an extended index finger covered in a blue latex glove.
“So let me get this straight,” he says after a time. “You had sex with her, and you did a few lines and had some drinks. She had already been partying?”
“I’m guessing that, much like her husband, she is the type to never stop. Only when she passes out and can’t help but take a break.”
“What’s that they say about opposites attracting, Moon?”
“Clearly not in this case. Only reason she still looks so good is because she’s young.”
He pokes and prods her scalp with one hand while pulling back sections of her long red hair with the other. When he’s finished, he stands upright.
“I gotta be honest,” he says, pulling off the rubber gloves, tossing them into the medical waste bin beside the stainless steel table. “I ain’t seeing anything here that tells me somebody messed with her other than herself. No bruises. No scrapes. No scratches. No cuts or lacerations of any kind. Not even in the scalp.”
“Evidence of an injection?”
Shaking his head.
“Not that I can see. And I would most definitely see the familiar target-shaped, round purple bruise and black pin-prick center on a girl whose skin is as light as hers.”
“So what do we do?”
“I guess it’s possible someone forced her to somehow ingest a whole lot of drugs. But then, from what you tell me, she was already doing this?”
“What if someone poisoned her?”
“Takes tox exam to figure that one out, and I most definitely cannot do that here.”
My eyes glance at her neatly groomed sex.
“Can you clean her up for me?”
“Yah,” he says, nodding gently. “I can get rid of anything that proves you were the last to be with her within hours of her death. But you probably don’t want to hang around to watch.”
“I don’t.”
“Why don’t you head upstairs and catch the local real-time news on the computer. See if your face shows up. Then we can figure out your next move and make plans for getting Sissy back to the hospital.”
“You’re a good pal, Georgie.”
“Don’t mention it. Just another little adventure in illegal pathological examinations in a long list of illegal examinations.”
“Naturally.”
I go for the stairs that lead up to the living room.
“Moon,” Georgie calls out, as I take the first stair.
“What is it?”
“Those two train wrecks upstairs. Bonchance and Walls. You really trust them? They telling you everything?”
I exhale, then breathe in the odor of disinfectant and alcohol.
“Look who we’re dealing with here, Georgie. A man who makes shit up for a living and a woman who sells all those lies for big money.”
“Enough said,” Georgie frowns.
“No truer words…” I say, and head back up the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
UPSTAIRS IN THE LIVING room, I check my cell. Two calls from Detective Miller at the APD. Two messages too. I decide not to listen to them yet while I head for Georgie’s laptop computer which is set up on the same long table where he stores his 1970s-era Yamaha stereo-cassette system and turntable.
Since the laptop is already opened, I just click on the spacer and the Google search engine appears for me like magic. I type in Channel 9 News which is the local Albany real-time news network. Real-time, meaning it’s updated every hour on the hour.
My stomach drops as soon as I click on the site.
My face appears for me in all its full-color glory. It’s not a bad shot actually, snapped when I was still a detective at the APD. I had more hair then. It was darker too. I sported an equally dark mustache and goatee. My brown eyes screamed of optimism, along with hopes and dreams that had yet to be shattered. Not exactly the face of someone who now is a suspect in the death of the wife of local NY Times bestselling author, Roger Walls.
From behind me I hear the sounds of Roger and Suzanne in the kitchen. Roger has obviously raided the refrigerator and discovered Georgie’s stash of Budweiser tall boys. Since the house smells of pot smoke, Suzanne has no issues about lighting up a cigarette. I can smell cigarette smoke coming from inside the living room.
I read the small article that goes with my picture.
The story tells of Sissy’s body having been discovered in her Chatham home by two workers under the employ of the Walls family whom I take to be the rednecks from the tavern. After examination of the premises it’s apparent that Sissy was doing drugs and alcohol, possibly with myself since not only was my calling card found on the scene but so were my prints. Said prints are easily traceable via the Albany Police Department database since I not only used to be under their employ but I currently collect a half-pension from them.
Go figure.
Detective Nick Miller is then quoted as saying, “While we still haven’t arrested Mr. Moonlight, we are currently requesting that he surrender himself to authorities for questioning.”
Now I know the reason for his phone calls.
The piece finishes up by saying that the deceased’s husband has been missing for more than a week and a half and is still missing. While Walls was arrested in the early 1980s for having shot a man who trespassed on his Chatham property, he is at present not being considered a suspect in the case of his wife’s death should it in the end, turn out to be something other than natural causes.
So there it is.
Roger is off the hook for his wife’s death while all the fingers point to me. I know that soon, the AMC pathologists will go to work on Sissy and when they do, they will not find my semen inside of her. But that won’t exactly prove that I didn’t kill her, will it?
I sit stewing while I listen to the sound of Roger pontificating on the nature of death and its inevitability. Suzanne smokes, listens and no doubt worries her pretty little head off over recovering that one million in cash she owes the Russians.
That’s when it comes to me.
The Albany cops have been looking for a way to nail me for something for years, ever since I brought their department down over that Mickey Mouse illegal body parts op they were running. I know that if even the slightest possibility of my having aided in Sissy’s demise exists they are going to try and at least nail me with manslaughter. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times before. At the very least, a person who is doing heavy drugs with another person bears a responsibility to prevent that other person from ingesting too much. It’s possible they are going to try and nail me with aggravated assault and negligence and try their damndest to put me in Sing Sing for a couple of years or more. When it comes to the death of a high profile figure or in this case, the death of the wife of a prominent world-renowned author, someone will have to pay.
That someone is me.
Here’s the deal: We can either return the body right away and I can take my chances on the APD clearing me of all charges. Or we can hold onto her for a just a little while longer and make certain that her body of evidence will in fact, prove that I didn’t kill her.
How am I going to accomplish the impossible?
I’m not going to do it alone.
&nbs
p; The great-grandson of Uncle Joe Stalin is going to help me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I SLAP THE LAPTOP closed and race back down into the basement lab, explain my plan to Georgie.
He looks at his watch.
“She’s scheduled to go under the knife at three,” he says. “That gives is us about four hours to pull this little stunt off.”
I make some quick calculations in my head. Forty-five minutes to Chatham. Which means there goes an hour and a half right there giving me two and half hours to meet up with Alexander. That is, assuming he will meet up with us in the first place, and to make it look like I wasn’t the last man to be with Sissy prior to her death after all. I don’t have to prove he killed her. Just that he was there. That alone should raise enough doubt in the mind of the police to let me off the hook. Considering he’s a member of the Russian mob while I’m known around Albany as a law-abiding head-case, that should shift the focus of their investigation away from me and onto him and his band of merry Russian men.
“The way I see it, Georgie,” I say, “if Alexander meets us on time, we can pull this off in just a ten minutes or less.”
“How do you figure that?” Georgie asks.
“Ten minutes is the average time it takes the average couple to complete the act of sexual intercourse,” I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
WHILE GEORGIE BAGS UP Sissy along with a few necessary tools of the trade, I stand with Roger and Suzanne in the kitchen.
“I thought you were going to help us get our money back, Moonlight?” Roger begs, slurring his words just a little as he finishes off his third beer since we arrived at the townhouse an hour prior.
“One person is already dead, Richard,” Suzanne presses, lighting yet another cigarette. “We need that money.” She’s beginning to develop some black and blue bags under her eyes. Her hands are trembling slightly. I can’t help but wonder if she’s stealing from her own coke stash ever since she took on the role of dealer and is now experiencing some withdrawal.
“The money isn’t going to be a problem,” I say. It’s a lie, but not entirely a lie. If I can manage to get this little legal problem behind me, I will be free to look for their money. Even if in the back and front of my mind I firmly believe that it’s long gone.
“How so?” Suzanne begs.
“You call Alexander for an emergency meeting,” I tell her. “You explain that you don’t have the money yet. But then, that’s okay, because you don’t have to pay him back now that Roger is home and sober and has written his book, as originally agreed upon. Now you want to see him face to face, so that you can personally hand him Roger’s book. You want to prove to him how excited you are to work for him. How wonderful and thrilling his story is. How handsome and courageous he comes off in it. How this whole thing has been a terrible misunderstanding.”
“But he’ll know we’re lying since we haven’t done any research. It was supposed to be a part of the deal. Driving around Manhattan and Albany in Alexander’s big black Lincoln listening to details about which wise guy he knifed under which bridge or which mobster’s head he decapitated in which basement.”
Me, shaking my head, once more picturing that severed head hanging out beside my dad’s large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in his basement embalming room.
“Just tell him that Roger did enough research on his own through initial interviews, emails, and the World Wide Web to come up with a very nice first draft. Stress the point by telling him that’s how Roger works. And now that the first draft is done, you desperately need Alexander to read through it as soon as possible so that Roger can begin on the second draft and the two of them can begin their on-site research.”
“I see where you’re going with this Moonlight. If Alexander thinks we’re producing a working manuscript, then he won’t threaten us with bodily harm if we don’t give him his advance back. We’ll be honoring our original agreement even if we are way past our original deadline.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not entirely sure I can write sixty thousand words in just a few minutes, Moonlight,” Roger chimes in, laughing and popping the top on another beer.
I look over one shoulder and then the other. I catch sight of the Georgie’s printer. There’s several reams of paper stacked underneath the table.
“Roger, you come with me,” I say. Then to Suzanne. “In the meantime you call Alexander and arrange the meeting. Capice?”
She takes one last hit off her cigarette and stamps it out.
“I’ll do my best,” she says, pulling her iPhone from the pocket inside of her jacket. “What have I got to lose but Roger’s life and my own?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I ONCE MORE OPEN Georgie’s laptop.
I go to Microsoft Word, request a new document.
A blank page comes up.
I push out my chair and stand.
“Would you like to do the honors, Roger?”
The big man is hovering over the laptop.
“You want me to sit down in front of that thing?” he says, like he’s about to be re-introduced to a sweet old lover who jilted him a long time ago. And he is.
“You don’t have to do much,” I say. Then I tell him exactly what to write as if he doesn’t already get what’s going on by now.
Slowly, almost painfully, he sits down into the chair. He sets his beer down off to the side on the table. Lifting his big beefy hands he sets them on the keys and I swear I can smell the salt coming from the tears in his eyes. Tears that at present, are staining his beard.
He begins to type. Two-fingered style. One letter at a time.
Click Clack. Click Clack.
He picks up a little speed prior to fingering the enter key, which is the modern-day equivalent to slapping the metal bar on an old manual typewriter after you’ve come to the end of a line and now require a new line to type on.
He types some more.
Speedy now.
You can almost feel the heat oozing from his pores. The energy emanating from an artist who’s been caught up in an almost permanent hibernation for months or many years, but who’s now being reborn.
When he’s done, he issues an exhale and does something amazing.
He smiles.
His face is positively beaming when he comes down on the return key once more and pens one final, third line. The line completed to his satisfaction, he gets up, opens up his arms and throws them around me.
“I’m sorry I used your head like a toilet bowl brush,” he bellows. “You are my friend and my savior. Even if you did fuck my wife.”
He’s crushing me in his bear hug.
“My pleasure, Roger,” I say, through constricted lungs.
Out the corner of my eye, I look down at the screen.
It reads:
Russian Reign of Terror: The Story of Joseph Stalin’s Great-Grandson and Life with the Russian Mob
by
Alexander Stalin
with
Roger Walls
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE PRINTER IS ALREADY connected to the computer via a USB cable. While I print out the title page, I grab hold of one of the stacks of paper, tear off the paper packaging. I muss the paper up a little bit, bending some of the ends to make it look like it’s been handled by big dirty fingers for a period of weeks. Then I set Roger’s title page on top of it. Retrieving two thick rubber bands from an unused ashtray that’s filled with paper clips, pens, and pencils with the tips broken off, I wrap them around the paper stack. One horizontally and then other, vertically.
I set the “book” down onto the table.
I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like the real thing.
Drinking down the rest of his present beer, Roger glances down at it. “Did I write that?” he says, his face still beaming with an all-teeth smile.
“You know what, Roger?” I say. “You goddamned well did write that.”
“The magic is back, Jack,” he sin
gs.
I turn to Suzanne who is now standing in the living room, her iPhone in her hand.
“Well?” I ask. “Alexander? Is he in?”
“He’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Can the present day Stalin be trusted, Good Luck?” I ask.
Suzanne’s frown turns upside down.
“He’s a killer and a drug dealer, Moonlight.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “There’s that.”
I go to the basement door, open it.
“Georgie!” I shout. “Grab the girl and let’s move out!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
WE ALL PILE BACK into Georgie’s white van. Roger takes the shotgun seat since it’s his house we’ll be driving to. For obvious reasons, we’ll take the scenic route over the most out-of-the-way country roads we can find. Some of the roads unpaved.
I sit in back with Suzanne and for the first time, listen to Detective Miller’s messages. As I suspected, he’s asking me to surrender myself for further questioning now that they have Sissy’s body in custody at the AMC morgue. If I don’t respond to his request by three o’clock today, he’ll consider me fleeing his demand and he’ll officially issue a warrant for my arrest. He also tells me that although they haven’t gone public with any of their findings, a preliminary examination of Sissy’s body suggests foul play. Obviously that initial exam occurred before we stole the body.
“If we find your man chowder floating around up inside her, Moonlight,” he adds, “God help you.”
Man chowder…
I have to wonder if Albany cops require a negative IQ in order to be employed. But then, I was a cop once. I should know. Or perhaps they changed the rules since the unexpected initiation of my so-called retirement.
Hitting the number seven on my keypad, I delete both messages and silently pray that we can pull off our little plan for Sissy and Alexander Stalin and have her back in the morgue by three o’clock.
#
We enter into the town of Old Chatham, Roger leading us on a maze of narrow, gravel-covered roads that bypasses the little township entirely. I’m sure he’d love nothing more than to make a pit stop at his favorite tavern, but that will have to wait.
