Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1)

by Vincent Zandri

  “But what is my business is this: I’m not going to prison for a murder I did not commit.”

  She lowered her head for a second. When she came back up, I could see that she was crying. Really bawling. If I had to guess, they were more the tears of frustration than sadness. In any case, I let her cry it out for a while.

  “That Scarlet Montana,” she said. “Nobody deserves to die that kind of death. But I can tell you this: she was no good, Richard. She was big trouble.”

  Her words hit me hard. It also kicked my built-in shit detector into overdrive. Because it was then that I knew for certain, Cain was fucking Scarlet. Or should I say, fucking Scarlet right along with me. The pressure behind my eyeballs suddenly shifted, dropping into my stomach like a lead weight. Scarlet might have been clinically dead, but for the first time ever, I was beginning to feel a genuine animosity towards her.

  Lynn was right: Scarlet was a boatload of trouble, even in death.

  “Mitch,” I said, a rock-sized lump in my throat. “Mitch and Scarlet. . . For how long?”

  “Since last summer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We have a son,” Lynn went on. “We will always have a son, no matter how we feel about one another.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We have a son.”

  “I would prefer that his father stay out of prison. He needs you. He needed Mitch too, once upon a time. But now he needs you again.”

  “Then for our son’s sake, Lynn, give me something. . . anything I can go on that will set this thing straight.”

  She looked into my eyes, nodded her head. “If I give you something,” she said, “will you make certain that nothing happens to our boy?”

  I told her I would make sure.

  “Promise me, Richard!” she insisted, her voice verging on a shout.

  “I promise, Lynn,” I said. “You know I do.”

  She nodded with tight lips and wet eyes.

  “That’s exactly what worries me. Not knowing if you will keep your promise. You have a habit of not paying attention to certain matters of importance.”

  What could I possibly say to that? I felt the weight of the pistol in my hand. Suddenly I felt ashamed of myself for thinking I would need it. For shade of a second, it was as if we had never divorced as I watched her walk into her bedroom where she opened a drawer, dug her hand deep inside, and produced a stack of envelopes. When she came back out, she handed one of the envelopes to me along with a pen and a blank yellow Post-a-Note. It had the name of a bank on it. A Swiss bank.

  “I’ll give you exactly ten seconds to write down the username, password, social security number and account number,” she said. “Then I want you out of this house.”

  I scribbled everything down. Then I handed her back the envelope.

  “Just leave,” she said.

  I started for the stairs. But before I took them, I turned back to her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “about the way things turned out between us. . . I’m sorry for what I did with Scarlet.”

  “I’m sorry for our son. I’m sorry for you and I’m sorry for the sad son of a bitch I replaced you with and yeah, I’m sorry for Scarlet too. . . May God have mercy on her poor fucking soul.”

  She took a staggered step back, looked me up and down, and shook her head. For a moment, I thought she was going to pass out.

  “Are you really going to call the cops, tell them I was here?”

  She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “My God, Richard,” she sadly laughed. “You just said it yourself. You are the goddamned cops.”

  58

  I navigated the less-populated secondary roads all the way back to George’s townhouse. The route took me through narrow alleys flanked on both sides by the backs of the old brick row houses. I motored steadily past overfilled dumpsters and countless burnt-out cars that had been stripped of everything but their steering columns. The drive took me ten more minutes than it would have had I gone the usual, out-in-the-open route. Which meant that as soon I arrived at the townhouse, I wasted no time.

  Out in George’s living room, I sat at the computer, bringing up the Google search engine. When I typed in “www.bankvonernst.com,” I came up with a website that was housed in Liechtenstein. Post-a-Note laid out before me, I typed in the necessary user information in the spaces indicated.

  The online spreadsheet appeared before me in a flash. Scrolling down, I discovered thirty-two separate transactions dating back the past four years to early 2007, all of them adding up to a grand total of $400,806 US. Unless Cain had come into some money from some recently deceased aunt or uncle, he was making one hell of a payday as a detective for the Albany cops.

  I printed a hard copy of the statement. If I’d possessed Mitch’s passwords, I might have cashed the damn thing out, sent all proceeds care of the Attorney General. For now, the bank statement would have to do.

  Inside the galley kitchen, I pulled George’s phonebook back out from the stand below the wall-mounted telephone. Since I couldn’t very well go to the police with my discovery, I located the address for the local FBI. In another drawer I found an envelope and some stamps. Addressing the envelope, I penned the word URGENT beneath the zip code and stuck it sideways under the lid of George’s mailbox as outgoing mail.

  That done, I pulled the duct-taped recorder off my chest and set it on the coffee table. Setting my aching body down onto the sofa, I laid back, head against the springy cushion. To say that I felt very heavy and tired was an understatement. The Smith and Wesson resting on my chest—easy access—I closed my eyes and drifted.

  There was a slam.

  I shot up, pistol in hand, pointing it at the front door.

  “Take it easy, Moon. It’s just me.” George was holding a white plastic shopping bag. He seemed to have an energy about him I hadn’t seen in a long time. He was an outlaw again and enjoying it.

  I took a minute to catch my breath. How long had I been passed out?

  “Did you get the shots?”

  “Haven’t let a Moonlight down yet,” he grinned.

  59

  The super-eight film had been shot from across a rather dusky early-morning side street somewhere near Saratoga’s downtown business center. It showed Cain and a thick, black-clad (Russian?) man standing outside the back service entrance door to what looked like a restaurant.

  The Russo.

  Smartly, George took a quick shot of the rental van’s dashboard- mounted digital clock at that exact point in time. It read 7:30. It wasn’t exactly an official time-stamped photo, but it would have to do. When the film once more focused on the two men, there seemed to be no doubt that they were arguing. Maybe there was no sound to go with the old 8mm, but clearly the dark man was holding a silenced automatic on Cain. They were moving their mouths rapidly and at certain points, waving their arms at one another. I had no idea what they were saying. Although I could not see their faces, there was no doubt that they were fighting, face to face, nose to nose, seemingly oblivious to the pistol as they were the steady rain that soaked them.

  But then Cain suddenly turned, tossing a burning cigarette to the wet concrete sidewalk and stormed off across the road.

  Another shot at the rental truck clock showed 8:20. Cain had been negotiating with his buyer for nearly an hour.

  That was it: the visual eyebrow-raising evidence I needed.

  The end of the five-minute film ran through the projector, causing it to flap with every spin of the top reel. George killed the power and hit the lights.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said.

  He folded down the screen, took a look outside.

  Still all clear in Albany, he reassured. As luck would have it, the townhouse had belonged to his long deceased mother. It was still deeded in her name. As for the telephone directory, George was conveniently unlisted. But the safety cushion, such as it was, wouldn’t last very long.

  “What now?
” he asked, turning back to me.

  I told him about my little talk with Lynn, about how she had led me to the Swiss bank account, how the bank statement was on its way to the FBI now that the mailman had made his rounds.

  “She did that for you?” he said as if surprised.

  “Scarlet and Mitch,” I said. “It appears they’d been bedding down.”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. I got the feeling he wanted to make a comment; maybe something about Lynn’s bad luck at having lost two husbands to the same auburn-haired, green-eyed beauty. But he let it go.

  Instead, he said, “It’s official. Detective Cain is now our primary suspect in the murders of Scarlet and Jake Montana. Hands-fucking- down, little brother.”

  I ejected the mini cassette tape from the recorder and put it with the film, my copy of the Swiss bank statement and the case file I’d pulled from George’s office earlier. I told him that if we had a brain and a half between us, we would lay low until dark. That would be the safe thing to do. But then, we couldn’t afford the convenience of safety.

  George went back into the kitchen, grabbed a Diet Coke, and sat down with it on the chair across from the couch. He made a tight-lipped grimace. Maybe he didn’t say a word about it, but the expression told me he was experiencing pain.

  “There’s one more job we have to pull off before I decide to end this thing,” I said.

  He pulled a half-smoked joint from his shirt pocket, lit it with his Bic lighter, and took three or four tap-tap drags on it, careful not to burn his lips on the fiery nub. He silently held it out for me, to offer me a toke. I shook my head politely.

  During the trip up to Saratoga in the rental van, he had tied his long hair back into a ponytail. His face was covered in gray-black stubble. He looked older than his age. But then I also knew how much pain George had to endure day in and day out.

  “What’s on your mind?” he exhaled.

  I stood up, tucking my 9mm in the waist of my jeans.

  “I’ll explain as best I can during the ride to the Home Depot.”

  The plan, as I relayed it to George went something like this: time was short, which meant we’d have to backdoor the operation. Rather than confront the body part buyers (or what was left of them) up in Saratoga, we’d go after the product itself. Or in this case, the “host” of the product—the dead and buried victims.

  What I had in mind was to put George’s and my talents for dealing with the dead to good and practical use. The two of us had worked the death trade as assistant morticians. I had the mortician business floating around in my veins. George had graduated to the level of pathologist. Who better than us to undertake a mission to resurrect the dead?

  More specifically, my theory revolved around locating just one of the harvested bodies, attaching it to Cain and Jake either by means of procedural association (the police report) or better yet, by physical contact.

  “The point is,” I told George as he drove us toward the Washington Avenue Home Depot in the van, “I don’t really have to prove anything. All I need to do is prove that a conspiracy exists.”

  Eyes on the rain-soaked road, George shrugged his shoulders.

  I told him that the mere suggestion of a conspiracy would naturally lead the FBI to believe that a cover-up was in the works. The cover-up would lead them to the frame job that Cain and Montana had been pulling on me all these months and years. I told him that Cain, acting in the position as the chief investigating officer on the unnatural deaths he’d called me in on, never recorded the fact that he pulled organs from the bodies. That deception alone, if it could be proven, was definitely going to raise the attention not only of Prosecutor O’Connor, but also the victims’ surviving families.

  “But what’s to prevent Cain from denying everything?” George asked. “He’ll just say he had no contact with the bodies once they left the scene of the crime or accident.”

  “No way he can deny everything.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “Because as you well know, a police report that requests either partial or no autopsy, by its very definition, must already be thorough and conclusive as to the cause, manner and mechanism of death. Gonna look a little suspicious if he overlooked a missing kidney or two. If there was no autopsy, how’s a set of kidneys missing?”

  He nodded. “It’s the can of worms trick,” he said. “Poke a hole through the tin lid, get the prosecutor to peek inside.”

  “I’m gonna do better than that,” I told him. “I’m gonna shove a fistful of night crawlers down his throat.”

  “Nasty,” George said with a sour face.

  The yellow van cruised west along the long stretch of highway. After a long beat, George spoke up again.

  “Let me get this straight, Moon,” he said. “You want to dig up one of the bodies Cain chopped up for spare parts?”

  I turned to him. “You and me, brother. We’re the perfect candidates for this kind of job. The last thing he wants is for one of those chop jobs to suddenly show up, six feet over-ground.”

  George shot me a look. “The last thing he wants is a postmortem evaluation,” he added.

  “That’s where you come in,” I said. “You perform a postmortem from caudal to clavicle. We do it in front of a video camera, prove without a doubt that the body was cut after it was pronounced dead.”

  I could tell George was thinking about it.

  “The cadavers all gave consent for organ donation,” he pointed out. “What if the court just assumes the bodies were cut up in the interest of science or medicine?”

  “You and I both know that anybody under the age of twenty-one must have their family notified prior to going under the knife. Regardless of driver’s license permission. If the family had been notified there would have been a clear paper trail leading up to the recipient.” I picked up the manila folder I took from his office file cabinet earlier, thumbing through it to exaggerate its thinness. “Look,” I said. “No paper trail.”

  “Not the first time I’ve laid eyes on those folders,” George said. “Just the first time I’ve realized how stupid they are. If you’re gonna cut up bodies for spare parts, you might as well fill out the false paperwork to cover your corrupt ass.”

  “What Cain and Jake must have been counting on was the reactions of the families involved. As far as the families are concerned, the bodies of their loved ones were buried just the way they looked in life. You know how funny people can be about death—”

  “—hermetically sealed caskets,” George jumped in. “Stainless steel-lined concrete burial vaults. Nonsensical when you really stop and think about it.”

  “Ah yes, but remember the philosophy of the great Harold Moonlight: it makes people feel calm and collected inside to know that their beloved dead and buried are protected from the worms.”

  “I see where you’re headed, Moony,” he said. “Any of those families get word their little boy or girl’s body has been messed with and select members of the A.P.D. may be responsible, they’ll create a shit storm so thick even a slick operator like Cain won’t escape it.”

  60

  We drove in silence while the afternoon wore on and the rain came down heavier. Soon the Home Depot loomed on the horizon like a giant metal-sided, neon-lit hardware and home supply Oz.

  “There’s just one thing that bothers me,” George said as we passed signs that directed us towards the parking area. “We go digging up a body illegally, they’ll not only add that to our laundry list of crimes, they’ll toss any evidence we come up with out of court.”

  I gazed at George’s profile—the gaunt nose, the long ponytail, the worn jean jacket that replaced the white smock just before we escaped Albany Med’s basement.

  “We’re not doing anything illegal,” I said.

  “Unauthorized exhumation is not punishable by law in New York State?” he needlessly asked. “You have to consult with the cemetery authority and get permission from the family.”

  He pul
led into the massive parking lot, made a beeline for an empty spot up close to the glass entry doors. He threw the transmission into park and killed the engine.

  “We’re gonna get permission,” I assured him, lifting the file folder once more, then setting it back down on my lap. “From the family.” My voice sounded muffled and thick with the engine off and the windows shut against the rain.

  Taking his hand off the keys, George left them dangling in the ignition.

  “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “I didn’t say when we’d get it. I just said we’d get it. Sooner or later.”

  “You’re counting on this sooner-or-later permission,” he said like a question.

  “When the family sees what we’ve done for them,” I explained, “they’ll be sending us roses.”

  “What about getting caught?” he asked. “You can’t just expect to drive into a cemetery and start digging away.”

  “You remember Albany Rural Cemetery?” I asked.

  “You know I do,” he said.

  He and I had personally assisted with the burial of dozens of Moonlight clients at Albany Rural back in the seventies.

  “The body we’re going to take is buried in the center of that ten- square-mile, heavily wooded plot of real estate,” I pointed out. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Risk,” George murmured with a shake of the head. “There’s some serious risk in what we’re doing.”

  “Risk is our middle name,” I replied, pulling out a small list of items I needed him to pick up.

  “I’m changing mine to Stupid,” he said, snatching the list from my fingers.

  My reason for choosing the teenaged body of Kevin Ryan was not indiscriminate.

  His official manner of death had been listed on the thin D.C. as suicide. I was aware of that fact without having to consult the D.C. itself. After all, I was the one who had filled out the form (which George, at my request, later co-signed as the county pathologist).

  I also knew for a fact that Ryan’s death had actually resulted from an accidental hanging inside the walk-in attic of his parent’s suburban home. So did Cain at the time. While I’d wanted to list “accidental death” instead of suicide in order to avoid any investigation at all, Cain insisted I go with the latter.