Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1)

by Vincent Zandri

  68

  First George pulled into a gas station, checking out Joy’s home address in a plastic-encased phonebook that was attached to the payphone unit by a thin cable.

  “How’s the pain?” he asked as soon as he got back inside the car.

  “I’ll manage,” I said, touching the stitches on my left arm through my shirt.

  “Want a painkiller?”

  “I’ll tough it out for now.”

  He pulled back out of the station and together we barreled our way toward Albany along Route 5. In the meantime, I called Miner’s office. Naturally he wasn’t there. Aside from Lola, he was the only one I could call, tell him where I was going, where I would be in case I didn’t make it out alive. I left him a detailed message, including Joy’s address.

  Next I dialed Lyons’ cell phone number. It rang for a quite a while before he picked up.

  “Lyons,” he said in a sleepy voice.

  “Guess who?”

  A pause. Maybe he confused me for a dream.

  “I heard. . . you could. . . be dead,” he stuttered, voice sounding thick and slurred like he had a sock stuffed inside his mouth.

  “I’m like that pink bunny,” I said. “I keep on going and going.”

  He didn’t laugh. “Tell me where I can meet you.” His voice noticeably perked up. “We still have time. . . to get this story. . . get this story out.”

  He sounded out of breath. He mumbled something away from the phone.

  “You alone, Lyons?” I asked.

  “My wife,” he said. “She’s asleep next to my daughter.”

  “Irrefutable evidence,” I told him. “I finally have it. Enough to prove me innocent of murder.”

  “Tell me where to meet you.”

  “I’ll get to that,” I said. “But this isn’t going to be about the original article. Instead, I want you to witness something.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You there?”

  “Yeah. Here. . . Witness what?”

  “Another murder.”

  He cleared his throat. “Whose. . . murder?”

  “Doesn’t matter who. Just get your ass out of bed and get some clothes on.”

  Another pause.

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Moonlight?”

  “Just know that the evidence I’ve collected will point to you as an accessory for taking a kickback from Cain,” I said. “So don’t fuck me over by going to the cops.”

  That had to jerk him.

  “I’m no accessory to any—”

  “—Cut the bullshit, Lyons,” I growled. “I know you set me up. You and Cain. I saw your face at the airport, remember? How much did Cain pay you to stab me in the back?”

  He was back to saying nothing.

  “Get a pen,” I commanded. “Write this down.”

  I gave him Joy’s address without mentioning the dead kid’s name.

  “That it?” he asked.

  “Bring a camera,” I said before terminating the call.

  69

  Joy lived, or had lived, in a just-add-water, prefab condominium complex just two miles outside the Albany city limits. One of those white, vinyl-sided units set inside a complex of one or two-hundred identical condo units.

  George and I pulled onto Woodside Drive, straining our eyes, stretching our necks trying to follow the numbered sequence mounted to every identical mailbox along the way. In the end, we didn’t have much trouble finding the place. Not with the four-door Ford Explorer parked maybe thirty feet down from Joy’s place.

  Printed on the side panels of the SUV in big red-on-white letters were the words The Albany Times Union.

  Could the vehicle be any more conspicuous?

  “The reporter beat us here,” George pointed out as he pulled the van over to the side of the road, just a few parcels up from Joy’s postage- stamp front lawn.

  As far as we could see, not a sign of life was showing itself outside 52 Woodside Drive. Nothing was stirring. Not even a goddamned rat like Cain. Were it not for the garage-mounted lamplight coming from the two identical condos that bookmarked Joy’s unit, the place would have been completely blacked out.

  I told George to wait in the car while I checked around back.

  Turns out the back was just as black and dead as the front.

  No Lyons, no photographer.

  No nothing.

  Back at the van I suggested to my big brother that maybe Lyons was still waiting inside the Suburban. The rain had all but stopped by then. The air was moist and cold, even for the spring.

  We took it slow and easy along the gradually declining road, both of us knowing full well that Cain could have set a trap for us. Thumbing the pistol safety off, I peered into the driver’s side window of the Ford.

  The SUV was empty.

  I suspected then that it was quite possible, if not probable, that somehow Lyons had let himself into the condo. But then, how the hell would he have gotten in if he didn’t already have a key?

  One thing was glaringly obvious: something wasn’t right.

  I had to power up my built-in shit detector. Cain was planning something. Exactly what he was planning I would have no way of knowing until it decided to jump out and bite me in the face.

  George followed me around the garage to the wood-paneled front door. Because I was the only one holding a gun, he was careful to stay close. A foot or two away from me at most.

  At first glance, the door appeared to be undisturbed. All quiet on the suburban front. For a split second, I thought about the doorbell.

  With my pistol tucked into my pant waist, I pulled the ring of keys from my left-hand pocket, inserting them one at a time into the lock. The first four out of a dozen keys, while sliding easily into the lock, did not turn the tumblers. That is until I got to number five. Slipping the smooth metal key into the slot, I felt the mechanical release of the tumblers. Holding my breath, I turned the knob clockwise, gently pushed the door open and I was in.

  I looked over my shoulder at George. There was this look in his eyes that somehow I knew would be there. This look that said this is an unhealthy place.

  We stepped into the dark vestibule. Looking up, I could see the vague lighting that leaked in through an arched picture window mounted above the front door. The wall to my left was decorated with a giant poster. Some fully-framed half-man, half-lizard. A bright green devil with a long pitchfork tail that smiled at me with dog-like fangs and piercing red eyes that reminded me of the albino man. The creature was holding a bottle of liquor in his left hand. Some kind of booze that was supposed to bring the devil out in you.

  To my direct right, a staircase followed the perimeter of the exterior wall. From where I stood I could see that the stairs led to a second-floor loft and some bedrooms beyond it. The wall to my right was covered in original artwork. Abstract modern stuff that looked a hell of a lot like the pieces Scarlet and Jake had displayed inside their house before it burned. Expensive art. Not the kind of thing a rookie cop would be acquiring on rookie pay.

  No family photos, no snapshot of Joy with a girlfriend or boyfriend or with parents or siblings, for that matter. It was like he hadn’t really lived there at all.

  One before the other we tiptoed into the kitchen, just past a door that led out to the garage and another door that led to a bathroom. My pulse was pounding in both temples, the pressure in the center of my head intense.

  Fuck it, I told myself. I called out for Lyons but got no response. Not from anywhere inside the house. Nothing but silence and a buzzing- hum that came from the motor of the white G.E. refrigerator.

  We moved on a few more steps, me with the 9mm raised at chest height, barrel pointing at the ceiling.

  The narrow kitchen ran almost the entire length of the first-floor living space. At the very end of it was a sliding door that accessed a wood deck. The wet deck glistened in the little bit of light that shined onto it from the next door neighbor’s exterior spots. The same bit of light that leak
ed in through the plate glass doors and vaguely illuminated what at first looked like a crumpled bundle set on the kitchen floor—like a plastic Hefty bag.

  A sweet smell hung in the air.

  I would have recognized the odor back when I was a kid; an odor that reminded me of the old man; of home. It was a smell George must have recognized too.

  The smell of death.

  I reached out with my left hand, ran it along the wall, found a light switch, flipped it on.

  You could not miss him now, nor could you mistake him for a plastic Hefty bag filled with garbage.

  Lyons lay face down on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

  70

  I knew then that the newsman had made it here too fast, taking the bullets meant for Joy, George and me. I didn’t know if it had been Lyons who’d jimmied the door or if it had been Cain. But then what did it matter at that point? He was dead. So too was my witness and my newspaper story.

  I cocked the pistol hammer. I wanted the mechanical noise to serve as a warning.

  I knew Cain was there. Christ, I’d known he was there even before I’d hit the light switch, even before I’d seen the jimmied door lock. I should have known anyway. From that point on everything seemed to move in this kind of slow, stuttered motion. Like a DVD when it’s slowed to a fraction of its normal speed.

  Then came a quick Pop! just before George dropped down to his knees. I tasted the salty blood on my lips and tongue. The blood coated my mouth at the precise moment my big brother collapsed flat onto his chest and face, the quick thump of Cain’s silenced pistol barely registering.

  It was like a dream, it all happened so slow and quiet, but then fast and violent at the same time. While I definitely felt the quick slam against my head, it was followed by the sensation of nothing at all. As the world shut down and numbness ensued, everything inside my head went black.

  71

  When I came to I opened my eyes and saw one body at my feet. And a second to my direct left. The blood that covered the tile was so thick and rich it appeared more black than red. I could feel it soaking into my pant leg.

  I tried propping myself up onto my elbow. It was then that I sensed a weight shift in my head and the pain settle in like two separate ice picks lodged directly behind my eyeballs. I sat up straight, felt my stomach constrict. Everything came up on me.

  “That’s it,” Cain offered. “Out with the bad.”

  When I was through, I sucked in a deep breath and used my left hand to push myself back up against the refrigerator. I tried to stand, but it was impossible. The spirit was willing, but the brain was near dead.

  I sat there, knees tucked into my chest, head between my legs. Cain had cold-cocked me twice in the same place, in the same week, with the same goddamned gun. He’d seated himself up on the counter beside the sink. In his right hand, a 9mm law enforcement service pistol. Set beside him on the counter was what looked to be a black skullcap. He was dressed in a long black leather jacket, black pants, and sneakers.

  This much was certain: my fragile life must have been a testament to how much Cain needed me alive to take the rap for everything. Sitting there on Joy’s tiled floor, head splitting, stomach reeling, ribs busted up, I might have welcomed death. Maybe death offered me only blackness and nothingness, but it was also painless.

  Cain fired up a cigarette. He smiled.

  “You really have no idea about what’s going on do you, old partner?” he posed. “You don’t have a fucking clue about what comes next?”

  “This is the part where you set me up for three more murders,” I growled, the words coming out like they were ripping themselves away from the back of my throat.

  He stared down at me with those slate-gray hawk eyes.

  “How can you be sure you didn’t kill them? Why have you been assuming all along that I set you up? Why are you always screaming conspiracy?”

  I tried to hold my head up, tried to stand again, but it was useless. My chin kept bobbing against my sternum.

  “Pull the clip on your piece,” he said. “Smell the barrel.”

  I swallowed a breath, peeled the automatic from my right hand, pointed the barrel up at my face, and took a good whiff. It smelled freshly fired. I thumbed the clip, felt it drop into the palm of my scarred hand, and looked into it. Three rounds were missing. Then, looking down at my feet, I could easily make out three spent brass shell casings sitting in a blood puddle.

  Something began to happen to my body then. Rather, to my head. This electric vibration and buzzing began to sound as if my brain had been somehow plugged into an outlet. I knew then that the orchestral music that blared inside my skull was just getting started.

  “You’re just a one-man wrecking crew, Moonlight,” Cain said. “No regard for the sanctity of human life whatsoever.”

  “I have this problem with my head,” I told him.

  “You’re on a death march, which is why, consciously or not, you went on a killing spree. If you ask me, you couldn’t stand watching all these people around you having a life.”

  In my head, the music was getting louder, the symphony pounding on their strings, blowing into their trumpets, banging on their drums.

  I gazed up at Cain sitting on the counter, smoking, his tongue shooting in and out of his mouth snake-like while he talked, the smoke clouding above his head.

  “I know what you’re thinking, old partner,” he continued. “That I’m a liar. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Because in the end, how can you tell what’s real, or just a figment of your imagination? After all, you haven’t been acting in your right mind. You’ve got a bullet in your brain. You’ve been accused of murder one with a second count to follow. Your powers of recall may be warped because you’re not in complete control of your faculties. Fuck, Moonlight, for all you know, this whole thing is an illusion.”

  The .38 back in my right hand, six rounds left over. It was so heavy, I could barely lift it off the floor, much less plant a bead on Cain.

  “Let’s go further back, shall we?” he said. “Picture Captain Head Case—that’s you—fucking Scarlet Montana in her bed. Then when it was over, after shoving a whole bunch of drugs and booze down her throat, he runs a blade across her neck in a way that would strongly suggest suicide. Because after all, Scarlet was an unhappy woman. Less than a day later, the man comes up on Jake Montana from behind, cracks the big guy’s skull with a pistol barrel. He leaves him lying on the kitchen floor to burn up with the house he’s soaked in embalming fluid because that shit burns nice and long and slow, almost like kerosene. The man torches the Montana home where he committed not one, but two murders in order to destroy the evidence.

  “But that’s not enough killing for the head case. Now that he’s been arrested, he’s got to figure a way out; a way to escape. But Nicky Joy has already done that for him. Nicky wants to help him because Nicky wants out of the madness. Nicky wants to make an appeal. So he arranges for the man to have a key to room 657 at the Hotel Wellington. It’s the safe house for their organ harvesting operation. Nicky has no doubt the head case will make it there because he will do anything to get free, even if it means killing or being killed. So when the two guards transporting him to county deps are attacked inside their car, it’s no surprise. It’s also no surprise that Head Case has escaped by doing something insane like jumping off an eighty-foot-high bridge. Most people would think twice about making that kind of jump, but the head case had a habit of making wrong decisions.

  “From there he breaks into a longshoreman’s locker room, shoots a night watchman in the back, then locks up two state troopers. Heading out to the hotel, he finds room 657, finds Nicky Joy and an old Russian partner by the name of Joseph. Head Case doesn’t hesitate to kill both men, then manipulate the scene to make it look like an organ harvesting gone terribly wrong.

  “I wonder, Moonlight, did Nicky scream when you cut his heart out?

  My head was vibrating like a gong; my breath coming and going in little short s
purts. Cain had known about Joy all along. He’d only bluffed to get me out in the open. I swallowed some blood. It was then I saw it standing just outside the sliding glass doors. The solitary figure—the silhouette.

  “Now picture our head case sneaking around the back of Joy’s condo, slipping into the kitchen by way of the sliding glass doors, and pumping two rounds into an innocent crime reporter’s head.”

  I had to believe then that he’d swapped pistols with me. We carried identical 9mm Smith and Wessons. He must have cleaned his prints and switched the pieces when I was out cold. He must have made the switch. I was sure of it. Or, I had to be sure of it. I had to believe it! Maybe I wasn’t in my right mind all the time, but I knew he made the switch. I didn’t have to see it happen to know it was true. I just had to believe it.

  “Now picture the head case pumping a round into Dr. Phillips’s chest just as he entered the dark kitchen. I mean, the poor bastard—the poor innocent pathologist you dragged into this mess. Your mess. He must have had no idea what hit him in the dark when you tried to silence him.”

  Framed inside the sliding door, I could see the figure as he stepped forward, a squat bulldog of a man.

  Cain slid down off the counter, approached me, reached down, and pulled the 9mm from my hand.

  “So what happens now?” he asked. “Do I call in my people and take a chance on having you arrested once more? Do we arrange for a trial, giving you the chance to escape again?”

  He aimed the pistol not at my face, but at the right-hand side of my head. At my temple. In the same place I shot myself four years before. Cain let out a small laugh as the glass slider slowly opened behind him. In stepped a man, quiet as all hell, Cain not having the slightest clue.

  “Tell me something Moonlight: do you realize how very sick you are?” Shoving the pistol barrel behind my ear, he pressed it up against my button-sized scar. “Come on, Moonlight, you’ve been here before. What’s it feel like to die?”