There’s a light on in the living room.
The shade is drawn over the big front picture window. There’s a silhouette of a woman appearing in the shade. It’s a silhouette of a tall, long-haired woman. Turns out she’s not alone. A man appears. He’s also tall. They lock in an embrace.
“Stop the car,” I say, my heart now in my throat.
“I can’t just stop—”
“Stop the fucking car now.”
Elvis does it. Stops the hearse in the middle of the road.
I open the door, get out.
I cross the street, approach the window, all the time listening for a voice, a laugh, a cry. Something that tells me the woman behind the shaded window is Lola and that she’s alive.
But I hear nothing.
Then the light goes out on the flat.
A man shouts.
“Hey, you!”
I run.
Chapter 30
I’m not sure if I’m running from the man who clearly took me for a peeping Tom, or running from the woman in the window. Probably both. I don’t care. I just want to run.
I hear the shout again.
“Hey, you, stop!”
But I keep running. I don’t want to turn around and see this man. See his face. I don’t want to know if he is the new man in Lola’s life. If Lola has a new life to begin with.
I keep running until I come to the street corner where Lark intersects Madison. I don’t want to turn around to see if I’m being followed. But I feel like I don’t have a choice.
I turn, breathing hard, my heart beating rapidly against my rib cage.
There’s no one behind me.
Then comes a screeching of tires as Elvis guns the hearse. He pulls up beside me, waves for me to get in. His eyes are bugged out wide. I should get in the car and forget I ever came to this place at all.
I do it.
I get in. Shut the door behind me.
“Just go,” I say, pushing out the words through forced breaths.
Elvis doesn’t argue.
Chapter 31
My breathing is coming and going in shallow spurts. I feel my soul going in and out of my mortal flesh and bone. I’ve felt this way before. It means too much oxygen is flowing through the veins and capillaries in my damaged head. This normal physio-biological reaction might not be a problem for most people, but for a head-case like me, it can mean trouble. At the very least, I can pass out. Once I pass out, there’s no guarantee I’ll wake up. And that would leave Elvis in a very precarious situation.
So what do I do to combat the effects of Lola?
I try and control my breathing. Try and take deep, slow breaths. Try and calm my heart and blood flow. It doesn’t always work, but I’m hoping it works now.
We move through the center of the city. The old city on Lark Street which is surrounded on both sides by four and five-story, nineteenth-century brownstones not very different from the one Lola lives, or lived, in. The new art district of Albany where every other woman walking the sidewalk has a steel hoop protruding through her nose or a stud through her lip and every other guy sports a Mohawk.
I’m staring out the window, not saying anything, trying to convince myself that the woman behind the shaded window in Lola’s apartment is someone else entirely. Someone who’s now taken over the apartment in the wake of her death late last year. It’s the only truth I can accept at this point. That is, I want to maintain my sanity. What’s left of it.
I light up a smoke, pop the tab on a new beer.
“That ain’t no way to handle your problems, Moonlight,” Elvis says after a time.
This, coming from the same man who needed whiskey at nine in the morning in order to swallow the fact that his illicit girlfriend is fucking the mailman when he’s not around.
I turn to him slowly, take a long pull on my beer, draining it. I toss the can onto the mat, knowing it’s entirely possible my dad is watching me from heaven, shaking his head in disgust.
“You handle your shit your way, Elvis,” I say, “and I’ll handle my shit my way.”
“This Lola,” he says, after a beat, “she must have been pretty special to make you this upset.”
I smoke my cig, nod.
“She was the one woman I got right. She was my perfection. And I blew it. I fucking blew it. And then, I left her by the side of the road where she died. Or I thought she died anyway.”
“You’ve never gotten over her. Not even in death.”
“No, I haven’t. She’s defined my life. She is inside me more than I am inside me.”
“And now you think she might be alive? You didn’t go to her wake or her funeral even? How whacked out is that?”
“I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face the deceased Lola.”
We reach the top of the State Street hill, the mammoth marble capital building that Teddy Roosevelt built on our right, the white marble County Court on our left.
“What went wrong between you two?”
I toss the cig out the window, stare down at the bottom of State Street now lit up in bright halogen street lamps, the red tail lights of the east-bound cars and taxis contrasting with the white headlights of the oncoming traffic.
“We were very different. As much as we loved one another, we were polar opposites. Or, let me put it another way, Lola had her shit together. A brilliant psychologist and college professor. I was . . . am . . . the head-case of Albany. Need I say more?”
He drives down the hill, Schroder’s office building now in sight on the periphery to our left.
“Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them.”
“You make that up?” I whisper.
“Sort of. Or let’s just say, it comes from a much higher authority.”
“The King.”
“Yes, Moonlight. The King.”
Elvis finds a parking space across the street from Schroder’s office. I reach into the glove box for my flashlight. Flick it on and off to check the batteries. The batteries are good. Then, I reach back inside the box for a screwdriver. I shove both tools into separate pockets on my black leather coat.
“Let’s go to work,” I say.
Elvis kills the engine, pulls the keys from the ignition, opens the door.
“Never broke into an office building before,” he says.
“You never forget your first crime,” I say.
Chapter 32
Schroder’s office is located on the first floor of a ten story 1920’s era building that’s constructed out of marble floors and walls. The ceiling is plaster, and the central corridor reaches a height of maybe fourteen or fifteen feet. While the overhead lighting has been turned off for the night, the wall-mounted night lighting illuminates the corridor in a dim yellow haze.
“What about security cameras?” Elvis whispers.
“You happen to see any?”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
“Don’t worry so much. I know the cops in this town.”
“The cops hate you.”
“They hate everybody.”
Schroder’s door is only a few feet down from the elevators. We go to it, me leading the way, a nervous Elvis on my heels. When we arrive at the door, I pull out the screwdriver in full anticipation of having to jimmy our way in. But something’s wrong. The door is slightly open. It’s also already been jimmied. And there’s noise coming from inside the office. The sounds of rustling. One or two people rummaging around the place, looking for something. Voices, too. Male voices. Russian voices.
“They’re here,” I say, pulling my head back from the door, pressing my back against the cold hard wall. I pull out my .38, thumb off the safety.
“Who’s here?” Elvis begs.
“The Russians.”
“Why?”
“They’re looking for something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe more drugs.”
“Maybe money.”
�
��Maybe that.”
“So what do we do?”
“We leave.”
“Good idea.”
It would be a good idea, too, if the series of rapid gunshots don’t make splinters out of the wood door.
Chapter 33
It’s like a kid’s playground game of Who blinks first!
Me, standing by the now destroyed door, the business end of my .38 aimed up at the face of Hector, the Russian giant, while the barrel on the heavy artillery he grips in his right hand stares me down.
“I know what you are thinking,” Hector says, his voice mechanical, baritone low, clearly trying his best to imitate Clint “Dirty Harry” Eastwood. “Did I fire five shots or six? Well, I’ve kind of lost the track myself.”
On the ground, shoved up against my left leg, is Elvis. He’s curled up in the fetal position, the thumb on his right hand thrust into his mouth. It also sounds like he might be crying. Standing four-square behind Hector, his partner in Russian/American crime, Vadim. He’s got a smile plastered on his face like blasting a wood door away with a hand canon is the most fun that can be had on God’s earth besides eating Oxy.
“Dirty Harry,” I say. “Excellent, Hector. Or should I call you Dirty Hector? And you don’t say the track. It’s just track. No definite article because track should be indefinite. Get it? If you’re gonna act like an asshole, you might as well get it right, Hector.”
He actually grows a smile at my suggestion, like I’ve just made his night.
“But being that this is a .44 Magnum,” he goes on, “the most powerful hand-job in the world and can blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky?”
Vadim pokes Hector in the ribs.
“It’s handgun, stupid motherfucker,” he says. “Not hand job. Hand job is something else.” He makes a jerking-off gesture with his free hand, which Hector shrugs off.
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m doing the great Clint Eastwood. Do not speak word, stupid fuck.”
Vadim shoots me a wink of his left eye and twirls a circle around his left temple with an extended index finger like Hector is a little crazy, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Yah, I’ve noticed.
The .38 is getting heavy in my hand.
“Now, where was I?” Hector poses.
“Do I feel lucky?” a trembling Elvis spits from down near my left foot.
“Da, da. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?” He cocks back the hammer on the .44. The mechanical noise of the pistol reverberates throughout my body.
I’m staring up at him, into his square-jawed face and his wide, unblinking brown eyes. He seems confused, as opposed to concerned, that I have almost as much gun on him as he does me.
“Now, little man,” he says, issuing me a you-know-what-to-say wave of his free hand. “You are supposed to lower your gun and say your line.”
“Fat chance, Hector.”
“Listen, Mister . . .” Vadim interjecting.
“Moonlight,” I say. “Dick Moonlight.”
“Listen, Mr. Moonlight,” Vadim says. “Just do it. Lower your gun and say the line and let's all walk the fuck out of here like friends, da? Like Apollo-Soyuz, 1975. Like and Ronnie.”
Coming from outside the building now, sirens. Police sirens. I’m guessing we’ve sprung a silent alarm.
I lower the pistol, and knowing Dirty Harry forwards and backward, I recite the line Hector so desperately needs me to recite.
“Say it,” Elvis cries out. “Just fucking do it, Moonlight.”
Outside the doors, two APD blue and whites pull up, flashers spraying bright red, white, and blue light all throughout the dimly lit corridor.
I cough a frog out of my throat.
“I gots to know,” I say, reciting the line of the frightened black man Dirty Harry has his Magnum aimed at. Say it while staring into Hector’s enormous black pistol barrel.
Hector’s Arnold Schwarzenegger cyborg face lights up. It’s then I know what’s coming. The hammer on the .44 Magnum revolver snaps down onto an empty chamber.
I don’t actually soil myself, but my sphincter muscle jumps an inch or two.
The police bust through the office building doors.
“Down on the fucking floor!” They scream.
Vadim and Hector bolt back through Schroder’s office. They’re going for a back door or maybe a window.
I’d follow them if only I don’t faint.
Chapter 34
When I wake up, I’m lying flat on my stomach on a bench that’s bolted to a cracked concrete floor. Like it always does when I come to after passing out, disorientation kicks in.
“Am I dead again?” I ask through a throat that feels like somebody poured fresh concrete into it.
“Again?” someone answers. “Who gets dead again?”
It’s Elvis. I recognize the redneck accent.
“I do,” I grunt.
“Strange life and death you lead, Moonlight,” he says. “You passed out. Must have been the hundred beers you drank yesterday.”
From the way my head is pounding, he’s not far off the mark. I sit up, wait for a moment while my swelled, aching brain settles itself in my skull and my eyesight regains its clarity. I turn to him. He’s sitting on the floor, stuffed in a corner between the concrete wall and the iron bars. His knees are tucked into his gut and his arms wrapped around his shins. If I were Ernest Hemingway, I would describe his face as “defeated.”
“What the hell happened?” I say.
“Schroder’s office. Break in. Russians already on site. Guns blasting . . . Shit like that is only supposed to happen in the movies.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, recalling the office door being shot to hell and my Mexican standoff with a gargantuan weight lifting, Hollywood wannabe Russian named Hector. “It’s all coming back to me now. Like a vivid nightmare.”
Just then, a metal door opens, and a blue uniform emerges.
“Moonlight and Hills,” he shouts as if we aren’t the only assholes locked in the tank. “Or should I call you Elvis Presley?”
I stand.
Elvis stands.
The blue uniform nods to a second blue uniform who’s manning some controls behind a Plexiglas covered booth. A loud electronic buzz sounds and the metal barred door clicks open. We step out.
“Follow me,” the uniform says. “I’m not sure why, but Detective Miller would like to see you in his office.”
When we walk through the wood and glass door to Miller’s first-floor interior office, he’s seated at his cluttered desk. He’s on the phone. He looks up at us, sticks two fingers into his shirt collar like it’s possible to loosen it with the blue tie knotted tighter than an iron curtain, and tells whoever is on the other end of the line that he’ll have to call him back.
He hangs up, stands.
“Gentlemen,” he says, gesturing with his right hand to the fake leather couch pushed up against the wall to our left. “Take a seat.”
A relieved Elvis immediately plops himself down.
“I’ll stand, thanks,” I say. Moonlight the defiant.
I shoot a hard glance at Elvis. He rolls his eyes and reluctantly stands. Solidarity is important in these matters.
“Schroder’s not pressing charges,” Miller says, reseating himself in his swivel chair, running an open right hand through his gray hair.
“What about the Russians who shot his place up?” I say.
“They got away.”
I roll my eyes without consciously telling myself to roll my eyes.
“They got away? That’s some killer police work, Barney Miller.”
Raising his right hand, Miller makes like a pistol. Points it at me.
“You are treading on thin ice, Moonlight. I were you, I’d can it before I toss your and fat Elvis’s ass back in the can for a B and E.”
“How come you’re not doing that now?”
“Schroder’s office building was still technically open for pub
lic traffic.”
“But the lights were off,” Elvis points out.
“Take five, Elvis,” I say over my left shoulder.
“Good point,” Miller says. “Cleaning crew had turned them out. They might have thought about locking the door behind them as well if they weren’t a bunch of uneducated morons.”
“So what do you want from us now?” I say.
“The Russians,” he says. “You aware of any business dealings between them and the brain surgeon?”
Elvis shoots me a look. I don’t have to see him in order to feel his great big, brown eyes burning two separate holes into my sensitive head.
“None,” I lie.
Miller’s looking into my eyes. He’s a trained cop. He knows how to spot a liar from up to and including, one hundred paces. He’s spotting one now. But there’s nothing he can do about it.
“Look it, Miller,” I say. “I don’t like Schroder any more than you do. But client confidentiality is a Moonlight golden rule.” I hold up my right hand, two fingers raised vertically like a Boy Scout.
“I find out you’re impeding a police investigation you’ll get more than just a night in the tank. A lot more.” Then, biting down on his lip. “I thought we had a private agreement, you and me.”
“Oh, yeah, we had coffee together yesterday,” I say. “Big whup. Can we go now, please? I need a beer real bad. And a smoke.”
Miller rolls his wrist over, gives his watch a glance.
“It’s seven in the morning, Moonlight. We got a bit of a problem here?”
“Don’t know about you,” I smile. “But it’s tomorrow afternoon in India, and that’s good enough for me.”
“You can go,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Your ride is in the back lot, keys inside it. Close the door on your way out.”
Moonlight Weeps: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller Book 8) Page 9
