“Gladly,” I say, turning, opening the door.
“Oh, and Moonlight,” Miller calls out.
I turn, my body half inside the door, half out.
“Yeah?”
“Remember,” he says. “The booze. It can be a real slippery slope. And you’ve got that head of yours to consider.” He taps his right temple with his index finger.
“Message received loud and crystal.”
“You might be a wise ass,” Miller says, “but I like you. You’ve got a pair of steel ones. Wish I had more cops like you. Be a shame to see you drink yourself all to hell.”
“I’ve been to hell and back plenty of times before, Barn . . . I mean, Nick.”
He nods.
“Just remember the slippery slope,” he says. Then, smiling, “You have a nice day now.”
I exit the building with Elvis on my tail, all the time the words “slippery slope” repeating themselves in my head like the tick-tock on a time bomb.
Chapter 35
Walking around the back of the old precinct, I breathe in the smog-filled city air. It seems somehow cleaner than the air trapped inside the APD. Elvis is two steps behind me.
“Why didn’t you tell Miller about Schroder’s drug deal with the Ruskies?”
“Jesus, Elvis, I gotta spell everything out for you?” I say, with my back to him. “Schroder’s my client, number one, and number two, Miller’s got himself a nice little illegal agenda, which is the destruction of Dr. Schroder. I’m trying to sort all this out without the main players getting arrested just yet.”
I can hear the overweight Elvis tribute entertainer trying to keep up with my speed walking so that he’s forced to jog every few steps.
“So what are we gonna do now? My stomach’s growling.”
Up ahead, parked in the back of the lot, is Dad’s hearse.
“Okay, we’ll grab some breakfast, and then we make the trip to Albany County Jail to have a little face to face with Junior.”
Ten minutes later we’re dining on plates of eggs, sausage, pancakes, and double orders of toast. Or should I say, Elvis is eating all that food, while I nibble on a toasted hard roll and downing cup after cup of black coffee, wishing I had a cold beer to sip on. While he chows down, I place a call to Schroder.
When he answers, I don’t say hello. I opt instead to put him on the defensive right away.
“You might have bailed us out of jail before we had to spend the night.”
“Might I ask why you were at my office last evening in the first place?”
“Making a check on the place,” I lie. “To make sure it was secure. Obviously, it wasn’t.”
Schroder laughs.
“I should just fire you right now, Moonlight,” he says. “Rather, fire you again.” He says again like Agayyyynnnneeee.
“You do that, and I’ll have no choice but to go to your buddy Detective Nick Miller with news of your little Oxy scheme with the local Russian mob.”
Elvis looks up at me, both his cheeks stuffed to maximum capacity with a future heart attack.
Schroder’s silence is so heavy I feel like the phone is about to drop out of my hand.
“You’re spying on me,” he says through obviously clenched teeth.
“Hey, Doc, just doing my job.”
“And what job is that, Moonlight?”
“Looking after you and your well-being.”
“Like I said, maybe my well-being could very well depend upon my letting you go for good.”
“Look, Doc, one way or the other, I’m getting to the bottom of how and why that poor girl hanged herself and if your son had anything to do with it. Like you, I think the whole situation stinks. But then, I think you stink, and I think the APD stinks, too.”
More silence.
“Okay, I won’t fire you no matter what you think of me personally. But let me tell you something, you’d better find out something good and positive about my son. Do you hear me? Things are getting a bit desperate on my end.”
“Sell your mansion,” I suggest.
“Not on your life. How would that make me look at the country club?”
“What are the probabilities of your license to practice medicine ever being reinstated in Albany?”
He exhales.
“Sadly, zero to nil.”
“Take it from me, Doc, sell the crib and use the cash to move out of town and start over somewhere else. Costa Rica is nice this time of year.”
“Relocation is all very well and good, but first there’s the matter of getting my son off the hook.”
“If he deserves to be off the hook, I’ll make it happen.”
“Thank you, Moonlight. That’s reassuring, despite your transgressions.”
“Will you need me to drive you around this morning?”
“I can work from home. I imagine you have some detecting to do.”
“True dat,” I say, hanging up.
Across the table from me, Elvis swallows what’s in his mouth. A gulp of food that might feed a small village in East Africa. “We still got a job, boss?”
I sip my coffee, toss my final ten spot onto the table, set the coffee mug back over it. Then I slide out of the booth and stand.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“I’m not done.”
“Bring it with you,” I say, and head out of the diner.
Chapter 36
Elvis is just finishing up his hastily made sandwich of eggs and sausage stuffed between two large pancakes when we pull into the visitor parking lot of the Albany County Correctional Facility near the airport.
“You better not be getting any of that all over the seats,” I say, killing the engine.
“You should eat more, Moonlight,” he mumbles while swallowing the last gulp. “It’d make you a happier, more likable human being.”
“The way you eat? That means you should be shitting happy bricks twenty-four-seven.”
“Never trust a man who don’t like his food. That’s what my mama used to say.”
“You got a mother, Elvis?”
“Hey!” he barks. “Don’t make fun of my mama.”
I get out of the hearse, shut the door. We make our way through the unguarded opening in the razor-wire-topped chain link fence towards the glass and brick-walled visitor center. At the metal and chicken-wired reinforced glass door, one is required to press a doorbell-like device before the uniformed guard on the inside will let you in.
“Yes?” comes the tinny human voice over the hidden PA. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to visit one of your bad guys,” I say. Moonlight the jokester.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m here to see Stephen Schroder,” I add. “He was brought in yesterday late afternoon.”
“You have an appointment?”
“Do I really need one? It’s not like the kid’s busy.”
A brief pause follows until the voice exhales, says, “Okay, come on in.”
A buzzer sounds prior to the door unlatching. I open it and step inside, Elvis right behind me.
I approach the uniformed guard, fill out the necessary sign-in sheet, and so does Elvis. After we’re handed one guest badge apiece, we’re asked to wait inside the wide open visitor’s waiting room until another guard comes to retrieve us. It takes only five minutes for the guard to arrive. He’s a tall, thin, black man who’s dressed in his gray uniform, a black utility belt buckled tight around his waist upon which is clipped a canister of mace and a billy club.
“Follow me, please,” he says, matter-of-factly as we follow him out of the waiting room, through a metal door, and into a brightly lit corridor with steel doors embedded into the white painted concrete block walls on either side. As I pass by each of the doors, I try and grab a fleeting glimpse through the narrow, safety glass lights installed into the metal panels. Behind each of them is either a distraught looking face or a portion of body that’s covered in the blaze orange county jail jumper.
We m
ove on amidst a soundtrack of prisoner’s shouts and cries, a few of whom are awaiting their journey to a state or federal prison where they will more than likely spend the rest of their lives. Some of the inmates of County won’t make it to prison, but will instead serve their terms in here instead. Others are just here for a brief time until they are bailed out, or a judge overturns their arrest.
We come to the end of the corridor, hook a quick left, and then another quick right into an empty room that contains only a table and four metal chairs.
“Wait here,” the guard says, as he exits the room, closing the door behind him.
When he returns less than a minute later, he’s got Stephen with him. The kid is shackled and handcuffed like he poses a danger to life and limb, and maybe he does. His face is pale, his eyes sunken and bloodshot, as though he hasn’t slept a wink since he was transported here only yesterday.
The guard sits Stephen in one of the metal chairs, then locks his shackles to a round bolt embedded into the concrete floor.
“Stay there,” the guard says to the kid, turning his back on him.
“Ha fucking ha,” Stephen whispers under his breath. Then, in his mock Tony Montana, “I like your back, cock-a-roach. Much easier to watch than your front.”
“That Scarface shit gonna get you far in life, Silver Spoon,” the guard says. Then to me, “I’ll be right outside the door should you require my assistance.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m sure it won’t be necessary.”
The guard leaves, closing the door gently.
We sit in heavy silence for a few moments, with only the muffled sounds of the jail coming and going all around us. I’m staring into Stephen’s face as opposed to looking at it. As for Elvis, his eyes go from me to Stephen to me and back again. Like he’s watching a long volley at a pro tennis match.
After a while, the kid’s scowl slowly grows into a sly smile. One of those smiles you just want to slap off his doughy white face.
“Brings you here, Detective Moonbitch?” he says, tired glassy eyes now wide and beaming like his smile. “Thought my old man fired your suicidal ass.”
“I’m still here,” I say.
“Really,” he says. “And here I thought it was just some asshole who looks just like you.”
Out the corner of my eye, I see that Elvis is nervously following the conversational shootout, exchange for exchange.
“You like trying to intimidate people, don’t you, Stephen? That’s why you’re always hiding behind the Scarface imitations. Makes you feel bad ass. Like you can take on the entire town with your bare hands and superior wits.”
He squints his eyes a little. Purses his nasty smiling lips.
“This town is like a giant pussy waiting to get fucked. You scared, Moonbitch?”
I exhale and slowly rise from the chair, rap my knuckle on the narrow glass panel. It gets the guard’s attention. He opens the door, gives me a look like, “What is it?”
“You can go ahead and unlock young, Mr. Schroder.”
“Sure that’s a good idea?” the guard poses.
“Yeah, you sure that’s a good idea, Moonlight?” Elvis chimes in.
I turn to him.
“Mr. Hills, please accompany the guard outside when he’s done unlocking our young friend.”
“If you say so,” he says, wide eyes unblinking, no doubt happy to be leaving the room.
Without argument, the guard unshackles Schroder, carrying the heavy chains back out into the corridor with him so they can’t be used as a weapon. Elvis follows close behind. The door closes.
“Stand up,” I say to Schroder.
He looks up at me with a scowl.
“What’s this?” he giggles. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to be a tough guy, Moonfag.”
He stands, a smirk plastered on his face, his eyes unblinking, staring into me. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear I was back on the grammar school playground.
“Take a swing,” I tell him.
“Really, Moonfuck, I eat little boys like you for lunch. I’m bigger than you, younger, faster . . .”
He makes the mistake of punching like an amateur, cocking his right arm back before thrusting it forward. He hasn’t even formed a tight fist before I’ve landed an uppercut into his soft baby fat underbelly. The left hook to his nose causes it to explode in a spray of red arterial blood. He drops to his knees, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the blood.
“My dad is so gonna fucking kill you for this.”
The door opens fast. The guard takes a look at the now ailing Schroder. Then he shoots me a look, and for the first time since I arrived at the prison, smiles.
“Everything okay in here?” he asks, giving me a friendly wink of his right eye.
“Perfect,” I answer. “The young man and I were just getting around to talking. We won’t be but a minute more.”
“No problem. Take all the time you need. The prisoner has all day. Maybe even all his life.”
The door closes again. The bolt engages.
I reach out, grab hold of Schroder’s thick blond hair, pick him up by it, toss him back into the chair. His face is a mess of blood, snot, and tears.
“How’d a rich kid like you get to be a bully? Your parents fight a lot when you were a boy? They ignore you? Refuse to buy you a Nintendo 64?”
“Shut up,” he says. His words are trembling because he’s weeping. I don’t recall Tony Montana crying like a baby.
“Tell me what happened last Friday night at your North Albany home. I want to know how you lured that girl into your bedroom and what happened between you two that resulted in her crying rape, you posting pictures on Facebook, and her killing herself.”
He weeps for a little while longer, until I reach into my jeans pocket, pull out the hanky, toss it over to him.
“Clean up. Do it now.”
He does it.
He inhales a deep calming breath, lets it out.
“I didn’t fucking rape her, okay? I know you think I’m evil, but I did not rape her. Fuck, I wouldn’t know how to rape her.”
It hits me then.
“You’ve never had sex.”
He looks down at the floor, wipes his eyes with the now soiled hanky.
“No, I haven’t. Not with a girl.” Then, looking back up at me. “You understand me?”
And there it was. The reason for Stephen’s bullying. Or more accurately, perhaps one of the main reasons.
“I get it,” I say, shaking my head. “But what I don’t get is why you would have lured a young lady into your room during a house party if your preferred gender has nothing whatsoever to do with hers.”
He wipes his nose with the hanky again. It isn’t bleeding anymore.
“That’s just it,” he says. “She lured me.”
“She lured you.”
He nods, his face having gone from wise-ass-smug-punk to sad, deflated, and frightened.
“It’s the truth, Mr. Moonlight.”
“What about the pictures? The ones that went up on Facebook.”
“I took them. I wanted her out of my bedroom. She wouldn’t leave. She got naked, kept throwing herself at me. I told her to stop. She wouldn’t. I told her if she didn’t, I’d take some pics and post them on Facebook. She started calling me gay and a queer and a fatso fag, and whatever. So, I took the pictures and posted them. It was a terrible mistake because she went ballistic, started swinging at me, yelling ‘Rape, Rape, Rape!’ It broke the party up. So did my dad coming home with the cops right behind him.”
“I can only imagine.”
“I wanna be done with this.”
“You shouldn’t have taken those pictures. Shouldn’t have posted them on Facebook.”
“I know,” he says. And that’s when he begins to do something extraordinary for a bully of his caliber. The crying jag becomes weeping. Softy, mournfully, regretfully. “I liked Amanda. I wanted to be friends with her. She wanted to do things with me. But
I . . .” His words trail off because we both know what he’s about to say. That he can’t live a lie with Amanda any more than he can live a lie with anyone else.
I stand.
“Your father know about you? Your sexual orientation?”
He wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, pulls himself together.
“How can he not?”
“He doesn’t like it, does he?”
He looks me in the eye.
“He and his old school pals used to take a special pleasure in beating fags up in the locker room after gym. Which is kind of weird since I’m pretty convinced that my dad goes both ways. Must be he hates himself as much as I hate myself sometimes. Does that answer your question?”
I see the pain in his face. The anguish.
“What you’re telling me is the truth? About Amanda?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll do what I can to get you out of here.”
“Thank you.” He stands. “Listen, Mr. Moonlight. I’m sorry about . . . before. Me calling you names. When I get scared, I get like that.”
I nod.
“Don’t worry about it. Worry more about what will happen if I learn you’re not being straight with me.”
“That’s the problem. I’m not straight.”
I try to laugh but I can’t. Neither can he.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“You want your hanky back?”
“Would you?”
I open the door, let myself out.
“Let’s go, Elvis,” I say, making my way back down the corridor towards the county lockup exit. “And no, we don’t have time to stop for donuts.”
Chapter 37
It’s going on ten in the morning by the time we pull out of the Albany County Lockup parking lot.
“Where to now since we can’t get donuts?” Elvis asks.
“State Senator Bates’ home.”
“Sure we’re gonna feel welcome there?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe we should get ourselves cleaned up first.”
“Not a bad idea, Elvis. Every now and then you come out with something stunning.”
“Now who’s the bully?”
Moonlight Weeps: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller Book 8) Page 10
