Vadim is still shooting with the video camera.
Hector just stands there, a dumb looking expression occupying his square face as he turns to the window, catches his own red laser beam and his own bullet. He hasn’t yet dropped to the floor before Vadim’s head explodes like a water balloon filled with red dye no. 2. Then it’s Doctor Schroder’s turn, as the squirming, suffering brain surgeon falls peacefully still, what’s left of his own brain spilling down the front of his IZOD.
I can’t say that I’m afraid as the laser shoots and scoots all around the room, at one point planting a bead on the Senator’s forehead, but then quickly disappearing without once having landed on myself or Elvis. Maybe it’s the effects of the cocaine I snorted earlier. Or the fact that the Russians and the Schroders are now decidedly dead. Maybe it’s simply because the heavy metal death rock has stopped playing. But despite the carnage of the evening, I’m thinking clearly.
Case and point: I know that whoever did the shooting was most definitely not the cops. Definitely not SWAT. Definitely not the local Sheriff. Law enforcement doesn’t act that way. They would, in essence, announce their presence like the mounted cavalry blowing their trumpets.
Whoever did the shooting knew precisely who to kill and who only to kill. I’m just thankful I’m not the one who had to do the killing.
I turn my head, glance at Elvis as he wakes up. He’s lost his sunglasses, and his eyes are now open wide and filled with as much fear as they were before he passed out. Despite the DNA that stains it, his thick, grease-filled hair, however, is perfect. I try and pull my hands free, pull my ankles free. But the duct tape is too tight. Too binding. We’re stuck here until someone finds us.
Just me, Elvis, a State Senator, the dead Schroders, and a couple of Hollywood-obsessed drug runners whose souls can’t get through the gates of hell fast enough.
Chapter 66
Then comes a wonderful sight. No more than three minutes later, the glare of red, white, and blue halogen lights flash through the bullet-riddled window glass. It combines with a wonderful sound. Sirens blaring. From where Elvis and I are sitting, it sounds like an army of policemen and women. For once, I will be glad to see them.
Another half minute passes before I make out the sounds of lug soles pounding up the staircase. Full combat/riot-gear-wearing police officers burst into the bathroom, spraying the dark room with a half dozen red laser sights that flicker on and off the walls like a light show at a cheesy Moscow discotheque.
“Moonlight!” I hear, coming from one of the cops behind me. “You alive?”
I try and mumble a feeble “Yes” through my duct tape. But I’m not sure Detective Miller can make out what I’m trying to say.
He comes around front, rips off the tape.
“You ripped my lips off!” I bark.
He smiles.
“Oops,” he says. Then, looking down at the dead bodies, including one severed arm, “What the fuck happened here?”
“We had a little birthday party,” I say. “Didn’t go so well towards the end.”
Miller looks at Elvis, then turns and stares at the Senator.
“They okay?”
“Yup,” I say as the cops begin to undo our tape. “But you might want to trade the senator’s duct tape for a pair of handcuffs. He and the late Doctor Schroder were partners in the Oxy selling operation. The doc was into it for the cashish, but the senator was into it for the hashish. We have the evidence on tape. Oh, and you’ll find his deceased sister-in-law downstairs on the couch. Her reasons for getting mixed up in all this are probably a combination of easy money and drugs, plus all the sex she could pile high on her dinner plate.”
“Someone shoot her in the eye?”
“No, she died by trick exploding Soviet Army birthday cake . . . Don’t ask.”
One of the cops frees Elvis.
He stands.
“This PI shit ain’t no more fun,” he says. “I quit, Moonlight. Are we square now?”
“You can go, Elvis. Your work is done here. And yes, we are square.”
He goes to leave.
“Ahh, Elvis,” Miller says. “Don’t go far. I’ll need a statement from you later.”
“I need a drink,” he says, bounding down the stairs.
Finally, I’m freed. I stand, rubbing my wrists. My eyes are planted on the politician who is still duct-taped to the kitchen chair. The cops are obviously in no hurry to free him.
“There goes the career, Senator,” I say.
He just stares back at me like he’s disappointed about still being alive. Knowing how bad it’s going to be when the media and the voting public burns him alive, I can’t say I blame him.
Outside on the front lawn, I light a cigarette while an EMT van pulls right up onto the grass, along with two long, black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows. The EMT van is for the Senator, but the Suburbans are for carrying away the dead. Trust the son of a mortician, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
Miller issues a series of orders to the dozen or more cops holding court on the front lawn, the chatter from the radios on the six or seven lit up cruisers that surround the place filling the air. The tinny chatter sounds somehow better than the death metal that I’ve had to suffer all night. He makes his way through the cops and through a small crowd of reporters and neighborhood sightseers who are only now beginning to gather like flies on shit.
“Let’s take a walk, Deputy,” he orders.
“You’re the boss,” I say, following him into the darkness around the back side of the house.
We walk to the far perimeter of the property to the tree line.
“We picked up Kevin Woods on foot as he was crossing over the golf course,” Miller explains. “When some neighbors called in saying they heard what sounded like gunshots coming from Schroder’s property, we came running.”
“I warned you about Kevin,” I say. “He had his laser sights set on the Schroders a long time ago. All he needed was something like what happened to Amanda last Friday night for him to work up the courage to finally do it.”
Miller reaches into his pocket, pulls out a Mini-Maglite, thumbs the Latex covered switch, shines the bright circle of light onto the ground. Resting on top of the leaves are four brass shell casings.
“Looks like thirty ought six,” he says. “Must have been perched up in this old oak. Gave him a perfect, unobstructed line of fire into the bathroom. Probably wouldn’t even need a scope at this range if he were doing his killing during the daylight hours.”
“He used a laser sight. Probably an infrared scope, too.”
“Really?” Miller says as if surprised. “Good for him.”
I catch the smile that forms on his face as he turns his flashlight off.
“He’ll get a fair trial,” he adds. “As for the Senator, my guess is Kevin wanted to leave him alive in order to make him face the inevitable shame and humiliation. Perfect. Exactly what I would have done.”
I can’t exactly see him, but I know his smile has grown even wider.
“You knew, didn’t you,” I say. “You knew Kevin was going to strike tonight.”
“I didn’t know for sure. One can never be certain of such things.” He pauses to breathe in and out. “But I had a hunch. A good, solid hunch.”
I smoke my cigarette, exhale blue smoke against the night sky.
“It’s not right,” I say. “Maybe not the Russians, but even the Schroders had their right to a fair trial.”
“Maybe,” he says, taking a step or two back towards the house. “But it all would have been expensive and who knows, in the end, his lawyer might have found a way for him to get off. On a technicality or something. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“Do their deaths pay for Amanda’s death?”
“I think so.”
“Do they wipe away the memory of your wife’s death?”
He looks up at the sky as if proceeding to ask his wife that very question. After a time, he nods an
d whispers, “You, too, babe? If you’re good with it, then I’m good with it.” Then, lowering his head, he turns back to me.
“Nothing will ever erase the memory of her death. But, at least, now we both feel as though we can live with it.”
For a brief, but heavy, moment, we both stand in silence while the last of my cigarette burns down to my fingertips.
“We done here, Moonlight?”
“You tell me. I’m your official deputy bitch these days.”
“Ex-deputy bitch,” he says. “Job well done.”
I reach into my coat pocket, grab the temporary badge and hand it to him. He stuffs it into his jacket pocket and walks away, his tall body fading back into the darkness of this long, long night.
Me? I place what’s left of the burning cig between my lips. Pulling up the collar on my leather coat, I take the long way around to the front of the house, whistling, “We’re caught in a trap . . .” the entire way.
EPILOGUE
It’s another three days before I’m ready for Georgie to pick me up in his pickup truck.
When I get in, I can hardly feel my legs as I close the door, strap on my seatbelt.
“You ready for this, Moonlight?” he says, his blue eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, his long hair pulled back tight in a ponytail.
“No,” I say. Then, “Yes.”
“When was the last time you had a drink?”
“Three days ago.”
“Promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
Pulling away from the loft, he makes his way across the abandoned parking lot all the way to Broadway, where he hooks a right. We drive for a while through the city until we come to the northern edge of town in an area that formerly housed the steel mills, lumber yards, and warehouses, but that now has become rehabilitated and gentrified into apartments and lofts for young urban professionals and artists.
He pulls up to a five-story brick structure that’s been painted white.
“Her number is 5B,” he says. “She’ll let you in because she’s expecting her monthly FedEx delivery of meds. Blood thinners, mostly to prevent stroke. You know the score with that head of yours.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Georgie.”
“I’m not sure what you would do, either,” he says. “As far as Lola goes, she won’t be getting her meds right now.”
I look down at my hands. They’re trembling.
“Right now, she’s going to get me instead. Whether she wants me or not.”
“She’ll learn to want you again, Moon. Just be yourself.” He reaches into the back storage area behind the seats, comes back around with some flowers gripped in his hand. A springtime assortment of daisies, orchids, petunias, and some other stuff that I don’t recognize. “Go get her back, tiger,” he adds handing me the flowers.
I open the door, slip on out of the truck.
I cross the street, enter into the building’s vestibule through the front glass door. I see the buzzer for 5B, the name Ross taped above it in black block letters. Well, at least she still remembers her name. Inhaling a deep breath that does nothing to slow the pulse pounding in my temples, I press the buzzer.
After a few long seconds, I hear a voice. A voice I recognize. A voice from the dead.
“Yes,” she says.
“Delivery,” I swallow.
“Come on up.”
There’s an electronic buzz, and then the door opens. I push my way through it, take the elevator to the fifth floor. I walk the brightly lit floor, not feeling the soles on my feet as they strike the linoleum-covered surface. By the time I come to the door marked 5B, I can hardly breathe. It takes almost all of my strength to raise my hand, extend my index finger, press the doorbell.
The buzzer sounds.
I pray to God above that I don’t make a fool of myself by passing out at her doorstep.
I hear footsteps, then a hand grabbing hold of the opener, and another hand unlatching the deadbolt. The door opens. I see her face. Lola’s beautiful tanned, brown-eyed face, her dark hair veiling it.
“Hello,” she says, looking into my eyes. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Moonlight weeps.
If you enjoyed this Dick Moonlight PI noir thriller, we invite you to try Moonlight Falls and Moonlight Sonata.
Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and No. 1 bestselling author of more than 20 novels including THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT WEEPS, EVERYTHING BURNS, ORCHARD GROVE, and WHEN SHADOWS COME.
An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated in the Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and FOX news. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the Best Books of 2014. A freelance photo-journalist and the author of the popular "lit blog," The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri writes for Engineering 360 and has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Suspense Magazine, Hudson Valley Magazine, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more. He lives in New York and Florence, Italy.
For more go to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Vincent Zandri © copyright 2016
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
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Cover design by Elder Lemon Art
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published in the United States of America
Moonlight Weeps: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller Book 8) Page 19
