Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1) Page 21

  55

  Scarlet’s empty drawer was still open.

  “Get in,” George said.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  I looked inside the drawer. It was dark and cavernous.

  “George, I can’t—”

  “Don’t argue!” he insisted, his voice a whisper-shout. Skinny old George practically picked me up and threw me in himself.

  When he closed the door, my world went black. I was locked inside a morgue drawer that only minutes before held the body of a woman I’d slept with. Had I hidden inside caskets back when I was a kid? Yeah. But this was different.

  I tried to hold my breath, but it was impossible. No choice but to breathe the cold death smell in through my mouth while George unlocked the door to the room, allowing Cain inside.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?” I heard George say, nice and polite.

  “Where is he?” Cain asked.

  “Where is who, Detective?”

  “Your friend, Dick Moonlight.”

  As far as I could tell from inside that drawer, Cain was all alone. But then, I had no way of being sure. The voices were difficult to pick up through the drawer’s steel paneling.

  “Don’t insult me, Detective,” I heard George go on. “Mr. Moonlight is a fugitive wanted for the murder of Mrs. Montana. I, for one, would not hesitate to alert the proper authorities if I were to come upon him.”

  That’s when Cain laughed. One of those loud smoker’s laughs that come from deep inside toasty lungs followed by a couple of lung- ripping coughs.

  “That was beautiful, Dr. Phillips,” he said. “You really missed your calling.”

  I began to hear something else now. Like a banging noise, only not a banging noise. More like a mechanical sliding sound followed by a slamming sound. Cain, opening and closing the drawers.

  “Let me tell you something, Doctor,” Cain said. “If I find out you’re lying to me, I will revoke your license. I will see to it that you do time.”

  “Like I’ve already told you,” George said, cool and collected, “I’m not the type to harbor a man suspected of murder. I have my reputation to consider.”

  “And what a hell of a reputation it is, George,” Cain said. “When was the last time you saw the light of day? You know, it’s true what they say about you.”

  “What do they say about me, Detective?”

  “That you’re really just as dead as the stiffs you slice up down here.”

  “Is that what they say?”

  Cain laughed some more. “That’s what I say, Phillips.”

  “Sticks and stones, Detective,” George said. “Sticks and stones.”

  Cain was treating George like common dirt. I understood then why my big brother went out of his way to help me whenever I asked for it. This wasn’t only about extra money for his granddaughter. It was about giving it back to people like Cain who considered the pathologist the lowest rung on the medical ladder. As if working with the dead made you incompetent when it came to dealing with the living.

  A few more drawers opened. The noises were getting louder. He was coming closer. Lying inside there, stone stiff and still, I knew he could not have been more than a drawer or two away from me.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for it to slide open.

  But the drawer didn’t move.

  Instead, I heard Cain ask about the two tagged and bagged stiffs laid out on the gurneys.

  “You’re the inquiring detective,” George said. “You tell me.”

  I heard what I thought was the unzipping of the body bags.

  “Why do you have them laid out like this?” Cain inquired.

  “They’re both on their way to Fitzgerald’s,” George said. “For embalming and for burial per the deceased’s instructions.” He paused a beat. “Please don’t hesitate to give the funeral directors a call if you’d like to confirm. You may use the phone in my office.”

  I heard the zipping back up of the bags. At least, I thought I could hear it.

  Loyalty. . . Fitzgerald’s. . . If Cain called George’s bluff and made the call, I knew that Mrs. Fitzgerald would not be able to lie for us. Nor would I want her to.

  “In a little while I’m heading north,” Cain said. “I’ll be back in town by noon. I’ll call then. If the bodies aren’t there by that time, I’ll send my own people out after them.”

  “I certainly won’t stand in the way of law and order, Detective,” George went on. “Is there anything else you need from me this fine morning?”

  I heard the door open.

  “Just remember what I said, Phillips,” Cain insisted. “You hold back on me with anything, anything at all, and I will take you down right along with your old buddy. Do you understand me?”

  “So help me die, Detective.”

  “You have a very morbid sense of humor, Dr. Phillips.”

  At least he’s got one, I thought from my grave.

  The door slammed behind Cain. A second later the drawer opened. I couldn’t jump out fast enough. I had a bullet in my brain. Who knew when I’d be renting one of those things for real? While I scrubbed my face and hands in the sink, George went out into the parking lot to make certain Cain was gone for good. When he came back in his face looked tighter than a tick.

  “It’s still raining,” he said. “But the sun hasn’t come up yet. We go now, we can make it to my house before full dawn.”

  “George,” I said, “if you do this, there’s no turning back.”

  “Listen, Moon, I know what I’m doing. . . In a us-against-the-world sort of way.”

  I finished drying my face and made my way back into the pathologist’s office. Opening up the top drawer of his file cabinet, I pulled a folder that contained the name and case number of a job I had worked on for Cain just a short time ago. I shoved it under my arm and met George back out in the hall, gazing into his tired blue eyes.

  “Got what you need?” he asked.

  “An acquittal would be nice,” I said. “And maybe a new brain.”

  56

  On the way uptown, we stopped at a Stewarts convenience store. While I waited sunk down in the passenger seat of the El Camino, George proceeded to clean the place out of its ice.

  A few minutes later the sun was coming up over thick gray clouds. First we transported the ice, then we carried the bodies in through the back door off a dark, narrow alley.

  We set Jake’s bagged body into the tub inside the downstairs bathroom off the kitchen. After packing my former boss in ice, we then carried Scarlet up to the second-floor bathroom and repeated the process.

  Having packed them with ice, however, we both knew that their state of preservation (such as it was) would not last. Maybe thirty-six to forty-eight hours at most before things started getting ripe. Even then, we’d have to change the ice two times per day, minimum.

  By the time we were through, daybreak was in full shine through the usual gray filter. Maybe the day was entirely overcast, but this morning at least the rain had taken a breather. George was good enough to find me a pair of Levis plus a green-and-black-checkered shirt. The jeans and the shirt were a bit snug in the waist and chest, but at least there wasn’t any blood on them.

  “Now what?” George asked from inside his galley kitchen, a cup of coffee in hand.

  “You got a wiretap hanging around?” I half-joked.

  “How’s about an old hand-held tape recorder?”

  “What about a video camera?”

  “Super-eight home movie camera,” he smiled. “My old man bought it right after the war. I used to make crazy trippy movies with it back in the late sixties.”

  “Get it out. And don’t forget film.”

  “Whaddaya you got in mind?” he asked.

  “While I pay a visit to my ex-wife, I’ll need you to go north, get some footage of Cain.”

  “How can you be sure he’s not home right now, catching up on his beauty sleep?”

  “Because people in his position do not sleep and
don’t forget, we were partners for a hell of a long time. I know how the motherfucker thinks,” I growled.

  “So what’s the mofo thinking?” George asked.

  “He mentioned going north. I think I can provide you with the specific Saratoga address.”

  I asked him for a phonebook. When he pulled it out from a drawer in the kitchen, I once again looked up the stats on the Russian cuisine restaurant called The Russo. I wrote everything down on a slip of scrap paper and handed it to George. I asked him how he felt about using his credit card to rent a Ryder van for the day while I commandeered the El Camino. We’d need the van later on, anyway.

  “If I have to,” he said.

  I told him he had to.

  “Christ Moon, to think I used to order your skinny ass around.”

  I instructed him to meet me back at his house at noon sharp. He said he could be ready to rock ‘n’ roll in five minutes. Then he said, “Ain’t got much in the way of scratch, Moony, other than what you fed me after the autopsy.”

  I got his point loud and crystal. That dough was his dough. No, that’s not right. It was his granddaughter’s dough.

  “Color eight-millimeter film takes a week to ten days to process. But I produce enough working capital, I can get a guy I know across the river to develop it one hour.”

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out the albino man’s envelope, opened it, and slid out five one-hundreds for myself and ten for George. There was fifteen more one-hundreds left over, which I stashed back in my pants.

  “Will that do?”

  “Plenty,” he said. He stuffed the goods in his chest pocket and left through the back door.

  57

  I parked the El Camino three lots down from Lynn and Mitchell Cain’s center hall Colonial. As expected, Cain’s BMW wasn’t parked in the drive.

  Rather than ring the bell, giving Lynn the chance to eye me from the upstairs window, I decided to backdoor it. I couldn’t have made a better decision.

  The way the house was set on a decline, the back door off the basement was accessible at ground level. The finished basement also served as a playroom for my boy, who was sitting on the carpeted floor playing Xbox.

  First I pulled out my shirttails, draping them over the automatic stuffed into my jeans. Then I tapped on the window beside the door with my knuckles. When the scrappy little kid looked up from his game, he saw my face and smiled. From outside I couldn’t help but notice that his baseball mitt was set in his lap.

  “Daddy!” I heard him say through the glass.

  I motioned with my right hand for him to unlock the door and let me in. Without missing a beat, he tossed the glove onto the floor, got up and opened the door. A second later, I was in.

  When I bent down to kiss him, I felt my head go light, my throat close in on itself.

  “We were supposed to be together last night,” he said, a little pout forming on his face. “What happened?”

  “Daddy sort of got tied up,” I said. “But I promise, I’ll make it up to you next week. How about we take a canoe up to Little’s lake, catch some bass?”

  “Cool!” he said, with a little jump. “So long as I don’t have a game.”

  “You don’t always play ball, do you, Bear?”

  His Batman pajama bottoms were falling down his skinny body, so he hiked them up.

  “I saw you on TV,” he said. I felt my heart race when he said it.

  “How’d I look?” I asked.

  “All dressed up in orange like that guy in The Fugitive. Mitch and me watch that movie on DVD.”

  My stomach sank at the thought of my son cozying up to Cain.

  “I look good?”

  He snickered. “Mom said it was about time you got what you had coming.”

  “That’s Mom,” I said. “Always joking around.” I ran my hand through his hair. “Speaking of Mom, is she up?”

  “She’s on her treadmill, I think. I’m not supposed to disturb her when she’s exercising.”

  I took a quick moment to listen. I made out the sound of the treadmill belt winding its way around the rollers.

  “I think I’ll go up and say hello,” I said.

  “Okay, but Mommy’s not going to like being disturbed.”

  I told him I’d proceed at my own risk.

  “That’s what Mitch always says,” he said. Then he asked, “Daddy, will I see you on TV again?”

  I smiled. “Yes, you will, and when you do, I won’t be wearing an orange jumper. But I will, however, be wearing a smile. Just for you.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” he said.

  “Neither can I.”

  I took the stairs up into the kitchen, two at a time.

  I didn’t stop there.

  I pulled the one hand cannon I had left from out of my jeans, made my way into the front vestibule, and up the center hall stairs. On the way, I noticed that the wall was covered with photos of the whole Cain family. Smiley-faced pics of Mitch, Lynn and my son sitting on a sunny Cape Cod beach. Another of just Lynn and Mitch holding hands on their wedding day.

  At the top of the stairs was a picture of Mitch and my son, each of them down on one knee, smiling for the camera. Mitch was wearing a red baseball cap that said, “Joe’s Grill” on the brim. It matched exactly the red t-shirt and cap my son was wearing. Further down, another photo revealed Mitch all dressed up his uniform blues, his hair cut just as short as it was now, but without the gray. As for the smug cop smile, it hadn’t changed one bit.

  At the top of the stairs, the rolling thunder noise coming from the treadmill was almost deafening. I made my way down the narrow hall, past the bathroom, past walls covered with more family snapshots, past Mitch’s and Lynn’s bedroom until I came to a room that contained the treadmill, a television and nothing else.

  I stepped inside, tapping the pistol barrel on the doorjamb. Lynn looked up quick. If this had been a Loony Toon, she would have shot straight through the ceiling. She pulled off her headphones and yanked a plastic red safety key from the readout panel that instantly stopped the rolling tread.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded, breathless voice barely a whisper.

  “You shouldn’t leave our son alone in the basement,” I told her.

  She stepped off the now idol treadmill. “I’m calling the police.”

  “I am the police,” I said, thumbing the hammer on the .38. “Besides, it’s your husband they really want. They just don’t know it yet.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, I’m in my right mind for a change. Mitchell is the crazy one. Believes he can get away with murder.”

  Lynn was wearing black spandex biker shorts, ped socks with Nike emblems on them and Nike running shoes. Her hair was bleached blonde, trimmed butch-short. When I was married to her, it was sandy brown and shoulder-length. Like Martha Stewart.

  “Mitchell is an outstanding officer and a decorated detective,” she said. “He would never do anything to jeopardize his reputation and the reputation of his family.” She actually seemed genuine, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I saw what they said about you on the news. About how you killed Scarlet Montana. You’re the criminal now. The screw-up- everything-you-touch son of a bitch. Knowing you, you probably have no recollection of it. Or at least, that will be your story. Won’t it, Richard?” She rattled the whole thing off without taking a breath.

  It made my skin shiver to be the subject of one of her tirades, especially one accusing me of murder. Maybe she knew something more than I knew. Something from the inside. In any case, I wasn’t there to argue. I was there to get information. Which is why I slid my hand inside my shirt, hitting RECORD on the tape recorder I’d duct-taped to my already bandaged chest.

  “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

  “You’re the one with the gun,” she said.

  I asked her the standard questions that I knew would either go unanswered or just relegated to I don’t know what you’re talking a
bout.

  Did she know that Mitch was engaged in illegal black market activity, namely the illicit harvesting and sales of body parts? Did she have any idea how long he had been participating in the operation? Why, in her opinion, would Mitch want to risk his own life by killing Scarlet and Jake?

  I asked her everything I could think of. But the most I got out of her was the tight, angry face I recalled so well. The face that told me, if she could, she would tear my eyeballs out and swallow them whole.

  The face that wasn’t entirely her fault. Not by a long shot. Because I wasn’t exactly being fair, was I? In a real way, she had every right to be angry. I was the one who’d decided to put my career before my family. I was the one who’d decided to sleep with Scarlet. Then, when I discovered that Lynn was sleeping with my partner, I’d decided to play the role of the suicidal cop. As if that would have solved everything.

  So who could blame Lynn now?

  Now that she was about to be screwed over again. Not by a man, necessarily, but by a goddamned cop.

  “Now if you do not plan on shooting me,” she said, “I have a child to get off to school. You do remember our son, don’t you, Richard?”

  Memory, it’s not the problem. . .

  She approached me. I thumbed back the hammer, lowered the weapon to my side. I couldn’t help but feel deflated and defeated, as if my life were nothing more than a badly played board game.

  “I don’t blame you for not talking,” I said. “I hurt you once.”

  “You gave me a world of hurt, more than once. And to believe I tried to help you when you needed it most, and you refused.”

  “Maybe it’s Mitch who’s hurting you now.”

  That’s when her eyes went from wide and angry to heavy and hurt. The mere mention of Mitch and hurt in the same sentence seemed to knock the wind right out of her. Having shared my life with them both, I knew Cain and I knew Lynn. There was something more to her distress than met the eye. I decided to go with my intuition.

  “He’s cheating on you, isn’t he?”

  “That’s none of your business.”