Moonlight Rises Read online

  Score.

  Czech guns the car up the driveway incline. At first, I think he might plow right through the garage door. But then he hits the brakes only foot or so from the door, the boat of a modified car rocking and bouncing on bad shocks, just like Dad’s old black Cadillac hearse. The headlamps shine bright on the overhead garage door, until the door suddenly starts raising and light fills the garage interior.

  The car jolts forward once more and then skids to a stop inside the garage.

  “Your client likes his cocktails,” Georgie chuckles.

  “Go easy on him. He’s handicapped…I think.”

  By now I have my binoculars out. They aren’t equipped with night vision like you see in the movies. But they are UV-coated. I purchased them on clearance for fifteen bucks at my local drugstore. With the garage light on, I have no trouble making Czech out. I see him swing his legs out and plant his feet firmly on the floor of the garage. Then he reaches into the back seat, opens the back door. It opens in the opposite manner a door will usually open, the hinges mounted toward the trunk rather than at the midpoint of the cab. The same way the doors work on an old-fashioned limo. Like the kind my dad used to hire out on occasion for a client willing to pay up for the A-level funeral procession package. A custom body job no doubt designed especially for his handicap.

  I see him reaching for something, which I assume is a wheelchair. When he pulls himself out of the car by his arms and sit down hard into something, I know I’m right. He closes the driver’s side door, then closes the back door, and begins to wheel himself around the back side of the car.

  I keep my binocs on him the entire time. When he stops about midway across the back of the car and spots the van, I can’t help but think that he’s spotted me, too. His employer spying on him. Even from that distance I can feel him looking right into my eyes, as if he can somehow make up for his paralyzed condition with superhuman eyesight.

  “Start the van, Georgie. But leave the lights off.”

  Georgie starts it. Czech turns back to the garage, wheels himself inside. The garage door comes down. Maybe ten or fifteen seconds later, the lights go on in the house. I aim the spyglasses at the living room window, which is covered in drapes. When I see them open just a crack, I know Czech is eyeing us again.

  “Let’s go,” I suggest.

  My girlfriend Georgie drives.

  Chapter 21

  We’re driving back toward my loft.

  “So, tell me, Moon,” Georgie says after a time. “What was the point of that little exercise?”

  “You gotta ask?”

  He turns to me while driving, that long gray-white hair still draping his face like a guitar dude from ZZ Top, sans the Santa beard.

  “You thought he was faking his paralysis, didn’t you?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “You don’t trust your client.” His right hand shoots up, index finger pointing at the van ceiling. “Correction, you never trust your clients.”

  “Jim Rockford’s rule number one in the private detective’s handbook: Never trust your client, especially if she’s a woman. Didn’t you ever watch The Rockford Files?”

  “You’re dating yourself. And apparently for you and Jim Rockford, a handicapped person falls under the female category. What are you, a fucking caveman?”

  “Jim Rockford’s rule number two. Never trust a handicapped client who can pound two pint-sized Jack and Cokes in about twenty minutes and still drive a straight line out of your drinking establishment.”

  “Hmmm,” he mumbles, pulling up outside my two-story building. “Out of curiosity, what’s Rockford’s rule number three?”

  He comes to a stop, kills the engine and the lights.

  “Never trust a client who’s willing to spend good money to hire a head-case like me. That’s actually my personal rule. Jim Rockford was worth the money. After all, we’re talking James Garner here…in his prime.”

  “I’m in my prime, Moon. Even if I do feel old.”

  “This ain’t about you. ’Sides, when it comes to that body of yours, it’s the mileage, not the years. And you’re still strong as an ox. Just a little worn around the treads.”

  I open my door. Georgie opens his.

  I have no idea what hits me before my world turns black.

  Chapter 22

  Here’s the deal: You’re dead again.

  Or, at least you’re pretty sure you’re dead. Because just like last time, you’re floating over your body in the far corner of a room with no windows. Looks a lot like a basement with concrete walls and a concrete floor. In the background, a garden variety Sears boiler, and a hot water tank with the ductwork and piping ripped out.

  You’re laid out on some sort of gurney or table. Duct tape covers your mouth. Your legs and arms are duct taped together at the wrists and ankles. In fact, your whole body is duct taped to the table. You can’t move anymore. Not with the blood that covers your chest and neck. Not with the blood that’s pouring off the table, pooling onto the concrete floor. Not with your heart no longer beating, your brain no longer functioning.

  It’s the same with Georgie.

  He’s been duct taped to a second table directly beside your own. While your eyes are closed, his are wide open, watching the three Obama-masked men-in-black poke him with something that looks like a hair dryer. Electrocuting him with wires that stick out of the nozzle.

  Like you, Georgie’s also bleeding from numerous lacerations and scrapes. As the electrical charges are applied, you can see him trying to back away. But there’s nowhere to go. While the men standing on either side of him take turns doing the torturing, the third one stands at the foot of the table and presses that voice machine against his throat.

  “Where is the zippy box?” he demands in that foreign electronic voice. “Your partner…he has box, yes? We need box.”

  From where you’re looking down on these three motherfuckers, you want to tell them you don’t have their precious box…whatever the fuck a zippy box is. That you never had a box. That you don’t even remember looking at the box. That they have the wrong man. It’s Czech they want. Not you. Not Georgie.

  As much as it pains you to see Georgie being tortured for something that’s your fault, you’re feeling kind of glad that you’re dead again. You’re starting to like this out-of-body-no-pain thing. You’re just waiting for the little speck of bright white light to reappear and for that rollercoaster ride through the wormhole. You’re looking forward to seeing the old man again. You’ll miss Lola, but you’re not sure she’ll miss you. Not with Some Young Guy to keep her company now.

  But then something happens.

  You feel yourself drifting. Only not in the right direction. You feel yourself drifting back down toward your bloody, beat-up, sweat-soaked body. It’s slow at first, and you do your best to resist the movement south. But how can you resist when you are no longer flesh and blood?

  It only takes a few seconds and, like a foot slipped into a well-worn boot, you’re back in your body.

  Chapter 23

  OK, maybe I didn’t die again after all.

  Maybe I was only dreaming. Maybe I was delusional after having been knocked unconscious for the second time in a few days, my already fragile brain screaming, Uncle!

  When I open my eyes, I feel more pain pressing up against my eyeballs than I can possibly comprehend. Imagine Conan the Barbarian shoving his sausage-thick thumbs into both your eye sockets until they pop out the back end of your skull? So much pain, I’m wishing myself dead. I know it’s difficult to stay alive sometimes, but is it really that hard to fucking die?

  Turning my head, I manage a quick glance over my shoulder.

  Georgie’s laid out on the table beside me. I try to scream through my duct-tape-covered mouth. Whatever I’m doing, it must be working. Because I manage to catch the attention of the Obama-masked leader, the one with the cancer machine now pressed up agai
nst his throat. He glances at me while the other two Obamas are busy applying those exposed electrical wires to Georgie’s mams. While the bigger of the two Obamas holds my big brother down, the far smaller one keeps trying to shift the hair dryer from slow to rapid air, and at the same time increasing the electrical charge in the wires. Or so I assume.

  But something seems to be the matter.

  The hair dryer is plugged in, but it doesn’t seem to be working, so they have to be content with sticking Georgie with the sharp ends of the wire.

  “What kind of torture you think this is?” says the smaller Obama, revealing his voice without the synthesizer. Russian. The voice is most definitely Russian.

  “I cannot work under such conditions,” says the other. He’s talking without his voice machine also. Another Russian. “In mother country, we can count on reliable Russian nuclear reactor to provide power. Here, in U-S-of-A, the fucking Bambi lovers won’t have nuclear reactor. Except in bombs. America is soft and fat and stupid, yes?”

  The smaller Obama keeps poking Georgie with the wires, anyway. He keeps flicking the switch like he’s convinced the power is about to come back on at any moment.

  Georgie’s face is beet red, and tighter than a tick. I’m not sure how much pain he’s in. But if they could tap the anger in him right now, they’d generate one hell of a charge.

  The head commander-in-chief Obama keeps demanding that Georgie tell them where the box is—the “fleshy” or “zippy box,” if I’m hearing him correctly. Since Georgie has less of a clue than I do, the little Obama keeps tapping him with the exposed wires, hoping for a charge. And with each prod, Georgie is growing more and more pissed off. Dude already has a painful skin condition in the form of frequent and recurring malignant melanoma.

  Thrusting his free hand out, he orders his sick Obama underlings to put a stop to their torture session. Such as it is.

  “Moonlight…He is awake, yes?” he says in electronic monotone. “Moonlight, he is trying to tell us all something.”

  He steps over to me, careful not to trip over the long electrical extension cord attached to the modified Conair hair dryer. He pulls the tape off my mouth. I suck in a breath. The damp basement air tastes like worms. It’s possible I’ve soiled myself. It’s possible Georgie has, too. Torture isn’t pretty, even if it does come from an uncharged everyday hair dryer most teenage girls own.

  I try to speak, but no words will come out.

  Commander Obama moves in closer to me, leans the side of his head into me, so that I can whisper into his ear. Pressing the voice box against his neck, he says, “Speak to me, Mr. Moonlight. Where is the zippy box?”

  “I. Don’t. Have. It.”

  He stands up fast, as if once more making for Georgie and more hair dryer torture.

  “Wait!” I’m trying to scream. But it comes out like a whisper.

  He turns back.

  “I do. I do. I do know where it is!” It hurts to speak. Feels like chunks of skin tearing off the back of my throat. But what choice do I have?

  He’s interested now. All three of them are interested, while they plant their gazes on me through those silly presidential masks.

  “It’s in my home.”

  “Where in home?” Commander Obama insists.

  “I’ll show you. But first you have to un-tape us, stop prodding Georgie with that Conair.”

  Commander Obama glances at the others. “Unbind them,” he orders, no longer feeling the need to use the cancer voice box now that his Russian cover is blown. Then his eyes back on me. “We will do this your way for now, yes? But if box isn’t there, Mr. Moonlight, we will torture you for real. We know how to torture you. We do good torture. Tricks we learn in Chechnya and Gori. Torture that is so slow, and agonizing, you will dead wish inside this concrete hole.”

  “He would wish he died, you mean,” chimes in the smaller Obama, the Conair still gripped in his right hand. “You learn nothing in English school.”

  “I learn how to say ‘fuck’ and ‘you’!” barks Commander Obama. “Do not correct me when I speaking the English.”

  “I get it,” I interject. “Yes, yes, yes, I very well get the point.”

  “See, ass pie?” Commander Obama says to the short Obama.

  “Ass! Hole!” small Obama corrects again. “Word is Ass! Hole! Yes?”

  I’m fearing an all-out brawl, which might not be a bad thing. But I also want to get the hell out of that basement. I decide to lay on some Moonlight charm.

  “Wow, you really know how to frighten somebody, Barack. Your English is excellent, and you really know what you’re doing. In that whole torture-the-guy-in-possession-of-the-important-information kind of way. I’m gonna have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

  I sense Commander Obama actually smiling proudly under his rubber mask. “I can do well in this country of the brave Bambis and the soft belly, yes?”

  “Yes, Mr. Obama,” I say. “Only in America can a man like you grow up to be President.”

  Chapter 24

  They un-tape us from the tables.

  Having duct tape torn off your bare chest is torture enough. Big and short Obama get a kick out of the procedure, like they’re giving us a waxing that glam chicks out in L.A. only dream about.

  Then a fourth Obama appears on the scene. Or maybe this Obama has been there lurking in the shadows the entire time.

  This one is shorter than the short one with the Conair. And smaller, too. Slighter. The newly arrived little one applies some Betadine solution to Georgie’s chest. Following that, the little Obama bandages him up. What we have here is a torturer with a conscience.

  “Don’t take this off until later,” the little Obama whispers. “And those jerk-offs made me agree to all this.”

  The voice shocks me more than that dead-in-the-water Conair did Georgie. It’s a female voice. It isn’t like the others. Do I suspect dissension in the ranks?

  I most certainly do.

  They yank us off the tables, stand us up, replace the duct tape on our mouths with fresh tape, and bind our wrists together behind our backs. Then they lead us up the stairs and out a trap door to a four-door BMW with tinted windows.

  No one says another word without the use of those voice synthesizers. That’s when something dawns on me. For the most part, they’ve been super double-secret protective of their voices. Is it possible I know one of them? Otherwise, why hide your voice?

  But I’m in no position to push the matter. Plus, there’s the issue of the smaller one. The one with the woman’s voice. No way she’s a part of the original gang-of-three that beat me to death just the other day. She’s a newbie. Far smaller than her teammates. By all appearances, she’s willing to blow her cover by whispering to us, and by helping mend the small punctures Georgie received from that Conair wire.

  Commander Obama and short Obama snuggle up into the front shotgun seat. Commander is pressed up tight against the door, yet somehow manages to hold a 9mm on us over his left shoulder. The taller of the three Obamas gets behind the wheel, fires her up. The small female Obama squeezes in beside me, an identical 9mm gripped in her left hand.

  That’s where they make their mistake.

  Putting Georgie and me together like that. If I were doing the transporting, I would have placed someone in between Georgie and me. Or I would have at least put one of us up front in the middle, instead of that fireplug. That way they could prevent us from working together to undo the duct tape that binds our wrists.

  To be truthful, it isn’t all that difficult.

  As the BMW moves slowly across a barren landscape of formerly suburban McHomes, I maneuver my wrists toward Georgie. Even with them being bound behind my back, I can do it without little female Obama or Commander Obama being the least bit suspicious. After all, they’re wearing masks. They have limited or even zero peripheral vision.

  Partially obscured vision is also a mistake.

  The ta
ll and wiry Georgie is able to maneuver his arms enough toward his left hip to get a hold of my wrists and to begin working his long fingers on my tape. He also has the benefit of long fingernails, as so many pot smokers do. The easier to roll a ducktail joint with. He works until I feel a tear in the tape, and then another, and finally one more.

  I’m able to take it from there.

  When my hands are free, I’m better able to attack Georgie’s tape in the same manner. When he’s free, we don’t have to say a single word to one another to know what to do next. Georgie and I have known one another for a lot of years. We’re as close as brothers.

  We move at the same time.

  Georgie going for Commander Obama in the seat in front of him, me springing my claws on the lady Obama beside me, snatching the 9mm out of her hands, slamming her over the cranial cap with the barrel.

  She falls into my lap as I swing the barrel around and press the pistol against the short Obama in the middle. When he pulls out his own piece, I blow his pumpkin head all over the windshield.

  Georgie wrestles with Commander Obama while he shrieks like a teenage girl. I cock back the hammer on the 9mm, press it up against his brain- and blood-spattered head.

  “The piece. Give me the piece!”

  But the driver swings the wheel hard to the right, making the car fishtail to the left, sending me and the woman in my lap against the door. Georgie falls back, and Commander Obama takes a shot that shatters the rear glass. With the tires squealing, the BMW still spinning circles, I know this is our only shot at getting out.

  “Bail!”

  Georgie opens his door, falls on out.

  I open my door, and both I and the woman fall out. My entire right-side screams in a pain so profound, I’m forced to swallow a mouthful of spontaneously upchucked bile. I stand up as quickly as my broken body will allow, plant a bead on the Beemer, trigger off three quick rounds that explode what’s left of the rear and front glass.