by Beau Johnson
See you when I see you,
Beau
June 3, 2021
BEAU JOHNSON lives in Canada with his wife and three boys. He has been published before, usually on the darker side of town. Such fine establishments might include Out of the Gutter Online, Spelk Fiction, Shotgun Honey and the Molotov Cocktail. Besides writing, Beau enjoys golfing, pushing off Boats and certain Giant Tigers.
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BOOKS BY BEAU JOHNSON
A Better Kind of Hate
The Big Machine Eats
All of Them to Burn
Brand New Dark
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Here is a preview from Blue Moonlight, the third Dick Moonlight PI thriller by Vincent Zandri.
Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.
PART I
Chapter 1
I’m awake.
I know I’m awake because my eyes are open and I’m looking down at my hands, which are handcuffed. Funny how I don’t remember going to sleep in the first place.
Turns out, I don’t remember boarding a plane either.
I realize I’m on a plane because when I shift my focus from my handcuffed hands to over my left shoulder and out the window. I see only friendly blue sky resting atop an endless sea of the fluffiest white cotton-ball clouds.
For sure, I’m flying.
I. Am. Flying.
Thirty thousand feet above solid ground, inside what looks to be an Airbus. A US Air owned and operated Airbus. Or so says the color-coded, impervious-to-puncture/sudden-impact/water-and/or-fire-damage, floatable, plastic-coated safety manual stuffed inside the conveniently located seatback pocket directly in front of me.
Or maybe I’m just dreaming.
Tell you what. I’m gonna close my eyes now, go back to sleep, wake up in my own bed.
Chapter 2
I open my eyes.
Wide.
Still flying. Not lying in my own bed. Not imagining things. Not dreaming.
Fuck me.
Chapter 3
Recap thus far.
I’m awake. I’m handcuffed. I’m flying. And it isn’t a dream.
Far as I can tell, I’m seated in the final row of the plane. The bouncy-bouncy seat, my ex-wife, Lynn, used to call it whenever we’d take a trip together, which wasn’t very often.
The cheap seat.
At first glance, there appear to be no seat assignments in the final rows of this plane. But that’s not exactly right, because the seat directly beside my own has most definitely been assigned. To say the guy occupying it is bigger than me would be like saying the Super Bowl is just another meaningless pro football game.
Dude’s so big he fills the narrow seat entirely, some of his excess bulk oozing over onto me. I’m not talking fat blubber here. I’m talking sheer, thick, hard muscle mass. The hand that’s attached to the wrist to which my right wrist is cuffed is bigger and thicker than both my hands put together. And I’m no lightweight. I’m a weightlifter. I can bench press two hundred and sixty-five pounds ten, sometimes fifteen times in a row. Clean. None of this bouncing it off your chest-cavity shit like all the high school meatheads do. But this Sherman tank of a man makes me feel about as rough and tumble as your average hopeless anorexic.
Like I already said, the half dozen rows of seats ahead of me are unoccupied, as are the starboard rows to my right. A thick gray curtain is draped across the entire midsection of the cabin, as if to afford me the utmost privacy. Or it could be that the back rows have been closed off to the general law-abiding public due to my presence. But I can’t imagine why in the world that could be.
I’m not a criminal.
My name is Dick Moonlight, and I’m just a head-case who barely survives on a cop half-pension and the occasional private dick job I can scrounge up. A suicide survivor who carries a small piece of .22 caliber hollow-point lodged inside his brain. By all rights, I should be a dead man. But then there’s not a lot of right surrounding me these days since my girlfriend left me for another man, since my sweet, bushy-haired little boy Harrison went to live with his mother in LA and at the same time ripped the pumping heart out of my chest, since my bar—Moonlight’s Moonlit Manor—burned to the ground, since Jack Daniels came back into my life in a big way.
Welcome to my world.
The plane dips and lifts and dips again, the entire fuselage rattling and shaking. An overhead light clicks on, along with a gentle chime.
PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS.
You ain’t gotta tell me twice.
But then, I’m already strapped in.
A tinny voice emerges over the PA asking us fliers to return to our seats and fasten our seatbelts until the captain decides to turn off the warning light or we crash. Whichever comes first. We’re about to encounter a patch of severe head-wind-instigated turbulence that simply cannot be avoided.
Severe. Turbulence.
It rings a bell. No, it more than rings a bell. Just the sound of those two words send my balls on a vertical rise through my colon, through my stomach, and on up into my throat, where they settle like two concrete lumps.
I tap into my memory banks. What’s left of them.
I’m flying.
But I don’t like to fly.
I hate flying.
I’m afraid to fly.
No, that’s not right.
I’m afraid of crashing.
We hit the promised patch of turbulence.
The plane rocks like a boat on a choppy sea. A wave of cold fear rushes through my body. But the big guy next to me, he’s smiling.
Correction.
He’s laughing. Laughing like flying through severe turbulence is the most fun you can have with and without your clothes on. What’s even worse is that every time we hit a wave of bad air, he yanks on the cuffs, the sharp end of the bracket digging into my wrist as if going for bone. I’m beginning to think he’s drawing blood.
“Mister,” I say, my voice a full octave higher than the good Lord intended. “Mister. Sir. Mister.”
He turns to me. He’s sporting this big-ass smile that’s centered on a bowling-ball-round face, thick red lips surround a goatee and mustache that’s far thicker than my own. His hair is thick too but sprinkled with gray and balding in the middle. I peg him for maybe fifty but going on sixteen. You know the type.
“Well look who’s awake!” he barks. “And just in time, too. We’re in for a ride. Turbulence. Makes things interesting, don’t you think? My three marriages were chock-full of turbulence. Never a dull day, sweetie.”
Sweetie…? Did this bruiser just call me sweetie?
He laughs, shaking his belly, which protrudes up tight against a Hawaiian print shirt that must have been specially woven for one of those huge-ass Samoan motherfuckers. He’s opening and closing the fingers on his left hand, the middle digit of which bears a thick gold ring with an eyeball-big, red gemstone embedded inside it. The stone is bigger than my eye, and I’m betting the entire thing must weigh in at five pounds. Even from where I’m sitting, I can see the letters NFL embossed into the gold band.
Football.
Pro football.
I love football.
But this guy’s a dick.
Situation check.
I’m flying.
I’m handcuffed to a bigger than big man who enjoys turbulence. Handcuffed to a big man who likes turbulence and who used to play pro ball, and who just referred to me as sweetie. Attached at the wrist to an NFL man and flying through some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced, and I have no idea how I got myself into this little predicament.
Which of course, begs the question…
“How did I get here?”
“You mean like…here?” NFL Man says, yanking on the cuffs, sending a wave of electric pain shooting up my right arm. “Oops, my bad. You mean here, on this plane? You tell m
e, sweetie…what’s your name again?” Reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a slip of yellow Post-it note. “Mr. Richard Moonlight, date of birth seven-two-sixty-something; Social Security number: zero-five-zero, yadda, yadda; height: five feet nine inches, even if you do look like five-seven with your boots on; weight: one hundred seventy-six pounds. Divorced, father of one poor unlucky kid, currently single after a crap-load of fucked-up relationships. Or should I say, relationship fuck-ups.” Staring down at me like I’m a booger on the armrest. “Five-seven and a buck seventy-six. Little guy, you are.”
“I’m five-eight-and-a-half. And your scale must be off…I’m one-seventy.” I wanna bust his ass for talking like Yoda, but I’m afraid he’ll yank on that cuff chain again. And besides, the plane is bouncing, and I’m too scared out of my skin for idle chatter.
Another jolt of turbulence. I feel my heart stop for the briefest of seconds. It starts up again.
“We get the info from the computer,” he laughs. “We don’t actually weigh you. And besides, you wouldn’t have let us if we’d wanted to, anyway. Not in the condition you were in.”
“What. Condition.”
NFL Man just looks at me, into my eyes. “You don’t remember, do you? You truly don’t remember?”
“My head,” I attempt to explain. “I have this problem with my brain. There’s a—”
“—little piece of.22 caliber bullet inside it, pressed against your cerebral cortex. Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it. You wouldn’t shut up about it on the drive all the way to the airport.”
“What drive?”
“From your crib to the airport. Plane didn’t very well pick us up in front of your loft, Moonlight.” Another belly laugh.
“OK, I give up. Who are you?”
Reaching back into his chest pocket, this time pulling out a wallet. When he does it, his unbuttoned shirt opens up enough to reveal a hand cannon stuffed inside a black elastic banded shoulder holster.
Guns on a plane. Cop on a plane. Or hijacker on a plane.
I’m putting my money on the cop. If I had any money. Even I’m not lucky enough to be hijacked by a hijacker.
He opens the wallet, revealing a laminated picture ID. There he is, all smiles and wavy black hair that isn’t yet sprinkled with gray. Big guy’s got to get a new pic. I try to catch the name printed in between the photo and the letters F, B, and I, but only catch the last name.
Zumbo.
Now if that doesn’t sound like a pro ball player, I don’t know what does. Turns out I recognize the name.
Zumbo.
Bob “Zump” Zumbo, fullback for the New York Football Giants from 1987 through 1994 when a knee injury sidelined him for good.
I might be flying, on the verge of crashing, but things are definitely looking up. “Giants,” I say.
Now the smile is so wide I fear it might split his entire face in half. “You a fan, Moonlight?”
I nod. “Never miss a game,” I tell him. “You were pretty great. The return of Larry Csonka. The Zonk.”
“Bad knees,” he says, cocking his head down toward his lap. “I had to retire with half pension.”
“That why you’re a fed agent now?”
“The FBI is my hobby. Keeps me out of the bars.”
“Mister, or is it Agent, Zumbo? Listen, I gotta pee something fierce. My back teeth are floating.”
He purses his lips. “Ah jeez, really?” he says, annoyed. Like I’m his five-year-old kid. “OK, but you gotta make it quick. Lots of turbulence. Case your injured brain hasn’t picked up on it.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a key, uncuffs my wrist.
I feel immediate relief. The skin isn’t broken, but it’s scratched. I run the fingers of my left hand over it.
Zumbo pushes himself out of the seat, stands up, and shifts himself into the aisle. His body fills out the entire back end of the plane. “OK, Moonlight, up and at ’em. And don’t try anything funny. We’re on a commercial flight and I have a gun, and by the looks of things, you don’t need any more trouble added to what’s sure to be an impressive rap sheet.
Behind him, a female flight attendant approaches. “Do you think it’s wise taking his cuffs off, Agent Zumbo?” she poses. She’s a small but attractive redhead with long, smooth hair parted neatly over her right eye.
The plane buffets and rocks again, enough that Zumbo has to grab the seatback to stay on his feet. Meanwhile, the flight attendant seems entirely unaffected by the sudden motion. She’s got her sea legs.
“Terrorists gotta pee, too,” he laughs, a little under his breath. “Constitution grants the right for a suspected criminal to water his teensy-weensy hog.”
Back-stepping, the attractive redhead shakes her head in disgust and retreats into the aft galley. I know what she’s thinking: “Men!”
Zumbo picks me up by the arm, leads me the two or three feet around to the emergency exit area behind our seats, where the lavatory is located. He opens the door and shoves me inside.
“One minute, sweetie,” he insists. “Or I come in after you, guns a-blazin’.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
He goes to shut the door.
“Wait one second,” I say. “What did you just refer to me as?”
The look on his round face has gone from glee to confusion. “Oh. Sweetie?” he barks. “I call lotsa people sweetie. Come on, Moonlight. Pee already.”
“No, not that. I mean just a second ago when you were talking with the attendant. You called me something.”
Back with the smile. “Oh, yeah. I called you a terrorist. Well, allow me to rephrase. You are suspected of performing a quote, ‘domestic terroristic act,’ unquote, to be accurate. You haven’t been arrested for anything quite yet. You’re merely being detained under suspicious circumstances. Think of it as being wait-listed for a spot in a federal pen.”
“So where are we going and why have I been handcuffed and why does it take an airplane to get me there?”
“We’re on our way to the Manhattan field office, for an interview.”
“I don’t understand. I’m not a terrorist. In fact, I used to be a cop.”
“Hey, man,” he exhales, “a Mrs. Doris E. Walsh of the Internal Revenue Service of these here United States of America disagrees entirely. And she can prove it.” Pulling out a folded sheet of stock from the back pocket on his husky-size Levi’s 501s. Unfolding it, he glances at it, then back at me. “Where’d you learn to construct pipe bombs, Moonlight?”
He shoves me further into the bathroom, closes the door behind me. “One minute,” he repeats from outside the door.
The plane shakes again. Dips. We’re going down. I just know it. I’m gonna crash, burn, and die a tragic, violent death. Be identified later by my dental records.
But then that would be the best news I’ve heard all day.
Click here to learn more about Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri.
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Here is a preview from She Talks to Angels, the third Henry Malone novel by James D.F. Hannah.
Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.
Chapter 1
They built Parker County General Hospital in the 1950s. It’s a squat one-story complex on that rare chunk of flat earth in proximity to Serenity. Renovations over the years—more functional than aesthetic—left the place usable but uglier than a blind date on prom night. The nearest other hospital is three counties over, though, and I suppose when your options are few, even the ugly girl looks good.
Old-timers still call it “the miners’ hospital.” Billy told me about men who were rushed there after mining accidents—where someone lost a limb or was paralyzed after a ceiling collapse. Other times, there’d be a cough that wouldn’t go away and they couldn’t catch their breath anymore, followed by a black lung diagnosis, the by-product of decades spent sucking in coal dust, doi
ng what it took to pay the bills.
Like most people my age, I traced my origins back to Parker County General. Well, not my origins per se; I didn’t want to know about that shit. But I was born at the hospital.
“I came off a shift out of Mine 5 and drove straight over and your mother’s already in the delivery room,” Billy had said. “I heard her through the door, screaming and pushing, and the doctor telling her how great she was doing and her telling him to go fuck himself, and then there was this crying noise, and it was the first sound I ever heard you make. They let me come in after a bit, once I’d scrubbed myself up and they put a gown on me so I didn’t get you filthy, and they let me hold you.” He laughed. “You were an ugly baby. Shame you grew up into such an ugly adult, too.”
No one’s ever accused my father of being a nurturing soul.
Inside the hospital, signs for the neonatal unit led you past the viewing area for the newborns. A mix of humanity stood at the glass, staring at pink-cheeked infants. Newly minted fathers looked at their just-born children with a blend of pride and fear. Family members contemplated ways to spoil children. Siblings had a dawning recognition of where they now stood in the pecking order. A few wandered over from other parts of the hospital, people in need of a reminder of hopeful beginnings as they waited for inevitable endings.
The nurse at the unit desk was about forty, with a lot of crispy blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore scrubs and a paint brush’s worth of blue eye shadow. I leaned against the desk as she tapped away on a computer.
“I’m looking for Katie Dolan,” I said.
She stopped and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You Henry Malone?”
“Every day since I can remember.”