Moonlight Rises

by Vincent Zandri

  “Nope.”

  “Even if it might lead to the assholes who did this to you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Client confidentiality, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “At least think about it?”

  “Yup.”

  Reaching into his pants pocket, he tosses a business card onto my lap. “I’ll be in touch,” he warns. “In the meantime, watch your back. The enemies you’ve made in Albany are a lot more dangerous than that piece of lead in your brain. And that’s saying something.”

  He turns, walks out the door. Officer Mike lags behind, standing in the open door, filling it like a giant pig in a big blue blanket. He smiles at me, exposing every single one of his grinding teeth. He bobs his head and glares at me. If we were back on the schoolyard, he’d be the big fat bully who stares you down from across the jungle gym before beating the lunch money out of you. I hate bullies.

  “Excuse me, Officer Mike,” I speak up, feeling a tell-tale dizziness swimming around my battered brain. “Would you mind finding me a new straw for my water?”

  He raises up his right hand, flashes me his middle digit.

  “There’s your fucking straw,” he smiles. “Suck on that for a while…Dick.”

  He walks.

  I guess he told me off but good, even if dick jokes are totally ’90s.

  The dizziness in my head gets worse. My vision begins to come and go. Like a Maglite with the batteries about to go on me.

  I call for a nurse. The one with the glorious cleavage. But I pass out before the heavenly vision can come to my rescue.

  Chapter 3

  You’re on a lifeboat that’s bobbing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Just a plain old wooden lifeboat like the kind they somehow forgot to bring along on the Titanic. On one side of you sits Lola. On the other, her new boyfriend. The faceless Some Young Guy. Only this guy isn’t faceless. He’s got Detective Clyne’s sad face.

  You’re naked, the sun beating down on your skin and flesh like a broiler oven on french fries. You’re also thirsty as all hell. Desert sand-parched.

  Lola’s like ten years younger than she is now. A fucking pulse-throbbing, heart-aching vision, even if she is but a figment of your imagination. She’s wearing this smoking hot red thong-kini, like she picked it special for the dream, and she’s sipping a bottle of cold beer.

  Dos Equis.

  Some Young Clyne is naked too, and he’s sporting this huge-ass boner. Just the biggest banana-shaped man sausage you’ve ever seen. It makes you want to cry the thing is so fucking big, while your own looks like a shriveled raisin in the sun.

  Maybe the hot sun is beating down on you, but your right side is on fire. It feels like a hot poker is being jammed through your skin into your kidney. You look to your right and you can see that Some Young Clyne is sticking you with a bowie knife. He’s got it thrust into your side, the jagged spine of the blade scraping against your bottom-most rib.

  Lola is laughing, sipping her beer. She takes her top off, allows her bouncy white titties to hang out. “Need to get catch some UVs,” she says, running the pad of her index finger over sexy red lips, then over her mams, making those nipples scrumptiously pert and perky. Like she’s nineteen all over again.

  “Don’t distract me,” says Some Young Clyne, his big boner bobbing up and down while he works. “I gotta get this thing out without popping it.”

  You’re in agony, red lights flashing in your eyes. He’s ramming the blade in deeper and deeper, until he reaches in with his hand, pulls something out…Something goopy, raw and meaty.

  It’s your kidney.

  Your. Fucking. Kidney.

  He holds it up like a triumphant Apache warrior holding up the still beating heart of General Custer.

  “Nice work, baby,” Lola cheerfully utters while grabbing hold of his cock. “Now how’s about an ice-cold beer and a little stress release to go with it.”

  I wake up to the scent of leather.

  A hand is covering my mouth. A black-gloved hand pressed down tight. One of those men-in-black Obama goons is standing on my right side, another on the left, and one at the foot of the bed. I peer down at my side. The Obama on my right flank is sticking me with a scalpel, jabbing the blade inside a fresh, three-stacked-rib-length gash that’s been sutured with a staple gun. He’s flicking the topmost staple and issuing a heartfelt giggle each time he does it.

  Sick goon at the foot of the bed holds that cancer voice machine up to his throat.

  “You should have stayed dead, dude,” he says, voice sounding like a computer. Sort of like that famous wheelchair physics guy, Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking with a foreign accent. Now I’m convinced the Obamas aren’t exactly American nationals after all, just like Clyne was getting at earlier.

  I want to reach out, grab hold of the emergency nurse call. But I can’t move. I can’t talk. The stabs of the scalpel take my breath away. The flicking of the topmost staple makes me see through a sheen of red. I’m choking. Choking on my own pain.

  “Peter Czech…he was here, dude?” Obama says. “He give you something, yes? What is it he give you, Mr. Moonlight, dude?”

  Scalpel Man pulls back on the blade. The relief is instantaneous. I’m able to swallow, able to moisten the back of my throat.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him, surprised at the sound of my own voice, now that it’s an entire octave higher than normal. “No one’s been here.”

  Flick goes the staple. I see red. Body burning electric.

  “Liar. We watch him come here, dude. Two hours ago. We fucking watch him. We think it is possible sneaky bastard give you a…a…a…what you call it…a flesh box. What does flesh box contain, dude?”

  “No, stupid,” interrupts the Obama on my left. “Zeepy box. That’s what it is. It’s possible Czech give him a Zeepy box, stupid motherfucker.”

  “Fuck cares what it’s called in America!” barks the scalpel man.

  I’m trying to make out where these men come from. But it’s tough to understand their voices through the synths. It screws up the sound of their words more than they’re capable of doing on their own. And anyhow, I don’t see a box of any size, shape, or form inside the room. I don’t see a flesh box or a Zeepy box or a shoebox or anything resembling a box.

  I look one way, then the other.

  I try to get up, but I can’t budge myself from the bed. I just don’t see a box, or I’d gladly give it to them so long as it’ll make them stop digging at me with that scalpel.

  This room isn’t big. There’s no storage. Wouldn’t a box be set out in plain sight? Is it possible Czech was here and I can’t remember? There’s a bullet frag stuck in my brain, and I just had my head bashed in by these same Obama look-alikes. Yes, it’s entirely possible I suffered another memory lapse.

  “If you see what you’re looking for inside this room,” I swallow, “you are most certainly welcome to have it. It’ll be my gift to you.”

  “What do you do with it, dude? Where do you hide box, dude?”

  “I. Don’t. Have. A. Box.”

  The scalpel inserted, the blade flicks the staple, and this time doesn’t the mofo pop out.

  I hear the tinny jingle of a single medical staple hitting the hard floor.

  Then I see several rapid-fire flashes of red just before passing out.

  When I come to, the Obamas are standing at the foot of the bed. One of them is looking out through a crack in the door. They obviously know that someone is coming, and that means they have to exit the premises. Pronto.

  “We’ll be back, Mr. Moonlight,” warns the lead Obama. “And we want what we come for, yes dude?”

  “By all means…dude.” But I have no idea what box and even more no idea about my new client Peter Czech having paid me a visit.

  The Obamas scoot out the door.

  I roll onto my good side and heave all over the bed.

  Chapter 4

>   A few minutes later Lola walks in, carrying a white vase filled with fresh flowers. She takes one look at me and drops the flowers to the floor. The vase shatters.

  So do my nerves.

  I don’t realize it, but the little staple flicking/popping incident has left a puddle of blood on the bed. On the opposite side sits a pool of my own brown bile.

  Moonlight the attractive.

  I sit up, more of that electric pain shoots up and down my side. I pull off the covers and somehow swing my legs around.

  “You’re out of your head!” Lola says, voice trembling.

  I suck down a breath and work up the strength needed to pull out the intravenous lines.

  “No, I’m out of my bed, and we have to go. I stay here, I’m a dead man.”

  “Richard, it’s the hospital. You leave you’re a dead man.”

  I slide off the bed. Stand. A bit wobbly. But once I get my breath back, I know I can manage without falling flat on my face. I shuffle to the closet, find my clothes. I toss them to Lola.

  “Help me with these. I’m telling not asking.”

  She’s still wearing those Jackie Os, tight jeans, black sweater. Hair long and pulled back in a ponytail. I can’t help but wonder where Some Young Guy has run off to. Or if he even exists in the real world. Maybe I dreamed him up in the first place. The brain plays tricks on you when it’s deprived of oxygen.

  “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

  I tear off the gown and reveal yet another uncontrollable erection. Doesn’t matter at this point. Lola has seen it a thousand times before. It ain’t all that much to look at, even at full mast. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s why Lola has turned to Some Young Guy. Maybe Johnson and I are just not good enough for her.

  “Help me into my pants.”

  She hesitates.

  “Like now!”

  She bends down with my Levis in hand. There’s blood on them. She holds the pants like you would for a child who’s too young to dress himself. I step into the pant leg. More electric pain. I step into the other leg and with Lola’s help, pull them up and over my manhood.

  That’s when the nurse steps in, her eyes shifting from the shattered ruins of a broken vase on the floor to me. She’s the good-looking short blonde nurse. The one with the cleavage.

  “Oh no you’re not!”

  She lunges at me, grabs hold of my arm. I pull away.

  “A man was here earlier. In a wheelchair. Did you see him?”

  She goes wide-eyed. I’m trying not to look down into her cleavage. But it’s like trying not to look at parallel Mount Everests while standing in front of them.

  “Yes. He said he was a friend. You spoke with him for a while.” Eyes back on the wilted flowers and shattered ceramic. Then back on me. “Did he give you anything? Anything I should know about?”

  A silent beat. “Why are you asking me that?”

  Shaking her head, she says, “You have a brain injury. You obviously don’t remember anything.” Her eyes shift down to my midsection. “You’re getting spontaneous erections due to a bruised thalamus. Not an ideal situation for someone who can suffer a stroke at any time. Get back in bed.”

  I glance downward. Just as I thought. I’m showing.

  She goes to grab me again, but this time I take her hand and hold it. I shoot a glance at Lola. “Lo, watch the door.”

  She does it.

  “It’s possible the man in the wheelchair gave me some kind of box, or something that looks like a box or a package. I don’t see it here. Did you take it? Is that why you’re asking me if he gave me something?”

  “You’re hurting me,” she says, trying to free her hand. “I don’t remember a box. Do you? Could it be around here?”

  I shake my head. My side feels squishy and liquid-like. I know I’m bleeding, blood is running from my side down my right leg.

  “Some men came to see me just a few minutes ago. They were dressed in black and wearing masks like President Obama. Did you see them, too?”

  “Mr. Moonlight, I’ve been standing out at that desk all morning, and I did not see any men wearing masks. My brain is perfectly normal, and I would recall that.”

  They must have gotten in through the service elevator somehow. Or the stairs. One at a time. Maybe even wore lab coats to make themselves look like hospital support staff.

  I let her go, grab the rest of my clothing.

  “I’m leaving and don’t try and stop me, understand? There’s no law against me leaving. I need you to grab me a wheelchair. Now. Please. Please. Now.”

  Nurse shakes her head, bites down on her lip. She slips past Lola, and just for a moment the two women pause to glare at each other, almost like they’re about to engage in conversation.

  But without saying a word, Nurse heads out into the hall, returns right away with a wheelchair, the letters AMC stenciled on the back.

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” Lola says as I ease down into the chair. “You should listen to the nurse instead of just staring goo-goo eyed at her boobs. You have a pre-existing brain injury. You could stroke at any time. You could die. Again.”

  I ask Lola to place a blanket over me. She grabs the one off the bed, steps around the puddle of broken glass and flowers, and drapes it over my lap.

  “Dead again,” I say to Nurse. “Been there, done that.” Then to Lola. “Let’s go.”

  “One of these times, Mr. Moonlight,” Nurse says, “you’re not going to wake up from being dead.”

  “He who dies today is quit for next,” I say, wheeling myself through the open door. “Shakespeare said that. Or maybe it was Ernest Hemingway. In any event, they’re both dead now.”

  “So are you,” Nurse says, “one way or another.”

  I don’t like the way she says it. Death isn’t something to joke around with. But then life…life is a different story. Especially my own train wreck of an existence. Now there’s something to laugh about.

  Chapter 5

  We make it to the elevator without anyone, doctor or nurse, giving us a second thought. Down on the hospital’s ground floor level, Lola pushes my chair slowly, casually, as though she’s taking me for a stroll in the hospital courtyard for some much-deserved fresh air.

  If I close my eyes right now, I swear I’ll fall asleep and not wake up for three days. Or maybe at all. Moonlight the near dead.

  It’s almost a letdown how easily we make it to Lola’s ride. Without even a single white-smocked doctor giving us any kind of hassle whatsoever. The half dozen we pass by on our way down the narrow corridor toward the electronic sliding doors simply issue kind bedside smiles and keep on their merry way.

  Stat!

  By the time Lola helps me up into the passenger seat of her Hummer, the blood oozing out my side has soaked through the towel. My erection has subsided, thank God, but I’m also beginning to feel lightheaded, which isn’t anything unusual for me—new concussion or no new concussion. But I do know that if I don’t get that gash in my side stitched back up soon, I’ll pass out not from simple exhaustion but from blood loss.

  “Head straight to Georgie’s,” I say through gritted teeth.

  Lola gives me no argument. But I can tell from the tight-as-a-tick expression on her face that she isn’t liking any of this. She even opens her mouth once as if to say something, reveal some kind of truth, or at the very least, give me a good tongue lashing. Maybe she knows that I know that’s she’s been cheating and maybe now she wants to confess. But she doesn’t confess. She just clams up on me again. In the end she just sighs, turns the big eight-cylinder over, and backs out of the parking spot.

  When she pulls out onto the road, I can’t help but spot them sitting inside an unmarked Chevy: Detective Clyne and his driver, Officer Mike. At first, I can’t be sure they’ve caught sight of me. But when big Mike holds his hand out the open window and flips me off for the second time in twenty-four hours, I’m pretty damn
ed sure I’ve been spotted by the APD, the same crime stoppers who rescued me from the Albany back alley in the first place. Against their better judgment, no doubt.

  No matter what happens from this point on, I’ll bet the non-existent mortgage on Moonlight’s Moonlit Manor that those two cops won’t be far from my tail. What I can’t decide, however, is if a cop tail is a good thing or a bad thing for a marked man like me.

  Chapter 6

  First things first: I ask Lola if I can borrow her cell phone since mine is nowhere to be found. Reluctantly, she hands it to me. Like I’m gonna get blood on it or something.

  My new client Peter Czech’s number is printed on his business card, which has been stuffed in my jeans pocket since he gave it to me a few days ago. I pull out the crumpled card, read the number, stuff it back inside the pocket, try to swallow the throbbing pain in my side.

  I dial the number, wait for a pickup.

  When it comes, I don’t give him a chance to say hello.

  “Czech, did you come see me in the hospital?”

  “How are you, Mr. Moonlight?” he responds in his happy, smiley, sing-song voice. I can just picture him smoothing out his mustache, seated in his wheelchair, the wheels of which might be locked in front of a massive, black, nuclear submarine. All around him stand HEPA-suited engineers working on the sub’s nuclear core while military personnel busy themselves by arming the missiles and warheads. I’m not sure if the picture I’m creating in my mind is entirely accurate. But it feels kind of accurate, in a Hollywood sort of way.

  “You visit me?” I press.

  “I did come to see you just this morning. Remember? I was concerned about you. You were groggy, but awake. We laughed about your nurse with the…uhhh…nice breasts.”

  “Breasts,” I say, picturing the small blonde nurse. “How’d you find out I was hurt?”

  “This is SmAlbany, after all. Word gets around quick. Cops reported the news to the Times Union after they found you half dead. I read the police blotters off the internet edition. Old habit of mine. It’s fun. I’m surprised you don’t read them.”