Moonlight Sonata

by Vincent Zandri

  “Bingo,” says Roger, draining his glass and quickly filling it with his third bloody of the morning. “Suzanne agreed to take on Alexander’s project with me acting as the ghostwriter in exchange for a little, shall we say, cooperative assistance.”

  I turn to Suzanne. Look her in the eye.

  “Let’s have it, Suzanne,” I say.

  She sits up straight, clears her throat, stares down into the darkness of her coffee cup, as if this will help her remember. “I asked Alexander if he would be interested in utilizing his rather unique powers of persuasion to get me back in the good graces of the most powerful publisher in New York.”

  “The Chance House Publishing Group,” interjects Roger.

  “Persuasion,” I say like a question.

  Suzanne adds, “My new Russian friend was to convince the house’s most senior acquisition’s editor of signing us on for Russian Reign of Terror with Roger as the ghostwriter.”

  I steal another sip of coffee.

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “Roger’s famous. A bestseller. A household name. You are, or were, the most powerful literary agent in the world. Why resort to illegal measures in order to get somebody to publish one book that he’s ghostwriting?”

  “You mean why sell yourself to the devil?” says Roger, drinking the last of his present bloody and pouring another before he’s swallowed what’s in his mouth.

  “Good question for somebody who has no idea how this business works,” says Suzanne. “You see, Moonlight, Roger is indeed a famous writer. But his sales over the past ten years have dried up to a trickle. After his contracts were cancelled, no one wanted to touch him. On top of this, it’s the twenty-first century. Macho, Hemingway-esque writers are no longer all the rage.” She sets her hand on Roger’s thick arm. “Real men like Roger are no longer seen as valuable commodities. He’s a bad boy. The type of writer a woman loves to hate.”

  “And most readers are women,” I add.

  “Young women,” Suzanne agrees. “They love Harry Potter, Amish romance, and sexy vampires. Not drunken bar flies who bang loose broads in the back seat of their Chevy then head back into the bar for more shots.”

  “I like that stuff.” I smile.

  “You’re in the minority,” Suzanne says. “The only way Roger and I were going to come back in a major way, was to convince Chance House not only to sign Roger as the ghostwriter for the new book but to offer him an advance never before heard of in publishing. Something that would generate a major media buzz.”

  “How much were you going to ask?”

  “Hold onto your chair, Moonlight,” Roger says, taking a drink of his newly poured bloody, some of the red staining his mustache.

  “Twenty-five million,” Susanne says.

  I nearly drop my coffee cup.

  “You heard correct. Twenty-five million. Upfront. No conditions. No contingencies. Finally, literary advances would match those of the sports world. Baseball. Football. Basketball. And half those professional cocks can’t even read at the eighth-grade level.”

  “An ambitious plan,” I say.

  “Up until now, the largest advance paid to any single author has been fifteen million. This kind of advance would set us up for life.”

  “After the Russians took their cut,” I add, seeing precisely where this is going.

  “The Ruskies were so into it, so convinced they had a deal that would make them famous beyond their wildest dreams, they even offered me a pre-advance,” Roger says.

  “How much?”

  “One million. Cash. Delivered in duffel bags to the place of my choosing, in exchange for a first draft manuscript to be delivered within six months. They would of course provide me with the research material and interviews via email and internet. It would all be very efficient, of course.”

  Suzanne sets down her coffee cup. “That one million would allow Roger to write stress-and worry-free. It also would represent about eight hundred thousand more than we would have ever hoped to secure if we had gone about things legally. But once the book was written, and the Russian’s forced Chance House into making a deal they couldn’t possibly refuse, I’m convinced we would have made history.”

  A small breeze runs through the yard. It combines with the weighted silence.

  “So how’s the book coming along?” I ask, knowing I probably just hit a nerve.

  Walls looks at Suzanne over his left shoulder. He then lowers his head.

  “We hit a snafu,” Suzanne says.

  “Yeah, a real snag,” Roger adds, “the least of which is not making our sixth-month deadline.”

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  “I lost the money,” Roger says.

  Me, shaking my head. “You mean, like you lost it on the ponies? Or the dogs?”

  Roger, shaking his head. “No, no. I lost it. Literally lost it.”

  “Who loses a million in cash?” I say.

  “He does,” Suzanne says. “The Russians arranged to drop the money off in a couple of individual duffel bags inside two lockers in the Albany-Rensselaer train station, which they did. Problem was, Roger decided to head straight to the station bar for a couple of pops before heading back to my office so we could safely secure the money in safety deposit boxes.”

  Roger slaps the tabletop. “It didn’t happen exactly like that, Suze. A friend showed up on her way back from New York City. I kindly offered her a drink. She accepted. We had a couple rounds, while the duffels were safely hidden under our table.”

  “What girl?” I ask.

  “Erica Beckett,” he says. “The girl you were with last night. Your cute little, um, deputy.”

  “Oatczuk’s perky-titted student assistant,” Suzanne adds.

  I picture the brown-haired young woman standing me up at Ralph’s to be with Roger, even after we’d sucked some face out on the sidewalk. The word cock tease comes to mind. But I keep it to myself.

  “Did you tell her what was in the bags?” I say.

  “I might be a writer, Moonlight,” Roger says. “And a drunk one at that. But I’m not entirely stupid. I simply told her I was coming back from a reading in Buffalo, and that was my luggage. When I got up to take a leak, I didn’t think twice about it. Who would know what was really stored inside the bags?”

  “And when you got back from said leak?”

  “The bags were gone,” he says, his eyes wide and glistening, like the pain in his heart is still intensely profound. “Naturally, I asked Erica if she saw anyone take them. But she swore she didn’t see a thing.”

  “How could she not? She was standing with them at the bar.”

  “Well, yes and no. She too decided to use the lady’s room. It probably didn’t occur to her to stay with my bags while I was pissing.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “I searched everywhere. The entire train station. Erica even helped me look. But they were nowhere to be found.”

  “At first I suspected Erica,” Suzanne jumps in. “But then, she couldn’t exactly have hidden them up her tight little ass.”

  “Very well put,” I say. “And the Russians? I assume you’ve let them in on your problem?”

  “The Russians were not happy,” Suzanne adds. “They lost their money, we’re three months past the six months deadline, Roger’s drunk most of the time, and they still have no book. And not even the Russian mob wants to put the grease to a Chance House editor if they don’t have a manuscript in hand to back it up.”

  “They want their money back,” I intuit. “They want out of the deal.”

  “But we have no way of paying it back.”

  “So?”

  “They came up with some other ways for us to pay them back.”

  I recall Sissy’s coke. How she claimed to have gotten it from Suzanne.

  “You became a dealer for them,” I say.

  Suzanne lowers her head, stares back down into her coffee cup.

&nbs
p; In the back and front of my mind, I’m wondering why the Russians didn’t just tell Suzanne to go to hell instead of entering into an impossible deal like this. But then, I’m sure it had to have something to do with ego, the desire for this Alexander character to get a book published by the most powerful publisher in the world and written by a famous author, and to have it be the basis for a reality television show. My built-in shit detector was speaking to me, too. It told me Suzanne didn’t just present the possibility of Alexander getting published, she promised him publication, fortune, and fame. All it would take on his end was a smidge of mob-like persuasion directed at the publishing house’s editor in chief, maybe in the form of a late-night B-and-E, the barrel of a .9mm pressed to the temple.

  “You didn’t just hire me to find Roger,” I say, after a time. “You hired me to find him and maybe to help him find that money.” I’m reminded of those rednecks who tried to rough me up out in Chatham. I recall seeing a third man pop his head up inside the cab when I was racing away. I had to wonder if that third wheel was Alexander Stalin, the Russian mobster and Uncle Joe’s great-grandson.

  “You’re a professional snoop,” Suzanne says. “Maybe you can think of something I haven’t. We’ve tried everything. But we can’t think of who could have stolen it. Maybe if you could ask around. Some of your more unsavory friends might know a friend of a friend. Something like that.”

  “Something like that,” I say. “Believe me, if I had a friend who knew about a friend who stole a million bucks, the both of them would be far away from Albany by now.”

  Suzanne sits back, exasperated.

  “Well, at least you got Roger back for me.” She stands, her coffee cup in hand. “Listen, Moonlight, if you’d like me to pay you what I owe you, I’m happy to end our relationship and relieve you of any further trouble.”

  “There’s just one problem, Good Luck,” I say.

  She and Roger stare at me.

  “The cops think I might have killed Sissy,” I say. “And now, from what you’re telling me, I think it’s possible your Russian friends could have killed her. Either way, if foul play is suspected, I’m screwed.”

  At the mention of Sissy, Roger starts to cry again.

  I look into Suzanne’s blue eyes.

  “So, what would you like us to do?” she says.

  “Help me find a way to convince the police I’m not the killer. If it comes to that.”

  “And how in God’s name could we arrange that for you?”

  “Go to the cops and spill your whole story.”

  “I told you before, Moonlight,” Roger barks. “No cops. They find out what we’ve been up to, they’ll put me in prison, no possibility of parole.”

  “I can’t exactly admit to selling coke and being a party to threatening the life of a Chance House editor, either, now can I, Moonlight?” Suzanne says. “Not after the calamity I went through with Ian Brando.”

  “And I’m not about to go to prison for a murder I didn’t commit,” I say.

  That’s when Roger raises up his glass.

  “A toast,” he says. “To us. The Naked and the Dead and the Totally Fucked.”

  Chapter 28

  REACHING ACROSS THE TABLE, I grab hold of Roger’s Bloody Mary and take a big drink. I slam the glass down. Hard. Blood-red liquid spatters the table.

  “Jeez, take it easy, Moonlight,” he says. “It’s not our fault you had to go and ball my wife.”

  Guy’s got a point.

  I partied and had sex his wife. I’ve been mentally avoiding that obvious deviation of SOP for a quite a while now and it’s time I owned up to it. In fact, if it weren’t for that one small, major mistake, I might walk out of there right now with payment in hand, and later on take my chances with the Albany cops. But not me. Not Richard “Dick” Moonlight. Not Captain Head-Case. I might have a chunk of .22 caliber bullet stuck inside my brain, and that bullet might help cause me to make the wrong decision from time to time, but I’m also supposed to be a private detective who is dedicated to doing the right thing. And now that I fucked Roger’s wife, and now that she appears to have been killed, the least I can do is try and help them find out who might have done it, and, while I’m at it, maybe help locate their money. Which is exactly what I offer up.

  “But I don’t come cheap,” I tell Suzanne. “My fee just doubled. And, if I locate the money, I’d like a bonus.”

  “Such as?”

  “You take on Moonlight Falls as my official agent. No questions asked.”

  She smiles. “I was going to do that anyway, Moonlight.”

  “Congrats, Moonlight,” Roger says, holding out his hand, “you just scored the best hard-core, tight assed agent in the business. Plus, you got a blowjob and a little doggy style for a signing bonus. Jeez, you must have some lit skills after all.”

  I let the hand go ignored.

  “I have a question,” Suzanne says. “With Sissy’s body no doubt in police custody, how in the world are we going to prevent the police from suspecting you or Roger as the killer?”

  Roger lowers his hand slowly.

  “We’re going to do the impossible,” I say.

  “How’s that, Moonlight?” Roger asks.

  “We’re going to steal back Sissy’s body,” I say. “And then we’re going to make it look like a certain Russian mobster killed her.”

  Chapter 29

  OKAY HERE’S THE TRUTH: I have about as much chance at locating that missing million bucks as I do winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. I might be wanting to do the right thing here, to make up for my tryst with Sissy, but I’m also not about to head to prison. That will take enlisting these two fallen literary angels to help out with my cause. If they can help with stealing Sissy and arranging her body to appear to have been killed by someone in possession of fingerprints and DNA besides my own—especially those of a Russian thug—it might at least place a semblance of doubt in the minds of the cops as to who actually killed her. That alone would get me off the hook. And if I could do so under the pretense that I am also working on locating their money, they might be willing to help me out, even if the body we’re about to steal is that of Roger’s wife.

  In the meantime, I decide it might be time to place a call to my old friend and spiritual brother, Georgie Phillips, retired Albany Medical Center pathologist.

  I do it. Georgie and I have been known to collaborate on some assignments of a rather sensitive nature in the past. And I see no reason not to categorize the manipulation of Sissy’s corpse for the purposes of getting me off the hook with the APD as sensitive.

  Georgie comes on the line. I picture the long, gray-haired Vietnam vet sitting in his living room parlor, Hendrix going on the stereo, the vintage vinyl record spinning on the turn table while he rolls himself a fresh joint.

  “Moonlight,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I explain everything.

  “I can get you the private viewing if we head there now,” he assures me. “This early in the morning the joint will be as quiet as a—”

  “As a morgue,” I say. “Funny.”

  “But this plan of yours,” he adds. “It’ll be highly illegal.”

  “Never stopped us before,” I say.

  “Gospel, Moon,” he says. “I can expect the usual payout?”

  “For your grandkid’s college education,” I say. “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll pick you guys up in my van. Be ready in ten.”

  “We’re ready now,” I say.

  He hangs up.

  A moment later my cell phone vibrates with a new text message. I thumb it open, stare down at it. It’s from Erica Beckett. I’d almost forgotten about her. To say that I’m troubled regarding the young poet’s intentions is putting it lightly. Her being a major cock tease is the least of it. Why didn’t she tell me how well she knew Roger? Why not just be open about it? And now I discover she was present the day he lost the money.
Even if she didn’t steal it, something isn’t right here, and I intend to confront her about it the first chance I get.

  I read the text. How is Roger? I’m worried.

  I thumb a text back in. Hanging in there. How was your night?

  Fun. Until we found out about Sissy.

  It occurs to me Roger didn’t have a cell phone on him, and that no one, aside from Erica and I, knew where he was…much less the police. Far as I know, news about Sissy’s death hasn’t yet gone out on the wire.

  I thumb in another text: Who told you she was dead?

  I wait for a response. Until I get one.

  I miss you, cutie. Heading to bed. Long night. Long morning ;)

  How did you find out? I text once more. But I get nothing in response.

  I call, but all I get is her answering service. “Hi, this is Erica…you know what to do…” Her voice screams of confidence, youth, and beauty. But I’m beginning to suspect something else.

  I pocket my cell just as a white Ford extended van appears.

  My bro, Georgie Phillips, to the rescue.

  Chapter 30

  INTRODUCTIONS ARE QUICKLY MADE and within a few minutes we’re piled into Georgie’s van. Suzanne rides up front while Roger and I occupy the back. Georgie is driving. He’s wearing his usual uniform of Levis straight leg jeans, cowboy boots, black all-cotton T under a worn jean jacket he’s probably owned since high school. His long gray hair is tied back tight in a ponytail, and his clean-shaven face is tanned from the sun, even though technically speaking, he’s supposed to stay out of the sun since being diagnosed with skin cancer.

  On the way to the hospital, George asks for our undivided attention while he goes over the plan to steal Sissy. When he’s through, he focuses his ice-blue eyes in the rearview so he can get a look at Roger.

  “I’ve read all your books, Mr. Walls,” he says. “I was a big fan in college, after ʹNam. I thought you nailed the pure, raw, male, sexual character better than Norman Mailer or Henry Miller.”

  Roger looks at him and smiles.

  “Thank you, Doc,” he says. “But I’m afraid there’s not a very big market anymore for what I’m doing. If there was, Sissy wouldn’t be dead, and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”