Shoot the Moon

by Joseph T. Klempner

  “What happens now?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you arrest me?”

  “I can’t do that, Michael. That’s why I’m telling you all this.”

  “What about you? What about your job?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” she says. “I’ll tell them you found me out somehow, or that you got cold feet. They won’t like it, but without proof that I told you, there won’t be anything they can do about it. They’ll give me a reprimand, maybe transfer me to another city. At DEA, when they want to get rid of you, they don’t fire you - that requires hearings, good cause, lots of messy stuff. Instead, they just transfer you. Then, as soon as you get settled in some new city and buy a home - boom! - they transfer you again. Pretty soon, you get the message and put in your papers. Maybe they’ll do that to me; I don’t know.”

  “Suppose I decide to go through with the deal anyway?”

  She laughs. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a trap.”

  “Like entrapment?”

  “Oh,” she laughs again, but bitterly. “We went way past entrapment. I took advantage of your goodness to come into your home, into your life. I’ve shared your daughter’s bed. I was the one who told you about some brother I don’t even have, just to give you the idea of selling the drugs in the first place. You never would have done it otherwise.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” he confesses.

  She says nothing.

  “So there’s no $3.5 million?” he asks.

  “Oh, there is,” she says. “They’ll put it together, just in case you insist on seeing that it’s all there. But they won’t let you walk away with it. Not that kind of money.”

  “What happens after they show it to me?”

  “They’ll ask to see the drugs.”

  “And?”

  “And as soon as they’re satisfied you’ve got the drugs, they give a signal of some sort. Usually, it’s opening the trunk of their car. You know, in order to put the drugs inside it. As soon as that happens, twenty guys with shotguns and DEA jackets swoop down on you like you’re the Sundance Kid. Next time you see daylight over your head, you’ll be eighty years old. Why are you asking me all of this?” she says. “Don’t you get it, Michael? It’s over.”

  He knows she’s probably right, but he says nothing.

  “Do you have any idea how many of them there are?” she asks him, making it clear that if he doesn’t know, she does.

  “I’ve seen some of them already,” he says. “They’ve been following me.”

  “Who?”

  “A black guy and a white guy, in a blue Ford.”

  “There’s no black guy on our team,” she says. “And DEA has no reason to follow you. We’ll know exactly when and where the deal’s going down, because Vinnie is the DEA. And so am I. Part of my job is to slip out and call them every once in awhile, fill them in on your innermost thoughts.”

  “Have you been doing that?”

  “I did at first,” she says. “I’m dangerously overdue.”

  “Maybe you should call in.”

  She looks at him. “Why are you saying that?” she asks.

  “No matter what, it makes sense.”

  She seems to ponder that for a moment, then nods in agreement. “And what do I tell them?”

  It’s his turn to ponder. “Tell them everything’s right on course.”

  “Is that navy talk?” she smiles.

  “I guess. I used to be-”

  “I know,” she says. “U.S. Navy, enlisted in 1976 - Six September. Stationed Norwalk, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; Vieques, Puerto Rico. Six months on the USS Charleston-”

  “The first four in sick bay-”

  “-before being discharged Fifteen August 1979 - and we knew about the sick bay, too. Just one more reason the investigation got code-named ‘Pushover.’“

  “Pushover,” he repeats. “That’s me, huh?”

  “Yes,” she says. “But you’re my pushover.” They both try to laugh at that; the combined result can best be described as a snort. “I even have DEA’s permission to - how did they put it? - ‘to have consensual relations’ with you if it becomes necessary ‘to protect the integrity of the investigation.’ Which is the only reason I haven’t.”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “Made love with you, silly.”

  In spite of everything, Goodman instantly feels his twin libido sensors react - pulse and penis. “I understand the DEA’s thinking of withdrawing their permission at any moment,” he says.

  She laughs - a real laugh, an honest-to-goodness Carmen laugh. He has to shush her, for fear she’ll wake Kelly.

  “I don’t get it, Michael. After what I’ve told you, you’re supposed to hate me. You’re supposed to want to kill me.”

  But Michael Goodman’s learning center has traveled far south by this time and is presently operating out of Testosterone Command. Now it adopts his voice and utters its first pronouncement.

  “Hate can wait.”

  “How can you forgive me for this?” she asks, but at the same time, she comes to him. The sensation of flannel against his bare upper body is electric. Pulse and penis seize full command of the operation.

  “If what you say is true,” Goodman reasons, “this could be my last night of freedom until the year 2036. I figure we better make the most of it.”

  “I like the way you figure,” Carmen says, and with that, she is over him, pulling his pajama bottoms off him in what might have been a single motion, had it not been for one of his commanding officers standing at attention and getting slightly in the way.

  Goodman reaches for the top button of her shirt. But as he does so, the jack-o’-lantern gives off a final burst of orange light, then dies, leaving them in blackness.

  She rolls to one side of him, and he hears her voice against his ear. “Put another log on the fire, would you?”

  He rises to his hands and knees and gropes towards the kitchen end of the room, drawn by the smell of burned wax, smoke, and pumpkin. Eventually, his eyes adjust to the point where he can see outlines and shapes. He locates the matches, the Chanukah candles, succeeds in lighting one and putting it in place.

  The distraction might well have managed to soften the resolve of another man’s will. But Michael Goodman has not made love to a woman for months, and it’s going to take more than a brief time-out to soften any part of him. Carmen notices this phenomenon now, not because she’s watching Goodman at this moment - she isn’t - but because a critical portion of his anatomy is suddenly backlit by the new flame in the jack-o’-lantern, causing a huge shadow to be cast against the far wall, where her gaze happens to be directed.

  “My God,” she mutters.

  “Is something the matter?” he asks as soon as he gets back to her.

  “No,” she says. “Nothing’s the matter - just be gentle.”

  He tries. He tries as he reaches again for the top button of her shirt. Tries as he fights to stop the trembling in his fingers, exaggerated by the flickering of the candlelight. Tries as he works his way down the row of buttons, until at last he frees an impossibly perfect pair of breasts, tipped with rigid dark nipples. He tries as he slips the shirt off her back, spreading it out beneath them on their makeshift floor bed. But when she presses her body against him and kisses his open mouth with hers, he completely forgets what it was he was supposed to be trying. And when she takes him with both hands, he hears himself make a sound somewhere between a groan and a roar, less befitting a human than some jungle beast that’s gone a year without a kill.

  “Maybe we should open a window or something,” Carmen suggests, “before you explode.” But instead of letting go of him, she holds him tighter, squeezes him-

  -and explode he does. Too suddenly, too violently. And far too quickly.

  It takes him awhile before he can catch his breath and speak. “Sometimes I can actually make it
last a little longer than that,” he tells her, and she breaks into laughter again, forcing him to smother her into silence.

  And then, somehow, his body frees him to make love with her - silently, gently, lastingly. It goes on for what seems like hours, days, weeks. More precisely, it goes on a full two Chanukah candles. They light a third one, neither wanting it to end.

  “Once you burn one candle, you’ve got to buy a whole ‘nother box anyway,” he explains. “They do it like that on purpose.”

  “What’s that?” Carmen asks.

  “Chanukah candles. They put-”

  “No, that,” she says, pointing to the underside of the card table, underneath which their heads have ended up.

  He looks. “Oh, that. A piece of gum.”

  “No it isn’t,” she says. And, putting a finger to her lips to silence him, she raises her body to examine it.

  Her change of position presents her bare bottom to him. Impossibly, he feels his commanding officer begin to come to attention once again. Merely following orders, he reaches out and touches her, but she pushes his hand away, as though to tell him that this is serious. He lifts himself up to see what he still thinks is gum but what her superior vision has apparently revealed is something else altogether. And as he looks closer, he realizes she’s right. The shape of the thing is simply too geometrical. It’s a perfect rectangle, perhaps the size of a sugar cube. It appears to be some sort of miniature electronic device, complete with a tiny wire antenna.

  And then it hits him: It’s a bug.

  He looks at Carmen. Her expression tells him that she figured it out before he did. She stands up now and heads for the bathroom, motioning him to follow her.

  Goodman closes the bathroom door behind them. “What do you-” he starts to say, but she hushes him. She bends over to turn on the water in the tub. He locks his hands behind his back to fight temptation.

  “Come on in,” she beckons him, lowering herself into the tub. He follows her dumbly, until they sit in the water, facing each other. “No bug in the world can pick us up over this noise,” she explains.

  “Who put it there?” he asks her. “Your DEA friends?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “It doesn’t look like one of ours. I think it’s more likely some other agency, like the NYPD. Probably the same guys who’ve been following you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well,” she says, “for one thing, it means they know about tomorrow night’s deal. For another, they’ve heard me tell you who I am, and who Vincent and T.M. are.”

  “What’ll happen to you?”

  “Meet your codefendant,” she says. “Maybe they’ll be kind enough to arrange adjoining cells for us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Obstructing justice, interfering with governmental administration, hindering prosecution, conspiring to distribute a Schedule One controlled substance. The beat goes on.”

  “You’re sure they’ve heard everything?” He finds it hard to believe.

  “Oh, they’ve heard everything,” she says. “Everything.”

  In fact, they’ve heard nothing.

  Spike Schwartz has been dreaming. He’s been dreaming about his bachelor days, before there were twins and midnight feedings, 2:00 a.m. feedings, 2:30 a.m. feedings, 3:15 a.m. feedings, 4:00 a.m. feedings, and bottles to warm, and diapers to change.

  He’s awakened suddenly by a noise that sounds like a water main has burst somewhere nearby. He grabs for the volume button on the wiretap recorder and turns it down. Nothing happens. He does the same with the room bugs. Number one, nothing. Number two, nothing. Number three, the noise disappears. He turns it back up, and the noise returns.

  “Fucking static,” Spike says out loud. Well, he figures, two outa three ain’t bad. He kills the power on bug number three. Then he remembers he’s supposed to make entries in the logbook. He finds the book, studies his last entry.

  2100 Subject tells a story about someone beautiful who dresses up like a witch.

  He checks his watch, is surprised to see it’s almost four in the morning. He decides he must’ve dozed off for a few minutes. He picks up a pen, enters a notation recording the next important development.

  0355 Bug #3 malfunctions, delivering only static, and is shut off. Subject asleep.

  “What do we do now?” Goodman asks.

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “The problem is, we’ve already committed enough crimes to put us each away for twenty years.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Take conspiracy,” she says. “All that’s required is an agreement to break some law, and that one of us does some overt act in furtherance of it.”

  “What’s an overt act?”

  “Anything,” she says. “It doesn’t even have to be an illegal act by itself. My handing the sample to T.M. Your returning one of Vincent’s calls. Our having the conversation we just had. I wouldn’t be surprised if Washington’s heard about that by now.”

  “So we’re kind of in this thing together, huh?”

  “Looks that way. Any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Pass the soap.”

  In his dream, Goodman is flying above the earth, peering down through the clouds at the city’s skyline. He’s not alone - it’s as though he’s the leader of a V-shaped flock of geese. Fanning out behind him are Carmen and Kelly and Pop-Tart and Larus. He wants to see if they all have wings, but for some reason, he’s unable to turn his head to the side to look back at them.

  All of a sudden, there are noises, the zinging of bullets whizzing by them. He knows they’ll all be shot, all he killed.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  He recognizes the voice of his daughter, but still he can’t see her; still he can’t move his head.

  “Daddy! Daddy! It’s for you!”

  His heart almost bursts at the thought of whatever it is she’s doing for him.

  “The telephone, Daddy! It’s for you.”

  He opens his eyes and finds he’s on the floor of his apartment, his head wedged against the wall. Above him is Kelly, extending a telephone receiver in his direction. He takes it from her, puts it to his ear.

  “Hey, Mikey boy. Sleeping late this morning?”

  It’s Vinnie, of course.

  “Take a look outside your door, Mikey,” Vinnie says. And then the phone goes dead. After a moment, there’s a dial tone.

  “What time is it?” Goodman asks.

  “Eight-thirty,” Kelly tells him.

  He rubs his eyes and looks around. For a moment, he wonders if all of last night was a dream. Then he notices his pajama bottoms are on backward. At least they got back onto him somehow. He spots Carmen on the bed, totally dead to the world. He goes to get up, but finds he has to do it in stages - his balance is slightly off, and his knees are decidedly wobbly.

  “Are you sick, Daddy?”

  “No,” he assures her, “just tired.”

  “Maybe you should sleep on the bed tonight,” she suggests. “I can take a turn on the floor.”

  “We can talk about it later,” he says. He stands there, trying to remember what it was he was about to do. Then he recalls the phone conversation. What was it Vinnie wanted him to do? Look outside the door - that was it.

  He walks to the door, unlocks it, and cracks it open, half-expecting to find Vinnie standing there. But there’s no one in sight. He’s about to close the door when his eyes are drawn downward. There’s something there, right on top of his doormat. He pulls the door open farther, sees it’s a suitcase, a large one - the awkward, heavy type people used to lug on trips before soft, lightweight luggage became popular. It’s particularly ugly, too - a yellow-and-green floral print. There’s a big tag on it that reads innovation luggage.

  He grasps the handle and braces himself for its weight - he has no interest in throwing his back out again. But when he lifts it, he finds it’s only moderately heavy, a sure sign that it’s empty. He carries it into the apartment a
nd closes the door.

  Kelly has exhibited the good sense to make her own breakfast, and the even better sense to make something that doesn’t require the application of heat. She resumes her seat at the card table, over a bowl of cereal of some sort. He remembers the bug, wonders if right now there are ten guys at CIA headquarters listening to his daughter chewing.

  “Are we going somewhere?” she asks between mouthfuls.

  He looks at her. She looks at the suitcase. He looks at the suitcase.

  “Oh, that.”

  “We can talk about it later,” she says.

  Carmen’s still asleep. Goodman notices that somehow she managed to get back into her flannel shirt before passing out. He wonders which one of them had the presence of mind to put some clothes on their bodies. A thought suddenly occurs to him, and he looks over at Kelly, but she seems to be thoroughly occupied with her cereal.

  He heads for the bathroom.

  “Someone called at oh-eight-thirty,” Spike Schwartz briefs Abbruzzo and Riley, who arrive at the plant at nine. “Told the Mole to look outside the door.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” Schwartz shrugs. “Whatever was there, it didn’t make noise.”

  “Mighta been a note,” is Abbruzzo’s guess.

  “Sonofabitch!” Riley mutters. “Fuckers are communicating in writing now - to beat the tap and the bugs. Maybe we need to get a video camera in there, Ray.”

  Abbruzzo ignores him. It’s too late for that. Though he must admit he likes the idea - can you imagine catching a couple doing it on video?”

  “Did they do it last night?” Abbruzzo asks Schwartz.

  “Do what, sir?”

  “It.”

  “It?”

  “Did they become acquainted in the biblical sense?”

  Morning is apparently not Schwartz’s best time of the day. He stares blankly at Abbruzzo, waiting for the next clue.