The Moonlight

by Nicholas Guild

  “What he’s running from can’t come after him.”

  Just by lifting her gaze, Beth confirmed the utter truth of what she had said.

  “It’s the Moonlight, isn’t it.”

  “That’s right—it’s the Moonlight.” For just a moment Beth put her hand over her eyes, as if trying to shield them from something. “I should have listened to you, Millie, because you were right all along. Bad things happen in that place.”

  . . . . .

  They waited together for Phil to return, but by ten o’clock that morning Beth was sure he wasn’t coming back.

  “I can’t keep my eyes open another minute,” Millie said. “Wake me when he gets here.”

  A moment later Beth happened to look at her, lying there in her bathrobe, with part of the bedspread pulled over her, and she could see from the way Millie was breathing that she was already asleep.

  Beth got up and went into the kitchen to make herself a mug of tea. She was glad to be alone again, because she had to think.

  Phil had her telephone number. If there was a problem, why didn’t he call? Could he have decided to leave without her? It occurred to her what maybe she had misread the guy from the beginning—maybe all he had wanted last night was another roll in the hay before he disappeared for good.

  She couldn’t believe what she was thinking. Not him, not her Phil. Besides, he had been too upset. A man who is coming apart like that doesn’t walk a mile through the rain just to get laid.

  He had meant to come back for her. She was sure of that—he had meant for the two of them to go away together.

  She sat down on the couch in the living room, holding the tea mug against her lap so that she could feel its heat through her bathrobe. She wanted to feel comfortable and quiet and safe within the familiar walls of her apartment. She wanted to slow down so that she could figure out what to do.

  Except that there were limits to what you could expect from a mug of tea, and everything was spinning out of control. She kept having to fight down the impulse to just surrender and let out the great spasms of weeping she felt gathering inside her.

  At last, simply because she had to do something, she went back into the kitchen, where the phone was, and dialed Phil’s number.

  She let it ring for perhaps two minutes, long after she knew no one was going to answer. Finally she hung up.

  Usually, when nobody answers the phone, that means nobody’s home. It had been over four hours since Phil left the apartment. He had said he wouldn’t be long, just a few hours to collect what’s mine. Probably he had been and gone, and the Moonlight was standing empty.

  Or maybe he really was there and knew it was her calling. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to her.

  She went back into the living room and sat down on the couch again. By the time she remembered her tea it was cold.

  It was twenty-five to eleven. He might have just left and be on his way—that was at least possible. From the Moonlight into Brookville was almost exactly a mile. Even if he was carrying a suitcase, the walk couldn’t take him more than twenty minutes.

  At eleven o’clock she went into the bathroom, where there was a window that looked out on Old River Road. She watched several cars drive by, but none of them was a wine-red Lincoln. The sidewalks were empty.

  He wasn’t coming. There wasn’t any way around it. He just wasn’t coming back.

  All right—she wasn’t the first girl in the world to have a man run out on her. It wasn’t a disaster. She wasn’t some pregnant teenager who had been abandoned at the church door. Her life wasn’t over. She would still be alive tomorrow morning, and in a month’s time she would have trouble remembering what he looked like. To hell with Phil Owings.

  She sat down on the toilet seat and wept like a child, holding a hand towel up against her face to muffle the sound of her sobbing.

  When she was finished, she felt utterly drained. There wasn’t anything left inside her except a dull ache in her throat that was more a physical discomfort than an emotion. She washed her face and went back into the living room. It was only when she lay down on the sofa that she remembered how tired she was.

  . . . . .

  She woke up with a start and realized immediately that it was already the middle of the afternoon. Her watch said three ten, so she was already late for work. Well, she was just going to have to miss work today, and if she got fired that was too bad.

  She was going over to the Moonlight. She didn’t make a decision about it—she simply knew she was going.

  Maggie was still asleep. Beth didn’t really think she would find anything at the Moonlight, so she would probably be back long before Maggie woke up and found the apartment empty. And even if she wasn’t, Maggie would assume she was at work.

  Fine. It would save a lot of explanations. Beth didn’t want to be told she was doing something stupid. She knew that for herself.

  She kept thinking about how scared Phil had been last night. He had been half crazy with fear, and he had come to her. He hadn’t run away—he had come to her. It was impossible to believe that now he would just take off without a word. So she had to go to the Moonlight, just to see if somehow he was still there. It was the only thing left to do, and she had to do it.

  It was not quite three thirty when she left the apartment. She didn’t even take her handbag, just her keys, which she slipped into the pocket of the light gray slacks she was wearing. She went the back way, through the parking lot behind Feenie’s hardware, so she wouldn’t have to walk past the restaurant where she worked.

  It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and there was a lot of humidity from the rain the night before. Within a quarter of a mile, Beth could feel her nylon blouse clinging to her shoulder blades.

  People stared as they drove past her on Old River Road. She knew it was just because she was on foot, but it made her feel exposed and humiliated, as if everyone in the world knew what she was up to, that she had cut work to chase after her lover like an infatuated schoolgirl.

  As she got further away from town, the branches of the trees on either side of the road grew together overhead to create an ever-darkening shade. It was like being in a tunnel, and the dampness of the air began to feel almost clammy.

  Yet the Moonlight was in a pool of bright sun. It fairly gleamed in its new paint, so that it looked slightly unreal, a mirage, a trick played on the senses. As she left the road and started up the gravel driveway, Beth had the sense of leaving one level of existence for another—like Alice, stepping through the looking glass.

  The garage was standing open, and Phil’s Lincoln as still parked inside. Beth did no more than glance in through the doorway, just to make sure that no one was there.

  The front door was locked, but the door off the patio was ajar by couple of inches. Beth went inside and looked around at the cavernous space that had once been the dining room. The few remaining pieces of furniture were still covered with sheets, and there was a general air of desolation.

  “Phil!” she shouted, still just inside the threshold. The sound echoed and died away, leaving behind a silence that was like a reproof. It was several seconds before she could nerve herself to proceed any further.

  She went up to the second floor. Phil’s shaving things were gone from the bathroom. The clothes he had been wearing that morning were in a soggy tangle in the bathtub.

  In the bedroom the chest of drawers was empty, and the closet had been cleaned out.

  He was gone—what else had she expected?

  She went downstairs again, and her heart nearly stopped when she walked into the kitchen. There was a suitcase standing open on the table.

  “Phil, are you here?”

  She was surprised by the tremor in her voice. She told herself not to hope.

  The pantry door was standing open, and Phil was sitting at the round table that took up most of the room. A pack of playing cards was spread out before him on the table, in what appeared to be some version of solitaire. He
was wearing his new brown suit.

  He looked up at her and an annoyed expression crossed his face, as if he couldn’t understand what she was doing there.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Are you all right? I got worried when you didn’t come back.”

  For a moment he didn’t seem to know what she was talking about, but then he smiled. It was a crafty, secretive smile, one Beth had never seen before.

  “Did you really expect me to?”

  He went back to his solitaire game, leaving her to consider the question. Had she? Somehow, all at once, it seemed very important to decide.

  “Yes, I expected you to,” she said finally. “You said you would. You said you wanted me to go away with you. I believed you.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere, sweetie.” He raised his eyes to her again and she was struck by their peculiar lifelessness, as if they saw straight through her—or saw nothing. “Anyway, not for very long. Don’t worry. You won’t even have time to get lonely.”

  Almost in spite of himself, he smiled again. And the sight of him like that, enjoying his secret joke, sent a cold thrill of horror through her.

  He continued to play his game, but his eyes never left her. His hands seemed to manage the cards automatically, turning them over and placing them face up on the table in orderly little rows, as if the whole process was somehow detached from his consciousness. Black six on red seven, red three on black four—the cards slid into place without error or hesitation. He never even glanced down.

  Gradually it began to occur to Beth that this was not the same person who had left her apartment not quite ten hours ago. In less than the space of a day Phil had undergone some transformation. He was not afraid, he did not love her, he played cards. He even looked different, although of what that change consisted she could not have said.

  “Phil. . .”

  And for just an instant his face registered nothing, as if he was waiting for something more. Then he remembered, and raised his head in an almost imperceptible acknowledgement.

  Because, of course, it wasn’t his name she had spoken. Not now—not anymore. She couldn’t imagine how she knew, but she knew.

  “Charlie?”

  The thin, cruel smile broke into a grin, so that he showed his teeth almost like an animal.

  “Good for you,” he said. “I always liked a smart girl.”

  Beth felt a sudden lurch in her mind, as if reality had just shifted a little on its axis.

  “What have you done with him?” she asked, fighting hard now to keep down a rising sense of panic. She hardly knew who she was talking about, or to whom.

  She was standing very near the round gaming table, which almost seemed to block the door, and she reached out to touch one of the chairs, just to reassure herself to its solid existence.

  “Where is he?”

  “Your jerk of a boyfriend?” Charlie answered, if that was who he was now—it was impossible to think of him as “Phil.” He managed a slight shrug, implying that he could hardly bring himself to consider the matter. “It’s kind of a tough question, isn’t it. You interested in philosophy or something? Otherwise, I can’t figure out why a dish like you should care. He ain’t comin’ back. Forget him. Besides, I’m a better fuck than he ever was—you don’t want to lie to me and say you didn’t notice the difference.”

  For a moment she was quite sure she was going to be sick. She felt a cold nausea in her bowels and her legs seemed about to collapse under her. But just as quickly as it had come the sensation passed away, to be replaced by a hot flush of shame that was almost physically painful, as if she had awakened to find the sun had burned her to the bone.

  Yes, of course. In some sense, she had always known. Now even that was tainted for her. Even the memory had become a curse.

  “Now, have I gone and embarrassed you?” Charlie laughed contemptuously. “Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a woman blush like that—maybe never.”

  He got up from his chair and came over to her. As he approached, Beth thought she could detect the smell of a decaying corpse.

  “Why don’t you just stick around?” he asked, putting his hand up to her face. “I got a little business to take care of tonight, but I’ll be back. You wait right here.”

  With all the force of panicky revulsion, Beth struck the hand away, and almost at once, as if it was a signal he had been waiting for, Charlie raked the back of his fist across her head, knocking her down.

  “Now you made me lose my temper.” He stood above her, rubbing his hand, looking annoyed and disappointed. “I don’t like to knock women around, but you brought this on yourself.”

  And then, the idea seeming to have just occurred to him, “I don’t think I can trust you.”

  With great effort she turned over and found herself looking up into his face, at once so familiar and so strange. In some uncanny way she felt divided against herself, as if the same words had somehow to speak different messages to different men.

  “What are you going to do?” Beth asked in a raspy whisper. Her right cheek was tender and already beginning to swell.

  “Do?” Charlie smiled, then almost at once the smile faded and was replaced by an expression of the most abandoned fear—it was Phil she saw, as if for a moment he had found a way to show his face from behind the mask—and then the smile returned. “I’m gonna collect on an old debt, that’s what I’m gonna do. Or do you just mean, what am I gonna to with you?”

  She didn’t answer, and after a moment he laughed.

  “You wanna hear a story?” He sat down on the edge of the gaming table, still menacingly close. “A few years back, when this place ’d stood vacant for a long time, a couple of clowns who thought they were real hard-asses broke in. They’d snatched some rich guy’s kid and were gonna keep her here until they got paid off, figurin’ the old Moonlight was the last place anybody ’d think to look. They had her down in the basement, all tied up with bailing wire.

  “Well, one night here was more than enough for those heroes—about four o’clock in the morning they just took off. They forgot all about the kid. They just left her here.”

  “What happened to her?”

  At first he only shook his head, seeming to forbid the question, and then, “She wasn’t my problem.”

  She remembered now. Millie had told her: “about twelve years ago some little girl was found dead up there.”

  “You know what I like about this place?” he asked, as if he really expected an answer. “I like it that all the doors are so solid—they don’t build houses like that anymore. And they’ve all got locks.”

  His hand went into his pocket and came out again with a shiny brass key.

  “Especially the pantry. I guess my friend Georgie really worried that somebody might get into the cookie jar—what do you think?”

  He laughed again and went through the door, closing it behind him. Beth scrambled to her feet as quickly as she could, but even as her hands touched the knob she could hear the tumblers of the lock snapping into place.

  She sank to the floor, still clutching the doorknob in both hands, sobbing helplessly.

  Chapter 34

  Jimmy DeLucia was behind the wheel of a car stolen especially for the occasion out of the long-term parking lot at LaGuardia Airport. It was a dark blue Chevy and hadn’t been near a carwash in weeks. It was the sort of car that couldn’t be traced, wouldn’t be missed, and was never noticed. It was a perfect car for the purpose and worth the little extra trouble of sending a couple of people all the way to Long Island for, because those were the kinds of precautions you had to take when you were setting up a hit for the Don himself. There couldn’t be any loose ends. It had to be the sort of thing he could walk away from as if it had never happened.

  It was just after dark and he was parked on a side street in the warehouse district of Stamford, waiting for a punk named Joey Rizzo, who had also been carefully selected. Rizzo’s mother was Puerto Rican, so
he could never be a made man. Still, he was very eager to rise and had proved himself dependable in routine work. He had also killed a security guard during the robbery of a jewelry store in Norwalk four months ago, the sort of free-lance job DeLucia usually frowned upon with his people and which, on this occasion, had earned Rizzo a severe reprimand. Still, at least the guy wasn’t going to sick up at the sight of a little blood. DeLucia didn’t really trust Joey Rizzo, but this time he didn’t have to trust him because Joey Rizzo was going to end the night with a bullet in the back of his head. After all, sooner or later the cops were going to nail this bozo for one of his amateur-hour stickups, and Rizzo was the type who would be very eager to trade some jail time away. It wouldn’t do to have this greaser telling the State Attorney’s office that he had seen Sonny Galatina blow some guy away. No, Rizzo was going to disappear, along with Owings.

  There were always risks, but the planning on this job left very little to chance. Owings’ house was being discreetly watched from the road—DeLucia had five men out in cars. When he got to Brookville, DeLucia would stop at a pay phone and be told whether Owings was at home. If he was, they would simply drive up to his front door and take him. If he wasn’t, they would leave the car one street over and walk through the woods. When he got back they would be waiting for him.

  Once they had him in the trunk of their car, it would all go without a ripple. The Family owned an office building downtown—Owings would be brought in through the basement garage and then up in the service elevator to the unoccupied top floor. Then they would phone Sonny. When the Don was all finished extracting justice, whatever was left of Owings would be wrapped in a plastic tarp and taken back down to the garage.

  There was a land fill in Darien. Rizzo would dig the grave, then DeLucia would pop Rizzo and dump him in on top of Owings. A few shovelfuls of dirt, and in the morning the bulldozers would take care of the rest. End of story.

  About two blocks up, DeLucia saw a car pull in to the curb on the other side of the street. The man who got out was a little under average height and walked with the quick, choppy gait of someone who liked to imagine nobody could push him around. He crossed the street, and started up the sidewalk, keeping close to the buildings.