“I’m tied to a chair, the lids on my eyes pinned back. On the television, a commercial- free ‘Apprentice’ marathon.”
This time, even gray hair had to smile. He turned to a woman on his direct right. A woman of about forty, I guessed. Short, rather plump, with thick round glasses and long black hair streaked with white.
“How would you describe death, Suma?”
The woman raised her head, tentatively. Across her neck she wore about two dozen beaded necklaces. She seemed kind of frightened.
She cleared her throat.
“Death does not exist,” she said in this high-pitched, almost rattled voice. “Death is a mortal term. We are immortal. Therefore, death has no meaning for us. It has no place in our vocabulary.”
“Thank you, Suma,” he said. “There you have it, Mr. Divine. Scarlet Montana is not dead. She is merely transfigured into another life form.”
“Well, I guess that about puts me out of a job,” I said, while sipping my coffee. It tasted like liquid dirt.
I set the cup back onto the table.
“Reincarnation,” I said.
Gray hair smiled.
He said, “Scarlet truly believed in the resurrection not only of the soul. But of the corpus too.”
All this enlightenment was making me dizzy.
I said, “Can anyone here tell me if Scarlet had been acting strangely over the past few days or weeks?” Again, the entire group stared at the floor.
Still, I persisted: “Did she seem depressed or angry? Was she acting out in any way that might seem unusual to any of you? Did she—”
“Mr. Divine,” Gray hair interrupted. “As you can see, this is a closed session and you are violating our right of assemblage. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
He uncrossed his lotus legs and stood up. All six feet six of him.
Jesus H. Christmas, behold the psychic giant.
I knew if I persisted much longer, he might whip my glutes with a bean sprout.
“Take it easy, Father,” I said. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of a tragedy.”
“There is no tragedy because there is no death. And it’s not Father, it’s Reverend, if you don’t mind.”
I backed off.
I said, “Well, then, Reverend, I’ll take my leave, back to the world of the mortals.”
I reached into my pocket for my wallet, slid out as many cards as I had on me, began passing them around to the circle of ladies.
The one named Kismet smiled.
“Richard V. Divine,” she said. “Masseuse, Personal Trainer and Private Investigator. Might you sing and dance as well.”
“Wasn’t room for all that on the card,” I said. Then, “If any of you happen to recall anything of importance, I urge you to give me a call.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” the good Reverend said.
By the time I got to him, I had two cards left. I placed them back in my wallet, underneath my silver-plated badge.
“Sorry,” I said. “None for you.”
He sat back down.
“Oh, and why is that, Mr. Divine?”
“You’re psychic,” I said. “You already know my number.”
He smiled, laughed a little under his breath.
He held out his hand, as though inviting me to place my hand inside it.
“May I?” he inquired.
I felt my stomach tighten up. My hands were scratched up. Inexplicably. But then, this didn’t seem exactly like the time to deny the man, give him an excuse to inform a higher authority of my willingness to hide something should it come to that.
I set my left hand in his, palm up.
Surprisingly, he said nothing about the cuts as if they weren’t even there. Instead he ran the tip of his right index finger along a thin line that curved its way around the meat of my thumb. After gazing down at the palm for a few beats, he let go of my hand, smiled, shook his head as though puzzled.
“What is it?” I asked, my eyes nervously veering from his to the many women who circled him.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “It’s just that your palm, it’s giving me a reading that just can’t be.”
“And what reading is that?”
He laughed again.
“It could very well have something to do with those recent abrasions,” he remarked. “But if you must know, it says you’re already dead.”
I nodded.
“I had an accident with a bullet to the head a few years back,” I explained. “I should be dead. So they tell me anyway.”
“But then, death does not exist, does it, Mr. Divine?”
“I guess I’m living proof,” I said. “I just wish I could say the same for Scarlet.”
29
I WAS STANDING INSIDE the open double doorway that accessed the Stormville Medical Center autopsy room. My ears pricked up to the soft classical music Stormville Pathologist George Robb was broadcasting from a rather expensive stereo console system that was set up on the lab counter directly behind the ceiling-mounted weight scale.
In the air tonight, the pungent odor of formaldehyde and alcohol.
Scarlet Montana’s white cadaver had already been removed from cold storage and was laid out on the table. From where I stood, I could clearly see the blood and water that was dripping off the body and collecting inside the stainless steel vat positioned beneath the table’s drain. Thoughtfully, Robb had covered her private parts with a green sheet.
The Pathologist had his back to me.
He was standing over the body, contemplating it the same way a mad scientist might contemplate a Frankenstein monster just before bringing it back to life. In his right hand he gripped the water spigot with which he’d used to wash the body down.
Sensing my presence, he about-faced, set down the spigot, then peeled off his latex gloves, tossed them into a blue medical waste bin.
“You’re late, Divine,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping further inside. “I got caught up in a psychic reading of sorts.”
We met in the center of the room, directly beside the body length table. We shook hands, a couple of battle-seasoned crime vets—Robb, having gained much of his experience with the dead in Viet Nam, more seasoned than me.
“So Detective Cain has requested that you solve their little suicide problem,” he grinned sympathetically.
I shot a tentative glance in the direction of Scarlet’s prone body.
I knew that the sight of her naked limbs and torso had no effect on a pathologist like George. For him, she was just another night’s work. But for me, she was still flesh and blood. Still a person. Despite the effort, I was having some real trouble referring to her as an “it.” Every time I glanced at her for more than a few seconds at a time, I felt a dull throbbing in the center of my head and in the back of my throat. There was the nagging pressure against the backs of my eyeballs, the buzzing in my brain.
Had I had anything to do with this? Anything at all?
I could only believe that I hadn’t; that on the other hand, Jake had everything to do with it, including motive, opportunity and means.
“Montana extended a personal invitation late last night,” I said.
“He wants this one bought and sold right away,” Robb correctly suggested. “Wants the transaction to go down his way, your name and only your name on the sales receipt. Avoid a full-blown internal investigation.”
“I am the internal investigation,” I clarified. “In the interest of preserving his wife’s memory.”
Robb grinned.
“He didn’t feed you that bullshit.”
“Directly to my bald-headed face.”
“The only thing Montana wants to save in a case like this is his own behind. And believe me, that’s a lot of real estate to save.”
I nodded in the direction of the body.
“Along with his freedom,” I said. “I.A. fingers point to him, things could get mighty ugly for Stormville’s finest
cop.”
If I had to guesstimate, I would have put George’s age at around fifty-four or fifty-five, although he looked quite a bit older. If you didn’t know he was an M.D., you’d swear he was an aging rock’n roll musician. He was a small man with shoulder length salt-and- pepper hair parted in the middle, a navy blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead. That night he was wearing a white smock that buttoned down the front and hung short of his knees.
His sleeves rolled up around his elbows, he wore three silver chain bracelets on his right wrist. His earlobes supported one silver hoop apiece and on his feet, a pair of worn cowboy boots over which he sported a pair of tight fitting Levi’s jeans with a good-sized tear over the right knee cap.
He disappeared into the connecting back office.
A moment later he came back out carrying a neatly folded smock. On top of the smock was placed a pair of green shoe booties, a transparent plastic face shield, a pair of tan colored latex gloves and a green cap. He handed the pile to me, told me to get dressed. While I slipped into my hospital costume, he stepped over to the stereo system and proceeded to replace the existing C.D. with a sad, classical composition by Vaughan Williams entitled Symphony Numbers 3 and 4. Better known as the “Pastoral Symphonies.” The same soundtrack he always worked to. Take it from an insider.
He turned to me, just as the lush operatic voices began to fill the white-tiled room.
Through his narrow mask I saw him purse his lips as if to say, Take a deep breath. I know this isn’t easy on you.
Fingering a Teflon scalpel off the tool tray, he brought the razor sharp tip to Scarlet’s already scarred sternum.
30
THE CARGO SHIP LOOMED over the two men like a mountain carved out of rusted steel panels and rivets. The ship bobbed alive in the wake of the Hudson River, rancid bilge spilling out of its pumps like steamy piss from an old war horse. The ship’s steel panels wrenched painfully with each up-and-down movement, its thick rope lines that tied it off to the concrete and macadam docks expanding and contracting.
Standing beside the far bow line on the very edge of the dock was a tall albino man dressed in black pants, leather driving jacket and black shoes. Hiding red-pink eyes were dark aviator style sunglasses. The Albino was Russian by decent. A ten year émigré via the failed Russo-Afghan war of the 1980s and ‘90s.
Lieutenant Mitchell Cain stared into the sunglassed eyes of the strange looking man, pulled a smoke from the interior pocket of his own leather jacket, silently but nervously offering one up to the Russian Albino man.
Reaching out, Albino man slipped one out of the pack with pale index finger and thumb. He stuck the smoke between his lips, then patiently waited for Cain to light it.
Which the shaky handed cop promptly did.
Firing up his own cigarette, the Lieutenant looked one way down the mile-long dock, then the other. Seeing that they were not being watched, he cleared his throat.
“Sorry this had to happen,” he said. “But no one expected Scarlet Montana to die.”
The Russian smoked thoughtfully, until he exhaled a slow, long stream.
“I get this straight,” he says in Russian-accented English. “Jake Montana’s beautiful wife is dead, yes. Found in her own bed, cut up from throat to cunt, yes. And you people call it suicide, yes.”
“I assure you, Joseph, that’s all it is.”
“Nobody inflicts big focking pain on one’s own body. Focking impossible, is it not, yes?”
Cain, smoking.
“Does it really matter how she died? All that matters is that our operation is not compromised should a county prosecutor start sniffing around.”
Russian Albino took one last long drag of the smoke before pulling it from his mouth, tossing it into the narrow no-man’s land between dock and bobbing boat.
In his mind, Cain imagined the still lit smoke hitting the river water below.
“And investigation about to begin, yes?” “No … I mean yes.”
“Which will it be, Mr. Cain.”
“What I mean is, an investigation by a special independent investigator appointed by both me and Jake Montana has already begun. But …”
“But what?”
Cain, smiling.
“But I assure you, you will be more than pleased with said investigation’s outcome.”
Cain, smoking, smiling, winking.
Albino Russian not smiling.
“Very clear I understand, Mr. Cain. Control of the situation you have. Just like my old KGB, yes?”
Yeah, just like your KGB, Cain thought. What the hell?
“Nothing to worry about, Joseph.”
“Good, because if business together should be exposed, I should have to focking kill you, yes?”
Russian albino raised his right hand to his white head, made like a pistol with forefinger and thumb, brought the thumb down.
Now Cain was not smiling. Now his face looked like he’d just swallowed a hammer and sickle.
Still he tried to tough-guy laugh.
“Everything is fine,” he stressed. “Our operation will remain status quo. Capice?”
Behind the two men, the big ship bobbed, its steel panels stressing, straining, bilge pissing, the river stinking of dead fish and gasoline.
“Mr. Cain,” Albino Russian said with a nod. “One more question I have to pose.”
Tossing his now spent cigarette to the macadam covered dock, Cain pressed it out with the tip of his black cop shoe.
“What is it?” he said with a smoky exhale.
“Scarlet Montana,” Albino man went on. “You did not cut her up yourself, yes?”
Just then, a inland seagull landed on the dock’s edge, its dirty-white feathered wings beating out.
“I just told you, Joseph,” Cain nervously retorted. “It was a suicide.”
“Sure it was, yes?” Russian Albino mocked. “A focking suicide. And you are not a professional liar, Mr. Cain, yes?”
“Not that kind of a liar.”
“Cross your Holy Christ soul, Mr. Cain?”
Cain, fake laughing.
“Cross your heart,” he said, making a large imaginary X across his chest with his right hand. “It’s cross your heart. Not soul.”
“I see the bright light,” Albino Russian said as the seagull opened up its wings once more, lit out for the open air. “Cross your focking heart.”
Pushing past Cain, Russian Albino started making his way back towards the port parking lot and the blue Toyota Landcruiser parked there.
“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Cain,” he said. “No one knows about our little meeting, yes?”
“Yes, you rancid piece of white Russian horse cock,” Cain sighed under his breath.
“Excuse me, Mr. Cain? You have comment to say, yes?”
I said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
31
FOR A WHILE, THE autopsy proceeded uneventfully.
Having removed the lungs, trachea and esophagus en bloc, George weighed organ after organ, recording each and every detail of the procedure into a microphone clipped onto his safety glasses.
From the start I had been careful to keep my distance. Especially when he initiated the proceedings by swiping the blade down the center of her chest, following the exact path of the long hesitation scars Scarlet may or may not have produced all on her own.
After a time, however, I found myself taking a good look at her face.
Her open eyes were unusually sunken in. Concave even. I knew that the eyes of a dead person gradually flattened out, the same way a bicycle tire will lose its air over time. But then, from where I stood maybe four feet away from her face, it seemed as though the eyes no longer possessed any type of reflective sheen whatsoever. Even under the high-powered lamps.
I ran the tips of my latex-covered fingers over the eyelids, opening and closing them.
I noticed then that my fingers were trembling. Ever so gently. Taking a step back, I removed them from her face.
/> Maybe I was just tired and a little crazy. But I shook my head, spit out with a little nervous laughter.
I spotted George out of the corner of my eye. He had just completed an examination of her pelvis, using not only his fingers but a stainless steel instrument. What he collected from his search he placed inside a small plastic jar, which he then sealed tightly. After he set the jar down on the counter, he just stood there, staring me down.
He looked at me strangely.
He said, “Richard, can I ask you a personal question?”
I nodded.
“Were you still sleeping with her?”
My wide eyes must have shouted volumes.
“Sheeeeit,” is all he said.
32
IT WAS A DECISION prompted more out of desperation than thirst: stopping into the downtown corner gin mill, taking a seat at the end of the long bar, ordering a double bourbon.
Straight up, no chaser.
But by that point in the day immediately following his wife’s killing, Jake Montana needed a drink, needed it badly. But then, he also knew that by downing the drink, he was playing with fire. It may have been the devil bourbon that made him pass out last night. He’d had too much of it before he came home, only to find that his wife Scarlet wasn’t alone. If only he hadn’t had so much to drink, he might not have lost his temper when he saw that Scarlet’s bedroom window was wide open, that the room was lit up with candles, that it reeked of cigarette smoke and something much worse. Something sexy organic.
If he hadn’t been drinking all night, he might not have gone into a rage.
He might not have blacked out.
He might not have killed Scarlet.
Or did he?
Because there was always the possibility that he was placing too much pressure on himself, allowing his imagination to run away with itself. What was for certain was that he and Scarlet fought. They got into one another’s faces, she with a bedsheet pulled up over naked breasts, he with fists clenched. He called her a “whore.” She called him a “Mean rotten drunk.” A “baby killer.” And that’s when he lost it. That’s when he slapped her, knocked her down.
Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls Page 10