Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller)

by Zandri, Vincent

  I feel the tingle in my stomach. It tells me I know where Georgie is going with this before he gets there.

  “Rose is a spy, and has been one since the Cold War. He’s been using his biological grandson to sell secrets to the Russians.”

  My big brother smiles, drinks some more beer.

  “Rose must have been selling secrets for decades,” he goes on. “He was a federal government accountant assigned to audit the Knolls atomic books. Dude must know precisely what a nuke reactor costs, where to get one, and exactly what stores sell them. And it ain’t Amazon-dot-com or Lowes.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking: When his daughter got pregnant, he used it to his advantage. What a hell of a way to expand the operation. Acquire a grandson, bring him up essentially Russian in an American world. Hope to hell he’s got talent for engineering, and hope to hell he can work his way into the nuke plant where it so happens his adoptive father works, and which his secret grandfather has been monitoring for ages on behalf of the Feds. It’s of course a risk all the way around. But what does Rose have to lose? Not a thing. He’s already got a foothold in the Russian spy business. He’s looking for longevity; a continuation program to keep the family business growing and thriving.

  “It might have been a no-brainer for Czech. That is, so long as old man Rose was paying him and his foster parents the whole time. Or maybe Czech had no choice but to toe the red line, or face something dreadful. Like his own death or the death of his adoptive parents.”

  “Czech told me his biological mother died of cancer,” I interject. “But he also told me both his foster parents died in an automobile accident.”

  “Look into it further,” insists Georgie, “and I can bet that car wreck was more than just an accident. Could be that Czech wanted out. Especially after his own accident and resulting paralysis. But Rose wouldn’t let him get out. And he proved how serious he was by killing the foster mother and father, made it look like an accident.”

  We both chew on that one for a while.

  “So why now?” I chime in after a beat. “Why does Czech come to me with some crazy story about finding his father who’s really his grandfather?”

  “Like I said, he wants to expose Rose for who he is.”

  “But in doing so he’ll expose himself.”

  “Risk he’s willing to take.”

  “Why?”

  Georgie, shrugging narrow shoulders.

  “Maybe he wants to protect Lola, his mother. Maybe he wants to protect his surviving biological father. Maybe he wants something else from Rose and he’s willing to expose him in order to get at it.”

  We both look at one another. Despite the rundown of factual events, and some pretty good guesses, we’re empty of real answers. But . . .

  “We just might find out in a few hours just what Czech wants from his partner and grandfather,” I suggest.

  “I suspect we will, Moon. And let’s hope that Lola is no worse the wear for her son’s newfound cause.”

  “A mother’s love for her son. It supersedes everything. Even federal and state law.”

  “And good old common sense.”

  My stomach drops at the thought of Lola being harmed and also at the thought of her having a son and a father like Rose and never revealing it to me. Then there’s the question of her being disloyal to me. It’s all too much to handle in one sitting. I drink down my beer, grab another from the cooler behind the bar.

  Standing, Georgie drinks down the rest of his beer, sets the empty on the table.

  “Gonna check on our injured Boris,” he informs. “He is a guest in our country after all.”

  “Sorry about the blood all over your Beetle.”

  “Don’t worry. Got friends who can clean that stuff up.” He smiles. “Gonna cost you though.”

  “Put it on my tab,” I insist.

  “Getting to be a huge tab,” he says, walking out the back door.

  CHAPTER 46

  WAS A TIME IN my youth when I would recall the old Montgomery Ward building with some sentimental affection. I remember as a kid anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Montgomery Ward catalogue to my dad’s funeral home. It was so big and thick, about the only book in the home that held more weight was the Bible and the phone book. For the entire fall season right up until Christmas I’d stare at full-color glossy pics of the toys I expected Santa to deliver. Trains sets, electric car racetracks, cowboy six-guns, basketballs, baseballs, footballs, fishing poles. You name it Montgomery Ward had it.

  While the toys miraculously appeared for me under the Christmas tree on the morning of December 25th, every now and then the old man would splurge and allow me to pick something out from the catalogue during the year. That’s when we’d make the short drive to the Montgomery Ward building which was located on lower Broadway in what then was the thriving North Albany village of Menands. That is, before the shopping malls took over and the big stand-alone department store went belly up and half of Louis Menands’ village got laid off.

  Now instead of driving up to this monstrous, red, white, and blue-lit white ten-story concrete and plaster-sided building with attached warehouse, Georgie and I approach a gated and boarded up haunted castle that’s been long abandoned and even longer forgotten. Now instead of happy shoppers coming to and fro from the parking garage located directly next door to the old building, feral dogs and cats patrol the grounds in search of their next meal while rats scamper across the old parking spaces and crows nest in the eaves.

  If the razor wire-topped chain-link perimeter fence screaming KEEP OUT doesn’t make you want to stay away from the building, the ever present threat of a psycho crack addict who won’t hesitate to cut your belly open with straight razor for an hour’s worth of high will.

  According to Boris, this is the place the officially dead but unofficially alive Harvey Rose calls home-sweet-home. But this is also the place where I hope to find Lola and Peter Czech alive.

  God willing.

  Since the parking garage isn’t fenced off, Georgie pulls up onto the first level ramp, drives slowly up, pulls into a spot that sends some crows flying off into the black night and some rats scampering for cover. He kills the lights. Reaching over me to the glove box, he opens it, pulls out a small black Maglite.

  He flicks it on, shines it on the goon’s knee. The one that’s no longer there.

  “One of us has to be Boris’s legs,” he points out.

  It’s Georgie’s way of saying, You’re it!

  We both get out, face the razor-wire topped perimeter fence.

  “Wonder if it’s electrified,” I pose.

  “Count on it,” Georgie answers. “Only way we’re getting in his him.”

  We begin the inevitable: dragging the bleeding Boris out of the Beetle.

  While I act as his human crutch, Georgie keeps a close eye on his back with both the Maglite and his .9mm.

  “Let’s have it Boris,” I insist. “How do you normally gain access to a dead man’s castle?”

  I’m fully prepared for a fight. But all the fight, along with half his blood, is drained out of him.

  “We call first, yes?” he groans. “On our cellular mobiles. We are then let in through a side gate. That gate leads to a door and a vesti . . . vesti . . .”

  “Vestibule,” Georgie interjects on the Russian’s behalf.

  “Da. Ves-Ti-Bule. English language is ball-sack hard to learn, yes? Inside Ves-Ti-Bule, electronic handprint is required.”

  “Thank God they don’t need knee prints,” Georgie says. It’s a joke. But nobody laughs. Especially the goon.

  I reach into his pockets, find his cell. It’s an iPhone. Expensive. Rose knows how to treat his Russian employees.

  “Call! I’m telling, not asking.”

  I hand him the phone.

  Boris uses his thumb to maneuver the touch pad. He thumbs a number contained in his speed-dial list. That’s when Georgie presses the barrel of his piece against the back of the goon’s head.
/>
  “You’d better hope you dialed the correct number and haven’t called out your Cossacks,” he warns. “Because guess who takes the first bullet?”

  “Do not worry,” Boris moans. “And you don’t know Slavic Cossack from Jewish Cossack.”

  OK whatever. But I am worried. Worried he won’t make it to the vestibule. We need his handprint or we aren’t going to gain access to the fortress. Easy access, anyway.

  It’s slow going with me acting as a living pair of crutches, but we make our way down the concrete ramp, out the garage. We maneuver ourselves towards a gate located on the side of the mammoth facility. Truth be told, I’m also concerned about surveillance cameras which Rose has no doubt installed somewhere. To our advantage however, there are none mounted on the fence. None that are plainly visible anyway. Makes sense too for a guy who has no choice but to remain dead in the eyes of the law and the public.

  “Side trouser pocket,” Boris says at the padlocked gate. “There is key in there, yes?”

  Georgie reaches inside for it. He pulls it out. There’s blood on it. He wipes the blood off on his pant leg, then inserts the key into the padlock and twists. It opens.

  We make our way through the open gate, try for the side door as fast as humanly possible. When we come to the metal door, Boris tells me to take hold of a certain brick that appears to be a part of the normal course work. He points the brick out.

  “Pull on it,” he insists.

  I do it.

  An entire brick panel opens, exposing a dimly lit keypad.

  “Do us proud,” I say.

  When he lacks the strength to raise his hand, I do it for him, pressing his palm against the keypad. There’s an abrupt mechanical click that signals something releasing, like a lock, and the metal panel door opens by a few inches. Georgie grabs hold of it, and opens it wide.

  “We’ll take it from here,” I say to Boris, dragging him inside and releasing him.

  He immediately drops down in the corner between the wall and the door, issuing a moan. Georgie applies more tape to his ankles and wrists. Then he asks him, “Where would Rose be right now? His ivory tower?”

  Boris just glares at the old pathologist quizzically.

  “Come on, man,” Georgie pushes. “At this point you might as well just tell us.”

  Boris the Russian goon hawks something slimy up into his throat, spits it out onto the floor.

  He says, “Mister Rose, he is always up in the tower. Ten floors up. Then another four floors after that.”

  “What’s the easiest way to get up there?” I ask.

  “No stairs past floor number ten. Only the freight elevator will take you there.” He cocks his head in the direction of the elevators. “It is where you’ll find dead or alive Mister Rose, yes?”

  “Someone takes a shot at us, Boris,” Georgie warns. “Or if this is setup, we’ll come back for you and kill you. Understand?”

  “If I am not already dead yet, dude,” he says. “Already I am seeing angels.”

  Funny, I don’t recall seeing any angels when I died.

  Georgie tapes the goon’s mouth.

  Then we head for the freight elevator.

  CHAPTER 47

  THERE’S SOMETHING SURREAL ABOUT rising rapidly inside a dark freight elevator. A straight vertical shot up ten stories towards the tower portion of the old Montgomery Ward castle to confront a living Russian spy who’s supposed to be dead. There’s something very Batman and Robin about the experience.

  It also seems just a little too easy.

  Rose has himself locked away inside a fortress and all it takes is one electronic palm print to get us inside the walls. As if reading my mind, Georgie has his .9mm out and at the ready. I do the same while the old elevator approaches the top floor.

  Until it stops.

  The machine just shuts down in between the ninth and tenth floor. There’s a disturbing pause that makes my throat close in on itself and my brain buzz from an adrenalin injection. A series of ceiling-mounted bright lights flash on. Lights so bright they blind me. The lights are followed by an incredible noise that screams and vibrates. The noise comes at us like a physical wave. A wall of crushing sound. It rattles the fillings inside my teeth. Both Georgie and I can’t help but drop our pieces. We can’t help but collapse incapacitated to the hard elevator floor, a couple of sad sacks of beat up bones and flesh.

  CHAPTER 48

  WHEN THE NOISE FINALLY stops, I lie on the floor of the freight elevator feeling myself go in and out of consciousness. I fight to stay alert, but I know that if the noise sounds again, I’ll be out cold. My fragile head won’t be able to bear it.

  While the blinding white lights continue to shine down on us, the elevator once more starts up. It lifts us up to the one remaining floor. I still can’t move. From what I can make out, out the corner of my left eye, neither can Georgie.

  When the elevator stops again, and the doors automatically slide open, I can’t help but raise up my head, as painful as the effort is. And what I witness not only sucks my lungs of all their breath, it answers the reason why Peter Czech tried to blackmail his grandfather.

  It all has to do with his severed spine.

  CHAPTER 49

  INSIDE A MAMMOTH LOFT space exists a room constructed inside a room.

  The room’s walls, ceiling, and floor are created by a thick layer or layers of perfectly translucent plastic held rigid and tight by an intricate stainless steel framing system. The room is isolated atmospherically with its own ducted HVAC system which is located right beside it. Placed inside the plastic room’s center is an operating table. Surrounding the operating table is a series of bright lamps. Portable monitoring equipment is stacked to the right side of the table, not far out of the way of the half dozen or so people who are standing around the table, and the man who’s laid out upon it. Face down. The monitors aren’t necessarily in the way, but the man who is filming the operation with a shoulder-mounted video camera is trying to get as close to the operating action as he can.

  The people are all wearing surgical scrubs.

  Not the usual hospital pea green scrubs, but white, as if this homespun operating theater were somehow far more special than the usual everyday medical surgery. And it is. Everyone wears masks, but that doesn’t prevent me from recognizing all of them. Or, all the people I should recognize, that is.

  As the shock of the noise subduing system wears off, and I can somehow collect myself enough to prop my body up onto one knee, I recognize Lola, and her half-sister, Claudia. They turn enough towards me as the doors open to issue me a direct look. The man to their left is someone I’ve never met before, but whom I know immediately.

  It’s Harvey Rose.

  The “dead” man sees me, issues me the slightest of glances, like Georgie and I are nothing more than the pizza delivery crew.

  “Security system spotted you inside the parking garage,” he explains in a low, strangely matter-of-fact, gruff voice. Until he shouts out, “Boys!”

  Almost immediately two monster goons are on us, pulling us up off the elevator floor, dragging us inside the great room. They relieve us of our automatics. Behind us, the elevator doors close. The goons pick us up by our jacket collars, and they force us to stand, however wobbly.

  Lola peers at me from where she stands by the operating table. Even from a distance of maybe twenty feet, I can see that her brown eyes are glassy, filled with tears.

  “Richard, why?” she sobs. “Why on God’s earth did you come here?”

  Before I can answer her, she turns back to the table.

  The man doing the operating is being assisted by Claudia. He slams down an instrument.

  “I cannot work in this way,” he grumbles. “Not if you want me to get this right!” He also speaks in a foreign accent. One which isn’t Russian however. More like Spanish.

  Rose takes two steps back inside the plastic operating room towards the table. “Not another word. Anyone!”

  I g
lance at Georgie over my shoulder. He glances back at me.

  Behind us stand the goons, ready to pounce on us if we move or speak or fart. In front of me is my longtime lover. On the operating table is a man.

  It‘s Lola’s son, Peter Czech.

  CHAPTER 50

  WE’RE QUICKLY USHERED OUT of the loft and into an empty windowless room. The room reminds me of a sterile, concrete APD interview room, only without the comfortable amenities. Like a metal ashtray for instance, or those concrete floor-mounted metal rings meant to secure one’s shackles. My head is still ringing, and the hardwood floor beneath my feet still feels like mush. But I’m managing to keep it together. More or less.

  Georgie doesn’t seem to be fairing as well. On the surface anyway. He isn’t speaking, for one. That has me worried. Usually Georgie can’t stop talking. Especially when he’s angry, which he surely must be at that point. His face is pale and withdrawn, like that shot of severe noise intensified with blinding white light has more than rattled his brain. Like it’s shaken loose his skin cancer, made it spread all throughout his body in a single instant.

  The goons tell us to “sit” in their Russian-accented tough guy voices.

  They don’t have to tell us twice.

  Georgie and I drop into the two available metal chairs.

  The goons exit out of the room then, close the metal door behind them, lock it from the outside.

  I turn to my big brother.

  “Can you talk?”

  He nods, swallows.

  “Jesus H,” he mumbles, “I think I soiled myself.”

  I try to laugh. But I can’t work up the energy.

  “That siren in the elevator,” he goes on after a breath-catching beat, “that’s one of the newest in army tactile weapons. It can make an entire army rendered helpless and defenseless. Yet it leaves them very much alive. Read about in Pop Sci.”

  “I think my fillings are loose. Rose’s Russian government pals must be keeping him well protected and the old Montgomery Ward well equipped with the latest in torture-the-intruder gear.”