“Say a prayer your brain didn’t pop, Moon. By all rights, you should be experiencing a stroke-induced coma by now.”
“The night is young. Tell me what the fuck is going on out there, and why my girlfriend is involved in it.”
“That was Czech on the table. Upside down, damaged spinal column exposed.”
“So I noticed.”
“Truth revealed. Your man is everything he pretends to be, at least as far as his paralyzed condition goes, Moon.”
“You think that doc was working on his spine?”
“That’s precisely what’s happening. Rose must be putting up the cash for some kind of experimental surgery.”
“Why? I mean, why do anything for Czech if he’s trying to expose the old man for what he is?”
Georgie sucks in a breath, releases it. I’m wishing he had a medicinal joint on him. His hands are beginning to shake as the pain of his condition settles in.
“If what’s being done to him is a surgery that can make him walk again, it might be costing millions of dollars. So you know what I think, Moon? I think Czech issued his old granddad an ultimatum. Put up for the operation or I expose you. Simple as that.”
“And Rose had no choice but to give in.”
“—PRECISELY, GENTLEMEN!” barks the deep voice from behind us. “Because there’s the matter of a zip drive containing thousands of pages of documents and photographs that detail my dealings with the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union for more than four decades.”
I never heard the door open. Never heard Rose walk in, or the two Russian meatheads who stand at the ready behind him.
Georgie and I turn to get a good look at Lola’s dad. I notice a distinct resemblance, especially in the eyes. Deep, passionate dark pools that don’t look at you, but look into you and through you. Cut into you.
He moves closer to us, which triggers the meatheads to pull out their separate weapons. .9mm Glock automatics. Like Georgie and I are any kind of danger at this point. We’re unarmed, still rattled by the siren, and just plain fucking old and worn out.
“Let me guess, Rose,” I say. “This the part where you tell us precisely what we want to know since you’re going to kill us anyway.”
The tall, seventy-something man laughs. Without his white mask and cap on, I can see that his now metallic silver eyebrows are so thick and unruly, they curl up at the ends much like a cartoon devil; like the Grinch who Stole Christmas.
But he isn’t the devil and he certainly ain’t the Grinch.
He’s Lola’s father and he’s a spy; a traitor. He’s somehow managed—most likely with Russian government assistance and expense—to declare himself dead in an era where spy satellites can focus in on how and where you part your hair from three miles up. No wonder he chooses to live a self-induced exile inside this old abandoned white castle. The same building that used to bring me so much happiness as a child but that now makes me sick to my stomach.
“You see, gentlemen,” Rose goes on, “it does me no good not to try and give Peter the gift of a healed spine, if the cost of such a miracle is within my means.”
“Let me guess,” I say, “you didn’t always share in that sentiment. Or you wouldn’t have ordered me beaten me so badly I actually died for five minutes.”
He smiles, like my death is reason for levity.
“I really must apologize for how my men treated you.” Glancing over his shoulder at the Russian goons. “My associates are born of a different culture and they sometimes can get carried away. Their orders were to frighten you, not kill you.” His eyes back on me. “And as for the operation, I resisted at first because even a man of my resources rarely has access to ten million dollars unmarked cash.”
“Ten million,” I repeat. “That’s what you’re spending on your grandson’s back.” It’s a question.
“For starters,” he admits. “And nothing is guaranteed. Not initial surgery, not stem cell injection, not rehabilitation, not follow-up surgeries. Not by a long shot. These doctors were flown in from Brazil. Their English is somewhat limited, but not their skills. They are pioneers at spinal cord surgery, especially for a man like Peter whose backbone was severed cleanly. He’s proving the ideal candidate for surgery and stem cell regeneration. But no one knows if it will last. And of course, this is all highly illegal in both the eyes of the global medical community and the law.”
“Black market stem cells,” Georgie mumbles out the corner of his mouth. “Cells lifted from unborn fetuses. No wonder the under-the-table ten million price tag. Christ, they could ask one hundred million and get it.”
“You brought Lola into this,” I point out. “Far as I’m concerned, Rose, you’re a criminal who should be incarcerated in federal prison to serve the first of two or three life sentences. You and Peter. I don’t care if he’s Lola’s son, and I don’t care if he can’t walk.”
I hear Georgie clear his throat.
“Moon here and I are going to see that you go to the clink, Rose,” he states boldly. “How about them apples?”
Good old Georgie. Pain or no pain, he says it like it is.
Rose laughs, runs open hands over his white gown.
“You’re in a position, my friends.”
Even the goons at the door laugh. I feel like a prisoner caught up inside a Bond flick. One of the shitty ones, post-Connery.
“As for Lola,” Rose adds while running the pads of both his index fingers over his thicker than thick, gray eyebrows, “she cannot help the absolute love she bears for her child. When Peter revealed himself to her for the first time since his birth some weeks ago, something inside her was freed.” He pauses, lowers his hands, stares up at the post-and-beam ceiling. “And something else too.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense Rose,” I smile. “Me and Georgie, we’re already dead. Am I right?”
“I’m not at liberty to tell you just what that something is.”
“This is your show. The liberty, eeet eees all yours, da?”
“You wouldn’t like it, Mr. Moonlight,” he says, eyes peering down at the floor. “Especially considering your romantic involvement with my daughter.”
I picture myself floating over my body. I once more see my dead body lying in the hospital bed, Lola standing over me. Then I see a young man enter. Some Young Guy who embraces her like a lover would. Is that what Rose is talking about? Is that why it will hurt me? The revelation that Lola is seeing someone else?
Movement from beside me.
I turn.
Over my shoulder I see Georgie drop out of his chair. He drops onto his knees. His face turns bed-sheet white, blue eyes bulging, long gray-white hair hanging like a veil. He starts to heave all over the floor. His body, trembling and convulsing.
“Someone grab a spoon or a butter knife!” I shout. “Something to open his jaws, stop him from swallowing his tongue, or biting it off!”
“Theo!” Rose barks, “please do something about that vile mess on the floor.”
Theo the goon walks out of the room, and quickly comes back in with a green towel. He steps over to where Georgie is now foaming at the mouth. He bends at the knees, sets the towel onto the small puddle of bile.
“Mr. Rose, my partner is very sick. He needs medical care. You have to allow your doctor to treat him.”
“That doctor is in the middle of experimental spinal cord surgery!” he snaps. “It is not possible.”
“Then you have to allow me to take him to a hospital.”
Now Rose just laughs.
“Really, Mr. Moonlight. Lola has always described you as far smarter than that. Please afford me the same courtesy.”
It feels strange knowing that my sig other has been talking to this insane man about me.
Georgie is down on his side curled up in fetal position.
Theo is down on one knee, trying his best to wipe up the bile, his own face having gone pale, looking like he’s about to join Georgie in getting sick. But when Georgie reaches int
o his side pocket, pulls out his stun gun, slams it into Theo’s neck, the thug chokes and trembles as the electric shock waves neutralize him, sending him face first down into a puddle of fresh, warm DNA. Courtesy of my big bro, and award-winning method actor, Georgie Phillips.
CHAPTER 51
I SHOOT UP, GRAB Rose by the neck, put a choke hold on him, forearm against Adams apple. He’s taller than me, but far weaker. All skin and bones to which a small round pot belly is attached. The physical makeup of your average paranoid shut-in. He feels like a tall bird in my arm.
The remaining goon draws his piece.
I make like I’m fisting a pistol with my free hand, poke at my forehead with extended index finger.
“Plant your bead asshole,” I insist. “A little above and between the eyes. That’s your target. But before your bullet enters my brainpan to join the other one that’s in there, I’m gonna snap your boss’s neck.”
I expect Rose to be trembling in my arms. But he’s still and silent. Almost like he wants his neck to be snapped. Crap, maybe he does.
“Shoot Ivan,” he demands in a soft, low tone. “Shoot him, and if need be, shoot him through me.”
Ivan . . .
“Ivan?” I repeat. “You serious? Ivan and Theo. Jeez, you can’t make this shit up.”
“Fucker’s got a death wish,” Georgie says standing, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You pull that trigger, Ivan, I will kill you. Just so you know, I got ya covered like a Minute Man missile.”
Ivan the Russian goon holds his aim on me. I’m staring down the barrel of a .9mm. A situation that sadly, I am all too familiar with.
“Separate,” Georgie says.
I begin to drag Rose to one side of the room, and Georgie goes to the other, closing his distance between him and Ivan with each step.
Ivan becomes confused, now shifting his aim from Georgie to me, and back to Georgie.
“Do! Not! Move!” He shouts, accent thick, voice wavering, verging on panic.
“Shoot us!” Rose screams.
The gun back on me. The whole thing feels like a fucked-up version of Russian roulette.
Georgie dives, the stun gun held out before him like the tip of a spear.
Ivan’s automatic explodes.
Rose goes limp in my arms.
Ivan drops dead-weight to the floor.
“Get his gun!” I shout.
Georgie snatches it up. How he’s able to make himself sick and then move so fast and do it all through waves of full-body pain is beyond me. But it all has to do with a survival instinct he’s retained from the jungles of Viet Nam where he was once held captive for a full week by the Viet Cong before making his escape.
I lay the dead-weight Rose down on the floor.
He’s been hit in the lower neck, maybe a half-inch away from his carotid artery. The bullet must have taken a nosedive into his lungs because it never exited into me.
“Fuck!” Georgie spits. “Now what?”
Rose is mumbling something. Something about Lola.
“Lola,” he’s saying. “My . . . little . . . girl . . . Lola. I’m. So. So. Sorry.”
The door opens. A man walks in, followed by Lola. I’ve never met the man before. But I feel like I already know him. And I do know him, in a way. I recognize him as the man from my out-of-body experience. The man who came to Lola when I died for five minutes.
He’s Some Young Guy.
CHAPTER 52
LOLA, DRESSED IN WHITE smock, sweat-stained white mask hanging down on her chest, the matching white cap still sitting on her head, runs to her injured father. She kneels down over him, takes hold of his hand. She’s weeping.
“Get a doctor!” she screams. “One of the surgeons!”
But no one’s listening.
The two goons, Ivan and Theo, who’ve been stung with Georgie’s stun gun, are still laid out on the floor, even though both of them have regained enough strength to prop themselves up onto one elbow apiece. But by all indications, the angry Russian bear has been zapped out of them. I can only imagine their regret in not having patted us down before leading us into this room.
Georgie has the .9mm gripped in his right hand and he’s shifting his eyes from me to Lola and Some Young Guy who stands a few steps inside the doorway. Some Young Guy is the lead man before an entourage of men and women all wearing navy blue windbreakers, the letters FBI emblazoned upon them in big gold letters.
Entering close behind them, a team of blue-uniformed APD, Detective Clyne out in front of them. Clyne and I make eye contact. He nods, his face white and withdrawn, like he hasn’t slept in days or been far away from the bottle.
I nod back.
Standing beside him is his driver, big Officer Mike.
Mike also purses his lips and nods. Friendly this time, as opposed to the hospital where he flipped me off. I guess my willingness to put myself into the shit all for the cause of right over wrong makes me much more likeable in his eyes. But I’m not so sure if I’m willing to place myself in the shit, so to speak, so much as I possess an uncanny knack for getting myself into shit. A head-case who’s no stranger to shit or train wrecks.
Some Young Guy immediately makes his way to Lola, kneels down beside her.
“You need to get back to Peter, Lo,” he says. He puts his fingers to Rose’s jugular, then looks up at his people. “Not getting a pulse. Need EMTs. Those docs in there can’t do this. Call it in now!”
“Already on it, Chief,” informs a small woman, who has a cell phone clutched in one hand, her service automatic in the other. As she holsters her weapon, she shoots me a look and a warm smile.
“Thanks,” she offers. “For all your help. Any idea how long we’ve been after Rose and his grandson?”
I’m rendered speechless. How have I possibly helped the FBI?
I turn back to Some Young Guy. He stands up from Rose, and takes Lola in his arms. He’s her man now, and it makes my stomach drop to down around my ankles.
Both Clyne and his men, and the FBI special agents spread out. They remove themselves from the doorway as a team of EMTs burst through and go to work on Rose.
Lola spots me then.
She looks at me while still clutched in the arms of Some Young Guy.
“Oh Richard,” she whispers. “You have no idea, do you?”
“No,” I swallow. “You’re wrong. I’ve known for days. When I died, I floated over my body. And I saw you and him, together. I couldn’t see his face. But I know it was him.”
Lola bears so much sadness and bitterness in her smile there’s no room left for irony.
Standing there with the FBI cuffing the goons, reading them their rights; with sirens blaring outside the building; with God only knows what going on outside that plastic-enclosed operating room; and with Rose clinging to life or already dead; with my brain fucked up and my heart breaking, my significant other, Lola, has no other choice but to smile.
Some Young Guy turns to me, approaches.
He holds out the hand that isn’t holding a hand cannon.
“I’m Christian Barter. I’m Peter Czech’s biological father.”
I feel the floor go soft. I’m not going to pass out, but I’m having trouble keeping my balance nonetheless.
“Are you with Lola?” I ask.
“It’s not what you think, Mr. Moonlight . . . Not entirely.”
“So what am I supposed to think?”
He’s got these wide blue eyes, a mustache, and a goatee sprinkled with gray hairs. He isn’t all that young. But he has a young way about him. Even an optimistic way, despite the circumstances.
“My son is being operated on in the next room.” Glancing at Lola over his shoulder. “Our son. And right now, with Rose in custody, our son is our priority.”
Lola goes to him, takes hold of his hand.
“We should go back in.”
I watch my girlfriend walk towards the door with the man who fathered her son. Biologically speaking.
/> Before they reach the open door, I stop them.
“Barter!”
He stops, turns, Lola’s hand tightly held in his.
“Are you going to arrest your own son?”
His smile dissolves then, his youthful look of optimism disappearing.
“If he lives,” he nods.
CHAPTER 53
DO YOU KNOW WHAT it’s like living every minute like it’s your last?
It’s not as surreal as you might expect. I’m not afraid. I’m not sad. I’m not paranoid. I grew up surrounded by death as if it were as ordinary as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You grow up like that, you learn to accept mortality as a normal course in life’s grand feast of events. Not something to be ignored or feared. And I live my life like it could end at any minute, that bullet frag shifting inside my brain causing total paralysis and stroke and eventually death.
But I also live my life like I’m going to live forever.
It’s not all that different from the way we all live. Because who knows how long we’ve got? How many times have we heard the story about the man who crossed the road and got hit by a bus? Or the woman who walked into the corner bodega for a Diet Coke and was shot by the guy holding up the store? Or the family that hopped a flight to Buffalo on a cold winter’s night, only for the ill-fated flight to take an unexpected plunge? Or even the middle-aged man who sat down on a calm Sunday afternoon to read a newspaper, fell asleep, and never woke up?
Death happens to all of us. It’s always chasing us, and just because you got a better shot at having it happen to you sooner than later doesn’t make it right for you to skip out on life. And as for me, I want to spend that life in search of the truth, regardless of whether I do right or wrong in the process. As a P.I., it’s what I do. As a human being, it’s what I obsess about.
In this case, I do right.
As Rose’s goons are carted away by the APD-accompanied FBI personnel and the near-dead Harvey Rose is rushed to the Albany Medical Center for emergency surgery, I stand beside Georgie, while Barter and Lola stand by their son whose own surgery is nearly completed.
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