But he’ll be wrong.
Dead wrong.
He won’t be the winner. Because I doubt he’ll be very happy in the long run. I doubt that as the years pass, he’ll ever truly know happiness again. No matter how hard he works at his new identity and his new home, he’ll always be left with the heartache of knowing his wife was bedding down with another man. And the bitterness in that pill never goes away.
Still, I can’t help but be happy for Clyne.
Maybe I’m a little envious even.
Who doesn’t wish they can escape their life and become somebody else from time to time? Who doesn’t sometimes wish to flee their broken heart? Who can ever truly blame a brokenhearted man for wanting to disappear?
So as the night gives way to the early morning hours on the day after Detective Dennis Clyne of the APD is declared WANTED by the FBI, I get undressed and slip under the covers of my bed alone, and I contemplate those very questions. Who hasn’t imagined themselves escaping from it all at one time or another? Who hasn’t thought about disappearing at least once in their lifetime?
As I begin to drift away, I see Lola, and I feel my heart ache. I see her tan face, her deep-set eyes, and her long thick hair draping her shoulders. I can even smell her lavender scent.
I wonder if I’ll be able to live without her. I wonder if I’ll ever get over the pain of her having left me for her old lover. The father of the son she never got a chance to love like a mother. I wonder if I’m the true loser in all of this, and somehow Barter the absolute winner-take-all, even if he has lost his son in the process. I wonder if in the final analysis, that’s the underhanded reason behind Czech hiring me: to expose Lola’s affair with the man who should have been his father. Or maybe I’m just a fool for thinking so. A train wreck of a head-case.
But I also can’t help but wonder, as a whiskey-infused sleep takes over, and my soul begins to slip away, if I’ll ever get Lola back. My Lola. I wonder if she’ll ever need me again. If she’ll ever want me. Desire me. Trust me. I wonder if I’ll want her again. Wonder if I can trust her. Or if our love is just too badly broken and beyond repair.
Inevitably we are all dead men and dead women. But until that time comes, we all become the victims of love, slaves to our most painful memories, jesters to our desires. Or maybe I’m just better off dead and buried.
I might drift off to the wetness of my tears dropping onto the pillow one by bloody one. But tonight, as darkness consumes me, and all consciousness flees my fragile brain, I begin to sleep the sleep of the dead.
And I cry for no one.
TO BE CONTINUED…
BLUE MOONLIGHT
Vincent Zandri
“This bitter earth can be so cold.”
-- Will Grosz
I’M AWAKE.
I know I’m awake because my eyes are open and I’m looking down at my hands, which are handcuffed. Funny how I don’t remember going to sleep in the first place.
Turns out I don’t remember boarding a plane either.
But I know I’m on a plane because when I shift my eyes from my handcuffed hands to over my left shoulder, I see nothing but friendly blue sky resting atop an endless sea of the fluffiest white cotton-ball clouds you ever did see.
I’m flying all right.
Thirty thousand feet above the solid ground inside what looks to be an Airbus. A USAir owned and operated Airbus, or so says the safety color-coded, impervious-to-puncture, sudden impact, water and/or fire damage, plastic-coated, safety manual stuffed in the seatback in front of me.
Or maybe I’m just dreaming.
Tell you what. I’m gonna close my eyes now. Go back to sleep.
I open my eyes.
Wide.
Still flying.
I’m not dreaming.
Fuck me.
Ok. Recap thus far.
I’m awake. I’m handcuffed. I’m flying. And it isn’t a dream.
Far as I can tell, I’m seated in the final row of the plane. The bouncy bouncy seat my ex-wife, Lynn, used to call it whenever we’d take a trip together, which wasn’t very often. The cheap seat. What’s strange is that the half dozen rows of seats up ahead of me are unoccupied, as are all the middle and starboard rows to my right. A thick gray curtain is draped across the entire mid-section of the cabin, as if to offer me the utmost privacy. Or maybe the back rows have been closed off to the general law-abiding public due to my presence. But I can’t imagine why in the world that could be.
I’m not a criminal. I’m just a head-case. A suicide survivor with a small piece of .22 caliber hollow point lodged inside his brain. By all that’s right in the world, I should be a dead man.
The seat directly beside my own however, is not empty.
Far from it.
To say the guy occupying it is bigger than me would be like saying Ernest Hemingway used to like the occasional chilled glass of Chablis.
He’s so big he fills the narrow seat entirely, some of his excess bulk oozing over onto me. The hand that’s attached to the wrist to which my wrist is cuffed is bigger and thicker than both my hands put together. And I’m no lightweight. I’m a weightlifter. I can bench press two-hundred-sixty-five pounds five times in a row. Clean. None of this bouncing it off your chest-cavity shit like all the high school kids do. But this Sherman tank of a man makes me feel about as rough and tumble as the Dali Lama on a starvation diet.
I’m flying and I don’t know how I got here.
The plane dips and lifts and dips again, the entire fuselage rattling and shaking. An overhead light clicks on, along with a gentle chime.
PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS.
You ain’t gotta tell me twice.
But then, I’m already strapped in.
A tinny voice emerges from over the P.A. asking us fliers to return to our seats and fasten our seatbelts until the Captain decides to turn off the warning light or we crash. Whichever comes first. We’re about to encounter a patch of severe turbulence that simply cannot be avoided.
Severe Turbulence.
It rings a bell. No, it more than rings a bell. Just the sound of those words sends my balls on a vertical rise up though my colon, through my stomach and up into my throat where they settle like two concrete lumps.
I tap into my memory banks. What’s left of them.
I’m flying.
I don’t like to fly.
I hate flying.
I’m afraid to fly.
No that’s not right.
I’m afraid of crashing.
We hit the promised patch of turbulence.
The plane rocks like boat on a choppy sea. A wave of cold fear rushes through my body. But the big guy next to me, he’s smiling.
Correction.
He’s laughing. Laughing like flying through severe turbulence is the most fun you can have with and without your clothes on. What’s even worse is that every time we hit a wave of bad air, he yanks on the cuffs, the sharp end of the bracket digging into my wrist. I’m beginning to think he’s drawing blood.
“Dude,” I say, my voice a full octave higher than the good Lord intended. “Dude, sir, dude.”
He turns to me. He’s got this big ass smile that’s centered in a bowling ball round face, thick red lips surrounded by a goatee and mustache that’s far thicker than my own. His hair is thick too but sprinkled with gray, and balding in the middle. I peg him for maybe forty-nine or fifty, but going on sixteen. You know the type.
“Well look who’s awake, Jake!” he barks. “And just in time too. We’re in for a ride. Turbulence. Makes things interesting don’t you think? My three marriages were chuck-full of turbulence. Never a dull day.”
He laughs, shaking his belly which protrudes up tight against a Hawaiian print shirt that must have been specially woven for one of those huge ass Samoan motherfuckers. He’s opening and closing the fingers on his left hand, the middle digit of which bears a thick ring with a stone embedded inside it. The stone is bigger than my right eye. Even from where
I’m sitting, I can see the letters N.F.L. embossed into the gold ring.
Football.
Pro football.
I love football.
But this guy’s a dick.
Situation check.
I’m flying.
I’m handcuffed to a big dude who enjoys turbulence. Handcuffed to a big dude who likes turbulence and who plays, or used to play pro ball. Attached at the wrist to an NFL dude and flying through some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced and I have no idea how I got myself into this little predicament.
Which of course, begs the question…
“How did I get here?”
“You mean like…here?” NFL dude says yanking on the cuffs, sending a wave of pain up my right arm. “Oops, my bad….You mean here on this plane? You ask me, Mister…what is it again…?” Reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a slip of yellow Post-A-Note. “Mr. Richard Moonlight, Date of Birth 7-2-62; Social Security number: 050-62-3028, height: five-feet-nine inches, weight: one-hundred-seventy-six pounds.” Staring down at me. “Little guy…you are.”
“One-seventy-even,” I say. “Five-nine and a half.” I wanna bust his ass for talking like Yoda but I’m afraid he’ll yank on that cuff chain again. And besides, the plane is bouncing and I’m too frightened for idle chatter.
“Excuse me, Moonlight?”
“Your scale must be off…I’m one-seventy.”
Another jolt of turbulence. I feel my heart stop for the briefest of seconds. Until it starts up again.
“We get the info from the computer,” he laughs. “We don’t actually weigh you. And besides, you wouldn’t have cooperated anyway. Not in the condition you were in.”
“What. Condition?”
NFL Dude just looks at me, into my eyes.
“You don’t remember do you? You truly don’t remember?”
“My head,” I say. “I have this problem with my brain. There’s a small—“
“—piece of .22 caliber bullet inside it, pressed up against you cerebral cortex….Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it. You wouldn’t shut up about it on the drive all the way to the airport.”
“What drive?”
“From your crib to the airport. Plane didn’t very well pick us up in front of your loft, Moonlight.” Another belly laugh.
“Ok, I give up. Who are you?”
Reaching back into his chest pocket, this time pulling out a wallet. When he does it, his unbuttoned shirt opens up enough to reveal a hand-cannon stuffed inside a black shoulder holster.
Guns on a plane.
Cop on a plane. Or hijacker on a plane.
I’m putting my money on the cop. If I had any money.
He opens the wallet quickly revealing a laminated picture ID. There he is, all smiles and wavy black hair that isn’t yet sprinkled with gray. Dude’s got to get a new pic. I try and catch the name printed in between the photo and the letters FBI, but only catch the last name.
Zumbo.
Now if that doesn’t sound like a pro ball player, I don’t know what does. And turns out I recognize the name.
Zumbo.
Bob “Zump” Zumbo, fullback for the New York Football Giants from 1987 through 1994 when a knee injury sidelined him for good.
I might be flying on the verge of crashing, but things are definitely looking up.
“Giants,” I say.
Now the smile is so wide I fear it might split his entire face in half.
“You a fan Moonlight?”
I nod.
“Never miss a game,” I tell him. “You were great.”
“Bad knees,” he says cocking his head down towards his lap. “I had to retire with half pension.”
“That why you’re a fed agent now?”
“The FBI is my hobby. Keeps me out of the bars.”
“Mr. or is it, Agent Zumbo? Listen, I gotta pee something fierce. My back teeth are floating.”
He purses his lips.
“Ah jeeze, really?” he says with more disappointment than annoyance. Like I’m his five year old kid. He says, “Ok, but you gotta make it quick. Lot’s of turbulence.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a key, uncuffs my wrist.
I feel immediate relief. The skin isn’t broken, but it’s scratched. I run the fingers on my left hand over it.
Zumbo pushes himself out of the seat, stands up, shifts himself onto the aisle. His body fills out the entire back end of the plane.
“Ok, Moonlight up and at ‘em. And don’t try anything funny. We’re on a commercial flight and I have a gun, and by the looks of things, you don’t need anymore trouble added to your pedigree.”
Behind him, a female flight attendant approaches.
“Do you think it’s wise taking his cuffs off, Agent Zumbo?” she poses.
She’s an attractive, brunette, her long dark hair parted neatly over her right eye. She also looks familiar to me. Like I might have met her in a bar once not to long ago, but was too drunk then to remember her name now.
The plane buffets and rocks again so that Zumbo has to grab the seatback to stay on his feet. Meanwhile, the flight attendant seems entirely unaffected by the sudden motion. She’s got her sea legs.
“Terrorists gotta pee too,” he laughs, a little under his breath. “Constitution grants the right for a suspected criminal to water his hog.”
Back stepping the attractive brunette shakes her head in disgust and retreats into the back galley.
I know what she’s thinking: “Men!”
Zumbo picks me up by the arm, leads me the two or three feet around to the area behind our seats where the lavatory is located. He opens the door and shoves me inside.
“One minute,” he says. “Or I come in after you, guns a blazin.”
“Yeah I got it.”
He goes to shut the door.
“Wait one second,” I say. “What did you just refer to me as?”
The look on his round face has gone from glee to confusion.
“What?” he barks. “Come on, Moonlight. Pee already.”
“Just a second ago when you were talking with the attendant. You called me something.”
Back with the smile.
“Oh, yeah, I called you a terrorist. Well, suspected domestic terrorist to be truthful. You haven’t been arrested for anything quite yet. You’re merely being detained under suspicious circumstances. Think of it as being waitlisted for a spot in a federal pen.”
“So where are we going and why have I been handcuffed?”
“We’re on our way to DC, for an interview.”
“I don’t understand…I’m not a terrorist. In fact, I used to be a cop.”
“Hey man,” he says, “a Mrs. Doris E. Walsh of the Internal Revenue Service of these here United States of American disagrees entirely. And she can prove it.” Pulling out a folded sheet of paper from the back pocket on his husky size Levis 501s. Unfolding it, he glances at it quickly. “Where’d you learn to construct pipe bombs, Moonlight?”
He shoves me further into the bathroom, closes the door behind me.
“One minute,” he repeats from outside the door.
The plane shakes again. Dips.
I feel like I’m about to crash.
Crash and burn and die a tragic violent death.
But then that would be the best news I’ve heard all day.
Electronic Edition Copyright © 2011 by Vincent Zandri
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
StoneGate Ink 2011
StoneGate Ink
Boise ID 83713
http://www.StoneGateInk.com
First eBook Edition: 2011
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are u
sed fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Fuji Aamabreorn
Published in the United States of America
http://www.StoneGateInk.com
http://www.VincentZandri.com
StoneGate Ink
Table of Contents
Aso by Vincent Zandri
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
Blue Moonlight sample
Copyright Info
Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) Page 18