by Diane Capri
“From what I gather, that tough time could have been avoided.”
Walls’s new drink arrives and he doesn’t allow the ice to settle to the bottom before he takes a swig off of it.
“She fucked up and got too greedy even for her,” he says wiping his bearded mouth with the back of his meaty hand. “We all fuck up from time to time or so sayeth the good Lord.”
“You shot a man,” I say, having no idea in the world why I would say it, other than my brain isn’t always right.
You would think I just punched the big man in the gut by the way his face goes rock hard, eyes wide and unblinking, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, jagged purple vein popping out of his forehead.
“Thou shall not refer to me as a killer,” he whispers. “That man was trespassing and threating me with my life. Or should I say, death? Besides, he survived the shooting with a small flesh wound.” Now looking away toward the back of the bar, but obviously seeing something very different inside that complicated head of his. “Son-of-a-bitch trespasser probably doesn’t even boast a scar at this point.”
I calmly take a drink of my new beer, even though I’m preparing to make a run for it should Walls spring up and go after my throat with both hands, or worse, threaten me with another pistol-whipping.
“Easy does it, Walls,” I say. “You did what you had to do. I might have done the same thing in your shoes.”
I sense a nervousness coming from Erica. She takes a drink of her beer and adds, “Mr. Moonlight almost blew his brains out once.”
There it is. She had to go and say it.
Walls assumes a gentle smile again.
“That true Moonlight?” he begs. “You tried to off yourself?”
“Like you just said, we all fuck up now and again. My fuck-up almost cost me my life, and my son his dad.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Roger,” Erica bursts in. “I don’t think Mr. Moonlight—”
“—It’s okay, Erica,” I say, holding my free hand as if to say stop. “I don’t mind talking about it.”
“So how did you do it?” Walls presses.
“Twenty-two caliber pistol to the temple.” I make like a pistol with my right hand, press extended index finger to the small, still visible scar beside my right ear lobe.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “Why aren’t you dead right now?”
“At the very last second, as I was about to pull the trigger, a vision of my little boy entered into my head. I began to pull the pistol away from my head. But I was drunk and I hit the trigger. It went off. Most of the hollow-point bullet shattered against my skull. But a small piece entered and lodged itself inside my brain, directly beside the cerebral cortex, making my present life a little bit insecure at best.”
“I get it,” he says, clearly fascinated. “I bet if that bullet were to suddenly shift right now, you’d fall off that stool and be dead before you hit the ground.”
“Something like that.” I nod.
Walls is slowly drinking and, at the same time, soaking up my story. It’s not the man who just shoved me head into a toilet bowl who’s listening right now. It’s the writer. I know this for certain when he pulls a small notebook and pen from the chest pocket on his bush jacket, and jots down a note.
“What are you doing?” I pose.
“Hey Moonlight,” he says, “didn’t you just get through telling me I should be writing?”
“Yah, but I didn’t mean about me. I’m writing about me.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, returning the notebook to the jacket pocket, “I didn’t say I was going to write a book about you. Just that I’m going to write a book. That is, I can settle on an idea, much less a bloody plot.”
I drink a little.
“So maybe that’s what this little escape is all about, Roger. Not being able to write. Writer’s block.”
He inhales, exhales, his beefy chest rising and lowering like the chest on a bull. Running his free hand down his face over his thick beard, he says, “Another brawny writer more famous than me once said, ‘When it feels like you’re typing with boxing gloves on, it’s time to get out of the house. Sometimes for weeks at a time.’”
I find myself nodding.
“Suzanne needs you,” I say, remembering what Sissy told me about her having to resort to selling cocaine in order to maintain the lifestyle to which she’s grown accustomed. But then, considering the source, maybe that was just the lie of a very angry, and even jealous young and jilted wife. The type of wife Walls seems to pathologically attract. For a brief second I think about confronting him about the cocaine issue and his wife’s accusations. But then considering the bear of a man sitting before me, and the inebriated state he’s in, and the fact that he’s already come close to deliberately killing another man who got on his nerves, I think twice about it.
I slide off my stool.
“I suppose I could ask you to come with us, Roger,” I say. “But I’m guessing you’re not going to cooperate.”
Another one of his beaming smiles.
“Got that right, Moonlight,” he says. “And I’m bigger than you. Or, stronger anyway.”
“Will you at least call Suzanne, tell her I found you?”
“So you can get paid.”
“Yup.”
“I’ll call her tomorrow. It’s late.”
I think about her lying in bed, reading my novel. Naked.
“Much appreciated,” I say.
“Sorry about the toilet dunking,” he says. “If I’d known about your … ah … cerebral condition, I might have thought twice about messing with you.”
“No harm done that hasn’t already been done.”
“Good luck with your book. And say, would you be opposed to having a drink with me sometime? Under better circumstances? You’re an interesting character. I might like to interview you further.”
“I just told you, I’m already writing about my character.”
“Hey, what’s the difference? You have your take and I’ll have mine. Besides, my book will sell better.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. But it’s a lie. My story is my story and that’s that.
“Don’t think too hard. Or you’ll end up like me.”
“You seem to be enjoying life.”
“But underneath this joyous and adventurous exterior, Moonlight, exists a tortured and lonely artist.”
“My work is done here, tortured artist.”
I turn to Erica.
“Shall we?” I say.
I fully expect her to accompany me back to my ride, and maybe even to my loft. But the MFA student does something that makes my heart sink. She shifts her body even closer to Roger’s than it already is.
“I think I’ll hang out a little with Roger,” she says.
“Yah, we can talk poetry,” he says, tossing me a wink of his right eye.
My heart dragging on the floor behind me, I exit Ralph’s, to go home alone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I SLIP BACK INTO Dad’s hearse.
It’s dark, cold, and black inside and out. Like my mood. Imagine me, Dick Moonlight, Captain Head-Case, getting jilted by a girl young enough to be my daughter for a famous drunken writer old enough to be my dad?
Life ain’t fair.
Before I turn over the eight-cylinder, I pull my cell phone from the interior pocket on my leather coat. The little flag that indicates the arrival of a text message appears for me on the screen. I don’t recall hearing the little chirpy chime or the gentle vibration that indicates the receipt of a text message. But that’s not an unusual circumstance for having been hanging out inside a noisy bar. I press my index finger on the flag and am surprised to see that the message is from Suzanne.
I open the message.
Sissy Walls is dead
I read it again.
Sissy Walls is dead
No matter how many times I read those four words, the message doesn’t change.
I drank with Sissy.
I snorted coke with Sissy.
I had sex with Sissy.
Sissy Walls. The wife of Roger Walls. A man who just beat the crap out of me inside a rancid bathroom stall and who shot someone for trespassing on his property.
Now I’m the trespasser, and the territory I trespassed upon is dead.
Fuck me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MY HEART PULSING IN my throat, I thumb the dialer and call Suzanne. It’s almost two in the morning, but I don’t care if she’s asleep. We need to talk. She answers after the second ring.
“What the hell happened?” I say in the place of a hello.
“Suicide,” she says, not a hint of sleepiness in her voice. “By the looks of it. Or maybe not suicide.”
“Who found her?”
“Some men who work for Roger. They called me.”
In my head, the rednecks chasing down my tail in their blue Freebird 69 pickup. “Maybe it wasn’t a suicide attempt after all. Maybe she just overdosed.”
“Does it matter at this point? Why are you so concerned, Moonlight?”
The thought of telling her the truth about how I spent my afternoon just doesn’t seem all that appealing at the present moment. So I just decide to play the concerned client routine.
“Look-it, Suzanne, I found Roger. He’s drinking in a bar called Ralph’s on the corner of Madison and New Scotland, across from the park. Should I go tell him?”
I make out some shuffling going on in the background. Then, the distinct sound of a snort, maybe the metallic sound of a razor blade being dropped down onto a gilded mirror.
“No, no,” the agent insists while sniffling.
“Everything okay over there, Suzanne?”
“Despite the circumstances, yes.”
I fire up the engine.
“I’m coming over.”
“Now? That means I’ll have to put on my face.”
“Your face is fine the way it is. We need to talk.”
“Fine. So be it.”
I ask for her address. She gives it to me.
I hang up and pull away from the curb, picturing the cops who are no doubt scouring the Walls home as I speak. Cops looking for clues, evidence, prints.
Prints and fluids with my genetic imprint on them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE RED AND BLUE neon tubing that cuts through the darkness to spell Ralph’s Bar isn’t entirely out of view of my rearview when my cell rings. Sliding it back out of my pocket, I glance at the now lit-up screen. I can’t say I recognize the number right away, but I peg the prefix as an Albany number. Downtown Albany.
Then it comes to me. The Albany Police Department. My former employers.
I answer the phone.
“Moonlight,” I say, trying to hide the alcohol that’s no doubt swimming in my voice.
“Richard Moonlight?” the man says on the other end.
“That’s me,” I say.
“You don’t know me, but my name is Detective Nick Miller. I’m new with the Albany Police department. I was wondering if I could get you to pay me a little visit at the South Pearl Street precinct. Or I’d be happy to come to you.”
“When should I come to you and for what?” I say, knowing precisely what it’s for, a vision of the young, red-haired bride of Roger Walls lying in bed beside me flashing through my brain.
“It’s regarding the death of a woman by the name of Sissy Walls.”
The little town of Chatham comes to mind. All the way across the river and into the trees.
“Chatham is a little out of your jurisdiction isn’t it, Detective Miller?”
“That’s funny, Moonlight, I don’t recall telling you where Sissy Walls resides.”
Me. Snagged. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Now then, Moonlight, since I obviously haven’t woken you from out of a sound sleep, why don’t we get together for a little chat right now?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I say.
He hangs up.
I slam my phone down on the empty passenger seat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I TEXT SUZANNE, TELL her I’m going to be about fifteen minutes late when I know full well that it might be about an hour or more before I can make it to her house. Maybe two. Maybe never. I’m a former detective. I know how these things go. I also know that if these cops suspect me of fucking with Sissy’s life, I’m pretty well screwed until I can prove myself innocent. That might take a lawyer. A very expensive lawyer. But instead of getting ahead of myself, I decide to take a chill, and simply listen to what Miller’s got to say. I haven’t done anything wrong, after all.
So why should I be worried?
#
The interior of the Albany Police Department is like the inside of a mortuary and just as pleasant. I know the place like the back of my callused hands. Even the smell that hits you in the face the second you walk through the front glass doors brings you back to a time when your brothers in arms were closer to you than your wife. So close in fact, that your jealous wife felt the need to find comfort in another man who just happened to be one of those brothers in arms I just mentioned. My partner and best friend at that time.
As I walk the narrow corridor to the reception window, I have no choice but to inhale the combination disinfectant and body odor, and I begin to feel a sick queasiness in my stomach. A nausea that has little to do with all the drinking I’ve been doing or the cocaine I snorted or even the sickening smell of this concrete block and glass building. Instead, it has everything to do with a suicidal past I would rather forget. I hand my ID and .38 to the guard sergeant manning window.
She buzzes me in.
“Welcome home, Dick,” she says, not without a snort. Most of the Albany cops aren’t very happy with me since I brought down half their house some years ago when I uncovered an illegal organ harvesting operation scheme some of the head cops were running. Everyone knows that cops watch one another’s backsides even when their front-sides are up to no good.
Detective Miller is standing at the far end of the wide open booking room as I enter. He’s not necessarily a tall guy, but he is taller than my five foot nine which is nothing unusual. He’s maybe ten years younger than me but ten years older around the eyes and, no doubt, in the liver, since most detectives in Albany tend to become prolific drinkers by their tenth year on the job. Clean-shaven, dirty blond buzzed hair, and a neck-tie that’s still raised all the way up past his buttoned collar tells me he’s all spit and polish, even at two thirty in the morning.
The fact that he doesn’t bother to shake my hand tells me he’s in no mood for small talk.
“Mr. Moonlight,” he says, “please follow me.”
“Gladly, Detective,” I say. “I’m familiar with the layout of this fine establishment of law and odor … Oops, I mean order.” Moonlight the jokester.
He leads me to a small interview room located to the right of the booking room. He opens the door for me, and together we sit down directly across from one another at a metal table under the bright light that spills down from an overhead fixture. His manila file is already sitting out on the table.
“Get you any coffee, Moonlight?” he asks, opening the folder, pulling out some glossy eight-by-ten color photographs. “That beer breath can stop a freight train.”
“I had a couple just before you called. In the safety of my own home.”
“You always drink alone in the middle of the night? Or is that your first lie since you were no doubt cruising the city?”
“Am I being interrogated about my drinking habits, Detective?”
He sits back, exhales.
“Let’s not get off on the wrong foot, shall we?”
“Indeed we shall not.” I smile.
“He comes forward again, chooses one of the photos and holds it up for me.
&nbs
p; I try not to look too shocked, but I’m not sure I can help it what with the way my mouth goes immediately dry and my pulse starts pounding in my temples. I wonder if Miller can make out my knocking knees.
“You know this woman, Moonlight?”
He holds the picture of Sissy up so close to my face I can practically smell the ink on the digitally printed photo. In the picture she’s lying on her bed, face up, her mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide, and lifeless. She’s clearly dead.
“She’s the wife of Roger Walls. Sissy.”
“Very good,” says Miller, as if I’m a first grader reading off spelling words. He drops the picture and begins to show me the rest of them, one after the other, which it turns out, are just different versions of the same dead body. Naked, dead body, I should say.
“How’d she die?”
“By the looks of it,” he says, “catastrophic cardiac arrest. Perhaps exacerbated by a suicidal overdose or perhaps by asphyxiation.”
“Asphyxiation,” I say. “You mean like somebody put a pillow over her face and held it there until her heart gave out?”
He smiles. “Jeeze, what a deduction, Moonlight. What a loss you are to this department.”
“Thanks. Kind of you to say so.”
“Were you by any chance with Sissy today or tonight?”
I sit back in my chair, inhale a calming breath. I think about pulling one of the cigarettes from the emergency pack I keep in my leather coat should I suddenly need to quit quitting–but then think better of it. It will make me look too nervous. Like I’m hiding something.
“Time out, Detective,” I say making the familiar referee T with my two hands. “Mind if I ask you a procedural question?”
“You gonna ask for a lawyer, Moonlight?” he says. “Because if you are, then screw you. Ain’t gonna change anything from my point of view.”
“Have you managed to contact the husband yet?”
“We still can’t get ahold of him.”
“He’s a tough one to track down. Take it from me.”
Miller gives me a look like he has no idea what I’m talking about. I feel the pounding in my temples grow louder, more forceful while the detective reaches into the file again, only this time he doesn’t pull out a photograph. He pulls out a business card. My business card, it turns out.