Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) (12 page)

CHAPTER 36

GEORGIE’S VAN IS STILL parked out front of my building down inside the abandoned Port of Albany. But we can’t very well go back there. Place is way too hot. But his old orange Volkswagen Beetle still works. It’s in “optimum condition,” as Georgie puts it, the former hot-wire-man-turned-pathologist having rebuilt it in his spare time over a period of twenty years.

We’re driving in the orange Beetle out of the city, in the direction of Czech’s suburban house on Orchard Grove. In the early morning, with the newly risen sun hidden by cold gray clouds, the streets are about as empty as Armageddon itself.

“There’s just one thing that bothers me,” I say, after a time. “Why would Czech hire me in the first place?”

“Because you’re Lola’s boyfriend.” He says it with all the inflection of a question.

“But why get me involved? And why do it based upon a lie?”

“My guess is that Czech hired you to expose Rose for what he is. You’re a head-case, you’re convenient, and you’re a snoop.”

“You really think they’re traitors? Like the fucking Rosenbergs?”

“Yes. Claudia explicitly said that both Peter and her father were traitors.”

“Well, whatever they were doing, they were doing it together.”

Georgie tokes on his still lit joint, taps the fiery end on the tip of his callused tongue, and stores the roach into the pocket on his leather jacket. As he drives I notice that his hands are no longer shaking, his face is no longer showing signs of pain. No tight jowls, no grimaces.

“So in exposing his grandfather,” he says, “Czech most certainly will be exposing himself.”

“Doesn’t make sense does it?”

“Not yet anyway,” Georgie admits. Then suddenly, “We gotta make a pit-stop Moon.”

He twists the wheel, hard right, pulls off the main road and into an alley that leads to an aluminum overhead door that I recognize. It’s a body shop. But not your everyday, advertise in the Yellow Pages body shop. It’s an anonymous body shop with no sign mounted to the old brick wall outside making passersby aware of its presence. Not that much of anyone other than the occasional wino would be found passing by this narrow Albany alley.

Georgie gets out, leaves the Beetle running. He disappears inside the building through a sort of trick door that’s been cut out of the overhead door. I wait inside the empty alley for maybe five long minutes before that trick door opens back up again, and Georgie comes back out carrying a duffel bag.

He slips back behind the wheel of the Beetle, sets the bag between us, unzippers it. He pulls out an S&W .9mm just like the piece that once served and protected me at the APD. He hands it to me along with three fresh clips. He pulls an identical one out for himself, stuffs the barrel into his pant waist and the three clips into the interior pocket of his leather jacket. I store my weapon and clips exactly the same way.

Then, reaching into the bag once more, he pulls out two cell phones. The old-fashioned kind that flip open and have no real apps other than text messaging and picture-taking capability. He hands me one of the phones.

“Number’s taped to the back,” he informs.

I looked at it, then shove the phone into a jacket pocket separate from the clips.

Georgie reaches into the duffel bag one more time, comes back out with an honest-to-goodness stun gun.

“What’s that for?”

“That’s for me,” he smiles.

“You get all the cool toys.”

“Pays to have good friends in low places.”

He picks up the now empty bag, tosses it into the back seat of the Beetle, and we’re off to Czech’s home-sweet-home.

CHAPTER 37

WE MAKE A DRIVE-BY of the Orchard Grove home first before stopping.

Pays to be prudent.

It’s only 6:45 in the morning. More than likely, Czech is still home, getting ready for work. It’s a slightly overcast morning. Chilly. We drive past the home slow enough to notice if any lights are on, which they most definitely would be. That is of course unless the handicapped man likes to wheel himself around in the near darkness.

We come around again, and this time I ask Georgie to stop in front. I’m listening to my built-in shit detector and it’s telling me Czech isn’t home. Since the blaze orange Beetle sticks out like a blood blister on a newborn’s butt cheek, I tell my big brother to pull back around to the main road where we can access a private drive that leads through a patch of woods behind the Czech backyard.

The backyard is surrounded by an old gray privacy fence, and the privacy fence is covered with overgrown pines and untended shrubs and bushes. The idea is to pull in there, then hide the Beetle behind the growth. That is, if a big blaze orange bubble can possibly be hidden.

“What if whoever owns this here private drive calls the cops?” Georgie astutely points out. “You know, like the pesky neighborhood watch committee?”

“Risk,” I answer him. “It’s what you and me are all about.”

“Stupidity too,” Georgie says, driving back onto the main road, and taking an immediate right onto the private drive, pulling off into a patch of trees directly behind Czech’s house.

We both get out.

I feel the weight of the pistol and the clips. It’s a good kind of weight to feel. We follow the privacy-fenced perimeter until we come to the slat fence that leads into the yard. Like all identical neighborhood fences, it contains a gate that’s unlocked and incapable of being locked.

We enter the backyard through it.

The backyard is nothing special. Just a concrete patio, black wrought iron furniture, and your basic gas cooker on wheels. The patio leads to a sliding glass door that’s covered by a floor-to-ceiling curtain. There’s a step leading up to the door. Must be Czech has no trouble negotiating the step. Many disabled people bound by wheelchairs learn to negotiate some pretty formidable obstacles. Call it survival instinct.

Georgie and I look at one another and approach the slider. He already has his Swiss Army knife out and ready to jimmy the lock. But the closer we come to the door we can see that jimmying won’t be necessary. There’s a fist-sized hole in the glass, and a long spider-veined series of cracks in the rest of the glass. Obviously we aren’t the first ones to visit the Czech household that morning.

“Fix bayonets,” Georgie says, sounding a lot like his old Viet Nam grunt self.

I draw the .9mm, slide back the bolt, allow a round to enter the chamber. I thumb the safety off.

Georgie does the same.

When I give him the nod, he sticks his right hand carefully through the existing hole, grabs hold of the opener, and slowly slides the door open. Pulling back the curtain, he takes a step inside, and like Alice, disappears through the sliding glass.

CHAPTER 38

I FOLLOW CLOSE BEHIND the old platoon leader while he takes point.

The place is dark. It also smells like must and sweat. There’s the faint scent of some bacon having been cooked recently. Probably isn’t all that easy for Czech to clean the joint. Not on a daily basis.

Georgie stops, runs his hand along the wall in search of a light switch. When he locates it, he flicks it on. Forget clean. The place has been left in a shambles. It’s been flipped, no doubt about it. Ransacked. Couch overturned, chairs tossed onto their sides, green Astroturf carpeting torn up with a blade so that whoever did this could get a look at what might be hidden underneath it.

It’s the same story in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms.

Glass shattered everywhere. Drawers and cabinets opened, bookcases pulled away from the wall, the books torn open and shredded, carpeting ripped up, holes punched though the sheetrock walls.

When we check the garage, the car is gone. And when we check the basement, the space is empty, other than about two dozen empty boxes piled up in the middle of the floor, the name Ashline Movers printed on the red tape that’s secured them. There’s a set of snow tires piled up in one corner, and some old furnace filters leaning against the boiler. Otherwise nothing.

Our .9mms at the ready, Georgie and I head back upstairs and check the bathrooms. The medicine cabinets have been tossed. No surprise there. Broken mirror and glass cover the sinks and toilets, the overhead light reflecting off of the shards like mini fun-house mirrors. All manner and type of pill bottles lie on top of the shards of glass. Staring down at the mess, I can’t imagine a big box being hidden inside something so narrow as a medicine cabinet. But then, what the hell do I know? I’m just the jerk who’s given his life once already for this project.

After we’re through with the bathrooms, we have one last room to check out. It’s located immediately off the front vestibule: Czech’s combination bedroom/office.

The bed sheets have been ripped away, the mattress ripped open in several places with a blade. Same for the box spring which has been removed and is now leaning up on its side against a far wall. A nightstand that holds a now smashed clock radio has been tipped onto its side, and the dresser drawers have all been pulled out, their contents of clothes, underwear, handkerchiefs, jewelry, Depend undergarments, and who the hell knows what else are tossed on the floor into a pile. Even Czech’s shoes have been examined. I might tell you that shoelaces have been ripped away, but the shoes are either loafers or specially made adult Velcro models.

What the hell kind of box are the Obamas looking for?

Of course, the desk hasn’t been spared a good ransacking. The drawers have been opened, their contents dumped out. Same with the rolling drawers on a giant metal filing cabinet, their files and their contents spilled everywhere. Some black and white banker’s boxes, like the kind my dad used to store the funeral parlor’s tax records in, have been yanked from the closet and dumped.

I have to wonder about the bankers boxes.

Is a banker’s box the kind of box the Obamas have been talking about?

“Think they found what they were looking for, Moon?” Georgie poses.

“The mysterious
zippy
or
flesh
box,” I say a little under my breath. “I’m listening to my built-in shit detector, Georgie, and I’m voting
no
. No way the flip would have been this thorough otherwise.”

“Right?!”

But something else is wrong with this scene and if I know Georgie as well as I think I do, I know he can sense it too. Together we look into one another’s eyes, and swim in the weighted silence.

Until Georgie breaks it by telling me he has a quick story he wants to share.

“There was this guy,” he begins, “went to his doctor complaining of migraine headaches. Said he got them every day. He couldn’t work, couldn’t function, couldn’t eat or drink. Guy’s life was just a total wreck. So the doc examines him, determines he’s got a rare disease. His testicles are positioned too close to his spine. They’re pressing up against his nerves causing the headaches. The only cure of course, would be total testicular extraction. Guy with the headaches was in such pain, he agreed to emergency surgery. He wakes up from the operation and never before has he felt so good. So good in fact he wants to treat himself to a custom-tailored suit upon his hospital release. So he heads to an expensive Jewish tailor. Jewish tailor gives him one looks and says, ’44 long. The guy is amazed at how knowledgeable the old tailor is. Tailor looks him over further, says, 38/14 for the shirt and 34/34 for the trousers. The guy is just positively floored at how much this old dude knows. But then the tailor says, for underwear, 36 or 38. The guy says, No way sir, I’m a 34. No, no insists the tailor, 34s are so tight they make your balls press up against your spine.”

Georgie laughs. But there’s a lesson to be learned here no doubt. Just because something appears to be broke doesn’t mean it’s actually broken.

“Take a look here, Moon,” he says, reaching into the top drawer on the file cabinet. “I’m nearly six feet and I have trouble reaching all the way into back of this thing. How the hell was Czech going to do it from a wheelchair?”

“Plus those bankers boxes up on the top shelf of the closet. He couldn’t exactly have climbed a stepladder.”

“The dishes in the kitchen cabinets, the books on the book shelf, the pills in the medicine cabinet . . . all unreachable for a guy who’s in essence not even three feet tall.”

Something hits me then.

“Georgie, follow me back downstairs.”

Together we head back down into the basement.

“These boxes,” I say. “Maybe the movers put them here way back when and Czech has just left them there.”

“Or maybe not,” Georgie says looking closer at them. “And check out the date of the move.”

I take a good look.

“April of this year,” I observe. “Czech hasn’t been living here for more than five months.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Told me he’s been here at Orchard Grove for six years. His first house.”

“Your boy is a liar,” he says.

“And possibly a traitor,” I say, heading back upstairs.

I take one more look around the kitchen. In the vestibule is a closet that we haven’t opened yet. I go to it, open the door.

“Czech is more than just a traitor and a liar,” I say.

“Explain,” Georgie pushes.

“I think he’s perfectly capable of walking,” I say, staring down at his unoccupied wheelchair.

CHAPTER 39

THERE ARE EXPLANATIONS, OF course, for how a disabled man can have boxes stored on the top shelf of his closet and files of papers in the top drawer of his filing cabinet. There are logical reasons why he’d have meds, plates, and drinking glasses stored in areas he can’t reach, just as they’re valid explanations why he might have boxes stored in an otherwise empty basement. The most obvious explanation is that Czech has someone help him from time to time. Perhaps even regular help on a daily basis. Many handicapped persons, no matter how independent minded, often depend upon the assistance of others just to get through a single routine day.

Which is exactly how I explain it to Georgie while getting back inside his Beetle. And Georgie, being a medical man by trade, couldn’t agree more.

He turns the engine over, throws the manual tranny into first.

“But how do you explain the wheelchair?” he poses.

“If he’s lying about who he is,” I answer, “then I guess he doesn’t need it. At least, he doesn’t need it in private. Or maybe he’s got more than one chair. Or it’s possible he was kidnapped without it by the same people who roughed up his house. The Russian Obamas no doubt upon orders from Grandpa Rose.”

“Which leaves us where?”

I never get a chance to answer before the bullet pierces the rear and front windshield.