Blue Moonlight Read online

  But first I run the water, place my hands under the flow. I splash the cold water on my face, stare into the mirror.

  Bloodshot eyes, sunk deep into black pools. Crow’s-feet dug into the skin along the outer regions of my sockets. Narrow fissures so deep I’m sure I could slip dimes into them and they’d stay. My goatee and mustache have turned into a full three-day, salt-and-pepper beard, and my usually shaved head is sprouting new growth that not only doesn’t hide the bullet-sized scar that resides beside my right earlobe, but somehow accentuates it.

  Look at me…I tried to blow my brains out once.

  It dawns on me that my head is pounding and my mouth tastes like an ashtray. I’m hungover. Crap, I hate hangovers. I’m thirty-plus-thousand feet up in the air, trapped inside a plane that’s rocking all over the cosmos, and I’m hungover and apparently under arrest…excuse me…under suspicion of being a quote, “domestic terrorist,” unquote, and I’m hungover.

  The perfect start to the perfect day.

  The water shuts off by itself. A nice, green feature of modern-day air travel. I pull some paper towels from the dispenser, wipe my face off.

  How did I get here, and why don’t I remember it?

  Because I’m a head case with a small piece of .22 caliber bullet lodged in my brain. That’s why I can’t remember.

  But that’s not exactly right.

  I do remember some things.

  Some. Things.

  Coming home from Lanie’s bar, still drunk from the New York Giants’ last-second win over the division rival Dallas Cowboys, assuring them their first playoff berth in three years. Drunk and feeling no pain due to a half dozen shots of Jack and maybe, ummm, a dozen beers. I’d lost count after six. One of those late-fall football Sunday afternoons spent on a barstool at Lanie’s Grille that eventually turned into one of those juicy Sunday nights, since I’m unemployed, have no girlfriend, no child to take care of, and no reason other than basic bodily functions to get up in the morning. Especially on a Monday. One of those rarer-than-rare blocks of time where the future was my oyster—but quickly turned into a clam when, upon arriving back at my riverside loft, I noticed an envelope sticking out of a stack of unread mail on my kitchen island.

  A letter from the IRS, addressed to me.

  A notice for payment for back taxes in the amount of five Gs and change. A letter identical to three notices I’ve already received and paid out over the past twelve months. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the IRS was hounding me, baiting me, terrorizing me.

  It’s all coming back to me now, like a badly planned murder.

  I see myself sitting slightly out of balance on the rickety barstool at the kitchen island inside my loft while my skin begins to peel itself away from my flesh and bones. I see steam pouring out my ears while I reposition my entire body weight on the stool and begin typing up an e-mail to the woman from the IRS whose job it is to handle my delinquent account. The same woman who, for the past year, has been haunting my dreams more stubbornly than my own impending death, than the thought of rotting in the lowest level of hell, than the still-vivid face of Lola, my ex-sig other, who ran off to strike up a new relationship with her old boyfriend.

  Doris E. Walsh, IRS auditor.

  I’ve never seen Doris in the flesh, but I couldn’t help but picture a great white whale dressed in a too-tight polyester suit, hair pinned up, a black mustache shading her upper lip. Thick-framed cat-eyed glasses would cover beady little eyes and, of course, horns would protrude from the top of her skull while a small scar might be implanted on the scalp that reads “666.” The entrance code to the Inferno. The PIN to eternal damnation.

  But then, maybe I was being a little harsh. Doris was just doing her job, after all. A horrid job, collecting money for her federal boss.

  My laptop was sitting out on the counter, booted up and ready. Positioning index fingers on the keypad, I began to type.

  Dear Ms. Walsh,

  I don’t have any money. I didn’t have any money the last time you hounded me for it, so I went to the bank and took out a loan for the five Gs you extorted from me then. I’m still paying on that loan and said financial institution surely won’t lend me more money to give to you. I’m not only unemployed at the moment, but I can’t collect unemployment insurance since I work for myself. I live off a small disability pension care of the New York State Law Enforcement Officers Union 82, along with a small Albany Police Department retirement account released early to me after I screwed up an attempt to blow my brains out.

  Last year I made approximately forty thousand dollars as a private detective, most of which was paid to me in cash, which I assumed would not have to go reported to your organization. How was I supposed to know I would be 1099’d later on by more than one conscientious client?

  Read my lips, Doris: I don’t have any fucking money!

  Since I can’t possibly pay you, and since you have a job to perform and a boss to answer to, tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to head out to Lowe’s and purchase several lengths of metal pipe along with some black powder and some simple detonators. Then I’m going to put one pipe bomb in your boss’s mailbox, another under his car, and one more in his locker at whatever country club he belongs to. And he does belong to a country club, am I right, Doris? Yes indeed, I’m going to blow up your boss and at the same time send a message to all the terrorized and overtaxed good citizens of the United States.

  The message?

  “They say you can’t escape death and taxes, but I’ve somehow managed to do both, on more than one occasion. And now I’d rather die again than shell out another dime.”

  Problem solved for both you and me, Doris. No more boss, no more overdue back taxes, no more threats of prison time, no more pressure on you to collect them from me.

  Sincerely,

  Richard “Dick” Moonlight, Concerned US Citizen

  Standing before the mirror in the airplane lavatory, I recall the letter. Recall every word. All it takes to recall a letter like that is a little concentration and a patch of smooth air outside this airborne tuna can/death trap.

  Exactly what happened next is not so easy to remember.

  I was drunk. But I do remember sitting on that rickety barstool that I rescued from the ashes of the bar I owned for a few months: Moonlight’s Moonlit Manor. The stool wasn’t safe, its four legs wobbly, barely able to hold my weight. But you know how tough it can be to get rid of a piece of furniture? And barstools cost money.

  I remember writing that letter, then sitting up straight, feeling the dizziness in my head and the sway of the stool. I read the letter maybe five times in a row and laughed out loud every time I read it.

  I might have a bullet in my brain and I might have been drinking Jack and beer all afternoon and evening, but I wasn’t stupid. I was perfectly aware that I couldn’t actually send that letter to dear old Doris E. Walsh. Not without the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, the APD, the devil, and the good Lord himself coming down on me like a pack of wild dogs.

  So, like a good, tax-paying American, broker-than-broke part-time private gumshoe, here’s what I did: placing fingers back down onto the keyboard, I moved the cursor to Cancel. That’s when I leaned forward on the barstool, placing more pressure on its legs. At the same time, dizziness filled my head. As you might have guessed, I’m not supposed to drink to excess with my damaged brain. That bullet frag might be tiny, but it’s big enough to cause me to suffer short-term memory loss during times of stress. The bullet frag can also cause me to simply pass out, and at times, cause me to make wrong or illogical decisions.

  Inhaling and exhaling, attempting to regain my equilibirum, I double-clicked on Cancel and another box appeared, this one offering me three choices:

  SAVE AS DRAFT

  Or…

  KEEP WRITING

  Or…

  DISCARD

  Naturally I shifted the cursor to Discard. But that’s also when I began to feel myself falling backward
, even before the crack of the stool’s back legs registered with my damaged brain.

  Instinct kicked in.

  I reached out, desperate for something to hold on to, something to break my fall. Instead of grabbing the counter, I slapped my hands down onto the laptop keyboard before dropping like a rock. A split second later I found myself down on the wood floor, my drunk body resting on a pile of twisted metal and broken wood.

  Heart pounding in my throat, I felt for broken bones. But as luck would have it, I’d landed on my glutes. I waited for the initial wave of pain to subside. Then I raised myself onto my knees, and from there, onto my feet. Besides the lumps and bruises on my ass and a throbbing pain in my skull, I was no worse off than usual.

  I was contemplating one more beer and an Advil chaser just before heading to bed when I happened to glance at the computer screen. Something had appeared on the screen that sent more shockwaves throughout my body than that suddenly broken stool had when it collapsed beneath my body.

  It was a shiny happy little green circle that contained an animated black checkmark. But the symbol was anything but shiny happy. Because placed beside it were two words spelled out in bold black letters. The letters spelled the words Message Sent.

  More pounding on the door to compete with the bad wind buffeting this plane’s fatigued sheet-metal skin.

  “Come on, Moonlight!” Zumbo barks. “I need you back in your seat now.”

  The plane rocks up and down, violently. I’m shoved around the interior of that lav like a fish trapped inside a fishbowl. “Coming, Agent Zumbo!”

  Turning toward the toilet, I bend down and pull up the seat.

  The Airbus A300 trembles and jolts, knocking me against both walls inside the narrow lav.

  “Move, Moonlight! Move it back to your seat and buckle in before we take a nosedive.”

  But I can’t move.

  I’m standing over the toilet, shrinking naked Johnson pinched between my index finger and thumb. I can’t move, much less pee. I’m catatonic with fear.

  The plane drops.

  My head hits the ceiling.

  Until the wings catch and now I’m on the floor, straddling the open stainless-steel toilet. There’s a huge thump, and then screaming coming from outside the door. Something big and heavy has fallen.

  It’s got to be Zumbo.

  Then comes an announcement over the PA:

  “Ahhh, this is your captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen.” Casual, lighthearted. Nice touch. “Not to be the bearer of bad news (chuckle), but we are encountering severe turbulence. We ask that you remain in your seats, seat belts buckled, and await further instructions from your flight attendants.”

  I don’t want to die in a plane crash. I want to die in my bed in my sleep with Lola sleeping right beside me, her steady breaths caressing my final moment.

  I pull myself up, turn, catch another glimpse in the mirror. A small gash above my right eye. A thin stream of blood oozing from it. No time for fixing it. I want out of here so that I can crash buckled in the safety of my seat.

  I zip up my pants and open the door, step out into the cabin.

  Zumbo is on the floor, pressed up against the corner of the galley, directly beside the emergency exit. Beside him, the cute little flight attendant is strapped into her booster seat.

  “Take your seat immediately!” she orders. “We have an in-flight emergency!”

  I cock my head and shoulder toward the NFL man turned federal cop. What about him?

  “Never mind him. He fell and hit his head.”

  I stumble my way around the corner toward my seat. But that’s when the Airbus rocks ’n’ rolls again, bobbing up and down, shaking from side to side, like we’re being bombarded by cannon fire on both flanks.

  And then it happens.

  Nosedive.

  The nose of the plane dips toward planet earth.

  I drop to the carpeted floor and grip the anchors of the two seats on either side of me. The g-forces yank me toward the tail of the plane. I feel like my heart is about to pop out of my chest. My torso and legs are no longer resting on the carpet as my body enters into a freefall along with the jet. I can make out the screams and shouts coming from the occupied seats a dozen rows ahead of me. The panicked and horrified voices compete with GE engines that scream and rev like they’re about to blow.

  How long does it take a nose-diving jetliner to make final contact with the solid ground from thirty thousand feet up in the air?

  Three minutes. I read that somewhere. Huffington Post. Or was it Wikipedia?

  I close my eyes, await the inevitable.

  All three long minutes of it.

  But we don’t crash into the solid earth.

  By some miracle of miracles, the plane rights itself, and I am once more on the carpet, both hands still gripping the seat anchors.

  Behind me, a booted foot kicks the Vibram sole that protects my right foot.

  “Get up! Get in your seat! Now!”

  Zumbo.

  I roll over. There’s a black-and-blue lump that’s freshly raised over his left eye. It reminds me of the cut above my right eye. There’s something about his eyes. They’re glazed over and sort of rolling around in their sockets while he tries to focus in on me. It’s almost as if the real Zumbo is no longer really present and a sort of messed-up, head-banged, short-circuited version thereof has taken his place.

  And to prove it, he pulls out his piece, aims it at me. At my face.

  Coming up on him from behind, the flight attendant.

  “Zumbo! No blood, no bullets, remember? It can’t go down that way.”

  Yeah, no blood, no bullets, Zumbo. And what the fuck is she talking about? What way is it supposed to go down?

  He turns to me, looks me in the eye. “Don’t. Give. A. Fuck,” he mumbles in this voice that sounds like an old vinyl record played at a too-slow speed. “You’re. Dead. Sweetie.”

  I get back up on my feet, face the front of the plane.

  “Zump!” I bark. “It’s your head. You hit your fucking head. You’re not yourself. I know what I’m talking about here. Put the gun away.”

  “Awwww, sweetie,” he says, those wet eyes rolling around inside the sockets, a thin stream of drool running down his lower lip. “I love it when you beg.”

  Here’s the deal: I’m scared.

  Scared stiff and confused and hungover.

  But my empty gut screams at me.

  It screams “Run!”

  But where the fuck to?

  Zumbo wobbles out of balance. He thumbs back the pistol hammer and smiles.

  Blood and bullets…

  I run like hell.

  I lunge for the gray curtain, pull it up and over my hand, and pull it back down. For just a split second I see a scattering of passengers. All of them strapped to their seats. Some are crying, some praying with rosary beads in their hands, some folded over at the waist, their heads pressed between their legs like they’re trying to kiss their asses good-bye.

  Behind me I hear Zumbo’s pounding footsteps.

  I don’t have time to focus on the scared-to-death passengers.

  I run. Up the narrow aisle toward business class, through another gray curtain. But before I draw the curtain back, I steal a quick glance over my right shoulder only to see Zumbo coming for me, his automatic gripped in his right hand, barrel pointing toward the ceiling, glassy eyes focused on me like I’m a linebacker who’s intercepted a pass meant for him. He’s not running so much as he’s hobbling as fast as he can.

  Bad knees.

  Bad head.

  Bad day.

  I draw the curtain and slip on through.

  Like economy class, business class is sparsely populated with scared-shitless passengers. I see only the backs of their heads. I pay them no attention as I sprint toward the pilot’s cabin.

  It takes a couple of seconds to get there.

  A flight attendant tries to stand in my way. This one is a man. He’s got gr
ay hair and a mustache to match, and he’s wearing the traditional US Airways blue uniform of blue slacks, matching jacket, and tie.

  “Please take your seat! We have an in-flight emergency!”

  He peers into my eyes with all the power of his authority until he glances over my shoulder at the monster approaching me from behind.

  “We most certainly do,” I say.

  From where I’m standing I can see beyond the luxury seats, and the rich people strapped into them, to the cockpit door. I brush past the attendant and make an all-out run for it. If I can get inside, I can grab the captain’s attention and bolt the door closed behind me.

  “Stop!” shouts the flight attendant.

  “Get! Back!” screams Zumbo. “Sweetie! Dies!”

  That’s when a man jumps up from a port-side window seat positioned closest to the cockpit, pulls out what looks like a pistol, assumes combat position, and aims the barrel point-blank for my chest. He fires and a snakelike coil leaps from it at lightning speed, slaps my chest, and makes my entire body feel as if it’s been dipped in hot lava.

  The plane bounces and bucks.

  The man who shot me falls to the floor directly in front of the cabin door. I try to maintain my balance, my posterior pressed up against an upright seatback. But the battle is lost before it begins. The beefy NFL monster behind me loses his balance and falls onto a first-class passenger who is screaming her lungs out and weeping.

  I feel the plane falling again as my knees give out, and I lose consciousness.

  When I wake up I’m occupying the same bucket seat in the plane’s aft where I woke up in the first place. The long gray curtain is back in place, Zumbo is seated beside me again, and once more I’m cuffed to his tree stump of a wrist. The cute redheaded flight attendant is nowhere to be seen, but the man who Tasered me is seated across the narrow aisle from Zumbo. I’m thinking he’s the air marshal. Air marshal’s got the Taser gun out. It’s gripped in his right hand. I can also see that he’s got Zumbo’s automatic stuffed into his belt.

  As for the turbulence, it seems to be history. Outside the window, nothing but blue skies. Peaceful, calm. But I know better than that. Zumbo is asleep. I can hear his snores. After our midair chase, I can’t imagine how anyone, let alone an overweight former New York Giant with bad knees and a bad headache, can sleep at a time like this. My guess is he’s been forcibly medicated after pulling that little chase-the-rabbit stunt with me. Oh, the crazy, mindless things a head injury will cause a formerly logical thinker to do. Take it from me: Captain Head Case.