Blue Moonlight (5 page)

I’ve been here before.

In a dozen other buildings in a dozen different towns. But always the same setting. As if to add some color and comfort to an FBI interview room would somehow go against company policy or what Hollywood would want us to believe in one of its B-level crime thriller movies.

Instead, what we’ve got is four walls, no windows other than a four-by-eight one-way mirror located in the wall opposite my right shoulder. I’m seated in the usual metal chair at the usual metal table, my wrists cuffed and chained to the usual round metal disk that protrudes from the underside of said metal table. That way they can be sure I won’t kill them all should I suddenly enter into a rage. OK, maybe I tried to shoot myself once, but I’m not about to pull a stunt like Zumbo did on the plane just because my head’s a little off.

Seated beside me is Agent Zumbo. He’s sipping on a coffee and enjoying a jelly doughnut that he’s lifted from off a plate of a dozen others just like it.

Dunkin’ Donuts.

There’s a long piece of white surgical tape stuck to his forehead. The surgical tape is holding a piece of thick gauze in place
over the egg-shaped lump and apparent concussion he suffered during our severely turbulent flight.

The cut above my forehead hasn’t been touched. But it has stopped bleeding. I’m guessing they figure it’s only a scratch.

Seated across from us is the agent who apparently posed as Cute Little Flight Attendant, whose name I have discovered is Vanessa Crockett. She’s got a nice figure and no doubt she intends to keep it, which is probably why she is abstaining from the doughnuts, although I’m getting a kick out of watching her eyes shift from the pile of white jelly-filled doughy goodness every two or three seconds.

Conspicuously missing from the party, the mustached Air Marshal Kevin, who I can only assume is back to flying and protecting the friendly skies.

“In five seconds, everyone,”
comes a tinny hidden speaker voice from behind me.
“Can you please say something, Mr. Moonlight, so we can check the levels?”

“There once was a fellow McSweeny,” I recite, “who spilled some gin on his weenie…”

“That works for me.”

Zumbo must get a kick out of that ’cause he bursts out laughing, his round mouth covered in white powder. “For a little man, you crack me up, sweetie. You really do.”

“Can we just get this started?” Agent Crockett barks. “I’m exhausted from that dreadful flight, and I wanna take a bath.”

Well, fuck me. She had to put that image in my head, right? Her naked body, resting in a pool of hot, steamy water and bubble bath. Heart be still.

“Good to go, Agents.”

Zumbo grabs another doughnut, takes a sip of coffee.

Crockett pushes her chair out, stands up.

Zump…Zumbo’s nickname bestowed upon him by his fellow New York Giants. Whenever he’d run over a middle linebacker the television broadcaster would shout, “You’ve just been Zumped!” The fans picked up on it too and so did the stadium JumboTron. Picture a giant cartoon caricature of Zump running over a skinny little cartoon defensive player, the word ZUMPED! cascading across the screen in big bold letters, the entire stadium shouting “ZUMPED!” in unison.

The old fullback wipes his powder- and jelly-stained right hand on his pant leg.

“Aren’t you gonna offer me a doughnut?” I pose.

Zumbo slaps my arm. The solid rock of a hand sends a shockwave throughout my torso. “Yo,” he says, “play right.”

“Kidnapping and physical torture,” I hiss. “All this is gonna make a great lawsuit, let me tell you.”

Agent Crockett turns away from the table, raises her right hand over her shoulder, waves it dismissively, like she’s about to say,
See ya!

“Oh, Moonlight, spare it. We don’t give a rat’s ass about lawsuits. We don’t have to. When it comes to domestic and international terrorism and the threat thereof, we enjoy an almost unlimited autonomy, so long as it’s in the best interest, health, and security of the GP.”

“That comes as a relief, actually, Agent Crockett. Save me a fortune in lawyer fees. You fabricate that severe turbulence too? In the best interest of the GP?”

“Shut
up
, little man.” Zumbo slaps me again. It hurts again too.

“Zump,” Crockett scolds, “please don’t hit the suspect. And no, Mr. Moonlight, that turbulence was the real deal.”

“Shackled suspect,” I add. “So aside from that stupid letter I wrote, why am I here?”

The female agent peers into the one-way mirror, then turns to face me once more. “Mr. Moonlight, do you recall a former APD detective by the name of Dennis Clyne?”

The name hits me upside the head. Less than a year ago he helped relieve me of a gang of Russian thugs who, along with the father of Lola, my then-girlfriend, were going to kill me if I didn’t produce a certain flash drive containing sensitive nuclear weapons secrets on it. Rogue nuclear warhead locations, to be more precise, that landed on the black market following the end of the Cold War. The short of it is that I never realized I was in possession of said flash drive until I discovered that it had been safely stored under a table in Moonlight’s Moonlit Manor.

In the end, Lola’s father was killed and the bar burned to the ground. Lola ran off with her ex-boyfriend. Dude who goes by the name of Christian Barter and who also happens to be a special agent for the FBI and the biological father of the now-deceased son she was forced to give up at birth, since she was only sixteen at the time. And Detective Clyne, whom I personally and, yes, illegally entrusted the flash drive to, bolted the country with it.

A shitload to sort out, I know. Try
living
it.

“I remember Clyne,” I admit. “How can I not?”

“Do you have any idea of his whereabouts?” Agent Crockett pushes.

“Word up is that he’s somewhere in Europe.”

“Where exactly, sweetie?” asks Zumbo.

I try to sit back. But my shackled hands won’t allow it. And my right wrist stings when I pull on it against the steel cuff. I turn to eye his round, doughnut-stuffed head. “Oh jeepers,
Agent Zumbo,” I say, “Clyne asked me not to reveal that when he placed his last personal call to me a few days ago.” Rolling my eyes. “Come on, Zump man, how the fuck should I know?”

He slaps me again. On the fleshy part of the upper arm, above the bicep. Does it with that heavyweight Super Bowl ring out front. I fall most of the way off the chair.

“That’s ‘Agent Zumbo’ to you, little man,” he says.

“So it’s true, then, that you and Clyne are in communication?” asks Agent Crockett.

Christ almighty, what happened to her little mandate about not hitting and/or abusing the suspect?
The hot little Crockett appears to have forgotten all about it. I exhale, shake my head. “I was being facetious.”

“Which is it, Moonlight?” the female agent shouts. “Yes or no?”

My head is beginning to spin. Not a good sign. It means my blood pressure is up. When my pressure is up, a lot of blood flows through my brain and it makes the sliver of bullet lodged inside the gray matter press up against the cerebral cortex. It means I’m in danger of passing out, at best, and at worst, falling into a coma. For now I’ll just take deep breaths and tackle their silly questions as accurately as I can.

“That would be a big fat
no
,” I assure her. “So, let me clarify something here. I really don’t get to see a lawyer?”

“What do you need a lawyer for, Moonlight?” Crockett poses, like I’m asking to speak to the president. “You’re not accused of anything. Nor have you been arrested. We’re just talking is all.”

“And I’m just shackled for no reason, having been kidnapped, Tasered, and taken to New York City entirely against my will.”

“The plane almost crashed and you went haywire,” Zumbo interjects, like he didn’t lose it at all himself after suffering a head-on collision with the hard US Airways interior during a moment of severe turbulence.

“Thus the reason for your cuffs, Mr. Moonlight,” Crockett explains. “Also, when we originally, and might I add, politely, asked you to accompany us to New York, you went ballistic. You had to be restrained.”

I’m trying to recall their coming to my door early this morning. But I have no recollection whatsoever. Considering the amount of alcohol I imbibed yesterday, I must have still been drunk.

“You don’t remember, do you, Moonlight?”

I shake my head.

“My brain—”

“We know, we know.” The pretty agent nods. “It’s not always right.”

Crockett turns back to the mirror. “Pictures!” she barks.

A second later the door opens, and a short, thin man enters. He’s holding a manila folder, which he sets down on the table. When he leaves, closing the door behind him, the female agent opens the folder to reveal a series of eight-by-ten full-color glossies.

“Recognize any of these, Moonlight?” she asks, slapping down the stack before me.

The top pic is of a man. A tall man with broad shoulders, dressed all in black. His head’s been shaved, leaving only a small cropping of hair. He has an equally cropped beard to match. He’s lost considerable weight, but I have no doubt about the identity of the man in the picture. “Clyne,” I say.

“So you do recognize him?”

“I just told you that!”

Zumbo, slapping the back of my head. “Be nice.”

When the shockwave abates, I say, “Yes, ma’am, I recognize him.”

“Nice touch, sweetie,” Zumbo adds. “Need more of that ‘ma’am’ stuff ’round here. Fact, we need more mams ’round here, period.” He finishes with a wink at Crockett, who pretends to ignore the gesture.

“You should be aware, Mr. Moonlight,” she goes on, “that you were the last man in the US to have any direct contact with Clyne prior to his sudden disappearance. We also know that you personally handed him the flash drive in question when it was your solemn duty and obligation as a former officer of the law to produce it for federal authorities. Namely, Agent Christian Barter. We further know that you withheld information about the illegal handoff that would have aided both local and federal law enforcement, leading us to believe, Mr. Moonlight—”

“That you are totally fucked.” Zumbo, laughing so hard he’s about to fall out of his chair.

But he’s right. I’m fucked. And they know it. We sit in a silence so pregnant you can practically feel the baby kicking.

Until I raise up my head and say, “Ummm, would it help if I said I was sorry?”

I close my eyes, cringe, and brace myself because I know what’s coming. Another slap. Against my left shoulder. Harder this time, the Super Bowl ring indenting itself into my flesh. When I open my eyes I’m down on the floor on my side, my cuffed hands hanging above my head from where the cuff chain is attached to the underside of the metal table.

“You been Zumped, sweetie!”

Fucking Zumbo.

He helps me back up and pats me on the back like I’m a teammate he’s just crushed all in the name of good sportsmanship. I run my fingers over abraded wrists and pray that, at this point, my hands don’t simply fall off.

“OK,” I say, “so what is it you want from me, Crockett, besides a death certificate?”

She pulls the top photo off the stack, sets it onto the table. Using her manicured index finger like a pointer, she points to the man seated in the middle. “Recognize the person in this shot, Moonlight?”

This man is also dressed in black. He’s taller than Clyne, clean-shaven, with trimmed dirty blond hair that’s streaked with gray. In the picture he’s seated in between Clyne and someone else I recognize. The someone else I recognize is wearing a black leather jacket. Her long black hair is lush and parted over her right eye. She’s wearing white plastic Jackie O sunglasses, tight white jeans, and long, knee-high boots. She’s my ex-girlfriend, Lola. The man to her left is Barter, her new boyfriend and the man who fathered the child she gave up for adoption at birth in the mid-1980s when they were both only sixteen years old. A child named Peter Czech, who became a nuclear engineer and a spy for the Russian government. A man paralyzed from the waist down who originally owned the flash drive in question prior to his untimely death.

Crockett begins going through the stack of photos. They are all the same. Shots of Lola, Barter, and Clyne sitting at a table at a café somewhere. Looks like Europe.

“Those other people look familiar to you too, Moonlight?”

“It’s Lola Ross,” I say and exhale, “and a colleague of yours. Agent Christian Barter. I’m assuming you know Barter through agency circles, Agent Crockett?”

“
Former FBI agent
,” she stresses. “And yes, I’ve met former Agent Barter, on numerous occasions during my occasional trips up to the Albany field office, Moonlight.”

I’d sit back in my chair and sigh if the chain length would allow it. But it won’t.

“What do you want from me?” I repeat.

What do you want so badly you’re willing to kidnap me, hit me, chain me up, Taser me, and nearly shoot me while in midflight thirty thousand feet above the solid fucking ground in order to get it?

Crockett turns to the mirror like it’s alive and breathing.

“What do you think?” she says aloud.

“Tell him now,”
says a tinny PA voice.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most fucked-over one of us all?

Richard “Dick” Moonlight. That’s who.