The moonlight falcon, p.6
The Moonlight Falcon, page 6
I nodded.
“Tell me, Mr. Moonlight,” he repeated. “What is your favorite time of day?”
“My favorite time of day?” I said. I glanced at Blood. “I don’t know. Blood, what’s my favorite time of day?”
“That would be happy hour,” Blood said, emotionless and flat.
By now, the two King Kong-sized gangsters were taking up most of the sidewalk behind their boss. A couple of briefcase-holding businesspersons, one dressed in a short skirt and matching jacket and another wearing a lightweight blue suit, made a point of walking around them, picking up speed as they did it.
Santiago lowered his head.
“And you must be the one they call Blood,” he said. “You are rumored to be a black superman or something. Is it true?”
Slowly, Blood turned to the cartel leader.
“Why don’t you save us all some time and tell us where the black falcon is so we can return it to our client and not have to kill you,” he said.
Santiago seemed to be taken a bit aback. He even lost his faux smile for a brief beat or two.
“You know,” he said, shaking his index finger at Blood, “it’s funny you should ask that question, Mr. Blood.”
“And why’s that?” Blood said, his eyes focused out the windshield as if doing his best to ignore Santiago.
“Because I was about to ask you two fine private detectives the same thing,” he said.
“If we knew where the bird was,” I said, “we wouldn’t be watching you and your gorillas.”
King Kong One came after me. But Santiago was quick to grab the big man by the t-shirt collar.
“Not now,” he said. “You’ll have your chance, amigo.”
King Kong One backed up. But not without extending his index finger and running it across his neck just like he did last night on the top of the small hill above the Lanie’s Bar parking lot.
“So, you see, gentlemen,” Santiago said, “it appears that you and me and my boss, Mr. Blaze just happen to be after the same thing. And since there is only one ancient Egyptian falcon to go around, it looks like we have all entered into a sort of competition, now haven’t we?”
“If we find who stole the bird,” Blood said. “...even if you stole it and right now you’re bluffing your Mexically ass off, we will take it from you and return it to Mr. Blaze. That’s our job. There is no competition. Understand?”
Santiago pursed his lips and nodded. He also tapped out a paradiddle on the open Jeep window frame.
“You’re very right, Mr. Blood,” the cartel boss said. “And I should warn you that if you do happen to come upon the bird and do not give it to me, we will find you and we will do things to you that you never imagined a human being could do to another so-called human being.”
“Oh, do give us an example,” I said, feeling my blood starting to heat up.
Turning to both his men and then back to me, he said, “I will tie you both to the steel beams on our new building. Then my men will proceed to slice the skin off your head and face. They will do this with surgical precision.” He demonstrates the cutting procedure using his right hand, like he’s gripping a scalpel in it. “The skin will be folded down by your neck. You will no longer have eyelashes, but you will be able to see everything happening to you. You will not be able to blink, and the blood will creep into your eyes. Your nose will be gone so the blood will fill your exposed Michael Jackson nasal cavities. Your lips will be gone, and your teeth and mouth will fill with blood. But you will not die within minutes, or even hours. You will shit yourself and you will remain like that for perhaps a full day or two while the flies lay eggs on your face and scalp, and while the birds take bites out of you. Eventually you will be blind and you won’t see what’s coming at you. But the pain and humiliation you will suffer will be like nothing you have before experienced and you will cry out for someone, anyone, to kill you.”
Blood and I gave one another a slow, long look.
Until, refocusing on Santiago, I said, “And here I thought you said it’s a beautiful day.”
The cartel man grinned and took another deep inhale of the morning air. He looked inside my eyes while smoothing out his mustache with index finger and thumb. Leaning into the Jeep, he rested his elbows on the window frame.
“I am Sicario, gentlemen,” he said. “We don’t believe in death. We believe in pain. No matter the weather, if you find the bird and you do not come straight to me with it, you will experience that pain and you will beg for death much like the condemned who are about to die for their crimes beg for their pathetic life.”
“Wow,” I said, “that was almost poetic, you smelly fucking Mexican.”
This time, King Kong number two came after me. But once more, Santiago held out his left arm, and reigned the big man in.
“Relax,” he said to the monster. “Obviously, Mr. Moonlight is begging for pain. He will get it soon enough.”
Santiago backed away from the Jeep.
“Have a wonderful day, gentlemen,” he said. “Don’t forget what I’ve asked of you.”
“How could we forget, Santiago?” I said. “I have goose bumps I’m so scared. My cock is a little hard too.”
The cartel sicario chuckled and headed back across State Street to the tower project. The two King Kong’s followed, one of whom flipped Blood and I off. But we didn’t bother with flipping the bird back at him. We simply grinned and waved, as though we were attempting to be nothing less than good, welcoming neighbors to our new illegal friends from south of the open border.
13
For a time, we sat in the Jeep in the parking lot and finished our breakfasts. When we were done, I fired the Jeep back up.
“So, what do you think?” I asked Blood.
He sipped some coffee and stared out the windshield.
“I believe he has no idea where the bird is,” he said. “If I have one gift, it’s the ability to read an evil man like Santiago.”
“I believed him too,” I said. “It only makes sense that he wouldn’t be hanging around a jobsite when he could be actively selling the bird on the black market.” I paused for a beat while a thought filled my head. “Have you considered that Blaze could be leading us on a wild goose chase?”
“How do you mean, Moon?” he said.
I sipped more of the now-cooling coffee.
“What if he actually has the bird but he’s pretending that he doesn’t,” I said. “By blaming some illegal alien cartel assholes like Santiago and his gorillas, he shifts the focus onto the criminal element. In the meantime, he sells an Egyptian relic that he illegally possesses, keeps the proceeds, and claims he never had the bird in the first place.”
Blood pursed his lips and nodded. He also pulled the lid off his Styrofoam cup and opened his window. He dumped the now cold coffee out the window onto the street. Recapping the cup, he placed it in the empty Dunkin Donut bag and set it by his booted feet.
“Bit of a conspiracy theory, Moon,” he said. “But for once, your brain hitting on all cylinders.”
I couldn’t help but grin. A compliment from Blood was rare. When he gave it to you, he meant it from the depths of his soul. Pulling away from the curb, I drove past the jobsite. Santiago and the King Kongs were standing inside the open deliveries gate. Maybe they were waiting for a delivery of more new tools they could pawn on the black market. Or maybe they were talking about the different ways they could torture Blood and me. Maybe that skinning us alive bit was too namby-pamby for sicario and MS-13.
I was about to hook a right at the bottom of State Street in the direction of my loft where I thought Blood and me could ruminate about the case of the Egyptian falcon over Irish coffees when my phone vibrated. Luckily the traffic light turned red, and I had to stop. There was no right-on-red at the bottom of the State Street hill.
Reaching into my coat pocket, I pulled out my phone and saw that the caller was Chief Homicide Detective Nick Miller. Just seeing his name on the Android digital screen made my pulse rise. I pressed the Answer icon.
“What’s up, Chief?” I said.
“You and Blood,” he said, his voice tight and terse like something was stressing him out. “You two working a case for that commercial construction guy, Greg Blaze?”
“How’d you know? I said as the light turned green.
Tapping the gas on the Jeep, I turned right.
“It’s my job to know,” he said. “It’s not in my wheelhouse, but I’m aware of the stolen artifact from the Albany Institute of History and Art and rumors abound that Blaze stole it after his excavators accidentally dug it up when they were making the foundations for the new State Street Tower.”
I drove south toward the old port off South Broadway.
“He claims somebody else stole it,” I said. “That’s why he hired the best PI in the business.”
“Marconi is the best,” he said. “Luckily, you have Blood with you. He’s one of the best too.”
Miller had this way of deflating me, sort of like my mother used too when I got a bad report card, or I put on weight.
“Listen, Miller,” I said, “I have this thing with my brain—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “I’ve heard it all before. If the bullet shifts, you die or whatever. Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your brain. I think you’re just you.”
Of course, the Marconi Miller was referring to was a pal of mine. He was older and the most experienced PI in Albany, and one hell of a guy to boot. When he and Blood worked on a case together, they made a powerhouse of a team.
“So why are you calling, Miller?” I said. “Just to remind me what a crazy man I am?”
“I wish that’s all it was,” he says. “But we got bigger issues to deal with.”
“Such as?” I said.
“You know a woman named Cory Daniels, bartends at Thatcher Street Pub?” he asked.
My stomach sank to somewhere around my ankles. I pulled the Jeep over and stopped.
Throwing the tranny into park, I said, “What the hell happened?”
“She was found dead this morning in her bed,” he said.
I knew she was dead before the words ever exited his mouth.
“How’d she die?” I said.
“Somebody cut her head off,” he said. “Used a French knife commonly found in most kitchens.”
Whatever was in my stomach started gurgling. I was forced to swallow some of the burning vomit that rose into my mouth.
“Any suspects?” I said.
“One,” he said.
“Tell me his name,” I said. “If it is a he.”
“Dick Moonlight,” he said. “You happen to know the man?”
14
Miller insisted we meet him at the scene of the crime. It was a cheap complex located in the Town of Colonie called Lake Shore Apartments. Affordable housing constructed mostly for the Section Eight crowd.
“Make it quick,” Miller said. “Both Colonie and Albany Forensics are working together and they’re about to stuff her body parts into a bag and ship her off to Albany Med for autopsy.”
In my spinning, fragile (if not damaged) brain I pictured the man who would be performing the autopsy. His name was Dr. Georgie Phillips, and he was my big stepbrother.
“Hell is going on?” Blood said.
I put the Jeep back in park, glanced into the side-view mirror, and over my left shoulder. Convinced the coast was clear I made a U-turn and put the pedal to the metal, as they say.
“Where we going, Moon?” Blood pressed.
“To the scene of a brutal murder,” I said.
I then filled him in on exactly what Miller told me.
“And you’re the suspect?” Blood said.
I turned onto the on-ramp for Highway 787.
“I was the last to be with her this morning,” I said. “She told her work friends she was coming to see me.”
He nodded.
“Yeah, that will make you a suspect,” he said. “But a weak one. It’s just because they haven’t come up with anybody better. You got any alibis?”
“Just one,” I said, as I entered the highway, careful not to sideswipe a semi that was barreling over the far-right lane when he should have been in the left.
“And who would that be?” he said.
“Manny the wonder dog,” I said. Then, throwing him a glance. “And you, sort of.”
“You’re now dead bartender girlfriend was already gone by the time I got there,” he said. “You could have gone to her apartment in Latham, killed her, drove home, gotten naked and back in bed during the hour it took for the pretty dentist to fill my tooth and for us to fill our desires.”
I shot him yet another look as I turned onto an offramp that would hook us up with Route 7, the main east/west artery that led to the suburban enclave of Latham—an area that less than a century ago consisted of farms and apple orchards. But all the farmers sold off after the war and made a fortune. Who could blame them?
Today a lot of the old farmhouses and old barns still stand, but instead of being surrounded by livestock, grass, trees, and fresh air, they’re surrounded by thousands of poorly constructed McMansions that more than likely won’t make it to one hundred years old without having to be torn down. Such is the price of progress.
“Whose side you on anyway?” I said. “First off, I’m not a liar, and two, I would remember if I did something terrible like mutilate a beautiful young woman with a French knife, even if she was only fucking me to get information out of me on the Egyptian falcon.”
“But I’m guessing you were pretty pissed off when you found out that’s what she wanted,” he said. “A man who’s not exactly right in the head might have gone off on her.”
“Okay, my head it’s not always right, and sometimes I forget things, but I would never kill anyone who didn’t deserve it.” Inhaling and exhaling a breath. “Besides, whenever I kill someone it’s always with my 9mm.”
“Let me see your hands,” he said.
“I’m driving,” I said.
“So what?” he said.
Removing them from the steering wheel I held them up. I twisted them at the wrists so he was able to get a view of both the back and front of my hands.
He nodded once again.
“You’re good to go, OJ,” he joked. “No defensive wounds. Nor did you cut yourself on your own knife.”
Up ahead was a green sign that indicated the numerous exits for Latham. I hit my directional and got off at the first one. When I came to the red traffic light at the end of the ramp, I came to a full stop. When it turned green, I hit the gas and headed west, past the Latham Circle, then onto Watervliet-Shaker Road. I drove for another mile. When I came to a road that accessed the Lake Shore Apartments complex, I hooked a right.
We didn’t need much in the way of directions, since we could plainly see the many cop cruisers, firetrucks, EMS vans, and even a satellite news truck parked outside what I took to be Building One. I parked way off to the side so that I didn’t get in the way of the official vehicles and company cars.
We got out.
“Remember,” Blood said as we approached the scene of a grisly crime. “You’re an innocent man who works for a dubious employer.”
“I’m not worried,” I said, as we came to the building’s wide open front door. “Not yet anyway.”
15
Just as we were about to enter the open door, a black-bagged body was being wheeled out on a yellow collapsible gurney by two EMTs. They were wheeling the body toward the rear of the EMS van which was backed into a nearby parking space. Both EMS workers (one male, one female), were pale faced. No, that’s not right. Their faces were as white as bed sheets. Considering the carnage most EMS pros witness during their careers, I knew that wasn’t a very good sign.
A man came to the door as soon as the body was moved outside. He was a tall man wearing a tan trench coat and a brown fedora. His face looked ashen, and tighter than normal so that his cheeks were concave. He reminded me of a cross between Sam Spade and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry.
“You’ll want to see this, boys,” he said.
“Actually, I don’t want to see it,” I said, my throat constricting.
“It goes with the job, Moon,” Blood said. “Besides, if anyone ain’t no stranger to the dead it be you.”
Blood was right. I’d grown up with death and spent enough time in my dad’s basement embalming room and numerous morgues to have real good idea of just about every way a man or woman could die, be it lethal knife wounds, gunshots, explosions, severe burnings, high impact trauma, suicide by hanging off jumping off buildings, plane crashes, car crashes, helicopter crashes, you name it. Heart attacks and cancer deaths were boring.
It got so my dad and I could eat breakfast and lunch in front of a body that had been decapitated. A body separated from its head didn’t spoil our appetites whatsoever. In fact, we probably chatted about how the New York Football Giants were doing that fall, or maybe about a heavyweight boxer who was coming to town who we wanted to see fight live-and-in-person in the ring.
But getting used to viewing the death scene of a woman I’d just slept with was something I would never get used to. It was too personal, or too emotional anyway. Yeah, that’s right, a man like me could get emotional at times, even if I was known around law enforcement circles as Captain Headcase.
Miller about-faced and stepped back inside Cory’s first-floor apartment. With Blood following close behind, I felt my pulse rise and my mouth go dry. The police or maybe forensics had laid out translucent plastic on the living room floor. The plastic led all the way past the kitchen to the back bedroom of the single bedroom apartment. There was blood smeared on the plastic. I didn’t want for it to get on the bottom soles of my combat boots, so I watched my step.
Miller was the first to step inside the bedroom. I was the second, and Blood was the last. I gazed at the mussed-up sheets and blankets, most of which were covered in the dark blood that came from arteries that had been cut open. In the center of the bed, the blood had pooled. I knew from growing up with my mortician dad that the average human body contained about one and half gallons of blood. Most of Cory’s was spilled out onto the queen-sized bed.
