Moonlight Breaks Bad, page 1
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ALSO BY VINCENT ZANDRI
The Dick Moonlight Mystery Series
Moonlight Falls
Moonlight Falls: Extended Editor’s Cut
Moonlight Mafia
Moonlight Rises
Blue Moonlight
Full Moonlight
Murder by Moonlight
Moonlight Sonata
Moonlight Weeps
Dog Day Moonlight
The Jack Marconi Mystery Series
The Innocent
Godchild
The Guilty
The Corruptions
The Chase Baker Action/Adventure Series
The Shroud Key
Chase Baker and the Golden Condor
Chase Baker and the God Boy
Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse
Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity
Chase Baker and the Seventh Seal
The Stand-Alone Novels
Everything Burns
The Remains
Scream Catcher
When Shadows Come
The Concrete Pearl
Permanence
The Ashes
The Shorts
Pathological
Banal
True Stories
MOONLIGHT BREAKS BAD
By Vincent Zandri
A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad.
An optimist is one who hopes they are.
—Chauncey Depew
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
1.
She’s going down on me in the handicap bathroom just outside the security checkpoint at the Albany County Airport. She’s younger than me, but not that much younger. Long, dark hair, a killer nose like a Renaissance Sculptor would carve on a Madonna with a slight hint of crookedness in the shaft, and big brown eyes that bowled me over when I found myself hopelessly staring into them at the bar only moments before. Her lipstick-red lips are thick, luscious, and I’ll be damned if they don’t feel like nirvana right now, considering their placement around my cock.
“You’re an angel sent from heaven,” I say, as she slips me out of her mouth, giving her jaw a rest while continuing to work on me with her hand.
“I appreciate the compliment, Mr. Moonlight,” she says, in a deep, sultry, Italian-accented voice. “A woman likes to know when she is appreciated. I’m still sorry for spilling beer on you.”
“Oh, you are so appreciated,” I whisper. “And love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Okay, so what’s happening inside the dead-bolted handicap lav isn’t exactly love. But that doesn’t stop her from issuing the loveliest little giggle before taking me into her mouth once more. But that’s when something happens inside my brain. Looking down at this strange woman I’ve only just met, I see someone else entirely. Someone else with long dark hair. Someone else with whom I’ve shared some special intimate moments just like this one. Only not inside a handicap lav in the airport. More like, in the privacy of our own bedroom.
Lola. My true love, and now ex-love, who seems forever gone from my life. I see her long black hair, deep brown eyes, and perfect sultry lips, and suddenly, what’s been feeling like nirvana no longer feels like anything. My manhood, such as it is, turns into shrinkage.
Major shrinkage.
The woman, whose name is Adriana, stops what she’s doing, looks up.
“Is there a problem?”
I turn away, embarrassed. No, that’s not right. Mortified better explains it.
Then, a knock on the door.
“Excuse me!” someone barks. Judging by the deep voice, most definitely a man. “How long are you going to tie the joint up?”
Adriana gets off her knees, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She then straightens out her red mini dress, smoothing out the wrinkles with both open hands.
“Looks like someone needs to use the toilet rapido,” she says before placing her fingers on my face, gently kissing my lips. “I’m sorry if your ending was not a happy one, no?”
“No worries,” I say, as she turns for the door.
“I will walk out first and see you in line at security.”
“Come on already!” shouts the man behind the door.
I suggest she go now, not to wait for me. After all, it’s not like we’re traveling together. We’ve only just met. Maybe I’ll see her at the gate for the plane that will take us south, to New York City’s JFK and the far larger airliner that will transport us across the Atlantic to Rome.
“Molto bene, Moonlight,” she smiles with those thick red lips. She brushes back her long brunette hair before opening the door and stepping on out. It’s then that I get a quick look at a bearded old man who is bound to a wheelchair. The old man goes wide-eyed when he spots Adriana. He smiles.
“Aren’t you the luscious one,” he says looking up at her from his wheeled perch. It’s then I notice his left hand doesn’t work right. The thumb and index finger appear permanently extended, and all he can manage is to move the paralyzed hand up and down.
“Andare all ‘inferno,” she snaps, which I translate as “Go to hell.”
Poor guy ... He’s just gotta use the bathroom ...
That said, I’m not entirely through with the joint yet. Closing the restroom door, I dead-bolt it secure.
“Hey you!” the man shouts once more. “What the hell are you doing? You were having sex in there, weren’t you? Don’t you know that’s illegal? The mile-high club is up there, not down here. I’m handicapped, and I have rights to this handicapped restroom.”
I pull up my pants, tuck in my shirt. Buttoning my Levis, I buckle my leather belt and quickly put my leather coat back on. Under normal circumstances, the coat hides my shoulder-holstered Browning automatic. But the firearms license stuffed inside my work-shirt pocket, along with my passport, doesn’t cover Italy or any other foreign destination.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I see a face that’s round, yet not puffy. The four-day growth makes me look tough, but not scary tough like the kind of thug you see on a Most Wanted Poster at the post office. My head is shaved bald revealing the dime-sized scar beside my right earlobe where a piece of .22 caliber bullet entered my brain pan after a botched suicide some years back. I’ve learned to live with the memory of the suicide like I’ve learned to live with the scar. We’ve become old friends over the years, even if there are still days when we hate one another.
Turning on the water, I splash some of it on my face, then onto my pants where some beer spilled on it earlier.
Another fist pounding on the door.
“I’m calling security you don’t come out now, young man!”
“Young man,” I whisper to myself. “You’re being too damn kind. Just ask that beautiful woman who just walked out of here entirely disappointed.”
Inhaling a breath, I tug some paper towels from the dispenser and dry my hands. Then, taking hold of my heavy backpack, I thrust the strap over my right shoulder. At the same time, I spot something on the floor. A small photograph. One of those wallet-sized pictures that all the kids bring home from school once a year. Bending at the knees, I pick up the picture and study it. It’s a small boy. Maybe six or seven. His hair is thick and black, and his nose bears the same crookedness in the shaft. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is Adriana’s child. She must have dropped the picture when she was putting herself back together. I turn the photo over. There’s handwriting on it. It says, “Momma, come home,” in the awkward handwriting of a child who is writing in a strange language. In my head, I see the beautiful woman down on her knees in front of me, and now that I know she has a little boy at home waiting for her, I feel like the foulest human being on earth. Pocketing the picture, I unlock the deadbolt with my free hand.
“My apologies,” I say to the bearded man in the wheelchair. “My dad raised me better than this.”
He smiles at me. A crooked grin that exposes yellowed teeth beneath a scraggily beard.
“I gotta take care of business real bad,” he says. “And you’re in there, banging that broad.”
“Not even close,” I say. But I’m not sure he believes me. Then, “Listen, I gotta go see a plane about an escape.” Removing myself from the door, I walk away.
“Hey you,” the old man says before I get too far.
I stop, turn back to him.
“How was she?” he says, grinning that hungry grin. “You know, the babe in the red dress.”
Rather than admit the humiliating truth, I decide to play along. “She’s Italian. From Rome. Need I say more?”
Somehow that’s his cue to belt out, “When the moon hits the sky like a big pizza pie that’s amore.”
Guy does a decent Dean Martin.
He goes to open the bathroom door using that semi-paralyzed hand. But he’s too far away from it. It almost pains me to see him struggling to open the door. I can practically see the sweat building up on his brow. I start to turn for my gate, but then I think twice and turn back for the lav, open the door for him.
“My apologies again,” I say as he slowly wheels himself inside, somehow managing the wheelchair with two semi-paralyzed hands.
“Forget about it,” he says. “I was young once ... and healthy ... and happy.”
I close the door behind him.
Turning, I head back in the direction of my gate. In just a matter of minutes, I’ll be on a flight that will take me away from Albany. Away from the city that Lola and I once called home. A place where once upon a time, I, too, was young and healthy and happy.
2.
Allow me to back up a bit.
You’re going to want to why me, Richard “Dick” Moonlight, Albany PI is heading to Rome, Italy all alone. Truth is, I have no choice but to go there all alone. After repeated attempts to reacquaint myself with Lola once she returned to Albany, after a year spent in and out of hospitals in a small town just north of New York City, she wants nothing to do with me. While a part of me is inclined to blame her indifference to my presence on earth on the car wreck that almost killed her more than two years ago now, and that nearly robbed her of both her long and short term memory for good, I can’t help but believe that I am solely to blame.
If this confession were local TV news story accompanied by video footage you might see me standing outside the front door to Lola’s downtown Albany apartment building. Me in my black leather coat and combat boots and she in her short skirt, leggings, and black boots. Her long black hair would be pulled back, and she might be wearing big round Jackie O sunglasses. For sure, she’ll be asking me to leave. To leave her alone now that she’s got her health and her life back to together. You might see me standing on the sidewalk dejected while she turns her back on me, slamming the door in my face. Then you’ll see me slowly make my away further into downtown, where I’ll disappear into the closest gin mill I can find.
I wasn’t a good partner to Lola. I made mistakes. Bad mistakes with other women that I attributed to the small piece of bullet that resides in my brain, directly beside the cerebral cortex or what’s known as the decision-making portion of the gray matter. A bullet that, at worst, can kill me without warning should it suddenly shift. Or, at best, sometimes results in my making stupid decisions. Like allowing a strange woman to give me a blowjob in the airport handicap lav for instance.
But I need to own my screw-ups, which means blaming Lola’s feelings about me on the bullet is probably my way of skirting around the issue. The fact is, Lola has moved on with her life. She’s healthy again in body and mind, and the last thing she wants is to have a head-case like me in her life screwing everything up.
But that doesn’t mean I love her any less.
If anything, I love her more, precisely because I can’t have her. So when I saw the advertisement in PI Magazine by a five-star hotel in Rome looking for an English speaking private investigator to work as house detective, I secured an interview, then called a travel agent, and bought a ticket. If I can’t have Lola, then I want to be as far away from her as possible. Rome seemed as good a place as any to escape to.
Fast forward to the Albany County Airport and my little rendezvous with a beautiful Italian brunette who, in all honesty, is far out of my league. Truth be told: I’m not entirely sure how it happened (Okay, blame it on the bullet, blame it on my loneliness, blame it on my need to distract myself from all things Lola ... Blame it on all the above). All I know is that my eyes radared in on her from the very moment she entered into the airport bar. She was carrying a leather purse strapped to her shoulder while pulling a pink, heavy-duty plastic carry-on bag. The way her long, rich, black hair swayed when she walked in her tall black boots and tight fitting short red dress made my pulse pick up speed like a jet engine on takeoff. She was stunning, and her look wasn’t that far off from Lola’s. They might have even been born of the same fashion mold.
I pegged her for maybe thirty or thirty-two and the way she filled out her red dress caught the attention of every eye in the joint. Male and female. As luck would have it, she took the empty stool beside me, which wasn’t exactly empty since my backpack was occupying it.
“Would you mind?” she said, in a soft accented, Sophia Loren voice that sounded as beautiful as it did exotic.
