Moonlight Gets Schooled, page 1
MOONLIGHT GETS SCHOOLED
A Dick Moonlight P.I. Thriller
Vincent Zandri
PRAISE FOR BOOKS BY VINCENT ZANDRI
“Sensational…masterful…brilliant.” —New York Post
“[A] chilling tale of obsessive love from Thriller Award—winner Zandri (Moonlight Weeps)…Riveting.” —Publishers Weekly
“…Oh, what a story it is…Riveting…A terrific old school thriller.” —Booklist, starred review
“Zandri does a fantastic job with this story. Not only does he scare the reader, but the horror show he presents also scares the man who is the definition of the word ‘tough.’” —Suspense Magazine
“I very highly recommend this book…It’s a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists…Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.” —Life in Review
“(The Innocent) is a thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.” —The Times-Union (Albany)
“The action never wanes.” —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting.” —Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years
“Tough, stylish, heartbreaking.” —Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Broken and The Cartel
“A tightly crafted, smart, disturbing, elegantly crafted complex thriller…I dare you to start it and not keep reading.” —MJ Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Halo Effect and Closure
“A classic slice of raw pulp noir…” —William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
Copyright © 2022 by Vincent Zandri
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover design by Zach McCain
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Moonlight Gets Schooled
About the Author
Books by the Author
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“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
—Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
1
The pounding on the front door of my Port of Albany loft woke me from out of sound sleep. A rare sound sleep, that is.. Something that pissed me off to no end due to the fact I’d been in the midst of one of those equally rare, but so goddamned wonderful dreams where I’m getting naked with the Asian American receptionist who works for my dentist.
We were locked in some nondescript hotel room, and she was taking off her shirt and exposing milky white breasts that were stuffed into a black lace bra. It was all I could do to unbuckle my belt with one hand and pull her into me with the other, so that my lips met hers
“Ohhhhh, Mr. Moonlight,” the Asian beauty with long black hair whispered in my ear, “me love you for so very, very long time.”
“Me too, China Doll,” I said. “I’m going to ravage you.”
“Yes, Moonlight, yes! You ravage me now. All…of…me!”
Then, bang, bang, bang on the industrial steel door and I’m wide awake in my empty bed. Swinging my legs around, I slipped out of bed in my boxer shorts and naked torso. Since it was September, the nights were getting cooler, and my loft in the old brick building on the Hudson River was downright cold. It felt like I was walking on ice cubes in my bare feet.
More pounding on the door.
“Just a goddamned minute!” I barked.
I went to the heavy steel door, unlocked the dead bolt, and slid it open along its tracks only as far as the attached chain would allow.
“Mr. Moonlight,” a short, heavily bearded man said. “Detective Miller said you were the best. That I should come to you right away.”
I shook some of the sleep (and the three double shots of Jameson) out of my head.
“Detective Miller, huh?” I said, picturing the tall, clean-shaven, dapper, jar-headed senior homicide detective.
That’s when I noticed his eyes shifting from my face to my midsection. I followed his eyes all the way down and discovered that I was sporting a huge hard-on. It was funny in a way, because I was sort of proud of it. A man of my years should only be so lucky. But at the same time, who wants to be sporting wood in front of another dude?
I looked him in the eyes.
“Happens,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said, as if it was his fault.
“Never you mind,” I said. “I just gotta pee is all.”
I gave him a total once over and turned on my rusty but ever dependable built-in shit detector. Like I said, he was short, kind of frumpy, if not unkempt. He also looked like he hadn’t slept since the Obama administration. His hair was dark and thick, but kind of greasy. It matched his beard. His appearance was the opposite of my mostly shaved scalp and perpetual five o’clock shadow. His blue suit was a too big for him, and the cuffs on his trousers hung too low on top of his brown Florsheim shoes.
Like I said, I could tell he hadn’t slept a wink all night. I could also smell nothing incriminating on his breath. No booze, that is. In the end, he seemed tame enough to me and besides, he was likely to hire me, and god knows I needed the money.
“Come on in,” I said. “It’s cold out and I gotta use the can.”
He nodded and stepped inside while I slid the door closed behind him. Then I hit the head on the opposite side of the big studio. When I was done, I slipped into a pair of Levi’s jeans that were lying in a pile on the end of my unmade bed. Since it was chilly outside the open industrial windows, and maybe verging on rain, I threw on a red pull-over.
Glancing at my watch I saw that it was going on five in the morning.
“Looks like I’m up for the day,” I said to myself, a slight wave of disappointment washing over me. An experienced gumshoe needs his rest. But not today.
“I’m gonna throw on some coffee,” I said. “You want some?”
Frumpy Man shook his head and just stood there maybe a couple feet beyond the front door. His face was pale and judging by his pout, sad. Maybe he was a brooder. When he reached into his jacket, pulled out a pistol, pressed the barrel against his temple, and blew his brains out on the spot, I knew for certain he was not only a sad man. He was a desperate man too.
God rest his soul.
2
Daylight was just beginning to illuminate the cloud cover to the east beyond the river. There was a slight drizzle coming down from a bitch of an overcast sky. I got the distinct feeling that Mother Nature was trying to tell me that summer in Albany was truly over.
With that in mind, I pulled the bottle of Jameson from off the butcher block counter and poured a little into my second cup of coffee while Albany forensics took pictures of Frumpy Man’s body and the nasty blood puddle that would have to be professionally cleaned. That is, once the coroner arrived along with a mortician who would cart Mister Frumpy-Whoever-He-Was away to either the morgue for autopsy or straight to a funeral parlor, like the one I grew up in, for embalming. The most likely scenario in the case of a suicide was autopsy.
When A P D Chief Homicide Detective Nick Miller came through the door, careful not to step on the crime scene, I got another mug out, poured him some coffee, and sweetened it with a full shot of whiskey. Without a word, I handed it to him.
“Jobz,” I said, after a time.
“What about him?” the detective said taking a careful sip of his coffee.
“You could have sent this man to Steve Jobz, instead of waking me out of a beautiful dream and messing up my living space with a big puddle of blood, brains, and bones.”
He cocked his head over his shoulder.
“Shit happens,” he said. “And Jobz is too busy with another case right now.”
The Steve Jobz we were referring to was my only neighbor in the now abandoned Port of Albany. He was as good a private investigator as they come. His full last name was Jobzynski, but he’d shortened it for obvious reasons.
Miller was wearing a tan Burberry trench coat that had a belt wrapped around the waist and a brown fedora that protected him from the rain. As always, he was clean shaven. Under the coat, he sported a dark blue blazer, a dark button-down, and a perfectly knotted blue-and-white-striped rep tie. His .45 semi-automatic model 1911 was conveniently stored and concealed in a shoulder holster.
“So, who the hell is he?” I said after a time, my eyes on the two APD windbreaker-wearing forensics pros. “I didn’t dare dig for his wallet. Far be it from me to contaminate a crime scene even if I live in said crime scene.”
“Good idea,” Miller said, sipping his coffee. “ His name is, or was, Marvin Gamble. Real estate lawyer with a good-sized pra
“Sounds exciting,” I said.
I drank some coffee. It needed more sweetener. I grabbed the bottle of Jameson, uncapped it, and poured more into my mug. Miller looked like he needed more sweetener too. I poured more into his coffee. He looked into his mug like a wizard will gaze into a crystal ball.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet,” he said. “We keep this up, we’ll be drunk before seven.”
“There’s worse things in life,” I said, taking a nice warm, soothing sip of the coffee. Then, “So why did Mr. Marvin Gamble come to my place with the express purpose of blowing his brains out?”
The detective drank a little of his coffee.
Then, carefully wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?”
“The Dems are in charge,” I said. “Let’s make it the trillion-dollar question.”
He nodded, like I was being serious. He was also back to looking into his crystal ball-like coffee mug.
“When Marvin contacted me earlier yesterday morning,” he said after a long beat, “he seemed very distraught.”
“About what?” I said.
“He said his wife had been missing for thirty hours, give or take.”
“That doesn’t qualify for a missing persons case with the APD,” I said.
“Therefore, I suggested he contact you if he was worried about something.”
“Maybe his wife just needed a breather from the marriage,” I said. “Happens all the time.”
“Exactly what I told him,” Miller said. “But Marvin told me that her being missing was a hell of a lot more than that. That she had been acting really strange as of late, and he feared she might be having another affair.”
“Another affair,” I said. “I don’t like the sound of that. No wonder the poor bastard was depressed.”
I glanced at Marvin once more. He was still dead, still lying on my floor, still making a mess that was gonna be impossible for me to clean up. Soon, the coroner would be here to pronounce the obvious.
My eyes shifted back to Miller.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“The cheating wife?”
“No, the cutie with the crooked nose on the Friends reruns,” I said.
“Don’t be a wise ass,” he said. Then, “Virginia. Marvin referred to her as Ginny when we last talked.”
“What’s Virginia, who apparently isn’t much of a virgin, look like?”
He scrunched his brow.
“Beats me,” he said.
I drank the rest of my Irish coffee. I was tempted to make another, but something told me that would not be a good idea.
“Let’s hope Virginia is worth blowing one’s brains out for,” I said.
“What’s that mean?” Miller said. “Nothing’s worth putting a bullet in your brain.” Then, realizing what he just said and the piece of .22 caliber hollow point that presently resided inside my brain. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
One last, long glance at Marvin Gamble. What was left of him, that is.
“Don’t be sorry. That could have been me once upon a time.” I mumbled the words more to myself than the detective. I added, “Do you at least know what his wife does for a living? That is, she works at all.”
He nodded once more.
“Yeah,” he said. “I believe she’s a schoolteacher.”
3
Minutes later, the forensics crew was gone, and so was Frumpy Marvin Gamble, leaving me to contend with a fucking mess. But when Miller offered to send over a cleaning service “on the house,” I felt a little better.
“Problem is, it can take a day or two for the cleaners to get to you,” he said, as we both walked outside and into the very gray, damp, cool morning. A morning that seemed to match the overall mood. “If you wanna put up at the Days Inn over on Wolf Road for a couple of nights, the department will comp you on that too.”
“Gee thanks,” I said. “Is this the part where you offer me a gig, Miller?”
He shoved his hands in the pockets on his trench coat. A white and black Range Rover that looked like it had just rolled off the lot was parked in one of the empty parking lot spaces to my left-hand side. Marvin’s ride, no doubt. You weren’t a lawyer in Albany County unless you could prove it by driving a hot shit ride that cost more than my annual salary. But hey, at least I was my own boss.
To my right-hand side, a hearse was still parked near my used Jeep. It said Hans Funeral Home on the side panels. It was a black vehicle, like the old Cadillac hearse my dad used to own with the words Moonlight Funeral Home printed proudly on both side panels in big white block letters.
For a second or two, I was transported back in time. Back when I’d accompany dad on a mission just like the one the Hans Funeral Home was on, which had a contract with the city for just such an occasion. We’d pick up the body of a suicide victim, or a murder victim, or an accident victim, cart them either to the morgue for autopsy or directly to our Pine Hills funeral home.
On occasion, their bodies would be in rough shape. By the time I’d turned twelve I’d seen severed limbs, disembowelments, severed heads, crushed torsos, you name it. I grew up with death and death was no stranger to me. You might assume I was horrified when Marvin Gamble blew his brains out right in front of me. But in many ways, it was just another Tuesday. Truth is, I was still a little pissed at him for waking me from my wet dream.
My eyes back to the homicide detective.
“So, what’s on your mind, boss man?” I said.
“I might put a junior dick in the department on this one, Moonlight,” he said, “since suicides are pretty routine. But with the defund the cops bullshit, we’re stretched too thin already.”
“That’s good news for me since I’m presently unemployed and can use a little casheshe.”
“Find out why this guy Marvin Gamble decided to sunder himself in a most, let’s call it, dramatic fashion. See what his wife is up to and if she had anything to do with it.”
I glanced back at the hearse and the wide expanse of abandoned Port of Albany parking lot beyond it, and the city skyline clouded in gray beyond that.
“She had nothing to do with it, Miller,” I said. “He shot himself.”
“Yeah, but there are new laws on the books,” he said. “Maybe she somehow coerced him into shooting himself. Badgered him. Happens all the time with teenagers. If that’s the case…that she tortured him mentally somehow, maybe publicly humiliated him on social media, or encouraged him directly to kill himself…we might have reason to make her a person of interest in his death.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and made finger quotes when he said, “person of interest.”
“So, what you’re telling me, Miller, is that Marvin Gamble killed himself, but he didn’t kill himself, even though I saw it with my own two eyes that he most definitely killed himself inside my loft of all places while I was filling the coffee maker with Maxwell House.”
He grinned that grin that made him look a lot like Clint Eastwood-slash-Dirty Harry.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that, Moon.”
The hearse engine came to life then, and the driver slowly pulled away. I knew that when Albany Medical Pathology was through with Marvin’s autopsy, and they got his body down in the basement embalming room, he would be evaluated to determine whether an open or closed casket would be appropriate. Judging by the amount of brains and bone he left all over my window walls and floor, you might guess he would get a closed casket.
But believe it or not, a mortician who knows his job could work magic with some basic stuff just lying around the home. Newspaper works as a great replacement for brains. All you have to do is fill the empty cranial space with a crumpled-up sports section, then place some malleable, thin screen material over that. Place some latex against the screen, glue it in place with Gorilla Glue, and you got yourself a new scalp. Finally, you spray on some insta-hair replacement like the balding, middle-aged Hollywood actors use, and bang-zoom, Marvin’s got himself an open casket. Then again, something was telling me Gamble would not get an open casket, because when word went out about how he died, no one would want to go near him.
