Moonlight Breaks Bad, page 8
“They sent me a picture.”
“Let’s see it.”
I reach into my coat pocket, produce the MMS photo that came my way late last night. I go to the photo of the severed finger, hand him the phone. He grabs it with his right hand and takes a quick look at it. He shows Spike Hair Anthony the photo. Both of their faces take on blank expressions, like they’re looking at a grocery list and not a hastily amputated digit.
“Guess you’re right, Moonlight,” Spike Hair Anthony says. “Looks like she does have to die now.”
He goes to hand me the phone back. In turn, I reach out for it.
“Wait just a fuckin’ minute,” he says. “Fuck you still doin’ with a cell phone on you? How do we know you haven’t called the cops, or 9-1-1’d our little emergency?”
He opens the window.
“I wouldn’t do that because I just told you, I don’t want anything to happen to Lola.”
He laughs.
“Her finger is probably being fed to the cat as we speak,” he smiles. Making like he’s tossing a Frisbee, he chucks the phone out the window. “That settles that,” he says.
I sit back in the seat, stare out the window into the darkness, knowing in my heart that Lola may already be dead.
We drive along the rural road until Vincent takes a hard left onto a dirt driveway headed off with a large billboard that reads, Ravena Cement Plant. To our left is a large gravel-covered yard that houses some massive dump trucks with wheels that are larger than my first apartment. To our right is a narrow structure made of wood and tin that’s as wide as your average backyard shed, but must be a mile long. The shed is elevated some twenty or more feet in the air and supported by heavy metal stilts. I know for a fact that the shed houses a long conveyor belt that accesses a deep lime pit. The purpose of the belt is to carry raw chunks of lime rock to the cement plant which is located at the opposite end of the belt where it gets crushed and flash fired into a fine powder, after which it is then stuffed into one hundred pound bags that bear the title “Cement.”
The reason I know this is because when I was a kid, my Moonlight Funeral Services dad would receive on average, one or two workers from this plant every year who had accidentally fallen onto the conveyor belt and ended up being ground up by the huge rock crushers housed inside the plant. The victims didn’t look very human by the time my dad got to them. They looked more like raw hamburger with hair sticking out of it. But that didn’t mean they didn’t deserve a proper funeral. Closed casket, of course.
We drive into the dark plant for a ways, the car bumping and rocking on the uneven, unpaved road, until someone flicks their headlamps on and off ahead.
“That’s her,” Anthony says. “Chalisa.”
“Chocolate Thunder,” Vincent says.
“I like that name better. Suits the fat evil bitch.”
“Oh, and you’re not evil?” Vincent points out.
“Okay, but at least I manage my waistline.”
Vincent pulls up to the car, throws the Lincoln tranny into park, though he leaves the engine running. Without exchanging a word, the two men get out, leaving their doors open. Vincent opens my door, grabs hold of my coat collar, wrenches me out. He drags me around to the front of the car.
“Down on your knees,” he says.
Anthony puts the gun to my head. “Do it, jerk.”
Vincent turns, goes back to the car. I hear the trunk opening and then slamming shut again. When he returns, he’s carrying that same shotgun I recall from when they first started tailing me on the Thruway. He cocks the pump-action, sawed-off shotgun by its wood pistol-like grip, aims the barrel at me. The door on the driver’s side of the car facing me opens, and emerging out of it like a big, dark, Jabba the Hut, is Chocolate Thunder.
“You didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout bringing that sack of shit here. How come he ain’t dead already? Cops be lookin’ for his perfect white ass.”
“Why you gotta bring race into it?” I say.
Anthony taps my skull with the silencer. You’d be surprised how much a simple tap hurts. The ringing in my belfry registers a split second before the pain. Maybe it’s best I keep my mouth shut.
“We have a surprise for you,” Vincent says.
“What kind of surprise?”
“Come on over and we’ll show you.”
“I just want my money. I just want what I have comin’ to me.”
“You’ll get your money. But you need to come here first.”
She hesitates.
“Come on,” Vincent presses. “We don’t bite.”
I’m on my knees, my hands on my head, fingers locked, knowing at any second I could be leaving this earth for good. Somehow, I’m still not feeling the fear, so much as I am wracking my brain for a way out of this shit storm. Like Chocolate Thunder already said, the cops are after me. Maybe now would be a good time for them to find me.
The big woman starts walking forward slowly, her fat middle shifting in her tight blue uniform like the water in an over-filled water balloon as she walks. When she comes within a few inches of me, Vincent snatches Anthony’s automatic from the littler man’s hand and inverts it so that the pistol grip is facing Chocolate Thunder.
“Take it,” he insists.
“Take what?” she says, her eyes wide, pink lips pursed.
“Take the hand cannon. We’re giving you the chance to kill Moonlight. Figured you deserved the pleasure seeing as you helped us out.”
Her eyes go even wider, the whites breaking through the darkness like twin headlamps.
“I don’t wanna kill no man. Even a crazy white man like him. I just want my money. Then I walk out of this town, don’t look back.”
She takes a couple of steps back, her lips forming a tight, desperate frown.
“You’ll get your money,” Vincent says. “How many times I gotta tell you that? We just want you to perform this final simple task, and then you’ll get it.”
I see what’s up now. They don’t want her to kill me, they need her to kill me. That way, she alone will assume the blame. Not a bad idea, actually.
She back steps again.
That’s when Vincent raises the shotgun that’s still gripped in his left hand, cocks a shell into the chamber, one-handed, like he’s John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn.
“No choice, Chalisa,” he barks. “Take the piece and shoot Moonlight, and I don’t blow your fat fucking head off. Got it?”
Her thick pink lips are trembling now as the tough as nails TSA agent begins to cry.
“You fucked up in the head, you know that?” she cries.
She steps slowly forward, takes hold of the pistol with trembling sausage fingers.
“I can’t believe you making me do this. What if somebody sees me? What if the cops watching right now?”
“All the way out here?” Anthony says. “Not a chance.”
“Nice and easy does it, Chalisa,” whispers Vincent. “Just aim and squeeze the trigger.”
She lowers the silenced barrel so that it’s pointing directly at my shaved cranial cap. For the briefest of seconds the reality of what’s about to happen sinks in. I’m not Moonlight the invincible after all. I’m Moonlight the fucked. I’m going to die. I’m going to fucking die. That’s when the fear finally shoots through my veins like a mainlined injection of jet fuel.
“Oh, Christ, forgive me,” Chocolate Thunder barks a split second before the shot rings out.
23.
I close my eyes tight, await the quick rise upwards toward the Almighty, or the long fall downward into the fiery abyss.
But nothing happens.
When I open my eyes, I see that half of Chocolate Thunder’s head has been blown away exposing her brains like the gooey center of an overgrown Tootsie Pop. A second shot rings out, and Vincent takes one through the neck. He drops to his knees while desperately clutching at the wound, scarlet arterial blood squirting out between his fingers. Chocolate Thunder collapses and crashes to the ground in a final act that holds true to her nickname. A second after that, Bowling Ball Head Vincent falls onto his round face, his dark, battered soul making a beeline for the nearest exit.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Spike Hair Anthony screams as he drops to his knees, grabbing hold of the silenced automatic. Another shot ricochets off the ground sending shards of gravel up into my face. Yet another shot hits the ground in front of me, telling me I’m also a target. Dropping onto my chest, I grab hold of the shotgun, look right and then look left.
That’s when I see Denis and Twigs coming at us.
The two TSA agents are approaching us on foot, side by side from out of the dark early morning mist, like they’ve suddenly become the Earp brothers. Service weapons gripped in their shooting hands, the red beam from their laser sights slicing through the night. Again, they shoot, sending more gravel spitting up into my face. I crawl a few feet forward so I can use Chocolate Thunder as a bullet stop. To my right, Anthony lifts himself to his knees, raises his automatic, fires off a burst that drops Twigs like he’s a sack of rags and bone.
Denis stops in his tracks and fires again, nailing Anthony in the left arm.
“Fuck,” the Italian shouts, while raising himself up onto his feet, about-facing and sprinting like hell for the conveyor belt.
I aim the shotgun in the direction of Denis. I should shoot him on the spot, but the good angel on my shoulder whispers to me, tells me to at least give him the opportunity to give up before killing him.
“Denis,” I shout. “Why are you doing this?”
“You need to die, Moonlight! You all need to die. I can’t have no witnesses. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.”
He takes another shot. As I duck my head, I hear the bullet slap into Chocolate Thunder’s fat stomach. It dawns on me then . . . the reason Denis and Twigs had the balls to approach us on foot, Old West High Noon style, and why they shot their own TSA team member.
“Denis!” I shout. “How much of that coke have you blown up your noses tonight?”
To my right, I steal a quick glance at Anthony as he slowly begins to climb a steel ladder up to the conveyor belt shack.
“All of it,” he screams. “It’s all gone. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! It’s all gone, gone, gone with the fucking, fucking, fucking, wind ... Best ... shit ... ever!” He sees Anthony and he aims his laser sight at the spike-haired idiot and fires. The bullet ricochets off the metal sending fireworks of red sparks every which way.
Holy Christ. He must be out of his mind. That was enough coke to last most junkies a month, and they did it all in a single night. No wonder he’s psychotic. Or maybe the truth of the matter is that he’s slightly more psychotic than usual. I want to ask him about Lola. About whether or not she lives. But I’m afraid of the answer I’ll get.
He comes closer, now shifting his weapon so the red laser sight is bouncing off my chest. I don’t want to shoot him. But what the fuck can I do?
“Denis,” I say. “Drop your weapon. We can talk it out.”
“No talking. I need you dead, and I need more coke. In that order. You dead. Me more coke.”
He takes steady aim. Rather, as steady an aim as a coke addict can take.
I take aim.
He fires, the round slapping against Chocolate Thunder’s soft underbelly.
I fire.
No more Denis.
24.
The shotgun blast blows a hole in his chest so big you could fit an overhead carryon case through it. It exposes his heart which, in the LED light from the Lincoln’s headlamps, is still pumping thanks to the power of cocaine. Denis falls onto his ass but manages to sit up for a few seconds. He looks at me, smiles.
“You got me,” he says, before dropping onto his back.
Jumping up, I turn to my right and spot Spike Hair Anthony just as he’s crawling through one of the shed windows. As his body falls onto the perpetually moving conveyor belt, I hear him scream.
My instinct is to go after him, save him. Doesn’t matter that he wants me dead. The sudden urge to save him takes over, or takes precedence over killing yet another asshole, anyway. Moonlight the humane. But what if I go ahead and leave him to die on the belt? It would serve the son of a bitch right. But then, that’s not who I am. That’s not the son my dad raised all alone after my mother died of cancer. He raised a good man. Not a killer. I have to believe that.
Plus, the cops need to put someone in jail. Better him than me.
Another scream.
“Help me!” Anthony screams from inside the conveyor shed.
Dropping the shotgun, I run toward the elevated conveyor belt. It’s moving at a pace that’s about equal to a moderate jog, which means I can catch Anthony if I sprint fifty yards or so ahead of his present, but ever moving, position. Positioning myself under the tall, metal bridge-like supports, I sprint fifty or so yards.
Heart pounds and lungs ache by the time I’m done. But that doesn’t stop me from finding the nearest metal access ladder and climbing it up into the conveyor shed.
Inside the mile long shed, the noise is nearly deafening as the rocks are transported to the plant behind me. Up ahead, I can see Anthony approaching me. He’s lying inside one of the long rectangular metal buckets that are planted on the conveyor belt, his leg more than likely is broken, thanks to the fall from the window. I’m standing on a narrow metal ledge as the conveyor rolls on toward a large square opening where the cement plant’s crushers are located and, beyond those, the fired up kilns. I can hear the rocks being crushed and pulverized as the buckets automatically raise horizontally and deposit their cargo onto the crusher as they pass it by.
As Anthony approaches, I know I have one shot at grabbing him and one shot only. But that’s when I make out the ping and then another. It takes a second or two to register, but the pings are bullets ricocheting off the metal shed supports.
“Anthony!” I scream above the noise of the mechanical belt. “What the fuck are you doing? I’m saving your life.”
“Told you I was gonna kill you,” he shouts. “I keep my promises, bitch.”
The automatic is gripped in the hand that’s attached to his one good arm, he fires again, and the bullet narrowly misses. He fires once more, but this time no rounds are discharged from the silenced barrel. He’s run out.
He’s only a few feet away now.
“No more bullets, Anthony,” I say, reaching out with my right hand. “It’s over. Take my hand.”
He tosses the gun at me. It hits the window beside me, shattering it.
“Fuck you, Moonlight. I’ll save myself. You understand? I’ll do it myself.”
He blows right passed me on the conveyor belt, our fingertips barely touching as he shifts from my right to my left. I’m not sure he’s even aware of what awaits him only fifty feet ahead in the cement plant. But when I hear him begin to scream like a psych ward patient caught in a nightmare I know his fate has finally sunk in.
The last thing I make out as I begin to descend the metal ladder back down to the ground is Spike Hair Anthony shrieking as the crusher begins to mutilate his body.
Feet first.
25.
Let’s just say I’m not about to shed any tears for the Italian-American mob even if I am a big fan of The Sopranos and The Godfathers, part one and two. Nor am I about to cry for the corrupt TSA agents, or even Adriana for that matter who, at present, is currently flying to Rome to be with her boy and perhaps, just perhaps, leave the drug smuggling business behind her. In the end, I’m guessing she was more or less striking up deals with both Denis and the mob, working both sides against the middle to her advantage. Could be she was even working Denis with her pretty mouth in exchange for a free pass when it came to smuggling dope through security. But when she decided to make a run for it with a pricey one pound bag of primo coke, Denis must have called her on it, and decided to keep the coke for himself, knowing he’d never have another shot at getting his hands on the stuff.
So what’s she do?
She plants it on me thinking if I somehow make it to Rome with the blow, she can then retrieve it and sell it. But if I get snagged with it, then it’s my ass that gets burnt while she walks away into the gorgeous Italian sunset. Of course, Denis knew all along that once the mob found out he had the blow, they would come after him, which meant he had to get to them first. It also tells me he was onto Chocolate Thunder and her secret conversations with Vincent and Anthony. He must have followed the big lady out to the cement plant rendezvous with plans to blow the Italians into Kingdom Come. Too bad for him, his plans didn’t work out so well. But I will say this: Hell must be having a field day.
Now, I’m last man standing, while the fate of Lola is unknown.
Doesn’t matter that we’re not together. What matters is that she lives. If she lives, there’s always the chance we’ll work it out, become a couple once more. I don’t need to pull out my cell phone to see that horrible photo of the severed finger. In my brain, I clearly see the severed joint, and I see the dagger-sharp red painted fingernail.
But that’s when it hits me.
Red.
Lola doesn’t wear red nail polish because red, according to her, is for hookers. In fact, while Lola has beautiful cuticles, they aren’t very long due to her work in the lab. She’s always complaining about her nails snapping off when she catches her fingers on the metal doors as she opens and closes the monkey cages.
My head fills with blood and adrenaline.
Maybe the photo that Denis messaged me was a fake. A fake to make me think Lola was being tortured and about to die if I didn’t pull through in producing Adriana for them. Maybe the screaming that I made out coming over the phone wasn’t coming from Lola at all but from somebody else playing the role of the tortured individual. Fuck, maybe it was effeminate Twigs who was doing the screaming.
I run to the Lincoln, slip behind the wheel, turn the engine over. Gravel spitting out from under the tires, I motor out of the plant and head toward Albany.
“Live, Lola, live,” I repeat like a prayer.
But I’m not so sure God can hear me.
