Blue Moonlight (11 page)

Lola is going to pass my table, within three feet of where I’m sitting.

As if it were scripted this way. The perfect time to get reacquainted. I make certain she sees my face by raising up my aviators.

She stops dead in her tracks.

Stares at me.

Her mouth hangs open.

“Just keep walking,” I tell her. “Around the corner.”

She walks on. I give her a long minute or so while my stomach muscles tighten and I lose all the moisture in my mouth. Then I follow.

She’s waiting for me across the street and a few doors down, in a shop doorway. I cross to her.

I know her so well. Her touch, her smell, her taste. But I have no idea who this woman before me is. I only know that I love her. No matter what’s happened these past few months. I still love her.

“How are you, Lola?” I say.

She steals a quick gaze over my shoulder. The color has drained from her face. She drills her eyes into me. “You shouldn’t be here, Richard,” she warns. “It’s not safe.”

“Look who’s talking,” I say. “Word up is that the relationship isn’t working out.”

She works up a hint of a smile, despite the shock of running into me here in Florence of all the places on God’s earth.

“Do you know where Harry’s Bar is?”

“I know it. It’s across from the Vespucci bridge.”

“Meet me there tomorrow, five o’clock. Please don’t try to contact me until then.”

“I’ll be there,” I assure her.

“Get away from here as soon as I’m gone,” she insists. “They see you, they will kill you.”

She steals another anxious glance over her shoulder, as if she can see Barter and Clyne from where we’re standing.

“Tomorrow,” she says, turning back to me.

And then she’s gone.

I pass by the square on my way back to the guesthouse. Clyne and Barter are still sitting at the table, making small talk, obviously waiting for someone to show who seems not to be showing. I see their faces as I pass them by, but it’s Lola’s face that’s implanted in my head directly beside that hollow-point bullet fragment. My heart is beating so fast, I feel like I might pass out. Not an unusual situation for me even during the best, most stress free of times.

Heading back toward Il Ghiro, I can’t help but feel lighter than air on one hand and full of fear on the other.

I’m meeting Lola for a drink tomorrow.

If I want to recover that flash drive, and if I want to stay out of prison, and if I want my IRS problem to go away, I have to make her trust me. If I want to rescue her from Barter, I’ll have to steal her away. I have a job to do, and I have a broken heart that’s bleeding all over again at the sight of Lola.

That night I lie in bed staring at the plaster ceiling and at the
Casablanca
fan, its wide metal blades spinning slowly around, circulating the warm, humid air. Outside the open french windows, people walk past, the soles of their shoes clapping against
the cobbles, their liquor- and wine-soaked laughs bouncing off the four-hundred-year-old plaster and brick walls.

I lie naked, smoking a cigarette, the cloud of blue smoke rising up to the spinning fan blades. I’m here to do a job. No, correction—I’m here to right a wrong that’s all my fault. Funny that it should take a head case like me to start this trouble, and now to end it. But I can’t do it without Lola’s help. I can only hope she will trust me enough to reveal the location of the flash drive. Assuming she knows of its location. Only when that happens will I have the upper hand and the business of separating Lola from Barter and Clyne can begin.

I smoke the last of the cigarette, crush it out in the ashtray set beside the bed. Listening to the occasional man or woman pass by my window on the cobbled street below, I feel a slight breeze entering in through the open window. My mind drifts off. I’m not asleep, exactly, but I’m not fully awake either, as the events that came to shape my life and death almost one year ago replay themselves in my head…

I’m lying on my back inside a narrow downtown Albany alley.

Three faces stare down at me. All the same face. The face of the president. President Obama. He always seemed like such a nice guy to me. Way too nice for the office. But now here are three nice-guy presidents kicking me in the ribs, kidneys, and stomach with their steel-toed boot tips. One of them kicks me in the face, loosens my back teeth. The one in the middle steps away, presses a handheld voice synthesizer to his throat, tells me, “You should have stayed away from Peter Czech!”

Then I’m floating above a bed inside the Albany Medical Center ICU. My sig other Lola is standing by my side looking sad and forlorn at the death of her boyfriend, but also looking choice in tight white jeans and a silk black blouse, Jackie O sunglasses covering tear-swelled eyes
and long, lush dark hair draping her chiseled face. I’m sad for her on one hand, but on the other, it lightens the heart to know that Lola is true blue. That she is standing by my side even in death.

But then something happens.

A man enters the room.

Some young guy.

He brushes up against her, runs his right hand over her ass. It almost looks like they’re about to make out over my dead body.

Suddenly I’m trying to jump back into my beat-up body. Suddenly I want my life back so I can beat the life out of Some Young Guy…

The scene shifts. But the setting remains the same—the hospital room, me in the bed. I’m alive again. Barely. Lola and Some Young Guy are gone. But the Obama-masked men are back. They surround my hospital bed. The one on my left is jabbing me with a scalpel. He’s using the sharp tip to pry out one of my surgical staples. The pain is so intense, I see red.

“Where is fleshy box?” the chief Obama standing at the foot of the bed demands in a Russian-accented voice.

“I. Don’t. Know,” I choke out.

I feel the flick of the scalpel once more, and then POP goes the staple.

I hear the ping of the steel staple hitting the hard floor. Then I pass out…

The scene shifts once more to the top floor of the old Montgomery Ward building in North Albany. The space is big and wide, like the giant warehouse it once was. Set in the middle of the big room is a room within a room: a room created out of translucent plastic, with an attached ventilation and respiration system. An operating room.

On the operating table, facedown, is Peter Czech. There’s a team of doctors working on him. Standing off to the side is Lola and Some Young Guy, who, it turns out, is really not so young after all. His
name is Christian Barter, and he’s an agent for the FBI. He and Lola are the biological childhood parents of Peter Czech, and now that they have found their long-lost son in adulthood, they have also rediscovered one another.

Suddenly a commotion coming from the operating table and the alarm of a flatlined heart. Lights flash on and off, buzzers buzz, and bells chime. The doctors toss down their scalpels and suction tubes. They rip off their masks.

“He’s dead,” they lament to Lola. “We are so very sorry. But your son, he is dead.”

Lola bursts into tears, presses her face into Barter’s chest…

And now I’m awake. Which means I must have drifted off to sleep, however briefly, my vivid memories coming at me in the form of an accurate dream.

But here’s the thing: I’m definitely not dreaming anymore because I’m definitely not sleeping. I have opened my eyes, and all I see is President Barack Hussein Obama standing over me.

Correction—three President Obamas are standing over me.

Two of the Obamas stand on either side of me. They each hold automatics, the barrels of which are pressed against each of my temples. I wonder if they realize that if they shoot at the same time, they’ll blow my brains out, but they’ll also shoot each other. Would serve the fuckers right.

The middle Obama backs away, goes to the window, looks out. He walks with a severe limp, like he has a fake leg. When he returns to the bed, he reaches inside his black leather jacket, pulls out his own automatic. He jabs the barrel into my left kneecap. The pain makes me jump.

“You like your knees, don’t you, motherfucker?”

He speaks English with a heavy Russian accent. Unlike the Obamas who killed me in the States, these guys don’t use
voice synthesizers to hide the fact that they’re Russians. I hate Russians. Correction—I hate Russian mobsters. But it’s OK. They hate me too.

“Speak up, little bitch!” he demands, jamming the barrel into my knee.

“Yes, I do!” I bark. “I like my knees!”

He pulls his gun away, unbuckles his belt, and allows his trousers to drop. Besides the fact that I can’t help but notice his choice of Eurotrash man-thong for undergarments, I can see in the half-light of the room that there’s a huge divot in his left leg where I shot his kneecap off point-blank nearly a year ago. Back when I was in search of the same flash drive I’m in search of now. But for different reasons.

“Boris,” I say.

“It is not Boris, Yankee Doodle fuck!” he snaps. “It is Gregor. Russian Boris is only in American movies.
Red Dawn
or
Red Sonja
starring the great Bruce Willis.”

“Arnold is in
Red Sonja
,” corrects the Russian Obama to my right. “Bruce Willis is
Die Hard
.”

“What-the-fuck-ever,” says Gregor. “Do not correct me when I am working.” He hoists up his pants again, pulls back the hammer on the piece, and trains it point-blank on my knee. “Now, Mr. Moonlight, I am prepared to blow both your knees off as repayment for what you have done to me back in that stench hole, Albany. But first I need you to locate my fleshy drive. Do we have understanding?”

“What fleshy drive? I don’t have it, remember? The police have it.”

Gregor nods at the Russian Obama on my left. He holsters his piece, takes hold of my left hand, jams it down flat on the
mattress. The Obama on my right raises up his knee, jams it down onto my shoulder, pinning me to the bed.

I begin to squirm, until Gregor shifts his pistol barrel from my left kneecap to my pride-and-joy golden jewels.

“Show Mr. Moonlight how serious we are this time about fleshy box!”

The Obama on my left pulls out a bowie knife the size of the Italian boot. He positions the very tip of my left pinky at the bottom of the long, chrome-plated blade. He presses it in tight.

I’m squirming again, but the Russian pinning me down is a giant of a man. He’s as big as a pro football player. Bigger maybe. Both goons are huge. I have nowhere to go.

I feel the blade press against my pinky. Feel the blade enter. Feel the burn of blade and flesh and spurting blood. Feel the blade against bone. Then, with one quick downward slice of the knife, I feel the tip of my pinky separate from the finger just above the knuckle.

I try to scream. But the air is sucked from my lungs.

The real pain hasn’t registered yet. Nor will it for a few seconds.

Gregor looks around the room, locates a T-shirt. He knows what’s coming. He shoves the shirt into my gaping mouth.

That’s when the burning electric pain hits like Mount Vesuvius erupting with burning hot ash over Pompeii.

This time when I try to scream, the T-shirt gags me.

Blood is pumping out of my pinky. What’s left of it.

The Obama with the knife steps back. They all step back.

“I will check on you from time to time, Mr. Moonlight,” says Gregor. “Each time you do not have fleshy box, I will remove a piece of your body. Do we make ourselves perfectly cruel?”

The big Obama clears his throat. “You mean
clear
. Do we make ourselves
clear
?”

Boris turns, shoots a sour look at the big-ass Obama. “Don’t you interrupt me, big stupid fuck of a man.” Then back at me. “Are we clear, Moonlight?”

I’m holding my left hand in my right hand. I pull the T-shirt out of my mouth and jam it onto the bleeding stub.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Are we clear!” Gregor shouts again.

“Yeah, clear,” I moan.

With that, the Obamas leave the room, closing the door behind them.

Fucking cruel Russians.