Moonlight Falls (29 page)

I asked him for a phone book. When he pulled it out from a drawer in the kitchen, I once again looked up the stats on that Russian cuisine restaurant called The Russo. I wrote everything down on a slip of scrap, handed it to George. I asked him how he felt about renting a car for the day while I commandeered the El Camino.

“If I have to,” he said.

I told him he had to. Then I instructed him to meet me back at his house at noon sharp.

He said he could be ready to rock n’ roll in five minutes.

“Bring cash. No credit cards, no A.T.M. visits.”

He scratched his forehead.

“Ain’t got much in the way of scratch, Divine, other than what you fed me after the autopsy.”

I got his point, loud and clear. That dough was
his
dough.

“Color eight-millimeter film takes a week to ten days to process. But I produce enough working capital, I can get a guy I know across the river to develop it one hour.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out the Albino man’s envelope, opened it, slid out five one-hundreds for myself and ten for George. There was fifteen more hundreds left over which I stashed back in my pants.

“Will that do?”

“Plenty,” he said.

He stuffed the goods in his chest pocket.

“Until high noon, Divine.”

66

TAKING A TURN ONTO Main in Woodstock, Cain pulled over to the shoulder, parked his unmarked B.M.W. To his right, the Canfield Park and the black wrought iron fence that surrounded it. In the night, the place was empty, other than the swans and ducks that swam in its half-dozen ponds. Not five miles beyond the park’s east end, the wide open farm country of Bethel—the true site of the infamous 1969 outdoor rock concert. Behind him, the sleepy town of Woodstock and the many quaint eateries, gift shops and bars that lined both sides of the historic downtown district. Including The Russo, the first Russian/American restaurant to ever grace the upstate New York community.

Before opening the car door, Cain pulled his 9 mm, thumbed the clip release, checked the bullet load in the light that leaked into car through the windshield via the streetlamp.

Full clip.

Reaching into his leather jacket pocket, he pulled out one more round. Slamming the clip back home he opened the chamber, slid the extra round inside. Then gently closing the chamber, he thumbed on the safety and returned the weapon to his leather shoulder holster.

Lighting a smoke, he opened the car door, slid on out into the foggy, damp early morning darkness. Shutting the door, he locked it with the automatic key-ring closer and jogged across the empty street. Once on the other side, he followed a narrow road that ran perpendicular to Main and that serviced the back entrances of the many commercial establishments. Some five minutes later, when he came to the one that serviced The Russo, Cain once more pulled out his 9 mm, thumbed off the safety and began making his way quietly for the back door.

67

I PARKED THE EL CAMINO three lots down from Lynn and Mitchell Cain’s center hall Colonial.

As expected, his B.M.W. wasn’t there.

Rather than ring the bell, give Lynn the chance to eye me from the upstairs window, I decided to back door it.

I couldn’t have made a better decision.

The way the house was set on a decline, the back door off the basement was accessible at ground level. The finished basement also served as a playroom for my son who, at the time, was sitting on the carpeted floor playing Nintendo.

I tapped on the window beside the door with my knuckles. When the scrappy little kid looked up from his game, he saw my face and smiled. From outside I couldn’t help but notice that his baseball mitt was set in his lap.

“Daddy,” I heard him say through the glass.

I motioned with my right hand for him to unlock the door, let me in. Without missing a beat, he tossed the glove onto the floor, got up and opened the door. A second later, I was in.

When I bent down to kiss him, I felt my head go light, my throat close in on itself.

“We were supposed to be together last night,” he said, a little pout forming on his face. “What happened?”

“Daddy sort of got tied up,” I said. “But I promise, I’ll make it up to you next week. How about we take the canoe up to Little’s lake, catch some bass?”

“Cool,” he said, with a little jump. “So long as I don’t have a game.”

“You don’t always play ball, do you?”

His Batman pajama bottoms were falling down, so he hiked them up.

“I saw you on T.V.,” he said.

I felt my heart race when he said it.

“How’d I look?” I said.

“Like that guy in
The Fugitive
. Like a bald Harrison Ford. Mitch and me watch that movie on DVD”

There it was again, the tightening of my throat, the sinking of my stomach, the pressure in my head. I squeezed my fist, fought the dizziness, the vertigo.

“I looked that good?” He snickered.

“Mom said it was about time you got what you had coming.”

“That’s mom,” I said. “Always joking around.” I ran my left hand through his hair. “Speaking of mom, is she up?”

“She’s on her treadmill, I think. I’m not supposed to disturb her when she’s exercising.”

I took a quick moment to listen. I made out the sound of the treadmill belt winding its way around the rollers.

I said, “I think I’ll go up and say hello.”

He said, “Okay, but Mommy’s not going to like being disturbed.”

I told him I’d proceed at my own risk.

“That’s what Mitch always says,” he quipped. Then he said, “Daddy, will I see you on T.V. again?”

I smiled.

“Yes, you will. And when you do it will be one of the best days of my life.”

“I can’t wait to see it,” he said.

“Neither can I.”

I took the stairs up into the kitchen, two at a time.

I didn’t stop in the kitchen.

I pulled the one hand cannon I had left from out of my jeans, made my way into the front vestibule, up the center hall stairs.

On the way I noticed that the wall was covered in photos of the whole Cain family. Smiley faced pics of Mitch, Lynn and my son sitting on a sunny beach in what looked to be Cape Cod, and another of just Lynn and Mitch holding hands on their wedding day—at a time when my sex plumbing was just beginning to work again. At the top of the stairs was a picture of Mitch and my son, each of them down on one knee, smiling for the camera. Mitch was wearing a red baseball cap that said “Joe’s Grille” on the brim. It matched exactly the red t-shirt and cap my son was wearing. Further down another photo revealed Mitch all dressed up his uniform blues, his hair cut just as short as it was now, but without the gray.

As for the smug cop smile, it hadn’t changed one bit.

At the top of the stairs the rolling thunder noise coming from the treadmill was almost deafening. I made my way down the narrow hall, past the bathroom, past walls covered with more family snapshots, past Mitch and Lynn’s bedroom, until I came to a room that contained the treadmill, a television and nothing else.

I stepped inside, tapped the pistol barrel on the doorjamb.

Lynn looked up quick. If this had been a “Loony Toon,” she would have shot straight through the ceiling. She was wearing headphones. She pulled them off, yanked a plastic red key from the readout panel that instantly stopped the tread.

“How did you get in here?” she said, breathless voice barely a whisper.

I said, “You shouldn’t leave our son alone in the basement.”

She stepped off the treadmill.

“I’m calling the police.”

“We are the police,” I said, thumbing the hammer on the 9 mm. “‘Sides, it’s your husband they really want. They just don’t know it yet.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m in my right mind for a change. Mitchell is the crazy one. Believes he can get away with murder.”

Lynn was wearing black spandex biker shorts, ped socks with Nike emblems on them and Nike running shoes. Her hair was bleached blonde, trimmed butch short. When I was married to her it was Martha Stewart sandy brown and shoulder length.

“Mitchell is an outstanding officer and a decorated detective,” she said. “He would never do anything to jeopardize his reputation and the reputation of his family.”

She actually seemed genuine, her eyes filling with tears.

“I saw what they said about you on the news. About how you killed Scarlet Montana. You’re the criminal now. The screw-up-everything-you-touch son of a bitch. Knowing you probably have no recollection of it. Or at least, that will be your story. Won’t it be, Richard?”

She rattled the whole thing off without taking a breath.

It made my skin shiver to be the subject of one of her tirades, especially one accusing me of a murder that up until a few hours ago, I was convinced of perpetrating.

Maybe she knew something more than I knew. Something from the inside.

But then that was silly. She didn’t know what I knew. That I could not possibly have harmed Scarlet. That it had been her husband all along who was trying to set me up.

In any case, I wasn’t there to argue. I was there to get information. Which is why I slid my hand inside my shirt, hit RECORD on the tape recorder I’d duct-taped to my already bandaged chest just after George left for Woodstock.

“Mind if I ask you some questions?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Yes or no,” I said. “Make a choice.”

“You’re the one with the gun,” she said.

I asked her the standard questions that I knew would either go unanswered or just relegated to
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Did she know that Mitch was engaged in illegal black market activity, namely the illicit harvesting and sale of body parts?

Did she have any idea how long he had been participating in the operation?

Why, in her opinion, would Mitch want to risk his own life by killing Scarlet and Jake?

I asked her everything I could think of. But the most I got out of her was the tight angry face I recalled so well. The face that told me, if she could, she would tear my eyeballs out, swallow them whole.

Straight, no chaser.

A face that wasn’t entirely her fault. Not by a long shot. Because I wasn’t exactly being fair, was I? In a real way, she had every right to be angry. I was the one who decided to end my life. I was the one who decided to play the role of the suicidal cop by “eating my piece.”

Maybe I couldn’t help what came in the weeks and months that followed the head-shot—the impotence, the obsession with newspaper clippings, the thirst for whiskey, the need for silence, the dread of headaches, the safety and painlessness of darkness, the cowardly withdrawal from my wife, my son, my work and from all that once made me a happy and complete man. But then in the end, all I had to call my own were my nightmares and a new life lived on the verge of death at any moment.

So who the fuck could blame Lynn now?

Now that she was about to be screwed over again. Not by a man, necessarily. But by a goddamned cop.

“Now if you do not plan on shooting me,” she said, “I have a child to get off to school. You do remember our son, don’t you, Richard?”

Memory, it’s not the problem …

She approached me.

I thumbed back the hammer, lowered the weapon to my side. I couldn’t help but feel deflated and defeated, as if my life were nothing more than a badly played board game.

“I don’t blame you for not talking,” I said. “I hurt you once.”

“You gave me a world of hurt, more than once. And to believe I tried to help you when you needed it most, and you refused.”

“Maybe it’s Mitch who’s hurting you now.”

That’s when her eyes went from wide and angry, to heavy and hurt. The mere mention of Mitch and hurt in the same sentence seemed to knock the wind right out of her.

“He’s cheating on you, isn’t he?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“But what is my business is this: I’m not going to prison for a murder I did not commit.”

She lowered her head for a second. When she came back up, I could see that she was crying. Really bawling. If I had to guess, they were more the tears of frustration than sadness. In any case, I let her cry it out for a while.

“That Scarlet Montana,” she said. “Nobody deserves to die that kind of death. But I can tell you this: she was no good, Richard. She was trouble.”

Her words hit me hard. Because it was then that I knew for certain, Mitch Cain was fucking Scarlet. Or should I say, fucking Scarlet right along with me. The pressure behind my eyes balls, it suddenly shifted, dropped into my stomach like a lead weight. Scarlet might have been clinically dead, but for the first time ever, I was beginning to feel a genuine animosity towards her.

Lynn was right. Scarlet Montana was a boatload of trouble. Even in death.

“Mitch,” I said, a rock-sized lump in my throat. “Mitch and Scarlet … for how long?”

“Since last summer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We have a son,” Lynn went on. “We will always have a son, no matter how we feel about one another.”

“Yes,” I said. “We have a son.”

“I would prefer that his father stay out of prison. He needs you. He needed Mitch too, once upon a time. But now he needs you again.”

“Then for our son’s sake, Lynn, give me something … anything I can go on that will set this thing straight.”

She looked into my eyes, nodded her head.

“If I give you something,” she said, “will you make certain that nothing happens to our boy?”

I told her I would make sure.

“Promise me, Richard,” she insisted, her voice verging on a shout.

“I promise, Lynn,” I said. “You know I do.”

She nodded with tight lips and wet eyes.

“That’s exactly what worries me. Not knowing if you will keep your promise. You have a habit of not paying attention to certain matters of importance.”

What could I possibly say to that?

For shade of a second, it was as if we had never divorced when I watched her walk into her bedroom where she opened a drawer, dug her hand deep inside, produced a stack of envelopes. When she came back out she handed one of the envelopes to me along with a pen and a yellow Post-a-Note. It had the name of a bank on it. A Swiss bank.