Moonlight Sonata

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

IN THE DREAM, I’M running. Running along the side of the road.

Running slow. Jogging. A nice, slow, steady gate, the blood pumping through my

veins, heartbeat elevated, breathing nice even breaths in and out, a small

sheen of sweat building on my skin, coating it like a transparent glaze.

I’m feeling good. Feeling at one with my body and the fresh

air. Feeling healthy. Like the little piece of bullet lodged inside my brain

doesn’t exist at all. Like I have nothing to look forward to but a long

back-nine of a life without the threat of dying at any moment should that

little fragment of bullet decide to make like an active fault line and shift.

Then the cars start passing by.

I’m facing traffic as I run along the roadside, so I can

easily see the faces of the drivers and passengers as they motor past. There’s

something about the way they’re gazing upon me. The drivers are slowing down

and craning their necks in order to get a good look at me. They’re risking

injury to life and limb by taking their eyes off the road to get a full

eye-fill of me, your average, everyday jogger taking in his morning run in the

sun.

Or am I?

When a carload of college-age girls goes by and they begin

to scream and hoot, the driver blaring the horn and swaying into the opposite

lane of oncoming traffic, I know something must be up.

That’s when I begin to feel a breeze.

It’s slight at first. But it’s a breeze all right, and it’s

blowing against my midsection. The farther I run away from home, the more

intense the cold wind blowing against my junk becomes. I stop running. I look

down at myself. It’s then I realize I’ve left home without my shorts. I’m

jogging along the soft shoulder of a public street in the middle of a bright

busy morning, with only a t-shirt and sneakers on, the rest of me exposed to

the world.

Panic fills me.

I about-face and try to sprint back to my loft. But my feet

won’t move. I’m paralyzed on the street-side as cars and trucks begin piling

up. They’re not flying past now, satisfied with a simple rubbernecking gaze.

They’re pulling off to the side of the road and getting out. Old people, young

people, men and women, girls and boys, cops, firemen, construction workers,

students, suits, priests, bearded rabbis, you name it . . . they’re all

stopping their vehicles and getting out. They’re standing in the road, gawking

at me with these wide as hell eyes, looking me up and down, feeding upon my

nakedness. Upon my exposed manhood.

Those eyes . . .

. . . They are the same kind of wanting eyes that stare at

me now.

Steely blue eyes that belong to a small but spunky

forty-something woman by the name of Suzanne Bonchance. Better known in

literary circles as the “Iron Lady,” due to a pair of brass knuckles she keeps

conspicuously perched on the edge of her desk. The same brass knuckles I can

plainly see as I sit down in a black leather chair positioned directly before

the desk. A desk so long and wide it can accommodate a dozen or more

manuscripts and still leave room for the Iron Lady’s many framed photos, which

are situated so a visitor like me can get a good look at them. Pics of her

seated in a café in Paris with Salmon Rushdie. Pics of her dirty dancing with

Jackie Collins. Pics of her walking the red carpet at the Oscars, Brad and

Angelia only a few steps behind her. Pics of her standing beside Michelle and

Barack Obama, a massive American flag perched on the wall behind them.

I slip my leather briefcase off my lap, set it down on the

floor, and once more eye those brass knuckles.

“You ever use those before?” I ask, nodding in the direction

of the very illegal street fighting weapon, as she seats herself gently into

her leather swivel chair, her neck-length black hair settling perfectly upon

perfectly carved shoulders. This morning those perfect shoulders are covered by

a perfectly tailored gray top that perfectly matches a gray mini skirt and knee

length leather boots. She looks like the offspring of an in-her-prime Sophia

Loren and a Friends-era Jennifer Anniston—that is, if they were ever

able to physically hook up and spit out a love child. Her perfect wardrobe du

jour costs more than my entire closet of Levi jeans and crew neck, all-cotton

t-shirts. But then, I’m not a hotshot literary agent.

“Would you like to see me in them?” she asks, a hint of a

perfect white smile forming on her red lip-sticked mouth.

“And only in them,” I say. Moonlight the Cagey. Or is it

Moonlight the Dog?

She exhales and does that positively-taken-aback eye

blinking thing that all classy women do when I surprise them with my wit and

charm.

“I’ve been warned about your humor,” she says, after a calm

and collecting inhale and exhale. “And about your . . .” Making like a pistol,

she points an extended index finger in the direction of her right temple.

“It’s okay, you can say it. You being the perfect literary

agent and all.”

“Suicide,” she says, the word coming out with a noticeable

hint of English on it. As if this New York born and bred woman were from

London.

“Botched suicide, to be perfectly honest. I couldn’t go

through with it in the end. Call me a wimp.”

“But you bear the scars. Emotional and physical.” It’s a

statement posed like a question.

“There’s a small piece of .22 caliber hollow-point lodged

beside my cerebral cortex. On occasion it can cause me to pass out, especially

during periods of great stress. Or it can mess with my decision making process.

It can also cause me to die right now, in this chair, if it suddenly decides to

shift. It’s a hell of a way to live, actually, knowing you can die at any

second. Makes you appreciate the time you have all the more.”

“Sounds positively warm and fuzzy,” she says, the corners of

her pretty mouth perking up. “But I trust the little piece of bullet doesn’t

impede your performance?”

I smile.

“My performance is impeccable.” It’s a lie. But what the

hell?

Her once cautious smile now becomes an ear-to-ear smile.

Sitting back in her chair, she sets both hands on the armrests. It causes her

jacket to open, revealing a tight-fitting black silk blouse unbuttoned enough

to reveal some serious cleavage and a black lace push-up bra. Victoria’s

Secret.

“I’m not interested in that kind of performance,” she

explains. “I’m interested in the performance of d**k Moonlight, private

detective.”

“I like the way you say it.”

“Say what?”

“Dick.”

We sit in silence while I watch the lids on her eyes rapidly

rise and fall. What for some might be an uncomfortable silence, but for me is a

whole-lot-of-fun kind of silence. Moonlight the Ball Buster.

“Why don’t we get right to the heart of the matter, shall

we?” the agent says after a beat.

“Goody,” I say, crossing my right booted foot over my

blue-jeaned knee. “Let’s have it, Iron Lady.”

She shifts her gaze from me to the window wall on her left,

as if looking out onto the Hudson Valley helps her think. “Are you familiar

with the poet and novelist, Roger Walls?”

I steal a silent second or two to think. But truth be told,

I don’t have to think about it. I’m familiar with Roger Walls, all right. He

visited my college during my senior year back in the early ʹ80s when I was

about to earn my BA in English Lit. Back when I’d made the solemn vow to never

enter into my dad’s funeral business and instead become a world-class author.

Like Hemingway. Mailer. Or Walls.

Roger f*****g Walls.

Sitting in front of the perfectly presented Suzanne Bonchance,

I pictured the less than perfectly dressed poet/novelist donning a ratty safari

jacket over a pair of worn Levis and Tony Lama cowboy boots. He wasn’t very

tall, but barrel-chested and sported a black beard and black, brushed-back hair

that by now would be grey. Or so I imagined. He was a bad boy writer, drunk

when he arrived at the college for his reading, and even drunker when he

carried a bottle of Jack with him to the podium. A daring move that caused the

rather conservative Providence College audience of stiff upper class profs to

pucker their assholes while the English students jumped to their feet and

issued a rousing standing ovation.

“Knives, Guns, and Bitches. Slasher Babe. The

Killer Inside Her,” I recite, recalling just a few of Walls’s sexually raw

and violent books. “Walls has a way with women and he reflects it in his

titles.” Moonlight the Lit Critic.

“Roger is old school, Mr. Moonlight,” Bonchance goes on, her

eyes still staring out the window, no doubt picturing an image of her stocky,

liquor-soaked client. “He comes from a time when male writers felt they had to

live by the Hemingway code. Tough, burly womanizers and drinkers. Men who lived

by their word and were willing to back it up with their fists and tire irons,

if need be. ” She sighs sadly, her eyes glued to the great beyond. Gives me the

feeling she misses the Roger Walls kind of bad boy writer. “Nowadays,” she goes

on, her voice more sullen, “you’re lucky if a male writer takes real sugar with

his double mocha Frappuccino. In today’s manhood-castrated world, a book called The Corrections is as much a hard-core prison novel as Justin Bieber is

another Sid Vicious, and being a bad boy means having to give back the Oprah

award.”

“Word up is that Walls has got an evil temper. That he shot

someone once.”

Her head springs back around, her eyes once more locked onto

me. She’s also smiling again, like she’s turned on by the fact Walls is not

only the last of his macho kind, but he's also a homicidal maniac.

“It’s the truth.” She nods. “He did shoot a man who

encroached on his property out in Chatham near the very rural Massachusetts

border. Almost thirty years ago now. Probably around the time he visited your

college. He’s always maintained that the man encroaching was threatening his

life with a hunting rifle. Of course, he only bears a slight recollection of

the event.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “He was inebriated at the time.”

“And flying high on windowpane LSD. In any event, the man he

shot did not press charges in the end.”

“After being shot?”

“It was only a flesh wound, Mr. Moonlight. The man with the

hunting rifle was clearly in the wrong by trespassing on private property.”

“Please call me Moonlight. Or, if you prefer, Ms. Bonchance,

Dick.”

She looks at me with an iron face. Matches her iron fist.

“Moonlight it will be,” she says. “Rather poetic, I might

add. An author’s name if ever I heard one. Have you ever considered writing

something, Moonlight? Your memoirs, perhaps? I could find you a ghostwriter.”

“How interesting you should suggest that,” I say, reaching

down with my right hand, setting it on my briefcase. “But before we get to

that, what is it you would like me to do for Mr. Walls?”

“I’d like you to find him for me.”

“He go missing?”

“Not officially.”

“As in, the cops aren’t looking him.” It’s a question.

“The police have not been notified and nor will they be.

Roger is no longer on probation for that shooting all those years ago, but his

file is open and it would be messy and complicated for him if they were to get

involved.”

“I understand,” I say. “But how long has he been gone?”

“About a week. He’s on one of his . . . how shall I say it .

. .” Tossing up her hands.

“Benders,” I say for her.

“Yes, benders,” she repeats, dropping her hands into her

lap. “Like I said, Mr. Walls is one of the last of the bad boy writers.”

“He still call Chatham home?”

“Aren’t you going to write down some notes?”

I tap what’s left of the dime-sized scar on the side of my

head with my index finger.

“My brain might be fragile, but it’s as sharp as the razor’s

edge.”

“Yes, he maintains a home there. And an apartment in

Florence, Italy. He also keeps a trailer in the Baja. An Airstream, actually.”

Then shaking her head. “Forgive me. I believe he’s since sold the Baja property

to a famous jazz musician.”

She says Airstream with so much happy, dreamy, sexy

recollection in her voice I’m surprised she doesn’t faint on the spot. Tells me

she’s no stranger to the inside of that desert Airstream.

“How wonderful for him,” I say. “Has the bad boy written

anything as of late?”

She winces noticeably. Like I picked up those brass knuckles

and tossed them into her gut. Or lack thereof.

“Funny you should ask that, Moonlight,” she says.

“How funny, Ms. Bonchance?”

“Please, call me Suzanne,” she says. “And it’s been quite a

while since Mr. Walls produced a full-length novel. Ten years to be precise.”

“Since Slasher,” I say. “That book rocked. Especially

the girl-on-girl threesome scenes. Lots of violence, too.”

“Yes, you would be his kind of audience, I dare say,

Moonlight. The movie did quite well, too.”

“Brad Pitt. How can it not do well? Walls must have made a

fortune.”

“Indeed. Problem is, that kind of money doesn’t last. Not

when you possess the rather expensive habits of our Mr. Walls. One of which is

divorce. He’s created a hobby out of it. You can’t imagine the child support

and alimony payments he must make on a monthly basis alone.”

“Or that he is supposed to make, anyway.”

“Correct, Moonlight. All too often he, um, let’s say,

forgets to write out his checks.”

“Another good reason for keeping the cops out of this.”

“Hmm, ya' think?”

I smile.

She smiles.

“So then, Ms. Bonchance, bottom line here.”

“Bottom line, Moonlight? A working Roger Walls is a

moneymaking Roger Walls. He’s also a sober Roger Walls and a responsible

bill-paying Roger Walls.”

“I see. It means you can keep up with the payments on your

Porsche and your house in The Hamptons.”

“How did you know I have a house in The Hamptons?”

“Lucky guess.” Moonlight the Intuitive. Then, “Any idea

where I might start looking for him? He got a favorite local bar?”

“Lots of favorites. So I assume.”

“Can you recall a specific one?”

She shakes her head. “I never frequented those kinds of

places with him. We engaged in more civilized behavior. Like dinner at the 677

Prime Steak House in downtown Albany.” Laughing. What a writer might describe

as sardonically. “Correction. I ate, and he drank.”

“Maybe there’s a joint in Chatham I can check out. Not a big

town.”

“Excellent, Moonlight. I can already see you are a master

detective.”

“Hey, you hired me. Warts and all. He have any family?”

“Parents are dead. He’s got a sister somewhere. But not in

New York. Don’t know whether she’s older or younger or even alive, for that

matter.”

“His ex-wives live around here?”

Shaking her head again. “His present wife resides in the

Albany area. Look Walls up on Wikipedia. You’ll find his list of love

interests there. The newest one’s an actress. Got lucky with some minor parts

in some Showtime stuff. A sprinkling of television commercials. Hot

piece of eye candy, if you ask me.”

“And Walls has a major sweet tooth, I take it. What’s her

name?”

“Sissy. Young thing. Bit of a partier. Has driven Roger to

the edge more than once.”

“She mind if I pay her a visit?”

“I’m not sure her minding is important.”

“Gotcha'. Anyone else you know I should check with? Friends?

Drinking buddies?”

“Roger doesn’t believe in friends. ‘No friends, no enemas’

he often preaches.” Then, raising her right hand like a brilliant thought has

just flashed inside her head. “There is one man you might try. His name is

Gregor Oatczuk. A writing professor at the university, with the MFA program.”

“Sounds important. But that name. Sounds like Upchuck.”

I make a face, like I feel like puking.

“He’s as close to a friend as Roger has around here, even

though Roger thinks of him as a bore. And, yup', hell of name to be born with.

He should change it.”

“You got a number for him?”

She leans up in her chair, picks up her phone. “I’ll call

his office. Tell him you’ll be coming.”

She dials and I wait. When someone answers, she asks for

this Oatczuk character by name. When she’s told he isn’t in, she explains the

situation to the person who must be his secretary. Then she hangs up.

“He’ll call me back. When he does, I’ll send him your way.”

“Thanks.”

“Find the writer for me. And I will pay you handsomely. Plus

expenses and a nice fat bonus.”

“With real money?”

“And then some.”

“Goodie. I might ask you to pay me in another way, as well.”

Once more, I set my hand back down on my briefcase.

Her eyes go wide, giving me that same up-and-down look they

gave me when I first walked in.

“Excuse me, Moonlight?”

“Not that kind of payment, Ms. Bonchance,” I say, pulling

the briefcase up and onto my lap. “But I have a small confession to make. A

moment ago, you asked me if I’ve ever written anything. Well, here’s your

answer.” Opening up the flap on the leather case, I slide out the manuscript.

“It’s a sort of fictional memoir. A detective story.”

Silence fills the office. A thick weighted silence that

makes my chest go tight.

“My list is quite full, Moonlight. I’m not really taking on

new projects. It’s one of the reasons I moved my office up to sleepy little

Albany. I no longer have to compete in the Manhattan rat race.”

I stand, the now empty case in one hand, the manuscript in

the other.

“Just read a few pages,” I say. “If you don’t like it, no

harm done. Consider it a personal favor. I’ll be on the case of your missing

writer, regardless.”

She c***s her head, sits up straight, feet flat on the

floor.

“Ok, leave it,” she says.

I set the manuscript on the table. It takes me by surprise

when she practically dives across the desk to snatch it up. A hungry fish on a

fat, juicy worm. Sitting back in her chair, she reads the cover page.

“Moonlight Falls,” she says, with a sly grin. “Not

bad, Moonlight. Nice title. Maybe you do have something here.” Setting the book

back down on the table, she stands and saunters around her desk.

“I can stay while you read it,” I say, reaching out, setting

my open hand on her perfect shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze. Moonlight the

Charming.

“Not today, thank you,” she says. “I’ll start on it tonight,

in bed.”

“That’s a very nice thought.”

“I’m sure it is. In the meantime, you have work to do.”

I start for the door, but stop before I get two steps.

“Oh, before I forget,” I say, turning back around. “Do you

have a book with a recent picture of Walls on it?”

She grimaces, annoyed. Like she wants me to leave already.

“I just moved my office up from the city. The books don’t arrive until later in

the week. Google him, or just stop at a bookstore on the way back to

your office.”

“They still have bookstores?”

“Yes, you can still find one or two in existence. The State

University Barnes & Noble on Washington Avenue, just down the road

from the campus, is the best one these days. Roger will have signed editions

there and, if you head there now, it’s possible Oatczuk will call me back and

you can kill two birds with one stone.”

I stand there. Silent.

“Is there something else, Moonlight?”

“My fee.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”

“Buck fifty per day plus expenses.”

“Give your billing address to my secretary out front,” she

says. But then she quickly throws up her hands. “Oh, hell. My secretary is off

today. We can take care of your billing needs tomorrow. In any case, call me

right away when you have some news on Roger. Day or night.”

“Day or night?” I say opening the door. “I wouldn’t want to

wake Mr. Bonchance.”

She laughs.

“I think, Moonlight,” she says. “Therefore I’m single.”

“I’m a private d**k, Ms. Bonchance,” I say. “Therefore I’m

divorced.”