Moonlight Falls (2 page)

He laughs. I laugh. We all laugh.

Ice officially broken.

I exhale some smoke through a narrow, satisfied grin, sit back in my chair, nod.

They’re right of course. I know the drill. I know it’s the truth they’re after. The truth and almost nothing but the truth. But what they also want is my perspective—my take on the entire Scarlet Montana affair, from soup to peanuts. As a former full-time Stormville Detective, I know that nobody sees the same thing in quite the same way. What’s important to one person might appear insignificant to another. What those Federal Agents want right now inside the basement interview room is my most reliable version of the truth—an accurate, objective truth that separates fact from fantasy.

In theory, at least.

“Ask away,” I say, just as the buzzing starts up in the core of my head.

“Just start at the beginning,” stocky agent requests. “We have all night.”

But that’s when the trouble starts.

Sitting up straight I feel my right arm beginning to go numb on me. So numb I drop the lit cigarette into the table. My head buzzes, chimes like a belfry. The stocky agent seated across from me is staring at me with these wide bug eyes like my head is about to explode all over him.

But then, just as soon as it all starts, the buzzing and the paralysis subsides. I manage to pick up the partially smoked cigarette, exhale a very resigned, now smokeless breath and stamp the cancer stick out.

“Everything you wanna know,” I whisper. “You want me to tell you everything.”

“Everything you remember,” Tall agent smiles.

Stocky agent bobs his head in the affirmative.

By all indicators, it’s going to be a long night.

“I think I’ll take that cappuccino after all,” I say. “In fact, make it double latte.”

For the first time since entering the basement interview room, I sense my facial expression turning deadly serious
.

One Month Earlier

1

IT BEGAN WITH A choice.

Rather, a real bad decision—the decision to stay with Scarlet Montana for more than her allotted forty minutes. It was the last thing either one of us needed, but the first thing we wanted. Or I wanted anyway.

In my right mind I’d spend an hour tops on a soothing massage, collect my forty bucks, make my swift exit. That’s exactly the way I planned it on my way over through the rain. It’s the reason I didn’t take the collapsible table with me; the reason I didn’t bring my oil belt, opting instead to shove a small bottle into my gym shorts pocket.

Get in quick, get out even quicker.

Just make time for a spur-of-the-moment massage, yours truly kneeling over the spot in which she lay flat on her belly on the carpeted living room floor, only a white bath towel covering her bare heart-shaped bottom. In a purely professional, if not clinical manner, I would allow my well-oiled hands to do what they had recently been trained (and nearly licensed) to do. At the same time I would act as a sounding board to this thirty-something woman who could no longer stand the sight of her life partner, Jake, the man who had given up any possibility of a happy marriage for the title of Stormville Police Captain—a position bestowed upon him not long after my head injury prompted a forced medical leave from the force. Now instead of a wife, he had a personal assistant; instead of kids, he had the South Pearl Street precinct full of upwardly mobile young cops; instead of a cozy suburban home life, he had his late evenings, early mornings and more frequent days and nights spent away from home altogether.

As for Scarlet Montana, instead of a marriage and a family, she had a huge helping heap of loneliness sprinkled with despair.

That Sunday night I dropped everything to brave a violent thunderstorm in order to make the half-mile trek to Scarlet’s on foot. This had to be just around nine o’clock because I was right in the middle of my incline presses when I got her call. Traipsing through the downpour across the lawns and suburban driveways in gym shorts, tennis shoes and gray t-shirt, I must have looked like the most rock-solid neighborhood night-crawler you ever saw.

But what’s for certain is that this time I promised myself I would stay for no more than forty minutes. This time I would fight to stay in control. Just a nice massage, an understanding listen, then a quick,
Hang in there, baby, everything’s gonna be just fine
. Maybe a hug, a peck to the cheek, and then like lightning, I’d be gone in a flash.

Would I ever learn?

Why could I not restrain myself?

Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with listening to her soft voice? Why did I have to stare into her soft blue eyes? Why did I have to gaze upon her ocean of thick auburn hair and picture myself swimming in it? Why did I have to picture my lips touching her thick heart-shaped lips? Why did I have to imagine them running the length of her sweet neck all the way down her back? Why did I have to gently slip my hands underneath the white towel? Why did I have cup her perfectly carved glutes into the palm of my one hand while the other gently caressed her milky white breasts?

Why was it that every time a despairing Scarlet Montana called me over to her lonely home I could not be content with concentrating on my new career while she elaborated upon the horrors of being married to the top cop in Stormville?

Why couldn’t I just ignore the bittersweet laugh she would make when I was touching her? As though her insides were being tickled by demons rather than her outside being massaged by a part-time masseur/private investigator?

So here’s how it happened with Scarlet inside the living room of my former department superior: our eyes connected, sort of like two deer that hopelessly lock horns. We jumped up from the floor, and by the time we made it up to her second floor bedroom not a stitch of clothing was left on our backs.

That’s exactly how it happened that night, only with one further significant fuck up added to the mix.

Rather, a
series
of fuck ups I should say.

The first being my incessant need to
get down
with Scarlet just because she rang the dinner bell. The second was my having consumed one of her husband’s tall-necked Budweisers prior to falling into a post-sex deep sleep on her queen-sized Serta. The third being the very sudden and unexplained homecoming of said husband. The fourth being Scarlet’s failure to wake me before I was jarred awake to the rattle and hum of an abruptly triggered mechanical garage door.

Here’s what I did: I jumped out of bed, scrambled about the dark room in search of my shorts and sneakers. All the time I’m doing this crazy one-legged dance while trying to step into my shorts mouthing “Shit, shit, shit” in this sort of screaming whisper voice.

Then comes the back door off the kitchen opening and slamming closed.

“This is bad,” I remember saying. “Why’d you let me fall asleep?”

“Relax,” was all Scarlet could say. “What’s he going to do? Shoot you in the head?”

I swear, even from behind closed doors I could see Jake’s tight-mustached face, big beefy arms, barrel chest and sausage-thick fingers already reaching for my neck. He didn’t have to shoot me. A stranglehold around my neck would suffice.

And get this: while my life
and
death were flashing before my eyes, Scarlet was calmly lying on her side, the sweetest smile you ever saw plastered on her face, the white bedsheet covering only her legs, leaving those lovely white breasts exposed. I swear, even with the old man marching up those stairs, I almost laid back down with her, started kissing her sweet mouth, pressing her beautiful body tightly, tenderly against mine.

My right mind: it’s not always right.

“Where are you going …
Dick Divine
?” she asked, while casually firing up another Virginia Slim.

“Divine will do,” I said, pulling up my gym shorts.

She laughed but I had no idea what the hell was so funny. Especially with the telltale footsteps just outside the door—one heavy heartbeat-like clump after the other.

This is what I did: I climbed out the second floor window with my Nike Airs balled up inside my left arm; jumped down onto the back porch roof, bare feet sliding out from under me so that I landed flat on my ass just a second before dropping down into the backyard.

No time to check for broken bones, no time to feel the pain, no time to consider the sudden stiffness in my right arm.

No time like the present to avoid a seizure!

I just bounded back up, caught my breath and, like my fellow Marines drilled me in the first Gulf War, selected a direct line of retreat, made the split-second decision to commit myself.

But before I started to run … just in that instant it takes your gray matter to shift from
Stop
to all-out
Go
, I took one last peek up at Scarlet’s bedroom. Through the driving rain I made out her face, her blue eyes and auburn hair made all the redder and richer when the bedroom light was suddenly flicked on behind her.

In that quick second I could tell that she was no longer laughing.

From where I stood in the rain and the quick flashes of lightning, I saw that she was simply smiling. A sad, lonely kind of smile that I knew in my heart had nothing whatsoever to do with happiness.

That’s when I turned, made my swift and stealthy exit from the Scarlet Montana homestead, such as it was, praying that a damn good lesson had finally been learned—that I would never more be led astray by my
other
head.

2

WHY DID SHE HAVE to call me on that particular night of nights?

Or …

… Why did I make the wrong decision by answering it?

I would have been better off just letting the answering machine do its job while I kept on pumping out repetition after repetition on my incline bench, filling my muscles and veins with the precious over-oxygenated blood that my body (and brain) now required.

Call it the head injury, call it plain bad luck. But one thing is for certain, the Gods were not with me that night anymore than they were with Scarlet. But then, maybe the Gods had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe none of this had to do with a damaged cerebral cortex for that matter. Maybe it was just a man thing.

I mean, what is it about the deceptive face of lust that taunts us, tests us, attracts us? The monster disguised as the prettiest little package you ever saw topped off in delicious red hair?

Such were the rapid-fire deliberations that immediately shot through my brain when later that night, I was startled out of a restless sleep by a fist pounding on my door.

My temporal lobe immediately went to work.

I pictured Scarlet standing outside my front door, the rainwater dripping off her long hair onto chiseled cheekbones and succulent lips. She would have had a knock-down drag-out with Jake. He came home drunk, entirely pissed off. He would have landed into her, blackened one of her teardrop eyes.

So I imagined.

But it wasn’t until I dragged myself out of bed, slid into a pair of jeans, hobbled on down the stairs to the front door, that I realized how false an imagination—never mind my own—could be.

He was a far cry from Scarlet Montana. The middle-of-the-night caller, I mean.

He was just a police officer. The kind of cop you might call “kid” if you were, say, in your mid to late forties. Anything beyond that and you might not notice him at all.

But I recognized him for exactly who he was.

A rookie with barely one year’s experience under his utility belt—a twenty-something cop with a degree in Criminology from Providence College who went by the name of Joy.

Officer Nicky Joy. I remembered him all right.

Just this wiry nervous little guy with a better-than-regulation buzz and snug fitting uniform blues, sized thirty-eight short at the max. Actually, a boy/man kind of cop—pink cheeked where most men his age were bearded. If he didn’t look studious enough already, he wore round granny specs over baby blue eyes.

I’d been running into Joy all year long on those occasions when my old partner, Detective Mitchell Cain, called me in on a situation requiring a still medically inactive cop who might be willing to work part-time with an overtaxed, or should I say, non-existent S.I.U. (Special Independent Unit).

That night, the blue-eyed Joy stood four square on the small front portico of my Hope Lane home, the rainwater dripping off the transparent plastic that protected his headpiece and clothing. It didn’t take a genius or part-time detective with a constant headache to see that he was breathing unusually hard, bottom lip shaking to the point of trembling.

Gripped in his right hand, a heavy black utility flashlight—the same kind of tubular job cops always carry around with them day and night more for protection than illumination. As for the palm of his left hand, it rested securely on the butt of his service sidearm.

Looking over the kid’s shoulder, I made out the Stormville blue-and-white parked up against the opposite curb, a beam of sodium streetlight shining down upon it, the still heavy rain strafing the metal trunk and hood. From where I stood inside the open door, I couldn’t help but make out the man who was sitting inside the back seat, round mustached face looking out onto an empty, rain-soaked neighborhood street.

Jake Montana.

No doubt about it, something terrible had happened.

I caught my reflection in the door light—at my two-day stubble, bald head and brown eyes. My face said,
I need sleep
. But sleep suddenly seemed out of the question.

I told Joy to step inside.

He did.

The rainwater dripped off his transparent plastic raincoat.

“Jake wants you to come with us, Divine,” he said, the tone of his voice beyond tragic.

I began to feel the familiar tightness starting in the back of my head, already working its way towards the middle.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Jake would rather tell you himself.”

I stood there, bare chested and stone stiff, the cool May mist soaking my skin.