Read Online Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) by Vincent Zandri - Free Book Online Page B

light. The kind of white light that shines down from one of those ceiling-mounted warehouse lamps.
    “Whaddya got to drink around this place?” he asks, scoping the wide open loft with deep set brown eyes. Tired eyes.
    “I’ve got a bottle or two. You here on official business, Clyne? Or did you miss me?”
    “Let’s get that drink,” he says, and together we settle in on the bar stools set in front of the island counter that serves as my kitchen.
    “To answer your question,” Clyne says over a clear drinking glass with a double shot of Jack in it, “I went to the hospital, and they said you discharged yourself. I didn’t believe them. Considering the shape you were in.”
    “It’s the truth,” I insist, even though I’m sitting here right in front of him.
    He takes a sip of the whiskey, lets it settle on his tongue, then swallows thoughtfully.
    “Pretty risky for a guy who technically bought the farm just the other day.”
    “It was either bolt or die . . . On a permanent basis.”
    “They came back for you didn’t they? Sometime around nine in the morning. Or so I’m told.”
    In my mind I picture the little blond nurse who tried to stop me from leaving. She must have told him everything.
    “I don’t recall the time.” I take a sip off my own glass of Jack. A glass that holds only a single shot. I wouldn’t want to alarm the dick by overdoing my booze privileges so soon after my resurrection.
    “You should have called me right away.”
    “Yup.”
    “You gonna start that ‘yup’ thing?”
    “Nope.”
    He makes a corner-of-the-mouth smirk.
    “Look Moonlight, it’s been a long life so far, and I’d really like to get home and put up my dogs and get drunk in peace, so if you could spare the ball busting.”
    I take another drink, nod. I’m too beat up to keep giving him a hard time.
    “Three of them this time. Same three I’m guessing, wearing those silly Obama masks, and using the voice synthesizers.”
    He pulls that same small spiral notebook from the interior of his trench coat, jots down a note.
    “How’d they get in, you think?”
    “You’re asking me?”
    “Yup.” He smiles. Drinks the rest of his whiskey. I pour him another.
    “OK, Clyne. My guess is it’s possible they know someone in the hospital. That’s my theory anyway, as a former cop.”
    “And brilliant private dick,” he adds.
    “Who’s busting balls now?” I laugh and hold up my whiskey glass for him to clink. Which he does. Good to have a new friend amongst my APD enemies.
    “What did they want this time?”
    “Other than to torture me by pulling out one of my staples, they switched the focus of their warnings from staying away from Peter Czech to something else. They want a box of some kind.”
    “What box?”
    “That’s the eternal question. Apparently Czech came to visit me, which I most definitely don’t remember, and he was supposed to have given me some kind of box with something in it. Now these Obamas are convinced I have the box and they want it too.”
    He drinks some more Jack, gazes at me quizzically. How would Agatha Christie put it? Gazes at me . . . rather quizzically .
    “So what’s in the box?”
    “Clyne, I just told you I have no idea about the box. So how could I possibly know what’s in it?”
    “Good retort. Allow me to rephrase. What, in your expert opinion, Mr. Moonlight, could be contained in this box the masked fellows who caved your face in want?”
    I cock my head, and feel an itchy pain in my side where Georgie sewed me up. The Lidocaine is really wearing off now.
    “Not a fucking clue.”
    “But it’s got to be worth a pretty penny. Or these people wouldn’t be willing to kill and torture to get at it.”
    “Agreed.”
    “And they’re convinced Czech left it for you, and you just don’t recall because of your . . .” He makes like a pistol and points to his head.
    “My accident,” I say. But we both know that the word he’s avoiding is “suicide.”
    We both