Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (156 page)

Moonlight Private Detective Services.

Kind of poetic when you think about it. Slides off the lips and tongue like nectar from the poetry Gods. The tonal opposite of Oatczuk.

I click on the enter key and observe the Suzanne Bonchance search results.

The top entry is from the William Morris Agency. Even I’ve heard of them. Mega agents for the world’s mega bestsellers. I click onto it. Bonchance is listed as one of their top agents. The site must not be updated since I know for a fact that she is now working for herself. Working for herself up in Albany, to be precise, one hundred forty miles from the ground zero of literary fortune and glory.

I keep browsing.

There’s a
LinkedIn
account and a
Facebook
account, which I skip over. An article from the
New York Observer
on Manhattan’s Top Ten Agents, of whom you-guessed-it resides at the top. I click onto it, and the perfect Ms. Bonchance is standing sandwiched in between punk poet Goddess, Patti Smith and Anthony Bourdain, the travel writer/cook superstar. They’re dressed to the nines and each of them are holding glasses of red wine and looking plenty drunk. But fashionably drunk. The date on the article is November 15 of last year. It’s March in the new year and Bonchance seems to have left the glitz and the limelight of Manhattan for little old Albany. Doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does. She claims to have a full list. Maybe she’s looking to kick back in our little sleepy backwater. Give her more time to read. In bed. Alone.

I continue with the search.

More photos of Bonchance hanging out with the rich and famous.

I decide to click on the “News” option. An article from the
New York Times
appears. It’s dated December 24th. This past Christmas Eve. There’s yet another photo of the attractive agent, but it’s just a head shot. And she’s not smiling. Instead, she’s sneering at the camera, half her outstretched hand blocking the lower portion of her face, as if she were trying to block it from the paparazzi completely. I gaze at the headline.

Power Agent Pilfers Client’s Story!

“Bingo!” I say aloud in the loft.

I read the article.

It describes the uber-agent of having been accused by a New York City-based writer by the name of Ian Brando of having stolen his story. According to the piece, Brando penned an urban thriller called
The Chased and The Dead
. It was about a punk rocker and his girlfriend who engage in a cross country run after a bank heist and get into a shit storm of trouble. Apparently Brando submitted the book to Bonchance, who inevitably rejected it, but then at the same time stole the story and sold it as the basis for her first personally penned screenplay which she called
Ninth Life
.

The article goes on to say that Bonchance making the jump from agent to writer was big news since that kind of thing rarely happens. Although she refused to give in to accusations of plagiarism, she did in the end agree to settle with Brando out of court for a half a million dollars in damages. From that point on, Suzanne Bonchance’s reputation as the Iron Lady in NYC turned rusty. The top agent fell hard and her competitors enjoyed kicking her while she was down.

I sit back in my chair and think things over.

No wonder Bonchance is so concerned about getting Walls back. If he is, at present, her only client, she’s probably desperate. Still, we have a problem now, Ms. Good Luck and me. The problem is one of trust. My dad might have been a mortician, but he taught me a thing or two about business, and one of his major rules was to always establish a trust between you and your client. Otherwise the professional relationship will always be marred by suspicion and animosity. That in mind, I pick up the phone, dial Bonchance’s number.

“You aren’t telling me the truth,” I say when she answers.

“Who the hell is this?” she barks.

“You know who it is. I’m sure my number comes up on the caller ID.”

“My assistant must be out having coffee for you to have gotten right through to me, Moonlight.”

“Bullshit, Suzanne. Who you trying to kid? I thought she was out for the day? Fact is, you don’t have an assistant. You can’t afford one. I’m surprised you can afford the rent in that building. No wonder you hired me. I’m the cheapest PI in the city.”

“You came highly recommended.”

“By who? The cops? They hate me and I haven’t had enough satisfied clients for you to come up with a personal reference. I don’t have a website either.”

“Okay, you’re cheap. Are you proud that we’ve established that?”

“You stole a book, put your name on it, and sold it to Hollywood.”

Bonchance exhales a sigh so profound, I feel it more than hear it.

“Tell you what, Moonlight, let’s stop and reverse the direction of this conversation.”

“Brakes officially applied. What is it you have in mind, Good Luck?”

“It’s almost lunch time. Why don’t you meet me at Prime for lunch in a half-hour? I’ll come clean and then you can get on with the business of finding Roger Walls. Agreed?”

“So long as you’re paying, Fancy.”

“Of course I’m paying.”

“Just making sure you still have room left on your Amex.”

“See you in thirty, wise-ass.”

She hangs up.

I go to my closet, pick out a clean shirt for my fancy lunch with my future literary agent.

CHAPTER SIX

“THE TRUTH, MR. MOONLIGHT, is that I do not have an assistant whom I can afford. Nor a secretary to answer my phones. Nor to bring me a bagel and cappuccino every morning. But make no mistake, I do have the money to pay you.”

Bonchance is speaking to me from across a small, white tablecloth-covered table at Mario’s 677 Prime Steakhouse, Albany’s most expensive and trendiest eatery. The type of place that serves thirty-dollar lunch entrées with cloth napkins and where you use proper words like “nor” and “whom.” The management requires you to wear a tie and a jacket when lunching in their establishment, neither of which I anticipated when choosing my usual wardrobe of black leather coat over Levis, worn-in combat boots, and a blue button-down. Un-ironed. Luckily the maître d’ proved to be a real Johnny-on-the-spot upon my arrival by supplying me with the necessary house tie and jacket. In the meantime, Suzanne is still dressed in the same ravishing gray skirt and matching jacket she was wearing only a few hours ago when we first met, her perfect shoulder-length hair even more perfect now that she is exposing her famous face to the general public.

“Why didn’t you level with me from the beginning, Good Luck?” I say, pulling a thick jumbo shrimp from a stainless steel bowl set on the middle of the table and dipping it into a pool of spicy blood-red sauce located in the bowl’s center.

“Stop calling me that,” the literary agent insists, an expression of scorn painting her face. “And be careful not to get any of the sauce on your tie or they will charge me for that too.”

Setting my shrimp back down, I stuff the tie into my shirt. I follow with a small sip of my
Budweiser
beer. I’m probably the only patron of this establishment to order a
Bud
. I’m surprised they even carry it. I’m definitely the only one who is drinking beer from the bottle and not a nice tall, chilled pilsner glass.

“Better?” I say.

“Much,” she says, that scornful look now replaced with a fake smile. I liked the scorn look better.

“So back to my question,” I say, picking the shrimp back up and drowning it in the red sauce. “Why not level with me? We need to trust one another if we’re going to work together.”

“I didn’t feel my past was any of your business. Simple as that.”

I take the shrimp in my mouth, bite down. Sweet, succulent, textural, the tang and heat of the horse radish-laced red sauce the perfect compliment. If only lunch were like this every day, instead of burgers, fries, and Diet Cokes.

I proceed to tell her what I know about her past and the book-stealing incident while finishing up my shrimp and wishing I could order another round without appearing uncouth for such a high brow establishment. Moonlight the socially conscious.

“Reports were greatly exaggerated. I would never willingly compromise my reputation for a single book or a quickie sale.” Bonchance is nibbling on a toothpick-speared olive that came with her clean martini. Nibbling sexily, I might add. “I merely used the gentleman in question’s title. Something I was perfectly in my right to do since titles can’t be copy written.”

“Then you didn’t use any of the story.” It’s a question.

She bites the olive off the toothpick, and washes it down with a gulp of martini.

“Okay, I might have borrowed certain elements,” she sighs after a beat. “Look, Moonlight. I’ll level with you further. I fucked up. I used the bulk of his story for my own and in doing so exercised a serious lack of judgment. I also ostracized myself from my colleagues, my agency, and my friends. Happy?” Her eyes filling up. “I lost almost my entire list of clients, not to mention that horrible lawsuit you speak of. For a while, it looked like my career was finished.”

“How many clients did you lose exactly?”

“All. Of. Them … Except …”

“He stuck with you, didn’t he?”

Her wet eyes light up as she steals another sip of martini.

“Yes, Roger stayed true. God bless him.”

“But he’s flown the coop, and without him home, healthy and writing, you just might end up having to look for a real job.”

“Something like that. Which is why I need you to be in search of him. Not here eating shrimp.”

The waiter arrives with our steaks. As he sets them in front of us I breathe in the sizzling aroma of a great cut of meat cooked medium rare. Perfection. I cut into the meat, pop the piece into my mouth. It melts. I hardly have to chew. If that little piece of bullet lodged inside my brain shifts right now and I die, I will die a happy head-case.

“It’s why you hired me isn’t it?” I pose. “I come cheap. And you’re broke.”

She cuts off a piece of steak that wouldn’t feed a church mouse, places it in her mouth.

“It’s true, I checked up on you with the police. You don’t necessarily come highly recommended Moonlight. That much is also true. But on the other hand, you weren’t described as completely inept either. And yes, you are affordable.”

I set my fork down, touch the scar on the side of my head. “So my former brothers and sisters in blue are the ones who revealed my past.”

“Yes, they made me very aware of your botched suicide. We are not perfect, us humans.”

“Much as we try,” I say. And then, changing subject. “This lawsuit you were involved with. It’s all over? No further trouble from the plaintiff?”

“Why are we still talking about this when it has nothing whatsoever to do with Roger? No further trouble from the plaintiff, I guess. Does that answer your query?”

I eat another bite of steak.

“Why do you say, ‘I guess’? That means you
are
having trouble.”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“I’ve gotten maybe a few prank calls.”

“Would you describe those calls as threatening?”

She sets her fork and knife onto the plate rim, picks up her drink, downs what’s left in one swift pull. Setting the now empty martini glass back down, she immediately gestures for the waiter to bring her another. I stare at my bottle of beer. I’ve barely taken a sip.

“The man who calls me tells me that one day he will get me for what I’ve done.”

“That’s what he says to you? Nothing else?”

“That’s all he says.”

“Is it the man who sued you?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

“How can you not know, Suzanne?”

“We never went to trial. I settled for that ungodly amount, knowing the whole time the book probably never would have sold anyway.”

“But you liked the story enough to steal it.”

That scorned face again.

“I borrowed it.
Borrowed
. Borrowed certain elements.”

“Enough for you to be sued over plagiarism.”

“Yes I settled to get it over with and to cauterize the bleeding. I never met Ian Brando in the flesh. Never spoke with him. I have no idea what his voice sounds like. No idea what he looks like. He could be sitting right next to us for all I know.”

“But you know it’s got to be him who’s calling you.” Another question. Posed as a statement.

Her new martini comes. She grabs it by the stem, takes an immediate drink.

“Might be better to let it breathe.” I smile.

“Eat your steak, Moonlight. And shut up.”

“Yes ma’am. You contact the police at all about these phone calls?”

“Mr. Moonlight, I do not wish to bring more attention to my previous mistake than I need to. Besides, what harm can a phone call do?”

“He decides to finally make good on his threats, you’ll wish you have contacted the police.”

“Please let it go for now, and please go find Mr. Walls.”

I nod.

“Okay if I finish my steak first?”

“And by all means finish your beer too. I wouldn’t want to deny a Cro-Magnon such as yourself the right to raw meat and booze.”