Shoot the Moon (34 page)

“I never noticed,” Goodman says. He still isn’t sure she’s telling him the truth. But it’s slowly beginning to dawn on him that she
must
be. “And Vinnie?” he asks.

“Vinnie is Frank Farrelli. Nine years in DEA.”

“And the other guy - T.M.?”

“T.M. is Jimmy Zelb,” she says. “Six years in DEA. They call him ‘No Neck.’ And T.M. stands for ‘The Man.’ Another little joke of theirs.”

“‘The Man’?”

She laughs softly. “You don’t even know, do you? ‘The Man’ means the law, the police. We’ve been playing games with you, Michael. And you’re so, so-”

“-dumb-”

“-that you don’t even get it when I explain it to you.”

But, in spite of himself, he’s beginning to. “Why are you suddenly telling me all of this?” he asks.

“It’s not all that sudden, actually. I’ve been having trouble ever since the day you took me in. You were
supposed
to be
nice
- they warned me not to be fooled, said that you would be - but you weren’t supposed to be
that
nice. You thought I was a whore. Yet you treated me like a lady. My God, you treated me like a
lover.
And your
daughter
- I wasn’t ready for
that.
By the time of your meeting with T.M. at the bookstore, I had serious doubts that I could go through with it. That’s why I had to work it so that
I
was the one to hand him the package, not
you.
Otherwise, they’d have you for a sale already.”

“My God,” Goodman says, letting it all sink in. “I feel so stupid.”

“
Stupid?”
She’s up on her elbow again; it’s he who lies flat on his back now. “You’re
wonderful,
Michael. You’re caring and loving and trusting and gentle and all the things a person could ever want. We took advantage of that. I got you to bring me into your home and take care of me so that I could betray you.
We’re
the ogres here, not you. Can’t you see that?”

And, at last, he can. “Everything was lies,” he says. It’s not a question so much as an acknowledgment.

“Not everything,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper. “Thinking you’re wonderful wasn’t a lie. Learning what it feels like to be cared about wasn’t a lie. Falling in love with your daughter wasn’t a lie. Falling in love with
you
hasn’t been a lie.” She lies back down. The light from the candle continues to play on the contours of her face.

For Michael Goodman, there is a cruel, terrible irony in this last remark. Short of Kelly’s recovery, nothing in the world could have made Goodman happier than to hear this woman lying next to him profess her love for him. It’s something that he hasn’t even dared to
think
about, much less bring up in conversation. But now that he hears her utter the words, the circumstances in which they’re spoken rob him of any pleasure he might otherwise have taken from them. He lies on his back, feeling totally exhausted - deflated, as though everything’s been sucked out of him.

“What happens now?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you arrest me?”

“I can’t
do
that, Michael. That’s why I’m telling you all this.”

“What about you? What about your job?”

“I’ll figure something out,” she says. “I’ll tell them you found me out somehow, or that you got cold feet. They won’t like it, but without proof that I told you, there won’t be anything they can do about it. They’ll give me a reprimand, maybe transfer me to another city. At DEA, when they want to get rid of you, they don’t fire you - that requires hearings, good cause, lots of messy stuff. Instead, they just transfer you. Then, as soon as you get settled in some new city and buy a home - boom! - they transfer you again. Pretty soon, you get the message and put in your papers. Maybe they’ll do that to me; I don’t know.”

“Suppose I decide to go through with the deal anyway?”

She laughs. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a trap.”

“Like
entrapment?”

“Oh,” she laughs again, but bitterly. “We went
way
past entrapment. I took advantage of your goodness to come into your
home,
into your
life.
I’ve shared your daughter’s
bed.
I was the one who told you about some brother I don’t even have, just to give you the idea of selling the drugs in the first place. You never would have done it otherwise.”

“I’m not so sure about
that,
” he confesses.

She says nothing.

“So there’s no $3.5 million?” he asks.

“Oh, there is,” she says. “They’ll put it together, just in case you insist on seeing that it’s all there. But they won’t let you walk
away
with it. Not
that
kind of money.”

“What happens after they show it to me?”

“They’ll ask to see the drugs.”

“And?”

“And as soon as they’re satisfied you’ve got the drugs, they give a signal of some sort. Usually, it’s opening the trunk of their car. You know, in order to put the drugs inside it. As soon as that happens, twenty guys with shotguns and DEA jackets swoop down on you like you’re the Sundance Kid. Next time you see daylight over your head, you’ll be eighty years old. Why are you asking me all of this?” she says. “Don’t you
get
it, Michael? It’s
over.”

He knows she’s probably right, but he says nothing.

“Do you have any idea how
many
of them there are?” she asks him, making it clear that if
he
doesn’t know,
she
does.

“I’ve seen some of them already,” he says. “They’ve been following me.”

“Who?”

“A black guy and a white guy, in a blue Ford.”

“There’s no black guy on our team,” she says. “And DEA has no reason to follow you. We’ll know exactly when and where the deal’s going down, because Vinnie
is
the DEA. And so am
I.
Part of my job is to slip out and call them every once in awhile, fill them in on your innermost thoughts.”

“Have you been doing that?”

“I did at first,” she says. “I’m dangerously overdue.”

“Maybe you should call in.”

She looks at him. “Why are you saying that?” she asks.

“No matter what, it makes sense.”

She seems to ponder that for a moment, then nods in agreement. “And what do I tell them?”

It’s his turn to ponder. “Tell them everything’s right on course.”

“Is that navy talk?” she smiles.

“I guess. I used to be-”

“I know,” she says. “U.S. Navy, enlisted in 1976 - Six September. Stationed Norwalk, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; Vieques, Puerto Rico. Six months on the USS
Charleston-”

“The first four in sick bay-”

“-before being discharged Fifteen August 1979 - and we knew about the sick bay, too. Just one more reason the investigation got code-named ‘Pushover.’“

“Pushover,” he repeats. “That’s me, huh?”

“Yes,” she says. “But you’re
my
pushover.” They both try to laugh at that; the combined result can best be described as a snort. “I even have DEA’s permission to - how did they put it? - ‘to have consensual relations’ with you if it becomes necessary ‘to protect the integrity of the investigation.’ Which is the only reason I
haven’t.”

“Haven’t what?”

“Made love with you, silly.”

In spite of everything, Goodman instantly feels his twin libido sensors react - pulse and penis. “I understand the DEA’s thinking of withdrawing their permission at any moment,” he says.

She laughs - a real laugh, an honest-to-goodness Carmen laugh. He has to shush her, for fear she’ll wake Kelly.

“I don’t get it, Michael. After what I’ve told you, you’re supposed to
hate
me. You’re supposed to want to
kill
me.”

But Michael Goodman’s learning center has traveled far south by this time and is presently operating out of Testosterone Command. Now it adopts his voice and utters its first pronouncement.

“Hate can wait.”

“How can you forgive me for this?” she asks, but at the same time, she comes to him. The sensation of flannel against his bare upper body is electric. Pulse and penis seize full command of the operation.

“If what you say is true,” Goodman reasons, “this could be my last night of freedom until the year 2036. I figure we better make the most of it.”

“I like the way you figure,” Carmen says, and with that, she is over him, pulling his pajama bottoms off him in what might have been a single motion, had it not been for one of his commanding officers standing at attention and getting slightly in the way.

Goodman reaches for the top button of her shirt. But as he does so, the jack-o’-lantern gives off a final burst of orange light, then dies, leaving them in blackness.

She rolls to one side of him, and he hears her voice against his ear. “Put another log on the fire, would you?”

He rises to his hands and knees and gropes towards the kitchen end of the room, drawn by the smell of burned wax, smoke, and pumpkin. Eventually, his eyes adjust to the point where he can see outlines and shapes. He locates the matches, the Chanukah candles, succeeds in lighting one and putting it in place.

The distraction might well have managed to soften the resolve of another man’s will. But Michael Goodman has not made love to a woman for months, and it’s going to take more than a brief time-out to soften any part of him. Carmen notices this phenomenon now, not because she’s watching Goodman at this moment - she isn’t - but because a critical portion of his anatomy is suddenly backlit by the new flame in the jack-o’-lantern, causing a
huge
shadow to be cast against the far wall, where her gaze happens to be directed.

“My God,” she mutters.

“Is something the matter?” he asks as soon as he gets back to her.

“No,” she says. “Nothing’s the matter - just be gentle.”

He tries. He tries as he reaches again for the top button of her shirt. Tries as he fights to stop the trembling in his fingers, exaggerated by the flickering of the candlelight. Tries as he works his way down the row of buttons, until at last he frees an impossibly perfect pair of breasts, tipped with rigid dark nipples. He tries as he slips the shirt off her back, spreading it out beneath them on their makeshift floor bed. But when she presses her body against him and kisses his open mouth with hers, he completely forgets what it was he was supposed to be trying. And when she takes him with both hands, he hears himself make a sound somewhere between a groan and a roar, less befitting a human than some jungle beast that’s gone a year without a kill.

“Maybe we should open a window or something,” Carmen suggests, “before you explode.” But instead of letting go of him, she holds him tighter, squeezes him-

-and explode he does. Too suddenly, too violently. And far too quickly.

It takes him awhile before he can catch his breath and speak. “Sometimes I can actually make it last a little longer than that,” he tells her, and she breaks into laughter again, forcing him to smother her into silence.

And then, somehow, his body frees him to make love with her - silently, gently, lastingly. It goes on for what seems like hours, days, weeks. More precisely, it goes on a full two Chanukah candles. They light a third one, neither wanting it to end.

“Once you burn one candle, you’ve got to buy a whole ‘nother box anyway,” he explains. “They do it like that on purpose.”

“What’s that?” Carmen asks.

“Chanukah candles. They put-”

“No,
that,
” she says, pointing to the underside of the card table, underneath which their heads have ended up.

He looks. “Oh,
that.
A piece of gum.”

“No it isn’t,” she says. And, putting a finger to her lips to silence him, she raises her body to examine it.

Her change of position presents her bare bottom to him. Impossibly, he feels his commanding officer begin to come to attention once again. Merely following orders, he reaches out and touches her, but she pushes his hand away, as though to tell him that this is serious. He lifts himself up to see what he still thinks is gum but what her superior vision has apparently revealed is something else altogether. And as he looks closer, he realizes she’s right. The shape of the thing is simply too geometrical. It’s a perfect rectangle, perhaps the size of a sugar cube. It appears to be some sort of miniature electronic device, complete with a tiny wire antenna.

And then it hits him: It’s a bug.

He looks at Carmen. Her expression tells him that she figured it out before he did. She stands up now and heads for the bathroom, motioning him to follow her.

Goodman closes the bathroom door behind them. “What do you-” he starts to say, but she hushes him. She bends over to turn on the water in the tub. He locks his hands behind his back to fight temptation.

“Come on in,” she beckons him, lowering herself into the tub. He follows her dumbly, until they sit in the water, facing each other. “No bug in the world can pick us up over this noise,” she explains.

“Who put it there?” he asks her. “Your DEA friends?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “It doesn’t look like one of ours. I think it’s more likely some other agency, like the NYPD. Probably the same guys who’ve been following you.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Well,” she says, “for one thing, it means they know about tomorrow night’s deal. For another, they’ve heard me tell you who I am, and who Vincent and T.M. are.”

“What’ll happen to you?”

“Meet your codefendant,” she says. “Maybe they’ll be kind enough to arrange adjoining cells for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Obstructing justice, interfering with governmental administration, hindering prosecution, conspiring to distribute a Schedule One controlled substance. The beat goes on.”

“You’re sure they’ve heard everything?” He finds it hard to believe.

“Oh, they’ve heard everything,” she says.
“Everything.”

In fact, they’ve heard nothing.

Spike Schwartz has been dreaming. He’s been dreaming about his bachelor days, before there were twins and midnight feedings, 2:00 a.m. feedings, 2:30 a.m. feedings, 3:15 a.m. feedings, 4:00 a.m. feedings, and bottles to warm, and diapers to change.