Moonlight Mile

Chapter Twenty-One

So you kinda killed a Russian named Timur to get the Belarus Cross.”

“No,” he said.

“No you didn’t kill him?”

“Well, yes, but we didn’t do it to get the Belarus Cross. We didn’t know shit about the Belarus Cross until we opened the suitcase.”

“What suitcase?” Angie sat on the edge of the couch.

“The one handcuffed to Timur’s wrist.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

Dre considered his flask but returned it to his pocket. He played with a key chain instead, swinging the keys absently around a hard plastic fob, which encased a picture of Claire. “You heard of Zippo?”

“Sophie’s boyfriend,” Angie said.

“Yeah. Notice how no one’s seen him around in a while?”

“It did come to our attention.”

He lay back on the couch like he was in a shrink’s office. He dangled the key chain above his head so that the picture of Claire swung back and forth over his face, the shadow passing over his nose. “There’s an old movie memorabilia warehouse in Brighton, right along the Mass Pike. You go in there, you’d see an entire floor devoted to posters, half of them oversize European ones. Second floor is props and costumes; you want the NYU philosophy degree that Swayze had on his wall in Roadhouse, they got it there, not in L.A. Russians got all sorts of weird shit there-Sharon Stone’s chaps from The Quick and the Dead, one of Harry’s fur suits from Harry and the Hendersons . They also have a third floor no one goes to, because that’s where the delivery and postdelivery rooms are.” He wiggled his fingers. “I’m a doctor, lest we forget, and these babies can’t be documented at a hospital. The moment they enter the system, they’re traceable. So we deliver them at a movie memorabilia warehouse in Brighton and they’re usually on a plane out of town three days later. Some special cases, they’re out the door as soon as the cord is cut.”

“Which was the case with Claire.” Angie leaned forward, chin on her hand.

He held up one finger. “Which was supposed to be the case with Claire. But it wasn’t just me and Sophie in the delivery room. Amanda was there and so was Zippo. I’d advised strongly against it. It was going to be hard enough to give the baby up without actually seeing her be born. But Amanda overruled me, as Amanda is wont to do. And we were all in there when Sophie gave birth.” He sighed. “It was an incredible birth. So smooth. Sometimes it goes that way with young mothers. Normally it doesn’t, but sometimes…” He shrugged. “This was one of those times. So we’re all standing there, passing this baby around, laughing, crying, hugging-I actually hugged Zippo, though I couldn’t stand the kid in real life-and the door opens and there’s Timur standing there. Timur was a giant, a bald, big-eared, face-only-a-blind-mother-could-love Chernobyl baby. You think I’m kidding but, no, he was literally born in Chernobyl in the mid-eighties. A mutant freak, Timur. And a drunk and a crank addict. All the positives. He comes through the door for the pickup. He’s early, he’s fucked up, and he’s got a suitcase cuffed to his wrist.”

I started seeing it now-five people walk into a room, two die, but four walk out. “So he’s not taking no for an answer.”

“Not taking ‘no’?” Dre sat up and put the key chain in his jeans. “Timur crashes into the room, says, ‘I take baby,’ and goes to cut the umbilical cord. I swear to Christ-I never saw anything like it. He grabs the surgical shears, starts coming toward me with them, I’m holding the baby, we’ve all just been laughing and hugging and crying and here’s this Chernobyl mutant coming at me with surgical shears. He’s got them open and he’s heading right for the umbilical cord, one eye closed ’cause he’s so fucked up he’s seeing double, and that’s when Zippo jumps on his back and cuts his throat with the scalpel. I mean, just opens it from one side to the other.” He covered his face in both hands for a moment. “It was the worst fucking thing I ever saw and I did my ER internship in Gary, Indiana.”

I hadn’t heard anything from the back bedroom in a while. I stood.

Dre didn’t even notice. “Here’s the best part. Timur the Chernobyl Mutant? Even with his throat cut, he flips Zippo off his back and as soon as Zippo hits the ground, Timur shoots him three times in the chest.”

I stood by the bedroom door, listening.

“So now we’ve got this freak of nature with a cut throat pointing a gun at us, and we’re all going to die, right? But then his eyes roll back to whites and he drops toward the floor and he’s already gone by the time he lands.”

I knocked softly on the bedroom door.

“We don’t know what to do at first, but then we realize no matter what happens, they’ll probably kill us. Kirill loved Timur. Treated him like his favorite dog. Which, when you think of it, he was.”

I knocked softly again. I tried the door. It was open. I pushed it inward and looked in at an empty bedroom. No baby. No Amanda.

I looked back at Dre. He didn’t seem surprised. “She gone?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s gone.”

“She does that a lot,” he said to Angie.

***

We stood out back, looking at a small yard and a strip of gravel that ran along the edge of the yard in a downward slope and ended at a thin dirt alley. Across the alley was another yard, much bigger, and a white Victorian with green trim.

“So, you had another car back here,” I said.

“You’re the private investigators. Aren’t you supposed to check for stuff like that?” He took a snort of the clean mountain air. “It’s a stick.”

“Huh?”

“Amanda’s car. A little Honda thing. She just dropped the emergency brake and rolled to the alley, took a right.” He pointed. “She made the road in about ten seconds from there, would be my guess, and then she turned the engine over, popped it into first.” He whistled through his lower teeth. “And a-way she went.”

“Nice,” I said.

“She does it a lot, like I said. She’s half-jackrabbit. Anything bothers her, she just leaves. She’ll be back.”

“What if she doesn’t come back?” I said.

He plopped down on the couch again. “Where’s she going to go?”

“She’s the Teenage Great Impostor. She can go anywhere.”

He held up an index finger. “Correct. But she doesn’t. This whole time on the run, I’m like you-I’ve been advocating foreign countries, islands. Amanda won’t go for it. This is where she was happy once, this is where she wants to stay.”

“It’s a nice sentiment,” Angie said, “but no one’s that sentimental with their life on the line, and Amanda strikes me as far less sentimental than most.”

“Yet”-he raised his hands to the sky-“here we are.” He hugged his arms. “I’m cold. Heading back in.”

He went back inside. I started to follow, but Angie said, “Hang on a sec.”

She lit a cigarette and her hands shook. “Yefim threatened our daughter?”

“It’s what they do to rattle you.”

“But it’s what he did. Yes?”

After a moment, I nodded.

“Well, it worked. I’m rattled.” She took a few quick puffs off her cigarette, and for a time she wouldn’t meet my