The Moonlight (30 page)

Except that that was just exactly the way it had gone down.

Besides, nobody was going to cross-examine the Devere woman.  When the Devere woman checked out of her hospital room, she was going to disappear into a Family limousine and never be heard of around here again.  Sonny Galatina wasn’t having any of his business interests involved in a murder trial, not if he could possibly help it.

The prints, the god damned fingerprints—they were the key.

A man doesn’t change his fingerprints.  Maybe, if he’s a fanatic about it, he can burn them off, but he can’t grow new ones.  It can’t be done.

So, what were the possibilities?  Has Philip Owings somehow gained access to a set of Charlie Brush’s prints, which by some process, unspecified and probably unimaginable, he transfers to the shotgun?  The prints of a man who has been missing for fifty years?

Or maybe Charlie Brush handles the gun at some time in the past, and Owings uses it without leaving any of his own?  Is he wearing, say, latex gloves?

The Devere woman would have noticed the gloves.  She was probably studying this joker pretty carefully while he decided if he was going to take her head off.  She wouldn’t have missed the gloves.

And when would Brush have had his hands on that gun?  How much time were we talking about?  Could the gun have been lying around somewhere ever since Charlie had got what was coming to him?

Spolino had heard once about a fingerprint that was lifted from the inside of a car window four years after the car, with some slob tied up in the trunk, had been buried in a land fill.  Four years, away from the light, preserved as if in a time capsule, and everyone was amazed.  Four years, not fifty.

Or maybe Charlie was alive somewhere and running the show.  Or maybe Charlie was dead somewhere and running the show.

The Devere woman had said the guy changed, right in front of her.  He started out as one man and ended up as another—or, more accurately, as the walking, talking corpse of another.  Philip Owings to Charlie Brush, and Charlie Brush, from all accounts, wasn’t wearing too well.

That was what she had said.  And the Devere woman, whatever else she was, was no mental case.  She would have made a favorable impression on any jury if only she’d had a slightly less loony story to tell.

And it was loony.  But then the whole fucking case was loony.

The clock over the door to the holding pen said one, and Spolino was hungry.  It was a nice day, for once not too warm, so probably, unless she heard on the kitchen radio that there was a crime wave on Greenley Avenue, Alice would be expecting him home for lunch.  She would have saved him some of the homemade fettucini verdi left over from dinner.  For a prim little yankee girl, Alice cooked pretty mean Italian.

He scooped up the reports from the Stamford police and tossed them in the top drawer of his desk, which he slammed shut with a casual twitch of his hand—it did not occur to him to lock the drawer.  Then he put on his sports jacket and started on his way.

Alice, that good girl, even had a piece of cold steak for him to have with the fettucini, and she sat at the kitchen table and watched him eat it.

“You want to hear something weird, Alice?” he asked her, aware that he was about to break one of the long-standing customs of the house—but who else was there?  Alice was perhaps the one person on earth who knew him well enough to believe he wasn’t out of his mind.

“Is it about the Grazzi killing?” she asked, her voice perfectly even as she sat with her arms folded over her slender bosom, as if he had discussed his cases with her every day of their married life.

“How did you know that?”

Alice merely shrugged.  “You left a manila envelope on the dresser last night.  It was stamped ‘Stamford P.D.’  What else would it be?”

The woman was amazing.

“Yeah, well, have you ever heard of a ghost that uses a sawed-off shotgun.  Do you believe in ghosts, Alice?  Because I think that’s what we’ve got here.”

Then he told her about the fingerprints.

She listened carefully, and when he was finished she absentmindedly ran her left hand through her short brown hair, which with Alice was always a sign of perplexity.

“You don’t think it’s possible someone’s pulling your leg?” she asked.  “I don’t mean a practical joke, but a deception.”

Spolino shook his head.  “I’d love to believe that, but I don’t see how they’d have managed it.”

“Are you going to tell the Stamford police about this?”

“I wouldn’t dare, Alice.  They wouldn’t believe it.  They’d think I was the one pulling someone’s leg.”

“Then I think you have to find Charlie Brush.”

“Alive or dead?”

“Alive or dead.”

The telephone rang and Spolino went over to the kitchen counter to answer it.  It was the station secretary.

“Tom, I got a call from the branch manager at the Union Trust—I thought, since you’re closer, you might want to stop in there on your way back.”

“Okay.  What’s it about.”

“Some funny money, sounds like.  Oh, and a package came for you.  I put it on your desk.”

He hung up, feeling reprieved.  He had been all set to tell Alice about the Devere woman, and maybe even the note in Charlie Brush’s suitcoat, but now he thought that might have been a mistake.  No point in giving her something to worry about.

“I have to go to the bank,” he said.  “Are we overdrawn?”

He smiled so she would know he was making a joke.

The Union Trust was at the top of Greenley Avenue, in a building that looked like a wedding cake and hadn’t even been there twenty years ago.  The manager, whose name was Crary, was a solid citizen who commuted from Norwalk, so Spolino had never met him before.

They shook hands, Crary asked him to sit down and then closed his office door before taking his place behind a large, uncluttered desk.   He opened a drawer and removed a letter-sized envelope.  Inside were about three dozen bills, all twenties.

Spolino took one, looked at the front, then the back, and held it up to the light.  Then he checked it against the others.  The serial numbers were all different and non-consecutive.

“They seem okay to me,” he said, “but I’m no expert.”

“They are okay.  But look at the date.”

Crary was short, about five six, and a good thirty pounds overweight.  His slick black hair was thinning badly and he looked worried.  But maybe bank managers always looked worried.

Spolino hunted around on the note until he found a date.

“Series 1951.”

Crary folded his hands together and put them under his chin, as if he was worried about keeping his head from wobbling.

“The life expectancy of a twenty-dollar bill is about two and a half to three years, because they don’t circulate as much.  A single is rarely good for more than eighteen months.  This bill is close to forty years old, and they’re all like that.”

“Who spotted this, a teller?”

“That’s right.  I had everybody check their drawers, and we came up with what you see.  Money moves through a bank pretty fast, Lieutenant, so I would guess everything here has come in over the last week.”

“So what you’re telling me is that someone out there has a wad of very old money and he’s beginning to spread it around.”

Crary nodded, looking more worried than ever.

“I don’t even know if this is a police problem . . .”

“I’ll bet the IRS people will enjoy hearing about it.”  Spolino gave the man one of his Community Relations smiles.  “You did the right thing to call us, Mr. Crary.  People don’t normally hold on to a stash like this if they’ve paid their taxes on it, but you never know.  Maybe some nutty old lady’s been keeping a nest egg hidden in her corset and the heirs found it.”

For the very first time, the bank manager seemed to ease up a bit—a man in his position likes to hear he hasn’t made a fool out of himself.

“Mr. Crary, I’ll tell you what I’d appreciate your doing.  These bills are probably being passed in stores—at least, if it was me I wouldn’t bring them into a bank, where they would be spotted in a minute.  If you could have your people check the cash bags that come in at the end of the week, and note who is taking the stuff in, and maybe the amounts, we’ll take it from there.”

He shook hands again and was back out on the street in two minutes.  Somehow bankers didn’t like you to linger.

“Well what do you know,” Spolino murmured to himself as he picked his way among the shoppers on Greenley Avenue.  “Charlie Brush seems to have himself a roll.”

. . . . .

The package on his desk was from Philip Owings’ insurance company and contained an audio cassette—he had almost forgotten about it.

Lieutenant Spolino hunted up a tape player and sat down to listen through a pair of earphones.

He didn’t even have to find his place.  There was a high-pitched squeak, and then the date stamp, and then the voice:  “Ah, this is Philip Owings of 637 Old River Road, Greenley, Connecticut 06831.  My policy number is 6568-8765-7724.  I had a little accident.  The car is drivable and there were no injuries.  Please have an agent get in touch with me.  My telephone number is 203-628-6787.  Thank you.”  And then a click.

Spolino rewound the tape and played it again.

The car is drivable and there were no injuries
.  That was the part he liked best. 
I’ve had a little accident.
  No specifics, just
I’ve had a little accident
.  It could be anything.  It was like the guy was reading a script.  Clever bastard.

But there was something wrong.  Spolino had to replay the tape about half a dozen times before it hit him.

“My policy number is . . .”

It was the way he pronounced the “o” from the back of his throat, the way the “r” got lost.

He had talked to Philip Owings for maybe half an hour, and the Philip Owings who had talked back was perfect to type—a nice California boy with that flat, accentless, California voice all the television newsmen worked so hard to imitate.  People out there might be crazy, their brains baked soft in all that sun, but there were supposed to speak the purest English in the world.

The voice on the tape was Philip Owings, only transplanted—like he had really grown up on Second Avenue and it still showed a little through the cracks.

It was Philip Owings, and it wasn’t.  Just like the guy who had blown Sal Grazzi out of his socks—he was Philip Owings, and then he was somebody else.

A copy of the whorehouse tape was part of the evidence package Spolino had received from Jerry Reilly.  He hadn’t played it yet—he had been too hypnotized by the fingerprints.  He got it out now and put in on the machine.

“Personal Services.”  That was the Devere woman, coming on all breathless and sophisticated.

“I got your number from a friend of a friend.  My name is Charlie, and I’m looking for a good time.”

Jesus, there he was.  Our authentic hard-ass boy, the righteous New York born and bred hood, singing his song of love through Philip Owings’ pipes. 
My name is Charlie
.

“It was like he became someone else, like one face just pressed its way through the
other,” the Devere woman had said. 
“And the second face could have belonged to a corpse.”

It was after nine in the morning before Beth woke up, which surprised her because they had gone to bed early.  She felt groggy, almost as if she had been drugged, and there was a terrible taste in her mouth.  Phil didn’t seem to be anywhere around.

She brushed her teeth and then took a long shower, letting the warm water pour over her until it brought her back to life.  It was only in the shower that she remembered her dream.

She got dressed and went downstairs, expecting to find Phil in the kitchen.  He wasn’t there.  There were no signs he had made himself any breakfast and the sink was still dry.

Even in broad daylight the house still gave her the creeps, and she didn’t like to venture into the other rooms.  She put a pot of water on the stove for some coffee and thought about calling out, but she didn’t like to do that either.

She found him out on the patio.  He was wearing nothing but his trousers—even his feet were bare—he hadn’t shaved and he was sitting on one of the lawn chairs, smoking a cigarette.  The concrete around him was littered with butts, as if he had been at it for hours.  At first he didn’t seem to notice her.

“Phil?”

She went up to him and put her hand on his shoulder, which was surprisingly cold, and he actually started.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked.  When he didn’t answer, “I’m making some coffee.  You want me to bring you some?”

“I’ll come inside,” he said, in a flat, tired voice, and got up from the chair.

He went upstairs and didn’t come down again for about three quarters of an hour.  At one point Beth could hear the water running, so he must have been taking a shower.

When he came into the kitchen he had changed into a pair of tan wash pants and pale blue sport shirt with long sleeves.  He had shaved and his hair was wet, but he still looked worn and sleepless.  When he sat down at the table he almost fell into his chair.