Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri Read Free Book Online

grab it out of midair, stuff it into my jacket pocket. “Wow, drugs, money, and a free trip to sunny Italy.”
    “Must be your lucky day, sweetie,” Zumbo says, before slapping me on the ass.

The FBI’s mission to get their precious flash drive back begins right away. Turns out Zumbo isn’t just one hell of a former Giant fullback; he’s also a giant shopper. He drags me all over the city. Drags me to Bergdorf’s, Macy’s, Abercrombie and Fitch, the Gap, for pants, shirts, running shoes, running clothes, sunglasses, two new bathing suits, luggage, and even a new black leather jacket that cost the FBI more than a thousand bucks.
    He also brings me to a stylist named, get this: Bruno. Bruno trims my facial hair to just a small, neat shadow, and the hair on my head to barely a growth above the scarred skin. I look so good, the black-bearded Bruno can’t take his eyes off of me.
    Along the way we stop at just about every street corner hotdog vendor for “a snack and a rest.” Man, can Zumbo eat. But all that walking on concrete is not kind to his bad knees. The lump on his forehead is not as swollen as it was this morning. And all symptoms of the temporary psychosis that led him to pulling his service piece on me in midflight seem to have abated. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to turn my back on him anytime soon.
    Later in the day he books me a suite at the Gramercy Park Hotel, upping my bill with the feds by an entire grand. Add to that a bottle of fine red wine, a six-pack of Peroni beer (to getinto the Italian spirit), a fresh pack of Marlboro Lights, some cooked brie, and a platter of cold jumbo shrimp, and I’m really beginning to like my new job as a deputized FBI agent, even if I haven’t been officially sworn in as anything other than a citizen who either retrieves a very dangerous flash drive or faces prison time himself.
    Zumbo leaves me to my lonesome after reminding me that I’m being watched at all times. But I figure I’m still allowed to take in a run along the East River. Fact is, maintaining my daily exercise routine is a priority and is strictly enforced by my general practitioner, who is always concerned about my circulation. That bullet fragment lodged inside my brain not only runs the risk of shifting one day, causing instant paralysis or death, but a blood clot can also form around it should my circulation not be operating at peak performance. And peak performance means constant exercise.
    I run south toward downtown until I come to the giant stone stanchions that support the Williamsburg Bridge, where I about-face and head back to the hotel. I pop the top on a Peroni beer, take it with me into the shower, and despite the surreal nature of my newfound lifestyle, try to think realistically about the job that lies ahead. Mostly I try to recall Clyne and what I really know about him.
    Detective Clyne first visited me in the hospital barely a day after I died a clinical death and underwent an out-of-body experience that told me my significant other, Lola, was seeing another man. From where my soul floated above the hospital bed, I saw Lola and this new man. Saw them practically making out over my dead body. Turns out that new man was really her old high school love, Christian Barter.
    But as for Clyne, I recall a sort of dumpy-in-the-gut, sad-looking man who bore the scars of a recent separation from his wife after she’d taken off with her personal trainer. I pegged him right away as a heavy drinker who knew what it meant to medicate himself night in and night out in order to sleep, but more importantly, to forget and to eliminate his dreams. He had sad, deep brown eyes, a high forehead, and on occasion he would reveal a smile that told me he’d known happiness and, now that he didn’t have it anymore, he missed it terribly.
    He took a liking to me and helped me out by offering me protection from a gang of Russian mobsters disguised in President Obama masks who were bent on torturing me