Moonlight Rises (A Dick Moonlight Thriller) by Vincent Zandri Read Free Book Online

hit off the drink, this time leaving it half empty. Or full, depending upon how you looked at it.
    “She was a good mom,” he smiled. “Just different. She was from Russia and so was my adoptive father. Moscovites. They’d escaped the Berlin Wall somehow in the late seventies and made it over to the land of the free and the home of the brave. They made a life for themselves here by going to school and educating themselves. By the time they adopted me thirty years ago my dad was employed at Knolls Atomic as a nuclear engineer. So, you could say, Mr. Moonlight, that I’m continuing the family tradition. My adoptive parents were hard workers and straightforward people. When there was something they wanted you to know, they just told you. No sugarcoating it. That’s the Russian way.”
    “Back to your biological father,” I said. “Why do you want to find him now?”
    For the first time, his smile faded. He sucked down the rest of his drink, causing the concave cheeks on his face to blush.
    “It’s personal, Mr. Moonlight,” he said, setting the empty glass back down with both, now steady, hands.
    “Pardon me,” I said, stamping out the still lit cig. “But there’s something we have to get straight. If you want to hire me, I need to know that you can trust me and I can trust you.”
    “I understand,” he grinned. “Emotional leverage.”
    “One way of putting it.”
    He stared directly at what was left of his drink. Not too much. I got the message. I got up, mixed him another one, weaker this time. I put a fresh straw in it and set it down in front of him. Then I sat back down.
    “As you might no doubt guess, my father will be getting on in years. I estimate him to be about seventy-six now, or thereabouts—”
    Raising my hands, I told him to hold it while I got up, grabbed a paper and pencil from behind the bar, popped a new beer for Uncle Leo, and planted myself back in front of Czech.
    “Seventy six,” I repeated under my breath.
    “I know he will die sooner than later and I simply want to meet with him, make some kind of peace with him . . . his existence.”
    “You’ve never spoken with him?”
    He shook his head, sipped his new drink, slower this time.
    “Never. I only know that he lived in this area and worked as an accountant, first with the federal government. Department of Military Affairs, I believe. The same department that oversees my operation at Knolls. Then for himself.”
    “And yet your father worked at Knolls also and you’ve never run into him?”
    “Not that I know of. I’m not sure we’d know one another, Mr. Moonlight. But I do know that my father knew him, and perhaps that’s how the whole adoption issue began in the first place.”
    “And his name is really Harvey Rose?” I questioned. “Why not just conduct your own search on the internet?”
    He smiled.
    “Really, Mr. Moonlight, I just told you his name. You wrote it down on a napkin. I’m not making it up. That would be counter-productive. I’m an engineer after all.”
    He had a point. I did just write it down and he was an engineer. Silly me.
    “And, hey, I’ve already exhausted my computer search,” he added. “The Harvey Roses I come up with are most definitely not him.”
    “How do you know?”
    He smiled, upper lip hidden under that thin mustache.
    “I just know.” Shaking his head. “My father is not listed on the internet.”
    Czech’s gut must have been speaking to him. I still wasn’t all that thrilled about the internet, even if it had taken over everyone’s lives. I wrote down the word “accountant” under his father’s name, scribbled a line underneath it, as if to add emphasis.
    “How can you be sure your dad still lives in the Albany area at all? How do you know he’s even alive?”
    “I can’t be,” he said, while tapping his flat belly. “In fact I should tell you that there is yet one more Harvey Rose who is listed as deceased by the Albany County Hall of Records. Died years