Shoot the Moon

Chapter Sixteen - Midnight At The Oasis

I spent a long afternoon watching Colon's office. I wanted to catch him leaving and follow him.

Watching the comings and goings of an office building in Manhattan for a specific purpose is like watching for a cork bobbing on the surface of the ocean.

However. A cork walking down Broadway caught my eye. I was too far away to make out his face but there was something familiar in his walk, the way he dressed. Sure enough, he turned into the Brill Building.

He was gone from the lobby when I got there but I watched the indicators and one elevator stopped at the eighth floor. Tropic's floor.

*****

"Good afternoon, Miss Feliciano," I said, smiling harder than a State Senate candidate with a brother in the construction business. "Remember me?"

"It's Feliconio."

"Sorry. I'd like to see Mr. Gray, please."

She pouted for a moment, then announced me and listened to her master's voice. "Yes. That's right: Murphy."

Without looking up, she held out one hand in the general direction of the office and let it dangle.

The door to the office was closed. I knocked.

"Come in. It's open."

Hearing the muffled voice, a faint old alarm sounded in my head. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, standing off to the side, out of the line of sight.

I heard the voice call, "Come in" and I had an eerie sense of having done this before. I poked my head cautiously into the doorway. The overhead lights of the office were turned off and the darkly tinted windows filtered the afternoon light of the overcast day into a weird kind of night... Except for a white hot bank of sunlamps on a frame, fired up and humming with megawatts, burning an artificial circle of tropical sunshine onto the canvas chaise by the wall. The room was sauna-type hot. With the dead potted palms it looked like a derelict Hollywood set for The Sheik. Sprawled on the sofa, toasting himself in the ultraviolet rays was a man in sunglasses and swimming trunks.

A man I'd seen many times before. No wonder "Mr. Gray" had caught my eye.

It was Teddy Dexter, my old partner in crime.

"Dude!" he cried, sipping at a drink in his hand, "You do turn up. Come on in. Take off your clothes, work up a tan. That's a bad looking suit, by the way. But then you always had excellent taste. Although I do miss the sailor outfit. How do you like the lights? Had 'em put in because I started to get depressed. Not enough sunshine in New York."

"Hello, Teddy," I said. Teddy Dexter was no longer quite so emaciated as I remembered; he almost looked healthy. He must have altered the daily cocktail of controlled substances by which he confronted and confounded the world. A little lighter on the amphetamines, perhaps. Otherwise he had changed little. Same thinning sandy hair, pale gray eyes. Older, of course. He must have been fifty-five, maybe nearer to sixty, but his face was still smooth, unnaturally smooth. The finest plastic surgeons in Brazil had been busy. He had a preserved look, waxy, like one of the Undead.

"Is this deja vu, or what? You don't seem surprised to see me."

"Somehow I'm not, Teddy."

"After all these years? I must admit I find myself slightly non plussed. Here I thought you'd be hiding from me."

"I just decided long ago that I'd worry about you when the time came. Now here you are and somehow it just seems right."

"I love that about you, Jack. That quality of cool detachment. How's my money?"