Several weeks after that night of nights, I had just finished the Friday edition of Wake Up, America! when I received a phone call from Melody Moon.
It was good to hear from her, even better when she told me the reason she called.
She’d been playing Rudy’s old television shows and she’d found a CD mixed in with the DVDs. “It could be, like, a movie or TV soundtrack,” she said. “But it sounds pretty real. And one of the men has this soft voice, like Clint Eastwood’s, only much creepier, and he’s telling the other man he wants him to assist some … I hate the word, ‘bitch,’ but that’s what he said … some bitch he’d hired who was coming to the other man’s military base to kill an Army officer.
“The other guy says he’s not sure he can help, and the creepy-voice man gets angry and tells him to make up his mind, that the … bitch can bring a guy named Oscar to help, but that would cost him almost double the amount.”
Felix and Oscar. Rudy’s “Odd Couple.” I recalled the other note he wrote for himself on his kitchen blackboard. “Jewel for Berry9.”
“Was the CD in the jewel box that was supposed to contain USS Huckleberry, disc nine?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said. “Then you already know about it. I guess it was silly of me to think it might be important.”
“It’s very important,” I said. “Can I come over now to pick it up?”
“Please,” she said. “I don’t like having it here. It’s ugly. What’s it all about, anyway?”
“In a word: karma,” I said.