Worse Angels (An Isaiah Coleridge Novel, Band 3) - Softcover

Barron, Laird

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593085019 ISBN 13: 9780593085011

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions.

Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-U.S. senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn't sure it wasn't, but one final look may bring his sister peace.

So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them. At the epicenter of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose. . . .

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laird Barron was born in Alaska, where he raised huskies and worked in the construction and fishing industries for much of his youth. He is the author of several short-story collections and three novels, and his work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. A multiple Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award nominee, he is also a three-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Barron lives in Kingston, New York.

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Chapter One

 

A blood moon glowered over the Catskills as I climbed out of the hole. I glowered back, imagining claws and fangs and muscles bursting through my clothes the way it happened for Lon Chaney Jr. on moldy old Wolf Man posters. Nothing doing. I remained plain old Isaiah Coleridge, but that was probably bad enough. Werewolf movies were on my mind, for various reasons. Earlier that evening, I'd commented on the topic to my girl, Meg.

 

Freudian as all get-out, she'd said. Good guy on the surface; woman-and-sheep-ravishing beast on the inside. Those faux romantic posters where the werewolf-in pants!-carries an unconscious gothic heroine in his arms? Not like that. He-it-dragged the woman by her hair. Blood drooled from where the roots tore free. Her shinbones gleamed in the moonlight . . .

 

You're ruining everything, I'd said. Why do horror movies always preface the main story with a curse that began years, if not decades or centuries, in the past? Does evil need to steep like a tea bag before it can manifest? Didn't get an answer, but one of Meg's enigmatic smiles, as if to say I needed to pay more attention.

 

"Every rock in the state of New York is in this goddamned hole." Lionel Robard tipped back his safari hat. He leaned on a pickax. It was chilly; steam rose from the sweat on his brow and his matted hair. Rawboned and sinewy, he was built for marathon bouts of hard labor. His Monte Carlo's headlights were on so we could see what we were doing, like a pair of resurrection men in a graveyard after the world had gone to sleep. He needn't have bothered, what with all that nickel-plated moonlight spilling through the mist and the trees.

 

I wiped my face and popped the top of a beer.

 

"The wages of sin are digging rocks when you go to bury your ill-gotten treasure." I eyed the inky shadow of a man crouched near an Austrian pine. The longer I peered, the more closely the shadow-man resembled a stump.

 

Last year, we'd snatched a bunch of money from the secret cache of a notorious murderer romantically dubbed the Croatoan, since deceased. North of one and a half million dollars. Held it and waited. First, to see who might creep from the woodwork searching for the loot, and for us. Second, the bills were minted in the 1960s and '70s. Changing that filthy lucre into contemporary currency without tipping the authorities, or other Wrong People, presented a challenge. Our best bet was to launder the trove via one of my underworld connections at a substantial cost and risk of alerting the aforementioned Wrong People; in this case, the Albany mob.

 

I kept other items from the Croatoan's cache. Tools of murder, documents, and videocassettes, chiefly. These were buried too, although closer to home in my own backyard. I was tempted to destroy these evil mementos. Yet, what if I needed them one fine day? That possibility stayed my hand.

 

Sinister home videos and killing knives weren't the issue right then. One and a half mil was the issue. Lionel had proven a good sport so far. He wouldn't, couldn't, stay cool forever. Prudence and temperance weren't his watchwords. The Marines taught him other skills, other bellicose virtues.

 

Thus, here we were in the sneaking hours, burying the money once again (we'd originally stashed it near home and then decided a lonely plot in the hills was wiser) with an eye toward a more permanent solution and only the gods knew when that might be. I set aside a portion for a sample, should a sample become necessary. We sweated a hunter or hiker stumbling across our handiwork and leaving an empty pit for us to find later. Far-fetched, yet eminently reasonable to our minds-which spoke volumes about the state of those minds, I suppose.

 

"I vote we quit pussyfooting around and cash in our chips," Lionel said as we made ready to lower the sealed containers. "The German? He could handle this weight."

 

"The German isn't safe. His partners were pinched in a sting. The Feds will have him under a magnifying glass."

 

"I hadn't heard. Who then?"

 

"Japanese liaison to the U.S. government might be our ticket. Former liaison. Sonny loves America and Elvis. Three years stateside near Graceland as a teen. I stayed with him in Tokyo when the Outfit sent me over on business. Elvis memorabilia out the wazoo."

 

"Rhinestone suit?"

 

"Rhinestone suit."

 

"Isn't he with the yakuza?" Lionel said.

 

"Sonny provides equal opportunities to all criminal gangs. I have to be careful. He likes me, but we aren't bosom buddies. He makes one call and we're boned. These ex-diplomats aren't loyal to anybody."

 

"Man, whatever gets us paid."

 

"The loot isn't going to evaporate."

 

"We might."

 

TouchŽ. My left hand trembled. In the dim, and not so dim, past I'd broken it, had muscles torn, the fingers dislocated. Healed, all healed, yet the nerves were weakening, the rubber bands of sinew and tendon losing their snap-back, and no matter how many racquet balls I crushed daily, or spade-loads of dirt I shoveled, the status quo slipped and my hand quivered when it grew tired and it grew tired ever more quickly.

 

"Hold tight a bit longer. I'll ask Meg for help."

 

"You ready to take it there?" he said. "You loop her in, this gets real."

 

"She's a research genius. Be peachy to know what we're dealing with." Detective license in my wallet notwithstanding, my girlfriend was the brains in the relationship.

 

"Kinda your job."

 

"I'm too busy getting punched in the face."

 

He hefted a stone and chucked it onto the pile.

 

"Does the origin matter? Gotta figure it's blood money, pure filth, the veritable root of evil. Get it laundered, problem solved. Who cares where it came from as long as we know where it's going?"

 

Any counter I threw at him would be weak.

 

"Blood money tends to carry a curse. I don't want to get bitten in the ass down the road."

 

"Brother, we were screwed the moment we walked into the madman's lair." He dropped his cigarette butt and commenced digging again. "Go read one of your books on mythology. Any of them. Curses get stronger with time. Dumping it for whatever we can get is the smart play."

 

"The smart play is to douse it in gasoline and strike a match."

 

He laughed as if I were making a joke.

 

Increasingly, there were moments when I wished heartily that we were capable of making the smart play. Just once.

 

Nature has everything plotted to a gnat's ass. Her vast blueprint overwhelms our ability to fully comprehend the true shape of reality. We glimpse points of intersection, we hear phantom notes on a cool autumn breeze, but seldom apprehend the greater symphony at play.

 

The day after we relocated the money, I sparred a few rounds with the regulars at the Deadfall Gym in Kingston. The Deadfall didn't help me improve my skills; it slowed their degradation. I'm strong and have fought enough to acquire an arsenal of nasty techniques. Fighting isn't a static art; it mutates rapidly, endlessly, and for every offensive tactic, there's a defense or a counter. I gave better than I got, and while sparring isn't really combat, to put it bluntly, I'd slowed. Somebody drilled me with a flying knee, applied a guillotine choke, and cranked my neck; somebody else hooked me behind the ankle and flung me headfirst onto the mat. The crash rattled the gym's metal garage door. Also got a complimentary dented nose in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593085019
• ISBN 13: 9780593085011
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
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