Fever Tree: A Novel of Southern Noir - Softcover

Applegate, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997237732 ISBN 13: 9780997237733

Verlag: AMBERJACK PUB, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

When a handsome and mysterious stranger arrives in Crooked River, the town is consumed by rumors. Although a deeply private young man, Dieter befriends everyone from deckhands to shopkeepers.

On the rebound from a disastrous relationship, the charming but hesitant Maggie Paterson falls in love. Teddy Mink, the town’s notorious, paranoid drug lord, convinced that Dieter’s a narc, formulates a plan to silence him. Maggie's recently estranged ex, who moonlights as a drug runner for Teddy, jealously agrees that Dieter must be handled—no matter the cost.

From the moonlit beaches of Quintana Roo to the waterfront docks of Crooked River, Florida, Fever Tree is a beautifully written story that charts the surprising journey of a deeply troubled young man zealously guarding the secrets of his past.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tim Applegate’s poems, essays, and short fiction appear in the Florida Review, the South Dakota Review and elsewhere. His most recent poetry collection is At the End of the Day (Turnstone Books). He lives in the foothills of the coastal range of western Oregon.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

When a handsome and mysterious stranger arrives in Crooked River, the town is consumed by rumors. Although a deeply private young man, Dieter befriends everyone from deckhands to shopkeepers. On the rebound from a disastrous relationship, the charming but hesitant Maggie Paterson falls in love.

Teddy Mink, the town’s notorious, paranoid drug lord, convinced that Dieter’s a narc, formulates a plan to silence him. Maggie's recently estranged ex, who moonlights as a drug runner for Teddy, jealously agrees that Dieter must be handled – no matter the cost.

From the moonlit beaches of Quintana Roo to the waterfront docks of Crooked River, Florida, Fever Tree is a beautifully written story that charts the surprising journey of a deeply troubled young man zealously guarding the secrets of his past.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Fever Tree

By Tim Applegate

Amberjack Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Tim Applegate
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9972377-3-3

CHAPTER 1

That afternoon he crossed over the last mountain pass and dropped down into the valley, into hardwood forest, hardwood swamp. Hill country for the next twenty miles but bottomland too, brackish water the color of iced tea swirling around trunks of cypress, the swamp's oldest trees. Slowing down, taking his time, avoiding the interstate for less-traveled roads to satisfy an urge, an ache, for real country, for red clay. Not a watery bowl of grits at some shiny new franchise off Exit 36 but an honest-to-God barbeque joint owned by the granddaughter of the man who first opened it, the son of a slave. What's left of a still in the woods out back next to the original pit grill, abandoned now too. Leafy silence, patches of sunlight, two or three picnic tables crowning the bank of a copper creek.

Then a blur of pines as the land opened up and the sun blistered the pavement, the air streaming through his open window no cooler than the rest of the air, just faster. A tarpaper shack with requisite junk cars littering the front yard and a Rottweiler snapping on its chain as Dieter's pickup flew by. He twisted the dial on the radio, looking for something to settle on: fire and brimstone, honky tonk, pork belly futures, then fire and brimstone again, venomous preachers railing against those malcontents who still railed against the war in southeast Asia four years after the fall. He had watched it unfold on TV at his dad's house, helicopters hovering over the rooftops of downtown Saigon while Kissinger, in his Washington office, denied blame. Dieter's father, close to tears, gaping at the screen, ashamed of the country his father, in the wake of the horrors of Verdun, had adopted, cherished, loved.

A shallow ditch parallel to the highway and wider spaces between the trees now, aisles of light. Dips and rises in the pavement, dappled shadows, blade of a road severing a patch of forest that Dieter, with his attention to detail, could readily identify: loblolly pine, southern red oak, persimmon.

As he approached the town, low coast fields of red clay gave way to savannas of sandy loam once submerged under ancient estuaries; in the riverbeds, kids still found sharks' teeth polished to an ebony finish by the sea. And now the names of those languid streams flowed through his mind — Carrabelle, Blackwater, Santa Fe — while the road unraveled its long yellow cord. Sparse woods punctuated by splashes of sudden color — flame azalea, St. John's wort — then a scattering of homes. Shotgun shacks but bigger homes too, the men who managed the mill or ran the casino staking their claim in the American dream: three bedrooms with two-and-a-half baths and a pool, with a view.

At dusk he crossed a bridge spanning a horseshoe of gunmetal gray water and discovered the town unchanged since the last time he was there, two decades ago, the year he turned nine. The harbor a tangle of masts and riggings, the town plaza dominated, as it was in Dieter's memory, by a statue of General Lee. When the last of the light flamed against the old brick storefronts, it was not hard to imagine, in fact, what Crooked River must have looked like a hundred and fifty years ago, at the height of the boom. Freight cars topped with Alabama cotton offloaded into the holds of those British schooners that would carry the bales, in the dead of night, across the wine-dark sea.

He parked in front of the Gibson Hotel and stepped into the lobby, struck for the second time since he pulled into town by déjà vu. The same chandelier hanging from the same domed ceiling still in need of a fresh coat of paint. Cracked leather chairs circling a badly stained rug, vaguely Persian. Tiffany lamps. A cuspidor. Behind the front desk, an oak cabinet's two dozen cubbyholes held flat gold keys, room-numbered, and Dieter remembered those too, the stamped keys.

Hearing a customer's footsteps approach the front counter, Mr. Gold, the Gibson's aged, genteel manager, shuffled out of the back room wearing a gabardine jacket and a paisley bow tie, an outfit so old fashioned, a fob watch wouldn't have seemed out of place. He offered Dieter a polite, professional smile.

Good evening, sir. May I help you?

A room, please.

Certainly.

Following a quick, cursory appraisal of the solitary traveler and his apparently much used duffel (a military man? a vagabond?) Mr. Gold opened his ledger, frowning in concentration while he worried a finger down the lined pages, as if the Gibson, which was nearly empty, had few available rooms.

And how long will you be staying with us, Mr. um ... The manager squinted down at the crabbed signature on the rental agreement, unable to decipher the name.

Dieter. It's Dieter.

Ah yes, Mr. Dieter. Sooo ... how long?

Observing the traveler's hesitation, Mr. Gold swept a twitchy hand through the few remaining wisps of his white hair, unable to hide his concern. A nice looking young man, but one never knew these days.

Perhaps you'd like me to hold the room then, with a credit card?

Cash. I'll pay cash.

The manager's head bobbed up and down. Currency was good. Checks could bounce. Credit cards could overwhelm their limits.

Of course.

For a week.

Excuse me?

Cash, Dieter repeated. For a week.

Certainly, sir.

As Mr. Gold watched the Gibson's newest guest ascend the shadowy stairwell, he felt a shiver of apprehension. Because something about young Mr. Dieter bothered him. His indecision? His reticence? The manager couldn't quite put his finger on it, but after forty years in the business a man developed certain instincts, a nose for such things. With a shudder he recalled last month's suicide in room 37. By the time the maid discovered the poor man's body, rigor mortis had set in.

CHAPTER 2

If Maggie Paterson thought the world was going to end the night a phone call from Colt's lawyer woke her at 4:00 a.m., she was mistaken. She had been dreaming about the apocalypse again — fire, famine, flood — when the phone woke her, but no, the world didn't end, it just added a few new twists to its dire story. Like the three-inch gash above Jimmy Santiago's right eye, that Howard Simmons, in his lawyerly baritone, now described. Or the broken beer bottle Colt had used as a weapon. Oh, I almost forgot, Simmons added, Santiago's right arm? Well that's broken too, nearly wrenched right out of its socket.

Maggie rubbed her eyes. While the lawyer droned on about Jimmy Santiago and the latest hyper drama down at the Black Kat Club, she couldn't quite shake the dream — carrying Hunter through the flames, racing toward the safety of the harbor — even though this new nightmare, unlike the other, was all too real. Colt's usually were. Unscarred, her beloved was sleeping it off down at the drunk tank, Simmons reported. There was still, of course, the question of bail, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. And no one knew at this point whether Santiago was going to press charges. Teddy Mink kept a close rein on those boys of his, Simmons said, but this bit of business was pretty damn extreme, even by Colt's questionable standards.

As he filled her in on the rest of the sordid details, Maggie couldn't help but note how pleased the counselor sounded to be telling her all this. She pictured him out on his screened lanai nursing a vodka tonic, gazing across the moonlit harbor. Assault, he sighed, with a deadly weapon, his voice breezy now, as if he were describing...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AMBERJACK PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0997237732
• ISBN 13: 9780997237733
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 232
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland