Beyond Blue - Softcover

Camacho, Austin S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940758904 ISBN 13: 9781940758909

Verlag: Intrigue Publishing, LLC, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

This novel is about a privately funded detective agency whose only purpose is to help police officers in trouble. The story follows four of the agency's cases, which overlap and intersect. There is an undercover officer in danger of being drawn into a life of crime, a crooked lawyer who is destroying police careers by making arresting officers appear to have violated criminals’ rights, a cop’s wife who accuses him of abusing their daughter, and a retired police detective who is now in charge of airport security and could lose his job because of a drug smuggling incident. Pursuing these cases is a team of unique and intriguing detectives. The agency's director, the enigmatic Paul Gorman, sits at the center of the action, pulling the strings and directing the team and to solve each troubling case.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Austin S. Camacho is the author of seven novels about Washington DC-based private eye Hannibal Jones, five in the Stark and O'Brien international adventure-thriller series, and the detective novel, Beyond Blue. His short stories have been featured in several anthologies including Dying in a Winter Wonderland - an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Top Ten Bestseller for 2008. He is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey. Camacho is also editorial director for Intrigue Publishing, a Maryland small press.

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Beyond Blue

By Austin S. Camacho

Intrigue Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2014 Austin S. Camacho
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-940758-90-9

CHAPTER 1

On a morning in late September, even before daybreak, much of the city that never sleeps was up and about its business. Prehistoric garbage trucks vied with darting taxicabs for space on Manhattan's wire-narrow side streets. Pretzel and chestnut vendors were already setting up their umbrella-topped pushcarts on the busiest corners. Beneath them, subways hummed through dark tunnels, delivering grumpy early-shift workers to their jobs.

At the southern end of narrow Manhattan Island, down on Fulton Street, the seafood vendors had their ice-covered stands set up even before the darkness gave way. The first rays of the sun glinted rainbow-sparkling off the scales of fresh fish. Chefs and cooks from all over the city picked their way between the stands, selecting the cheapest fish that could fill the space on their menus reserved for the always overpriced "catch of the day."

The whole fish market scene was so busy and chaotic that Lorenzo Lucania had to park the car two blocks away. He wore a black leather coat and gloves against the morning chill. The two larger men who had accompanied him blew into their hands, but Lorenzo hardly noticed the cold. He ignored the buzz of haggling chatter around him, and tried not to notice the slimy puddles that his wingtips occasionally slopped through.

So abruptly did Lorenzo turn between two of the huge fish display tables that the men following him stumbled into each other. Lorenzo fixed his obsidian eyes on a graying man in apron and plastic gloves who stood behind the piles of fresh fish. Without a word, Lorenzo stood at the display table until the merchant snapped, "You come to buy or to look?"

"I've come about your last payment," Lorenzo said softly. "I think it'll be better for business if we take this into the office."

The merchant's hand crept toward a wooden-handled flat cleaver. He shook his head. "Not much point in talking," he said. "What I gave the boy is what I had. That's all you get."

Lorenzo could see his breath and smell his fear. Around him, he sensed the other fish peddlers edging away from them, exercising the native New Yorkers' eternal right not to get involved. He swung out quickly, slapping the merchant hard and grabbing his wrist to shake the cleaver from his hand. Then he pulled the man forward and thrust him toward the little shed that served as his office.

Over his shoulder, Lorenzo called to the two other men. "Stay out here. Make sure nobody steals any fish. We may own them soon."

Inside the shed, he pushed the merchant into the folding metal chair alongside the card table that doubled as a desk.

"Look, Pop, you know it don't work that way. You want to do business here, you pay your fair share. You don't, things happen. Now, which finger do you use the least?"

"No," the man cried. "No." He shrank away in his chair.

"Hey, we were told to bring back a finger. Now maybe I can squeeze you out one more day. But that's all. You have the rest of the money tomorrow or you be damned sure you know which finger you want to donate to charity. Because if you don't pick, those two guys outside will pick, and they can't even count. Two to them is the same as one." He leaned forward until his face was very close to the fish peddler's. "Do yourself a favor and have the dough tomorrow, huh?"

Lorenzo stepped outside the shack, pulling the door closed behind him.

He looked at the other two men. "He'll have the money tomorrow."

"I wanted to get some fingers," one of them said.

"Better to keep him working so he can come up with the cash," Lorenzo said.

"Ahhhh, crap," the other man said. "We never have no fun." He slammed the cleaver into the wooden butcher's block where it seemed to shudder for a moment.

Lorenzo shrugged and started back toward the street. He focused on the people around him, going about their daily business, not wanting to think about the man in the little shack who also was just trying to make a living. A bus pulled up at the far corner and he thought about the working stiffs boarding it, wishing briefly that he was one of them, riding up FDR Drive, maybe to a fancy office uptown on Park Avenue.

But that was never going to happen.

There weren't any Park Avenue offices for people like him.

Undercover cops lived in the street and died in the street. And sometimes, he didn't know which possibility he hated more.

In one of those offices uptown on Park Avenue, Irving Jerome turned his chair just a bit so that the first light of day shone on his notes for this morning's court case. He nibbled at his bagel and sipped his designer coffee, supremely confident that by noon, two p.m. at the outside, his client would walk. With his Johnny Deppish good looks, Jerome knew he could sweet-talk almost any jury if he had to, but today he knew that charm would not be needed because the prosecution's case was fatally flawed. The arresting officer had done all the right things, but he had done them all the wrong way and the only thing Jerome had to do was to point out the mistakes.

The officer said he had read Jerome's client his Miranda rights, but neglected to have a witness present. He had turned in all the drugs found on the felon, but had not had his client verify the exact amounts. He had used no excessive force, but had failed to prevent Jerome's client from cutting himself over his eye while thrashing around in the back of the police car.

It was almost a given that the judge would direct an acquittal and the case would be over by noon. And if, by some wild chance, that did not happen, Jerome had another ace in the hole that would guarantee his client's freedom. But he didn't want to use it. He much preferred to tear police apart on the witness stand. For one thing, it was good for business. The other, simpler, more important reason was that he hated the police. He always had, ever since the time years before when his father was arrested on a minor assault charge and then, while awaiting arraignment, was killed in jail by a drug-crazed prisoner.

Jerome sat back, staring out his expansive window, past the small balcony, at his panoramic view of the city. His eyes wandered to the Grand Hyatt hotel down by Grand Central Station. He would meet a certain young lady later that day in one of those rooms to collect one of the perks of working for the men who ran the city from underneath. He would enjoy the woman nearly as much as he would enjoy destroying that cop in court in a couple of hours.

"Francine, I've heard it all before. Just tell me what you want," Patrolman Alex Brooks said. He finished strapping on his uniform holster. Through the smoked glass panel in the front door, he could see his partner waiting for him on the front porch.

"What I want?" Francine screeched. Her plasticized blond hair flipped around her shoulders as her head snapped forward and back. "I want something more than this dismal crap." When she stopped shaking her head, not one single hair had changed its relative position.

"Francine, I already work as much overtime as they let me," Alex said, his voice the soft mumble of a man who had heard it all before, said it all before, and knew it would not be listened to this time either. "You're the one who wanted this house."

"I wanted to get out of Bensonhurst. That didn't mean we had to move to this dump. And you're not the only one who works. I have to work too, you know. And meanwhile, poor Amy is always here all alone." She waggled an index...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intrigue Publishing, LLC
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1940758904
• ISBN 13: 9781940758909
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 284
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland