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  Perhaps that singular failure is why I still hadn’t moved on—in every sense of the word. Guilt is a burden that begins as a grain of sand and ultimately becomes a boulder you push up an endless hill. In any event, the segue from my previous life of adventure and routine bloodshed to that of a rustic detective required an adjustment.

  Lionel had assisted my search for the Walker girl. Our failure hit him hard, although he was the type to conceal such pain. Prior to his role as a farmhand, he served multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance.

  My own difficulties with acclimating to a relatively normal existence paled next to his. Reintegration to civilian life proved a challenge. Lionel said if his existence were dramatized as a cable network Movie of the Week, he’d weep whenever a car backfired and ultimately find salvation in honest country labor and the love of a good woman. He spent his days in the field, bucking hay and mending fences, and his nights down at the Golden Eel, running up a tab. Consorting with a bevy of loose women hadn’t moved him along the path to redemption either.

  He emerged from the barn as I approached.

  “I have a job opportunity for you,” I said.

  Minerva, who’d ridden home shotgun, barked and trotted over to him. Lionel didn’t own a dog. That didn’t fool Minerva.

  “Already got a job.” His hands were skinned from repairing the tractor. Cold-eyed and lean, he’d let his blond crew cut grow shaggy, although he covered it in a dusty safari hat that snapped on the side. He knelt to scratch Minerva’s ears.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I promise this will be even more fun than shoveling shit. Are you and your car available early tomorrow morning?”

  “Chauffeuring you is frequently hazardous.”

  “Understood—this will be no exception. Name your reasonable price.”

  Lionel gambled heavily. Football, basketball, boxing, ponies—you name it. Lucky streaks were the reason he owned a restored 1975 Monte Carlo and an arsenal to rival the collections of gun nuts and militiamen everywhere. More common losing streaks, alongside a ferocious booze addiction, were also the primary source of his perpetual impoverishment. He quite literally could not afford to refuse my offer.

  He said, “My day rate is gas money, two packs of cigs, and a bottle of hundred-proof bourbon.”

  “Sold. I’ll buy you some clothes too. Twill Dickies and a safari hat? For the love of God.”

  “It’s a safari adventure hat. Nobody cares how I dress. I’m merely the wheelman. You’re the face.”

  “A face ideally suited to hand modeling.”

  “Draw to your strengths, brother. Why don’t we get started today?”

  “I want to lay the groundwork, make a few calls. And I’ve got other fish to fry. Phone has rung off the hook lately. People are desperate.”

  “Damsel in distress? Kitten up a tree?”

  “The owner of the Deadfall Gymnasium has a problem that requires a delicate touch.”

  “Makes sense. You’re renowned for your delicacy.”

  * * *

  —

  THE DAY I’D formally established myself as a private detective, I rented an office. It is an immutable law that a bona fide private detective must acquire a bolt-hole to hang his homburg and .38, preferably shepherded by a buxom girl Friday. A beautiful receptionist might get me into more trouble than I could handle, so I opted to keep the overhead low, for the moment.

  I’d chosen a building two blocks north of Main Street in Stone Ridge, a hamlet between New Paltz and Kingston. Stone Ridge used to be a province of Greater Rosendale; rock quarry country a few miles southwest of the Ashokan Spillway. Now it was a bedroom community bordered by farmland.

  A tourist could hit every highlight in a five-minute cruise, end to end, along the main drag: Emmanuel’s, a boutique shopping center in the west; Davenport Farms, a market warehouse for local agriculture in the east; and a string of banks, restaurants, and assorted shops between. You’d pass stands of big trees and historical homes dating to the Colonial era, and frequently glimpse those green mountains to the north. The hamlet charmed me instantly. Rural, yet central to my activities in the Mid-Hudson Valley.

  In a twist of fate, that shady realtor who skipped to Mexico with the Aryan blood money and left me holding the bag? Indeed, he’s the man who originally showed me the property and that’s how we came to have further, less fortunate dealings.

  The Elton Cooper Building, a stone-and-plaster job slapped together in 1938, occupied its own lot. Lynn’s Fortune Shop sat across the quiet lane adjacent to an abandoned garage. The proprietor read palms and peddled occult knickknacks. She smoked ganja on the front porch. Residential houses were scattered farther back amid copses of elm, maple, and old-growth sycamore. A stream curved through the woods to Stone Ridge Pond. Raccoons pillaged trash cans and deer grazed on lawns. That was the neighborhood.

  The ground-level neighbor had recently departed New York City. He ran an art gallery. Second floor was me and a recording studio down the hall. The studio operated about as frequently as I did, which is to say not very. I had not met the owner. The interior aesthetic clinched the deal. From the frosted-glass entrance that read COLERIDGE INVESTIGATIONS to a reception area and rear space for my private office, the atmosphere reeked of film noir.

  A tall, skinny window overlooked Atwood Street. Dingy black leather furniture smelled like it had traveled through time directly from the 1950s. My nook featured a desk, sofa, Diebold safe, and a closet. The safe held my passport, several hundred bucks, and a Colt .45 auto a former client had forked over in lieu of cash. I don’t care for automatics and stashed the piece in there until I decided what to do with it.

  I moseyed in after lunch and dialed a handwritten number on the reverse of an FBI-issued card. Virginia area code. I rested my shoes on the desk and waited.

  “Bellow speaking,” Special Agent Ezra Bellow said. Kids screamed joyfully in the background.

  “There’s an edge to your voice,” I said. “Children underfoot?”

  “These little motherfuckers are everywhere,” he said in the hushed tone of an eyewitness reporting an in-progress murder to 911. “Family barbecue and I’m in charge of the inferno. What can I do for you, Coleridge?”

  We’d first crossed paths (and swords) while I searched for Reba Walker. Bellow and I forged a wary friendship despite the case’s tragic ending. Several years my senior, African American, widower, conservative in dress and philosophy, albeit not a total stick-in-the-mud. A by-the-book G-man willing to read between the lines in the service of justice.

  “I’m looking into a murder most foul,” I said.

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Marion Curtis.” I smiled grimly to envision Curtis’s reaction were he to ever guess an ex-contractor such as myself was on cordial terms with a Fed. The revelation would likely shorten my life expectancy by a minute or two.

  “I see. The victim?”

  “Guy with a toe tag was a rent-a-thug named Harold Lee of Kingston.”

  I heard him pull away from the phone and yell at the kids to stop doing whatever they were doing.

  “Two minutes,” he said to me and hung up. Ninety seconds later, he rang. No human background noises. “Take it from the top.” In character, icy and official.

  “Hold on. Where are you? Where in the house?”

  “The study in a wing-back chair. Staring into a full glass of vodka, because whatever you’ve got on your mind is bound to give me a headache. I actually started hitting the sauce this morning. A miracle I restrained myself this long. The extended family landed three days ago. Brother, sister, a cousin, and their entire brood. My nerves are shot.”

  “Please accept my sympathies. I’m trying to picture the scene. Do you happen to be wearing an apron and a chef’s hat?”

  “Affirmative,” he said after a
long pause.

  “That’s adorable,” I said.

  He exhaled heavily.

  “You say Marion Curtis is bankrolling your investigation. Deluca Family henchman, Lord of the Underworld, Curtis?”

  “That would be him.”

  “Are you in or are you out? Gimme a scorecard.” Bellow had perused the FBI file on my preceding career as a suspected hitter. Didn’t seem to hold it against me much.

  “Out, definitely out. I’m not contracting.”

  “It would not be in your best interest to advertise, even if you were back on the job. In short, what’s a poor Fed to believe?”

  “Relax, I’m a changed man,” I said. “Besides, were it otherwise, I’d lie my ass off to save us both the trouble. But I’m not on the job. Cross my heart. This is an old-fashioned PI case.”

  “Except, your client is a mob captain. Worst of the worst, some folks in D.C. might argue.”

  “Let’s not be judgmental.”

  “I’ll do my best. What favor do you want that I am going to officially refuse?”

  “I’m wondering if Lee’s murder has pinged the Bureau’s radar. It may be connected to a similar killing that took place two years ago.” I consulted my records. “A thief named Ray Anderson. Both gentlemen did piecework for the Deluca Family. Both got the wrong end of a big knife.”

  “Better lay the entire scenario on me.”

  So, I did.

  Bellow didn’t speak for a while after I wrapped the good-parts version of my adventures thus far. Glass clinked and I heard him swallow a presumably copious measure of vodka.

  “Hmm,” he said. “This doesn’t bode well.”

  “Which aspect?”

  “Every aspect. Pros getting shived and/or decapitated is troubling. Curtis’s involvement is troubling. Him involving you is extra-troubling. You don’t need me to say it’s healthier to avoid Chinese court dramas as a lowly peasant.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Haven’t heard news regarding your stiffs. I’ve been far afield this month. Coulda missed the latest office gossip. The M.O. is familiar . . .” More clinking. “I’ll run it up the flagpole. Be a day or two.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good luck with not murdering the children.”

  “Counting the minutes until they apparate back to their lairs. Try to avoid getting pushed into a woodchipper.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  A man who operates in my sphere should always have several irons in the fire. Paying an evening visit to Burt Plantagenet was such an iron.

  Burt P owned the Deadfall, a gym in west Kingston catering to professional boxers and mixed martial artists and those in training for the pros. A rude structure made of brick and sheet metal, the Deadfall had been a neighborhood fixture going on forty years. It squatted two blocks from the Hudson between a Catskills charter company and a pizza shop. Weeds grew in pavement cracks. Street signs were tagged with gang argot.

  Nevertheless, once he pulled the chain on the steel roll-up door, the interior radiated pure George Reeves goodness. A knuckle-dragger’s paradise of heavy bags, striking dummies, boxing rings, and Olympic barbells. Bleach, sweat, and adrenaline. Curled-up-at-the-edges posters of Charles Atlas and Muhammad Ali glared like old gods down upon their supplicants. Classical inspiration for a spanking new hernia or a fat lip.

  Burt P proved true to type of a character in his line. Bluff and jocular. Arms thick as moose haunches. He dressed in a stained shirt with the gym logo and a V-neck that revealed entirely too much dead-white chest hair. He rolled his sweats up to the knee because his calves were simply that enormous. The man possessed a solid-gold reputation among the fighting community. He paid his protection and didn’t hassle the camps if they fell behind on the rent, didn’t get mired in politics or infighting, and prohibited illegal activity on the premises. Patrons knew where they stood.

  We ate a pizza in his office that overlooked the main floor. The walls were patterned with receipts and award certificates and photos of celebrity fighters. I didn’t recognize anybody except for a Puerto Rican welterweight boxer who’d left the game when I was in college.

  Shoptalk ensued. Business remained steady, although he’d widened his advertising and that attracted a certain casual element to the gym. He referred to this element as “asshole yuppies.” I wondered aloud what I could do for him that his protectors, the Deluca Family, couldn’t.

  “Not what they can’t do.” Burt P’s voice rasped from an eon of chain-smoking. “It’s what they won’t. I ain’t in any rackets. Mind my p’s and q’s and Mr. D’s boys lay off my shop. Muscle costs extra. I won’t let myself in for that.”

  “Smart man. Mob will eat you alive.” I took a bite of pizza to illustrate the point.

  “Tryin’ to teach your elders to suck eggs, sonny. You come recommended. Albany says nice things. Dino the Ax’s nephew is who sold me, though.”

  “Charles Bachelor. Swell kid.” Not really.

  Chuck was an ex-con, a hard case I’d put in traction at the request of Marion Curtis. Arcane mob politics. Chuck and I had patched it up since. Granted, he’d limp for the rest of his days, and I heard damp weather gave him pains. His essential nastiness remained intact. Nastiness has its uses. As does gratitude. I could’ve stomped his spine instead of his knee.

  “He trained in here for a while before he went away,” Burt said. “I agreed as a favor to his uncle. Great jaw, decent hands. Might a done somethin’ if he’d stuck with it. You smashed his leg. He won’t say why. Although, I can guess a hundred and one reasons.”

  “Men will disagree.”

  “Chuck usually gets the better of it. Anyway, he vouches for you. Says you throw him some work now that he’s benched.”

  “Seems fair. I snuffed his burgeoning career as a hood and, ostensibly, his shot at the title.”

  “Beats an ice pick in the ear,” he said. “Chuck’s a maniac and no secret. His uncle’s the sole reason he isn’t in a pine box already. The way Jesus stands between mankind and God’s wrath, Dino shields that boy from old gangsters with long knives and short tempers.”

  “Dino the Ax attends Plantagenet family dinners?”

  “I opened my doors in 1977. I know everybody in this town. Dino and me were in the Army together. ’Nam.”

  “Small world. My dad flew jets over there.”

  Mervin, my father, graduated from the Air Force Academy with honors. After he’d spent a few years in the cockpit, the brass assigned him to AFISRA—Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency. Perfect job for a man who relished puzzles and excelled at underhanded bullshit. I didn’t say any of this. It might have ruined the bonding moment Burt and I were sharing.

  “Don’t have much in common with Dino anymore,” Burt said. “We honor our families. Do anything for blood.” He inhaled, steeling himself. “Which brings us to the reason I called you. My granddaughter, Aubrey, is in love. Her boyfriend is true-blue. There’s a problem.”

  “Yes, there’s a problem,” I said. “She’s in love. On a scale of one to ten, how complicated is the situation?”

  He rubbed his jaw.

  “Romeo and Juliet. On a scale of one to ten. Opposite-sides-of-the-tracks affair. A river of bad blood divides our families. There’s a jealous suitor who set her cap on the boy. Gangster wannabe, and she’s backed by a rough element. Naturally, the boyfriend’s daddy prefers the wannabe.”

  “The road to true love never did run smooth.”

  “This road’s got potholes that’d sink a tank. See that bruiser when you came in? Musclehead in tights?”

  The brute had given me the stink eye on my way into the gym. A regular Mr. Beefcake. The type who made sure the entire world saw and heard him.

  “He came around outta the blue a few weeks ago,” Burt P said. “Brought some pals along. They aren’t with any fight camps. T
hen again, quite a few of my customers just come here to lift. Still, I have a sneakin’ suspicion he and his posse are here to keep an eye on me and send a message if I step over the line.”

  “Your granddaughter’s rival has juice.”

  “Dunno about juice. Her family is into shady crap. That’s what I know.”

  “Throw the brute and his crew out on their asses,” I said.

  “The Deadfall is Switzerland. Musclehead and his boys pay their fees and they ain’t done nothin’ except make me nervous.”

  “Kick them to the curb anyway.”

  “Might come to that. I’m biding my time. Got a lot to lose on my end. So, whaddya think? Will you take it on?”

  “Well, Burt, I don’t know.”

  “They’re stalking Aubrey. Crank calls, threats—”

  “Terrible. This might be a job for the cops.”

  “—and one of ’em killed her cat—”

  “Killed her cat?” I straightened in my seat.

  “Uh, yeah. Strangled her and stuffed her in the mailbox.”

  “I see. Tell me your woes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At last, Burt P concluded his tale worthy of a Viking saga.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. “You have a pillowcase stuffed with hundred-dollar bills? Because this will be expensive.”

  “I can get my paws on whatever you want. Long as you can fix my problem.”

  I rubbed my temples. The demons would not be exorcised.

  “Where can I find your granddaughter? Like to chat with the girl, take her measure and whatnot.”

  Burt P proposed dinner at his house. I demurred, citing a previous engagement. I wished to observe Aubrey from afar, perhaps speak with her friends and associates before introducing myself officially.

  He recited the details and I jotted them down.