And Come Day's End

Gabriel F.W. Koch

Description

Lenny Oliver's secrets ended his life-lies he dressed up in detailed and occasionally elaborate finery. But only the secret holder is fooled in the long run, as Lenny discovered in a dark alley in the Wall Street neighborhood. Michael McKaybees is a private investigator working in New York's five boroughs. He specializes in money crimes like insurance fraud, with the occasional cheating spouse (his partner's favorite since she thinks all cheaters should be flogged in public). Now, however, he has been forced to expand his investigative work to include homicide. Implicated in his best friend Lenny's death, Michael finds himself entangled in a web carefully woven by someone who wants to destroy him-and there's no doubt he's up to his neck in shit. Then there's his father, Marlowe Black, who has decided now is the right time to show up after an absence of more than three decades. Hell, Michael didn't even know he was still alive. Marlowe's reputation as a combat-hardened PI is well-known among the City's criminal element, making him a hated man. And he, too, is a suspect in Lenny's murder. When McKaybees discovers the body of Lenny's wife, Jill-Michael's childhood sweetheart-hidden in his apartment, murder becomes seriously personal and the need for vengeance demanding.

Sujets

• Hard-Boiled
• Detective
• Mystery
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977205582
• Langue: English

Extrait

And Come Day’s End
A Michael MacKaybees Mystery
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2018 Gabriel F.W. Koch
v1.0

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.


Outskirts Press, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-1-9772-0558-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909562

Cover Photo © 2018 www.gettyimages.com. All rights reserved - used with permission.

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Prologue
1:45 a.m. Financial District, New York City
“I t’ll work out if you stay calm and don’t let him know what you’ve got. This is only a first meeting, so relax, dude,” Lenny Oliver muttered nervously as he turned into an alley in lower Manhattan.
His lights slashed a battered green dumpster. Three cats jumped from inside, balanced on its rim, and then waited for him to leave.
At first glance, he saw their eyes, and then their tiger stripe markings. The cats continued staring like Giza goddesses.
Oliver switched off the lights and blinked against the afterimage.
Shit, they’re bolder than rats , he thought with a nervous chuckle, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the edge of his sleeve. He pressed the window button, which let in odors of trash from the small seafood restaurant in the building to his right.
“Damn stupid location for a clandestine meeting,” he muttered as his bravado buckled when he heard the crunch of footsteps. His heart jumped in his chest, swelled in his throat when the door latch behind him clicked.
The rear dome light flooded the car, but Oliver didn’t turn to look back. As a condition for the meeting, his visitor had insisted he didn’t want a face-to-face.
He listened to the seat give under the man’s weight, smelled musk aftershave. A scent of cognac carried the accented words “Good evening, Mister Oliver. I appreciate your promptness.”
He fought what he felt was an irrational urge to open the door and run like hell down the alley as bile scorched the back of his tongue. Unable to stop himself, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a round, sallow face with black-shadowed blue eyes under dark blond eyebrows. The man’s shoulders seemed extraordinarily wide, his face gripped with a lack of compassion as if he never considered the need to pause and consider the consequences of his decisions.
Rovich, the man’s boss, demanded complete anonymity before agreeing to meet. His orders stated, “Do not request a name, and don’t talk unless asked a question.”
Oliver nodded, placed both hands on the top of the steering wheel, and noticed they shook. He squeezed the wheel, which whitened his knuckles.
The cats started fighting, howling, and banging in the dumpster as if a pit bull had suddenly joined their gathering.
“You know why we asked to meet with you.”
You asked? Oliver thought, and then wondered, Did you mean that as a question? He decided it was a question, found his voice refused to work, and then nodded several times.
“Good. Where are the flash drives and the papers?”
“I don’t have them with me.” Oliver cleared his throat hard.
“You were told to bring them, Mr. Oliver.” The voice was flat and too quiet.
Oliver spoke too rapidly. “I…we…need to make a deal first. They’re extremely well hidden where you’ll never find them if something happens to me.” He turned his head, stopped when he heard the movement of cloth, as if his visitor had reached under his jacket, and his voice cracked on the plea, “We can make a deal. Both of us can get what we need.”
“Don’t be stupid, Mister Oliver. There is no deal to be made.”
The pressure on the base of his skull came quick, cold, and completely unexpected. Oliver knew, without attempting to see, that he felt the barrel of a handgun. He knew he’d never smell the acrid stench of burned cordite should the trigger be pulled.
Then he thought of his wife. And as if the man could read those thoughts, Oliver heard, “Did you leave them with your wife? I certainly hope you did. For several nights, I’ve watched her in your home. She leaves the bedroom blinds open. I’ll very much enjoy interrogating Mrs. Oliver after completing my task here with you, unless you want to tell me where I can find what I came here for.”
“I can’t… Please don’t hurt her. She doesn’t know anything about this.” His voice jammed against the back of his tongue. Oliver forced sound out in a hissed appeal. “Please, sir.”
“I suspect you’re not being truthful, Mr. Oliver. However, I’ll learn the truth at the appropriate time from your lovely wife.”
It’s too late, Oliver understood with sphincter-releasing clarity, felt hot urine pool between his thighs as an icy cleat of terror ripped up the length of his spine and twisted like a razor-sharp scythe into his chest.
The back door closed and the overhead light extinguished.
Oliver opened his mouth to release the scream wedged in his chest. His final plea, “You know I’d never tell anyone,” failed to temper the cool anger pulsing from the man behind him.
He inhaled deeply, eyes filming with tears, pictured his wife, and thought, Sorry, Jill, I love you, I’m so sorry I got you into this mess!
He heard her laughter, as if for the first time; desperately grasped the wheel to turn and fight, heard a loud metallic clack, felt his head slammed against the steering wheel, and died before he finished the desperate inhalation he drew to finally tell his visitor what he wanted to know.

The gunman stuck the small handgun in his pocket after firing two additional shots into Oliver’s skull. He leaned into the front of the car. His gloved hands searched the corpse, and stopped when his fingers clasped an iPhone. He sat back and slowly scrolled through files until he located the address in New Jersey he’d heard Oliver recite to his wife when he’d said, “Stay at Michael’s apartment in Hoboken tonight,” before Oliver left their house in Queens an hour earlier.
He shut off the phone and slipped it into his jacket, arranged a few items in and around the car after squeezing Oliver’s dead fingers on them to leave prints. Then he walked casually from the alley, pulled off the surgical gloves he wore, blended with foot traffic, and stepped into the neon promise of a tomorrow Leonard Oliver once assured himself would be his to enjoy forever.

2:03 a.m. Lower Eastside of Manhattan
The grinding noise from a truck’s engine on the off-ramp from the Williamsburg Bridge distracted undercover detective Isaac Robinson. The sound drew his attention from the distant support column holding up the roadway to the right of where he stood, across the FDR Drive.
For the last two weeks, Robinson had done surveillance on a stockbroker and his wife, who, he suspected, had strong ties to a powerful Ukrainian gang based in Brooklyn. A phone tip from a snitch alerted him to the availability of new information regarding the stockbroker’s activities.
He wasn’t surprised when his snitch told him to meet her alone at 2 a.m. After all , he’d thought, what informer in her right mind wants her identity as a snitch on the streets in this town?
He’d parked his car a block south of Delancey as she’d recommended. Before leaving the unmarked, Robinson contacted his superior, Lieutenant Dokker, and told her he’d left his post in Queens to meet an informant.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. Dokker had sounded highly pissed off.
“Listen, Lieutenant…my snitch is a hundred percent. I’ll meet her and then I’ll get back to my post. Nothing’s happening out this way anyhow.”
“I don’t like the feel of this.” He could hear the frown in her voice. “Give me the location, Sergeant. I’ll meet you there.”
He had wanted to advise her, This woman’s gonna bolt if she hears you approach . At the last second, he relented, not because Dokker had ordered him to, but more because of an unprecedented gut feeling suddenly banging through his torso like a fire alarm.
Robinson leaned his back against the car door, closed it quietly, and walked to meet his snitch. When he discovered he was alone, he felt icy trepidation flush through his gut. He hesitated at the sight of a short, narrow-shouldered man stepping from the fence around the base of the nearest bridge support. The stranger stood wrapped in a nightmare of moving shadows.
Robinson thought he saw a pair of homeless men closing in on a trash barrel alongside the road where he’d parked.
Ignoring them, he shook off the distraction of the truck roaring overhead and the worm of panic burrowing in his chest.
“Where’s Cassie? She’s supposed to be here.” He lifted his service revolver from the holster clipped to his belt.
The stranger, a boy who Robinson thought could not be older than sixteen, walked over to him. Robinson turned his head and leaned, thinking the boy might be afraid that he’d be overheard.
A thin whisper of steel slicing across steel filled his mind as an odd whistle shivered the air. He felt a hot liquid spray his face and run down his neck.
Robinson’s hands flew up, fingers fumbling to pinch off the severed arteries. His