Red House

Kenneth Wishnia

Description

First she was a beat cop, then she was unemployed. Now, Kenneth Wishnia’s dynamic Filomena Buscarsela has apprenticed herself to a New York City PI firm to put in the three years necessary to get her own PI license, which she needs to earn enough money to support herself and her daughter. Trouble is, she often agrees to take on sticky neighborhood cases pro bono—like the group of squatters restoring an abandoned building in the neighborhood—rather than handle the big-bucks clients her bosses would prefer.

While helping out her more “senior” colleagues with her own superior investigative techniques bred from years on the beat, Fil agrees to look into the disappearance of a young immigrant. Then, witnessing the arrest of a neighbor on marijuana-possession charges that nearly turns into a shoot-out with the police, Fil is roped into finding out what went wrong. Trying to balance charity cases like these with bread-and-butter cases, not to mention single motherhood, Fil is quickly in over her head dodging bullish cops, aggressive businessmen, and corrupt landlords in their working-class Queens neighborhood.

After years of policing and backstreet bloodhounding, Filomena Buscarsela is apprenticing to earn her own private investigator’s license. She pours on her Spanish, her clever tricks, and her battle-tested charms to uncover a labyrinth of deceit, racial prejudice, and impenetrable bureaucracy that not only rocks her neighborhood but also threatens the foundation of the big red house that is this PI’s America.

Sujets

• DRUGS
• Latina
• Police
• Noir
• Immigration

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604869088
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Red House
A Washington Post "Rave" Book of the Year
"Ken Wishnia is a terrific writer. Red House is frank, fresh, funny, and very, very well-written." Barbara D’Amato, author of Other Eyes
"Ken Wishnia is a ventriloquist and a magician. Red House is wry, dry, and seriously funny, a stellar addition to a highly regarded series." John Westermann, author of Exit Wounds
"Ken Wishnia’s detective is smart, funny, offbeat, and angry. This is a book for your inner bitch." Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job series
"Smart dialogue, a realistic and gritty depiction of New York, and the sensitive exploration of environmental, racial, and economic issues make this another great read in an energetic series." Booklist
"An engaging character with [a] wry sense of humor. The jam-packed plot makes for an exciting story." Publishers Weekly
"[Wishnia’s] word play is as sharp as his social conscience, and he has created a wonderfully intelligent and human voice for his protagonist. She can move from angry to funny to obscene in a handful of sentences, then climb back out of the gutter to take on the big boys again without hesitation. If only Buscarsela were real, the world would be a better place." Washington Post
"Wishnia delivers well-developed characters with sharp, realistic dialogue. Red House shines when it depicts the gritty, uncaring urban jungle." South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"Complex, tough and sharp, a witty, attractive and sometimes audacious narrator, she seems at times a bit larger than life. And in her case, that’s fitting." Drood Review of Mystery
"She puts [other] female sleuths way in the shade." The Times (St. Petersburg, FL)

Red House
© 2014 Kenneth Wishnia
This edition © 2014 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-402-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911530
Cover: John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
To my parents who will raise a fuss if I don’t dedicate at least one more book to them
INTRODUCTION
In detective fiction, there’s an accepted set of rules: The dead body on the first page; the single-minded PI who puts everything aside in pursuit of that one case; the clean, simple story arc, the escalating body count; the ending that explains all, leaves nothing hanging, and gives everyone what they deserve.
As a longtime reader and writer of detective novels, I’m fine with the rules. I’ve read many a great book that follows them to the letter and have had no complaints. That said, there’s nothing more impressive to me than a writer who can successfully break them and Ken Wishnia proves himself to be exactly that with the fourth book in his wonderful Filomena Buscarsela series, Red House.
Forget about the dead body on the first page. We don’t see one here until quite a bit further into the novel. But rest assured, there’s lots to occupy us in the pages before. In this gritty, chaotic, and refreshingly real-feeling work of crime fiction, there are guns drawn and drugs consumed. There are sleazy lawyers and racist cops and shifty bootleggers and innumerable sticky and legally ambiguous situations navigated by our plucky heroine "Fil" so that, by the time the stiff makes its appearance, the reader feels a part of Red House ’s world.
A wildly unpredictable world it is, too, with the first-person, present-tense narrative heightening the feeling that at any given time, anything can happen.
Early in the book, Fil finds herself at an affordable housing rally with her twelve-year-old daughter Antonia. It seems business as usual, Fil chatting with her daughter and making sharp observations on the goings-on, as well as introducing a new character (and the rally’s star) Manny Morales, "an iron-pumping, hell-raising housing advocate." The reader is lulled into thinking it’s a scene about Manny and the rally until a man in the crowd the previously mild-mannered Sonny Tesoro apparently angered by frequent police harassment, pulls a gun on the cops. And the tone changes fast.
Urged by Sonny’s wife, Filomena sets out to find the real reason for his violent outburst. That search which leads her through a maze of corruption involving a building occupied by squatters could have easily served as the only plot thread in the book. But actually, it’s part of an elaborate and fascinating tapestry, the Tesoro case one of many tackled by Fil as she apprentices at Davis and Brown Investigations in the hopes of getting her PI license. Blood leads to more blood, corruption begets corruption, and by the time all is revealed, we find several disparate cases held together by a strong yet surprising thread. "So that’s it," Fil says late in the book. "With God’s help, I have survived one more trip through the labyrinth." As have we all.
A detective with a realistically full docket is something rarely seen on the page. But the biggest rule Wishnia breaks may be the character of Fil herself the polar opposite of the classic lone wolf PI. Placing her in a bustling firm loaded with colorful characters and surrounding her with people who need her for one reason or another, Wishnia also gives his heroine a real life with real concerns and responsibilities. Though she can match any iconic detective wisecrack-for-wisecrack, the Ecuadorian immigrant is also multidimensional and flawed. She sweats, she worries, she sometimes blurts out the wrong thing at the wrong time. She has a boyfriend she rarely gets to see and a daughter who is her entire world. In short, Fil feels not so much a classic fictional detective as a friend someone you’d be more likely to spend time with in life than on the written page. In fact, Ken told me that several women have come up to him after reading Red House and said, effectively, "This is my life. How did you know this?" (His answer was, "Because it’s my life, too.")
It’s Fil who makes it possible for Wishnia to break as many rules as he does. She’s a singular character, and that almost makes us expect a singular plot structure … almost. Down to its nontraditional ending (no spoilers!) Red House, like Fil, thrives on the unexpected.
It’s a trip though the labyrinth. I can’t recommend it enough.
Alison Gaylin Woodstock, NY
CHAPTER ONE
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Anonymous Fortune Cookie
SOMETIMES I FEEL like my work is never done. Like the two weeks of madness that started when the elder Mrs. María Muñoz walked into the office one November morning, plunked herself in front of me and said,
"No sabemos de Pablito."
"Excuse me, do you have an appointment?" asks Katwona.
"I’ll handle this," I tell her, and switch into Spanish. "¿Qué estaba diciendo?"
The other trainees look up, because it’s always a sign of something. Trouble, usually, and no money. Somehow, none of the cases with Spanish-speaking clients ever lead to money.
Well, I’m here to change that.
Supposedly.
"Pablito is missing," says Mrs. Muñoz, her earthy roundness supporting an old, gray cardigan.
"For how long?"
"Three days."
I close the file I was reading and open a pale green steno pad to a clean sheet.
"Where’d you last see him?"
"He was working in West Cove, on Long Island? There’s a train station near there "
"I know where it is."
There’s a faint tremor below her blotchy skin as Mrs. Muñoz reacts to the slight harshness in my voice.
I don’t want to go out to LI. It costs too much, and it’s a pain in the ass. And I hate how working for money forces you to be ruthless.
"Sorry," I say. Wednesday of a rough week. Dead-end cases dragging me down into the cold, black heart of next Monday’s performance review.
"But you know that I don’t have the time or the authority to do it for free, and I doubt that you have the money to pay us," I explain in Spanish, as politely as possible. "Did you try calling the police?"
"No police," she says. "He doesn’t have papers."
Of course not. So she’s scared to call the police. Scared the Suffolk County cops will kick his ass instead of asking if he’s getting enough hot meals. Scared the money will dry up and there won’t be enough blankets to get through the long winter gray, endless, and cruel to a family that once embraced the rich girdle of sunny, volcanic soil that carries the Savior’s name. Scared the unforgiving, icy Nordic sky will fall on her head. And that the West Cove cops don’t have the manpower to investigate a simple disappearance without evidence of a crime like, say, a body.
"I’m not my own boss," I say. "I can’t get to it for a couple of days, and I can’t do it for free."
Eventually she accepts. "How much?"
Try seventy-five dollars an hour.
"A hundred dollars a day," I say. "Two days for a hundred and fifty."
"Oh. So much."
"It’s the best I can do."
And the boss’ll skin me for cutting his price by ninety percent.
I get the details, sign the contracts and lead Señora María Muñoz to the door. She grips my arms, con