Soft Money

Kennethneth Wishnia

Description

Even the best cops burn out. 23 Shades of Black’s Filomena Buscarsela returns, having traded in her uniform for the trials of single motherhood. Once a cop, always a cop. She may have left the department, but Filomena’s passion for justice burns as hot as ever. And when the owner of her neighborhood bodega is murdered—just another “ethnic” crime that will probably go unsolved and unavenged—Filomena doesn’t need much prodding from the dead man’s grieving sister to step in. Secretly partnered with a rookie cop, she hits the Washington Heights streets to smoke out the trigger-happy punks who ended an innocent life as callously as if they were blowing out a match.

From the labyrinthine subway tunnels of upper Broadway to the upscale enclaves that house the rich and beautiful, from local barrio hangouts to high-priced seats of power, Filomena follows a trail of dirty secrets and dirtier politics, with some unexpected stops in between. In a town big enough to hold every kind of criminal, crackpot, liar, and thief, from ruthless gangsters to corporate executives drunk on greed and power, she tracks a killer through the city’s danger zones.

Sujets

• DRUGS
• Latina
• Police
• Noir
• Immigration

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604868500
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Soft Money
Named one of the five Best Mysteries of the Year by Library Journal
"Wishnia’s world is like a New York subway train-fast, loud, dirty, and dangerous but it’s well worth the ride with Filomena Buscarsela in the driver’s seat.… A hard-edged story gracefully told." Booklist
"Great fun.… Fil is a hyperbolic character, spewing enough acerbic opinions to fill half a dozen average mysteries.… A spirited sequel." Publishers Weekly
"Sharp and sexy.… Hilarious and exciting…[Wishnia] has a perfect ear for female urban angst." Chicago Tribune
"A distinctive voice from the barrio and an innovative addition to the detective canon.… Great action scenes, characters unlike any you’ve ever met before and some of the finest writing out there.… One hell of a story." New Orleans Times-Picayune
"Filomena’s scorched-earth tactics … are as effective as her wisecracks. And what wisecracks! As his blistering hardcover debut shows so well, Wishnia is the first American writer to propel both his dialogue and his story by harnessing the recent British hard-boiled school’s tidal wave of class rage." Kirkus (starred review)
"Nonstop activity, wry humor, mordant characterizations, and a solid dollop of police procedure make this a hugely appealing follow-up to 23 Shades of Black." Library Journal
"Filomena will stick with you as you turn back and look forward to pages of colorful prose that leave you tingling with the joy of knowing her." Baltimore Sun
"Sizzling … memorable characters, genuine surprises, and fine writing … 23 Shades of Black took the mystery world by storm. Soft Money keeps the winds in full swirl." Book Page
"A superb hard-nosed urban mystery. The story line is crisp … teeming with excitement and danger. Filomena can be as tough as they come while alternately being totally gentle with her infant." I Love a Mystery
"If someone happens to ask you where the really important, groundbreaking new work in the mystery field is being done, point them toward this wonderfully rich novel by [Kenneth] Wishnia. The novel manages to be exciting and funny, as well as convincingly multicultural, proenvironmentalist, and strongly feminist." Dick Adler, reviewer for the Chicago Tribune (on Amazon.com )
"Fast-paced … vivid … gritty … Filomena is as tough as they come." Romantic Times
"The heroine is irresistible.… The book is beautifully written, the characters well rendered, the action convincing and the descriptions have just the right resonance.… This is a mystery I couldn’t put down because I didn’t want to leave the company of a writer I respected and characters I liked. That’s rare in any genre." Suffolk County News
"A gripping nail-biter of a mystery novel written in the terse, barking prose style of Raymond Chandler.… Riveting characters." Brown Alumni Magazine
"This series is shaping up to be one of the most original and intelligent in the mystery genre." FemaleDetective.com

Soft Money
© 2013 Kenneth Wishnia
This edition © 2013 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-680-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012913635
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 on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
For Leah, Jeremy, Steve, and Dave And a big hug for Alison Hess You know who you are
INTRODUCTION
There’s a tradition in mystery novels of both Left and Right sociopolitical underpinnings. A hardcore example of this on the Right is Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, created in the Red Scare of the late forties and fifties by the World War II vet who originally conceived of his cryptofascist private eye as a comic strip Mike Danger. Legend goes Spillane was forced to abandon the strip due to the syndicator wringing its hands about the excessive violence in the story panels. But Hammer in prose would, among other achievements, quell white male postwar disquiet of the other America on the move. This was evidenced for instance by the real life bravery of another World War II vet, Medgar Evers, murdered in his native Mississippi for daring to believe that the justice he fought for abroad should be for all at home.
"God but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out." So says Hammer toward the end of One Lonely Night after he wipes out some filthy commies torturing his Gal Friday, Velda, looking for the plans of the secret weapon. Imagine if that scene were reconceived and it was a black private eye saying something similar after he’d machine-gunned a viper’s nest of Klansmen or White Citizen Council-types giving the works to his woman friend.
Not that Ken Wishnia’s Filomena Buscarsela would ever be so brutal going after a racist polluter or a crooked teabagging politician, though she might have a picture in her mind of doing so. Just a passing notion, you understand. As you’ll see after you read this edition of Soft Money, she, like Evers, is a veteran of sorts, a woman of principle. A tough, hardnosed, bighearted broad who stands up for her friends and more, she reflects on the conditions that affect her and the people she knows.
Buscarsela came along when the mystery field had, thankfully, broadened, reflecting an America in hue and gender beyond the confines of fifties and sixties crime fiction that bolstered a white chauvinist outlook on all things crime solving. It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been people of color characters populating mystery and crime stories before, but too often their roles were relegated to the background or presented as exotic. We didn’t journey much into their heads, get to know them in a dimensional way as we did the protagonist.
To be clear, in this book the second, after Buscarsela’s debut in the Edgar-nominated 23 Shades of Black (not exactly foreshadowing the leather and lace antics of 50 Shades of Grey, though there are some juicy parts in the novel nonetheless) the redoubtable Ecuadorian native is no longer an NYPD officer, but not quite a PI with her ticket just yet either. Indeed, she’s the initially reluctant people’s detective who’s taken a grunt job with a bunch of prissy environmentalists.
But really, a woman like her, a single mother with a sardonic, protect-the-underdog sense in her bones, can’t help but eventually plunge deep into the murder of a humble corner store owner when the victim’s sister asks for her help. Make no mistake, Fil Buscarsela ain’t no Miss Marple, amateur sleuth. Mind you, the old girl could riff off a smartass comment now and then to give her props. She didn’t, though, make these kind of observations: "The train pulls in and I get on, thinking about all the lies they fed me about social mobility this society offers, about how anyone can make it if you work hard and study, if you try. In reality, the system fears innovation and only rewards those who can play along by whitewashing their alternative cultural values."
Those sentiments rang true in the novel’s first incarnation. Now, after the fleecing Wall Street gave Main Street in the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008, and the more recent matters of the LIBOR dust-up and bid-rigging shakedowns by banks too big to fail, Buscarsela’s words have come back to haunt us.
The burden she carries is not simply to bring to justice the one who pulled the trigger or did the deed. They’re just misdirected and miseducated lumpen: if someone or some progressive group had gotten to them earlier, they’d be foot soldiers in the struggle to make the truly guilty pay. For that’s the task Buscarsela’s set herself, and it’s a mutha. Makes Sisyphus look like a sissy, it does.
Go on, Filomena, go on.
Gary Phillips Los Angeles
CHAPTER ONE
"He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent."
Proverbs 28:1
LÁZARO PÉREZ had a woman’s heart.
I mean that. He had a heart transplant three years ago and the organ donor was a woman. He always said it made him the man every woman wants: strong back, soft heart. I needed that heart of his. His store, the only one in the barrio open past 1:00 A.M., was always a haven for me when I had to get out of the apartment or risk becoming a New York Post headline for murdering my indiscriminate fucker of a boyfriend. He also let me run up one hell of a tab when I needed it bad and no one else would give it to me. I don’t think he ever knew how much he meant to me by just being there.
Lázaro was killed on April 28. Two punks held up his corner store for $211 cash and shot him dead. There was no other motive. Just two punks who lost control of the situation. Lázaro was a tough one: He got shot in the hand one time chasing two other punks out of his store and still managed to tackle one of them so hard the guy fingered his partner before the cops even got there.
I told the police detective these particular punks would probably party for a week until the money ran out then go and hit another place, and to watch for the same MO.
"What MO?" he said. "Two greaseballs held up a store and shot the owner. That’s as common as Lincoln-head pennies."
But there’s always an MO. I decided to find it.

I remember that April 28 was unseasonably cold. It rained all day and into the night.