Murphy The Stolen Coast

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-83501-021-1
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Adrift in a sleepy coastal Massachusetts town, a man who ferries fugitives by day gets twisted up in a plot to pilfer diamonds in a heist novel that infuses Elmore Leonard and Casablanca. Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving around people on the run from powerful enemies. Except for the occasional fumble, the family business-co-managed with his father, a retired spy-is smooth sailing, filling up Onset's holiday homes during the town's long, drowsy off-season. But when Elena, Jack's enigmatic former flame-and former client-fugitive-makes an unexpected return to town, wealthy fiancé in tow, her arrival upends Jack's routine existence. Elena, after all, doesn't go anywhere without a scheme in mind, and it isn't long before Jack finds himself enmeshed in her latest hustle: intercepting millions of dollars' worth of raw diamonds before they're shipped overseas. With sharp wit and stylish prose, CrimeReads editor in chief Dwyer Murphy serves up an irresistible page-turner as full of heart as it is of drama.

Dwyer Murphy is the editor-in-chief of Crime Reads, Literary Hub's crime fiction vertical and the world's most popular destination for thriller readers. He practised law at Debevoise and Plimpton in New York City, where he was a litigator, and served as editor of the Columbia Law Review. He was previously an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Centre for Fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Murphy, Dwyer

Leseproben

1

Tommy Carvalho was featherweight champion in the Police Athletic League when he was fifteen years old. That might not sound like much of a title to you or me, but for Tommy it was a point of pride. He married young, straight out of high school, and developed an addiction to Vicodin that he managed to kick, possibly by reminding himself that for a span of time in his golden youth there wasn’t another boy on the South Coast of Massachusetts who could knock him down. The marriage ended after a year. He still saw his ex-wife regularly and liked to cook her dinner once or twice a week, without asking questions about how she spent the rest of her time or affections. We had never been very close growing up, but Tommy was part of my Thursday evening pickup basketball game. Most of the year we played at the Y, but in summer we went to the beach. It was five a side, full court, and Tommy was an able if slightly undersized wing who liked to run. He had a carelessness about him on the court that I always admired. Whenever I pulled a rebound, I looked for him streaking down the sidelines.

In the time since he cleaned up, Tommy had taken over as the head of Parks and Recreation. He was the one who had suggested laying the new blacktop on the public beach courts several years before, and whenever we wanted to play late, he carried a master key to turn on the lights. We would all throw in a dollar or two afterward, toward the electricity bill. It seemed to me he had settled into a nice, tranquil life, all things considered, and it surprised me that summer when he brought up the possibility of escape. At first, I took it for a joke, but after he kept finding ways of steering the conversation back in that direction, I decided there was probably more to it.

‘You should take a vacation,’ I suggested. ‘Go somewhere warm. Have a cocktail.’

‘I don’t want a vacation,’ he said. ‘We’ve got beaches right here.’

‘Then go somewhere cold. Fly to Iceland. It’s light out all night.’

‘I’m not some goddamn tourist,’ he said.

That was the problem. When you got right down to it, Tommy had a lot of pride.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Tell me where you want to go.’

‘Somewhere they won’t find me.’

‘Who’s they?’

The question only made him upset. In addition to the pride, Tommy had a temper. We were sitting at a table outside Alphonse’s café, across the street from the playground. The court lights were still on, and they cast a strange, sidelong glow over Tommy’s gaunt features.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Unless you’ve got a reason, there’s no point in dwelling on it. It’s not something you do for recreation. You’ve got to have a plan and a hell of a motivation.’

‘I’ve got one,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t understand, but I’ve got a motivation all right.’

‘What is it?’

He leaned in close and lowered his voice. Before, he’d been bellowing.

‘Ever wake up in the morning and you don’t recognize yourself?’

‘Sure. Everyone does.’

‘Maybe, I don’t know about everyone. I know what I see: a fucking stranger.’

‘You think you won’t see a stranger if you wake up in France?’

‘Who said anything about France, for Chrissake?’

It was true, nobody had. I pulled another beer out of the bucket, and we talked for a while about the game. Talking about pickup was never simple. Our weekly crew had twelve, but we usually brought out three or four irregulars. The losers would have to regroup and shoot for the right to play again, with an informal agreement that a man shouldn’t be left out more than a game at a time. The teams therefore disassembled and re-formed with new pieces and styles, and it was difficult to speak of a single game in any meaningful way, unless there had been a winning streak. Instead, you had to talk about feel and flow and other vague notions that brushed up against the spiritual. That night Tommy and I had played together twice. We lost one and came back to win the other. It was early in the summer and the ball rolled off your fingers differently outside.

‘I just want to know how it could be done,’ Tommy said later.

I was looking for a waiter to pay.

‘I think I’d feel better if I knew,’ he said. ‘Like a mantra.’

‘I thought your stint was in Old Colony.’

‘It was. So what?’

‘They don’t have mantras in Old Colony. That’s a stone-cold outfit.’

‘The hell they don’t. You were never there, were you? That’s one place I’ve been.’

He stuck his hand into the ice melt at the bottom of the bucket where the beer had been.

Old Colony was the prison where he once served two months on a criminal responsibility evaluation.

His mood had darkened over the course of the night. It was mean of me to tease him.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you really want to know, come by the office. We’ll talk.’

That perked him up and got his fist out of the water. ‘You mean that?’ he asked.

‘Sure, anytime. Come by tomorrow.’

‘I can’t tomorrow.’

‘Sunday, then.’

He shook his head. ‘Sunday, I’m cooking for Mila.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Tommy, come when you can. Whenever you’re motivated.’

Before I had a chance to pay the check a fight broke out on the street beside the café. Somebody had said something to one of the waiters. Alphonse always kept a lot of tough waiters on staff. Most of them were his nephews, and they would come from around New England for a few months to...