Tempted by Trouble (36 page)

I drove back to Detroit. I drove back home and missed Cora every mile of the way.

The FBI had told me what I already knew. Today I missed Cora more than I could bear.

It came in waves. I didn’t miss her every day. Some days I resented her. Most days it was the opposite. Today, after I had visited my parents’ gravesite, the wave of love had been like a tsunami.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had visions of Cora, the way she had been when she first ran to me in the falling snow and asked me my name, a beautiful autoworker who was dressed in blue Dickies and steel-toed boots, the Brooklyn-born woman I had cooked for and had taken on dates, the woman I had asked to marry me, the woman I had carried across the threshold as she wore her beautiful wedding dress, the woman I had promised to love and honor and cherish and respect until death did us part. That woman was gone, gone forever, but I knew how to make her return to me, if only for a few hours.

As a breeze kicked up and the moment sighed across the barren trees, as I heard my neighbor’s kids laughing and passing my home riding their skateboards in the cold, I looked at my wedding ring.

Heat rose and warmed my throat.

I wept.

Then I whispered, “Tomorrow. I’ll take it off tomorrow.”

I opened the medicine cabinet and removed the bottle of prescription medicine I had been given by a heartbroken and terrified woman named Abbey Rose. A moment passed before I shook the bottle. There was only one pill left. The medication had helped me through pains and helped me cope with a mountain of guilt, a weight that only a man as strong and powerful as Atlas could carry. I had been Atlas for a long time.

I popped the final pill and washed it down with tap water, and then I thought about Abbey Rose Brandstätter-Hess.

One day I might send her a note on Facebook. Or maybe I’ll just remember that day in L.A. That would be best. Just remembering that horrible day, as I knew she would, would be best. I was her bogeyman. The man who wore the wingtips and the fedora would always be her bogeyman. Just as it was a day best remembered, it was also a day best forgotten.

The pill took effect and a gentle haze covered my world. This would be the last pill before truth. This would be the last pill before denial subsided and reality took root.

When I stepped out of the bathroom and walked into the living room, I gazed toward the kitchen and Cora was standing there. Her skin glowed and my wife was beautiful and ethereal. She lifted her blue dress and offered me a glimpse of her legs up to her thighs, teased me, winked at me, and then she smiled. This time her hair was longer. Much longer. She tousled her mane and laughed. Her hair was dark brown with golden highlights. It was the way I liked it the most.

She asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Her soft, youthful features, round and doelike eyes, making her appear childlike and seductive all at once.

She was my wife. I was her husband.

Cora turned around and walked back into the kitchen and continued washing dishes.

I went into the kitchen and helped her, shared love as we partook of the division of labor.

She asked, “What did those men want?”

“Nothing. They were looking for somebody who used to live here.”

My wife turned and kissed me. As we kissed, my home lit up with the glow of love.

I held her face and asked her, “What do you want to do now?”

She smiled. “We struggle and we overcome and we make this one of the greatest stories of survival and love that . . . we make it a great love story . . . that’s what we do.”

Hey, everyone!
¡Señoritas y señores! ¡Hola a todos!
It’s me again.
¡He regresado!

© Mrs. C. Young Photography, NYC

Years ago I had wanted to do a road story—well, sort of. I’ve always wanted to have a story that moved from one city to another and used as much of the terrain in the USA as possible. I never got around to writing that book, and if the creek doesn’t rise, I will. This novel isn’t that novel, but it has brought back that desire. While working on
Tempted by Trouble,
the novel you’re holding in your hands (or listening to on tape or CD and enjoying the voice of the narrator, Dion Graham), I did drive back and forth across the Land of the Free, starting in L.A. and ending up at the Home of the Braves. That was a long ride and I made that trip three times. I didn’t use the trip the way I had desired because the characters needed to get to their destinations, but it was worth the experience—I guess from an actor’s POV—to understand what the trip was like and be able to write it correctly. I’ve done the same thing for all of the books, whether they were set in Pomona, California, or Argentina. I have to make that trip and walk that walk. In this case, I had to drive that drive. Damn gas prices. Anyway. I will tell you this: Once you get out of the concrete jungle called L.A., the topography is beautiful and for about two thousand miles—I kid you not—there are more Dairy Queens than there are stars in the sky. On that long stretch of I-10, there were almost as many DQs as there were those bright yellow billboards with the blue writing, the ones that announced that the Mystery of the Desert was at exit 322. Yup. As I passed through the Texas Canyon, I stopped there too. I have my beer mug and a cowboy hat to prove it. As I have done with all of my fictional novels, whether the setting is a small town called Odenville or in the West Indies on the island of Antigua or in London in the shadows of Parliament, I broke out the charge card and slapped down the passport, packed a carry-on bag, took an electric toothbrush, and visited all of the locations in the name of research.

For a tourist, some places are more exciting than others. But to a writer, they are all worth the trip. There are no dull places. Even a ride down Highway 11 in Trussville, Alabama, can spark my imagination.

Now, a few words about the novel you’re holding. (I won’t give away any plot points.)

I love stories and films that are noir, stories that are gripping journeys through secrets, lies, and, of course, murder. If there is a gun in act one, by act three there had better be some blood on the dance floor. The characters in
Tempted by Trouble
are, at times, disturbing, and for the duration of the novel, regardless of where they came from, they are all connected. From the onset I had viewed Dmytryk as a dark and broken man who was born thirty years too late. He was made for the era when movies were still being shown in black and white. That thought might be embedded in the dialogue of the novel. Crossing paths with Eddie Coyle and falling into a dubious occupation as a means of survival, for me, creates hair-raising tension as well as subtle complexities. Then toss in some real-world problems and . . . bam.

Before I ramble on too long, or before Gideon or Hawks or the Man in the White Shoes comes knocking at my mental door, let me hurry and get to the most important part of the acknowledgments, the part where I name and thank all of the usual suspects. They are indeed my partners in crime.

Book ’em, Danno.

I want to thank Tiffany Pace for her initial edits. Thanks for the assistance. The check is in the mail. LOL. Has it been twelve years? I hope the next twelve go by as smoothly.

Of course, with all of the traveling I do, I have to thank the people who have kept my life in order for the last decade, Karl and Tammy at the Planer Group in Los Angeles. Thanks for everything.

Quiana London and LaToya Lemon in Detroit, thanks for driving me around Motown when I was up for the event at the public library. I’d already started the book, but I hadn’t decided where Dmytryk was going to rest his fedora. Being in Detroit a few days, watching CNN, chatting with people in crisis, walking around the Ren Center, riding the DPM, it all helped in the creation of this fictional tale.

Natalie Godwin, thanks for taking a few moments out of your busy schedule and showing me other parts of Detroit. The same thanks and appreciation goes out to you. Thanks a zillion.

On the storytelling front, Sybilla Nash, thanks for the feedback and input. Tell Kortney “Yo!” and that I look forward to seeing her in more Hollywood blockbusters.

Mo in Germany and Kayode in the UK, once again a thousand thanks to my intellectual crew. LOL. You guys read parts, if not all, of this, from the first word. You saw characters added and deleted, and you survived the confusion that came from reading a new chapter where names had been changed midstream. Apologies and no worries. Names still might change before this hits the press. I hope you enjoy the gifts that I sent you. LOL. If Dmytryk Knight can wear a pocket watch, dagnabbit, you can too.

I think the difficult thing for me, creatively, was that after writing two Gideon books back-to-back, it was hard to get out of that hit-man frame of mind and not create another character that would fit perfectly into that world. Dmytryk had to have his own personality. His own sensibilities. His own history and motivation. Giving a new character his own voice is the fun part and the hard part. This character reminds me more of someone that character actor William H. Macy would play. At times, he brought to mind Billy Bob Thornton in
The Man Who Wasn’t There.
Or Bill Paxton in
A Simple Plan.
(Loved that novel too. It’s another that I could read again.)
Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Inner Sanctum,
the rich and dark mood from a few novels and more than a dozen noir movies comes to mind as well. Okay, I’m going on a tangent. Mork calling Eric, come in, Eric. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Out of that long list of works in that dark genre, the one that will always stand out is
Chinatown.
There was no fantasy ending and I applaud its depth and grittiness. It had a shocking yet logical ending that showed that money and power rule the real world. That powerful conclusion of
Chinatown
shook up both Hollywood and storytellers alike. Good guys do lose. Bad guys do win. The latter fly to Washington in private jets while the former struggle to get enough change to buy a bus pass to ride MARTA.

And, on a side note, as the world of graphic novels pops inside my brain, maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m drawn to Ed Brubaker’s work in that wonderful arena, especially
Coward
and the Criminal and Incognito series. His work is gritty and he does not hold back. So far as my works, I’d already written
Thieves’ Paradise
and
Drive Me Crazy
before I discovered the work of Eisner Award-winning American cartoonist Ed Brubaker. A few of my characters—maybe Driver, Gideon, Dmytryk Knight, and the crew from
Thieves’ Paradise
—I hope that they all end up in the graphic novel medium at some point.

 

Anyway. It’s getting late, so I’d better get to the part where I thank a few more people.

Lolita Files, thanks for the notes early on. You are, as the Brits say, brilliant.

John Paine, once again, thanks for looking at this book as I was working on the project.