Kindle Edition
Amazon
Three At The Center Of Rage
Amazon
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Martin J.Ryan
Pages: 900
Copyright: October 24, 2012
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Three seemingly ordinary men yanked from the daily humdrum to pursue their destinies in the grit of an amoral world; emerging transformed for good or evil and dealing in extraordinary ways with the forces arrayed against them.
New York Detective, Sergeant Frank Driscoll, is assigned to the murder of a beautiful Russian immigrant. What at first seems a bungled mugging, proves instead to be a botched execution by a hired professional, a man with whom Driscoll engages in a heart-stopping firefight; with Driscoll later discovering that the shooter has unexpected connections.
Finding himself in charge of a case that is far from routine, this pushy, hardnosed cop pursues a risk-laden dot-to-dot linkage up the food chain of the business and political elites, rudely penetrating their polished space to uncover a world of laundered money and sex for government contracts, while posing too great a threat to those who know how to push back—hard.
The "apple pie" life of third generation Pakistani-American law student, Yusuf (Joe) Masood, is suddenly turned upside down when his older brother disappears in Islamabad while attending their uncle's funeral. Declared a suspicious episode in a climate of war and terror, this leads to a relentless FBI interrogation of Joe's parents--for Joe a rage-inducing event. All of which sets in motion his journey into the terror camps of South Asia and the singular event of his life in Lahore’s exotic Anarkali bazaar, leaving in his wake a ticking bomb that Detective Driscoll must defuse.
This ticking entity is Charlie Farrell, a "lost in a crowd" porter at Wall Street's TrustBank-Manhattan. A delusional and emotionally needful outsider who teeters atop a cauldron of hate; ready to be persuaded, to be shoved, to morph from the daily humdrum into today's world of terror---to be confronted by Driscoll.
While Frank Driscoll is the anchor, Joe and Charlie have equal importance. All three are flesh and blood and flawed, especially Charlie, and in the chaos of an unruly world, from radically different starting points, none follow a simple line from A to Z, but rather move outward in different directions, engaging other characters into newer, ever more dangerous, situations.
The title refers to the fact that each character at a given point is staggered and close to being overwhelmed by his rage, and it is only when he moves to the center of it, his rage, embracing it, that he finds his equilibrium. Thus the title: Three At The Center Of Rage.
Excerpt
FRANK DRISCOLL
In his bedroom he takes the last slug from the bottle, removes his clothes and discovers the weapon at his ankle, which he had forgotten. Feeling slightly out of kilter he looks down at it as if it were a malignant growth, and it takes a moment to recover whatever normal brain function he thinks he might be losing. Yawning, he un-straps it and places it on the top of his dresser, then still yawning walks naked to the bathroom.
Most of the tenants have invested in stalls, but for no particular reason he and Anne never got around to doing the same. The shower is in the tub. He reaches and turns the knobs and holds his hand under the spray and waits, then adjusts for more heat. His shoulders hurt. If Anne were here she would massage them with her wonderful fingers. The temp alters to almost perfect. A quarter-inch turn of the knob and ah, yes, that’s it. Goldilocks hot. He climbs into the tub and pulls the blue curtain along the oval ring, closing himself in. Yeah, terrific, as the tension eases, moving his back side to side in a swaying motion under the prickly spray. The hell with Hammer and Barrett, especially Barrett. One of life’s better moments he tells himself as he empties his mind of all the crap in his life, and begins to feel drowsy from the sheer enjoyment of the shower, as well as from the beer, he corrects. An empty minute passes before he picks up his washcloth and soap at the same moment he imagines that a small unidentifiable sound slips into the kind of slowly reducing level of awareness he experiences on his way to sleep in bed. He becomes motionless, puzzling. Angered by this intrusion into his nothing moment he asks himself if he has really heard something? Shit. Stop with the noises, the paranoia, Frank. Allow yourself a little relaxation.
Or should he check? Should he? He sighs aloud with disgust at himself, but unable to control his impulse he turns off the shower. Waking to life beyond the curtain, he remains quite still, focusing, while the surface of the bar of soap in his left hand turns mushy. The limp washcloth held at its corner by his right index and thumb hangs against his outer thigh, cooling. A neighbor’s plumbing rumbles in the wall. His head is down, his eyes staring at the tiles along the tub’s inner rim, seeing without fully registering where it needs caulking. A few beads of water drip from his nose, chin, and the tip of his shriveled penis. He shivers from the combination of cold and the notion of danger, and he holds his breath while his thoughts converge to the keenest arrow of concentration…. But he hears nothing, exhales, says aloud, “Stupid jerk,” and turns on the shower. Ten minutes later, thoroughly relaxed, a dry, naked Frank emerges from the bathroom and freezes one step beyond the door. Something is different. What? The hallway is dark. Didn’t he leave it lit? His gaze drifts the hall’s length to the kitchen, hearing the same remote sounds he had heard the other day, coming in from West End Avenue and Broadway. Had he actually opened that same window? Has stress made him deranged, forgetful?
“Hell no,” he whispers as he realizes the lighting in the living room and bedroom has been altered. The living room light is on, the bedroom light is off. He distinctly recalls the reverse. He is not crazy. Someone has been here; maybe still--in one of the rooms. As if psychically drawn, even before he can turn his head, his attention shifts to the door to his apartment; and when his eyes catch up to what his brain intuits, they see a fine vertical crack of light, indicating to Frank, it is fractionally ajar. Fuck. Now as if revved on Speed he ticks off his options rapid fire: His holstered 9 mm is on the living room floor next to his jacket and a few newspapers, part of the casual heap. His ankle weapon is on his bedroom dresser, and his Dad’s old 38 Special is locked in the drawer of his night table. His mouth goes bone dry as everything he has experienced, everything he knows, tells him he is not alone; and his jaw juts twice, as if punched, while his body chills from the clammy sweat now coating his body. Does he go to the living room or the bedroom? For which pistol? And what if both are gone? Okay, but if he goes for the locked 38, the bedroom is dark. So now what, asshole, yell for help? Move! He is offended by the indignity of his nakedness, considers for an irrational moment reaching back for a towel, then reminds himself that intruders are not polite society and terry doesn’t ward off bullets. So, seconds used up and options duly noted, he finally moves, takes a step toward the lighted living room and halts.
Though the hallway is dark he has spied a black object on the floor along the baseboard, halfway between himself and the kitchen; the thing barely reflecting what little light seeps in from the living room. Glancing around like a thief he hurries forward, stops, looks down, says, “What the hell?” and picks up his Dad’s 38 Special. Riveted by this ordinarily familiar and non-threatening item, his lips part but the words don’t come, as if his brain has turned to stone—a notion shattered in an instant as Frank reacts to the kitchen light flicking on with a man, his grinning face fully lighted, stepping boldly into view and aiming a handgun at Frank, whose every primal impulse combines to propel him into a left-moving semi-crouch, his index pulling the trigger as the barrel completes its swing and levels at the man who side-steps to invisibility before the explosion; and in the scrap of time it would take Frank to compute what has happened, the door to his apartment slams with a frightening report behind his back, causing him to swing with his arm still extended and fire into the closed door. In another moment, as if waking in a nightmare, he finds himself outside his apartment door, still naked, staring for seconds into the eyes of two terrified neighbors before they slam their door with a bang nearly equal to the detonation of his Dad’s 38 Special.
|
