Cattleya Hoskin, journalist for Gamut Magazine, has come to Pittsburgh determined to get that interview with Lupa Schwartz, the grandson of the great detective her father once worked for as “leg man,” gumshoe, and chronicler. Coerced into investigating the poisoning death of a local Catholic who passed just after receiving the sacrament of last rights from a well-known Catholic priest and euthanasia advocate, Schwartz and Cattleya team up to write the case study that will establish her career once-and-for-al.
Cattleya Hoskin, journalist for Gamut Magazine, has come to Pittsburgh determined to get that interview with Lupa Schwartz, the grandson of the great detective her father once worked for as “leg man,” gumshoe, and chronicler. Now that Schwartz is carrying on the legacy and has built a reputation as a masterful sleuth in his own right, the idea that she should write a piece on him seems organic to her. Schwartz has never shied from the press before, so why is he being such a cold fish toward her? Nothing in Schwartz’s attitude changes when Cattleya arrives unannounced on the famous detective’s doorstep until a case he doesn’t want also arrives unbidden and unwelcome right behind her. Coerced into investigating the poisoning death of a local Catholic who passed just after receiving the sacrament of last rights from a well-known Catholic priest and euthanasia advocate, Schwartz and Cattleya team up to write the case study that will establish her career once-and-for-all.
Excerpt
Entering Pittsburgh, PA at night via the Ft. Pitt Tunnel is an awe inspiring sight. The sudden panorama headlined by a three story fountain shooting straight up into the sky below and to the left; the stadiums hunkering in the distance beyond the mist from the fountain’s spray seemingly huddled against the cool air blowing off of the rivers winging outward as they fork off to the right; then the city; a twinkling ornamented tannenbaum of glass and steel, a clustered architectural aggregation — simultaneously careful and arbitrary in its complex arrangement; like a peculiar structural bouquet of bau haus, deco and neuveau compositions. There’s even a crystal castle. It’s amazing.
At least that is what I’m told. I arrived at 10:30 in the morning on a train. The first thing I saw of Pittsburgh was the inside of a refurbished train station, which I’m also told was once quite impressive. I’d come to force a meeting with a man whom I’d come to consider either the rudest person alive or a clever pretender to the title.
