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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Hard,
Hard City by Jim Fusilli |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Solid Jim Fusilli reprises private eye, Terry
Orr, in his new novel, Hard,
Hard City. The city may be a hard place, but Orr is a solid,
soft-hearted, professional who endangers his own life as he tries to help a
wayward teen. Orr never leaves character, and Fusilli deepens the scope of
Orr’s personality in this fourth novel. Here’s
an excerpt from the end of Chapter 3, pp. 57-65: I drove slowly
alongside the craggy retaining wall, and I rolled down the window to take in
the briny scent and to see if the ocean mist could reach me over the high
rocky divide. Above me, seagulls bobbed and struggled in the blustery winds. The sun had fallen
behind gray clouds, adding to the ghostly ambiance of the gleaming oceanfront
lane, serenely quiet in the off-season. For a moment, I felt as if I’d
puttered onto an empty I made a right at Sea
Bright, as randmcnally.com told me, and I found Silver Haven, and I moved
along, soon passing a stretch of American flags, flapping violently in the
wind, on the tapered islands that separated the east- and westbound lanes of
the immaculate boulevard. On either side, prominent single-family homes,
superbly maintained, tastefully appointed— Victorians, narrow ranches, brick
Colonials, bold contemporaries in lavender and rose—all somehow managed to
complement one another, creating a neighborly ambiance, one of quiet,
restrained affluence. Pure-white snow coated spacious lawns, and a yellow
sign at the road’s side warned of deer. It certainly was unlike
any My mother, In Silver Haven, the only sound I heard
was the putt-putt of my rental car. At the junior high, where runners in
purple hooded sweatshirts and matching sweatpants obediently did laps around
a manicured football field, as many as 100 bicycles stood in two long,
colorful rows. Not one wore a security chain. Two municipal workers were taking down
a damaged tree limb, and a policewoman waved me around their effort. I pulled up next to her. “Can you tell
me where I can get a bite to eat?” I asked. “Keep going to the second light, make a
left and you’ll find a couple of places,” she replied. She had soft blue eyes
and full lips, and her face was pink from the slapping wind. Her name was
Maki, according to the gold bar above her badge, and she wore an u-round
automatic on her belt. “I appreciate it,” I said, and reached
to roll up the window. “You wouldn’t know how I could find the home of Harlan
Powell, would you?” She tilted her head and rubbed her
gloved hands together. “Harlan Powell? No, I don’t believe I know anyone
named Harlan Powell.” I looked up at her, as she peered over
the top of the car as if scanning a horizon. “He’s a player here, isn’t he?” I said. “What’s that mean?” she asked. “A
player?” I shook my head. “If you haven’t heard
of him, and the Exxon guy... No, I guess not.” I thanked her again, and I drove on,
putting her and the workers in the rearview. He was a big man, broad across the
shoulders, thick in the neck and thighs, and his blue topcoat did little to
hide his muscularity. As I stepped out of the sandwich shop and into the
frigid air, I saw him glaring at me, and then he came off the front of his
black Cadillac SUV and walked toward me. And then, without a word, he punched me
in the stomach and I fell hard to the concrete, landing on my knees before
tumbling to the side. The big man put his big shoe against
the side of my head and pushed hard enough to let me know how much it would
hurt if he went all the way. “Nobody wants you here,” the big man
said, his voice surprisingly smooth. I gasped for air. “You’re going to give back what’s
ours,” he said, “and then you’re going back where you came from. You got me?” I couldn’t move, nor could I believe no
one was coming to my aid. When I’d walked into the sandwich place, trim He stepped off my head, reached down
and yanked me to my feet. I still couldn’t catch my breath, and I
noticed he had brass knuckles across the fingers of his bulky right hand. The
metal wouldn’t mean much if he went for the midsection again, but it’d crack
open my jaw if he snapped a short right at my chin. “You won’t squeeze us,” he said,
staring hard into my eyes. “We don’t pay.” Dizzy from pain, I wasn’t strong enough
to go back at him. Not yet. Under close-cropped dirty-blond hair,
the big man’s wide head seemed more square than oval, and the veins in his
broad neck pulsed as he held on to my collar. “Give,” he said. “You— You got the wrong guy,” I said,
wheezing. “You want to see Harlan,” he said, “you
see me.” “Yeah,” I replied, “Harlan. Harlan
Powell.” “Give,” he repeated. A middle-aged woman, thin, light-blond,
in a red parka, cast a quick, stealthy glance at the big man. Head down, she
hurried into a vest-pocket appliance store. “My wallet,” I said. Tiny lights danced
before my eyes. He nodded and I dipped awkwardly into
my back pocket. He studied the card I
handed him. Across White Cedar, a
young man, prematurely gray, watched from behind the bay window of an
insurance office. “I’m no thief,” I said. “You’re saying you
didn’t break into the car?” I shook my head. “Car?” He let go, shoved me. I regained my footing
and I studied him, and I couldn’t find a weak spot, at least not one I could
work now with my bare hands. I wiped off the side of
my head. Blood trickled from my ear. He reached into his
topcoat and shoved my business card into his shirt pocket. “What do you want?” he
said. “I’m looking for Allie,”
I told him. He looked at me. Then he
showed me the butt of the gun in his topcoat pocket. He snapped his head
toward the Darth Vader Caddy. “Get in,” he growled. He made me put on the
seat belt, and then he walked away from the car and he pressed a button on
his cell phone. The conversation was brief, and it looked to me like the big
thug was taking orders. He nodded a few times, said yes again and again, and
then he shut down the little phone and came back to me, though not before
shifting his gun to his left side, away from where I could reach it. The blood from the gash
on my ear trickled down my neck. “Where are we going?” I
asked as he turned over the engine. “Shut up,” he explained. He drove toward Route 36
with the brass knuckles across his fist, and he breathed through his nose as
if he was ready to explode in anger at the slightest provocation. “We going to Powell’s?” Without looking, he
threw a right jab in my direction, but I ducked it with little effort,
despite the restraining belt and the ache in my gut. “I told you to shut up,”
he said. The big man was slow,
and whoever he spoke to on the phone had rattled him. I filed that away,
along with the image of him dropping his left when he threw the hard right at
me on White Cedar. I knew I’d be seeing him again and only one of us was
going to like it. Ten minutes later, we
pulled into the Exxon station I’d visited on my way into town. Parked on the
side of the building, near the empty garage bay, was a white four-door
Mercedes with gold trim and “Get out,” he said. I went out into the
cold, sneakers on the cracked blacktop, and he came up behind me and nudged
me toward the station’s door. In the seat behind the
desk where Ezra Exxon had been was a man, about my age, who had to be Harlan
Powell. Flabby across the midsection, with a second chin, he looked like the
kind of guy who spent most of his day on his ass, and drove the golf cart right
up to the clubhouse door. His pricey clothes were immaculate: A thick
mustard-yellow sweater covered an ocean-blue silk shirt, and he wore
navy-blue wool slacks. Despite the rock salt that had coated the streets
since November, his soft black alligator loafers were spotless over sheer
socks. But not even the smell
of old gasoline could hide the stench of arrogance that rose from him. Here
was a man who’d spent a lot of time being impressed with himself. “Tell your muscle he had
his last free shot,” I said, looking into his drowsy blue eyes. Powell didn’t break a
smile. I could tell he thought of himself as a tough guy, despite the paunch,
and maybe he’d earned the attitude: He had a deep, crude scar above his left
brow, and his wide nose looked like it had been cracked long ago, about the
time something cut him near the eye. And though his hands were smooth, he had
broad knuckles that suggested he may have had to use his fists before he
figured out how to do it with brains. “Cut your ear, did he?”
Powell said, peering at the little wound on the side of my head. Then he looked over my
shoulder at the thug behind me. “Lou,” he said, with a snap of his head. “In
the back.” The big man went toward
the bay without comment or protest. I watched as he squeezed his body through
the door frame and edged past the white van. “You’re looking for my
son?” I nodded. I reached across and
grabbed a fat roll of paper towels that sat atop an old, grease-stained phone
book. “And why’s that?” Powell
said. “People are worried,” I
said, as I dabbed the coarse paper against my ear. “I’m not.” “And there’s a problem
with some cash. From John McPorter’s—” “He’s soft in the head,
you know,” he said, cutting me off. “Living in that rat hole, praying. . .“ “Yeah, but somebody took
his $47!.” A door slammed somewhere deep in the garage bay. “You notice that the
worse it is for some people the more they believe in God?” he mused. “Stupid,
right?” “Maybe that’s why they
can’t wait to get to heaven,” I said. “Heaven? You’re kidding, right? Wait,
don’t tell me you believe in that shit.” He looked at the crease in his
pants, flicked away a yellow thread. “Here, up there, downstairs—you are what
you are, and all you’ve got coming to you is what you went out and got.” “However you got it. . .“ “Damn right,” he said. An after-the-fact philosophy, spoken by
a man trying to justify his misbehavior. He asked, “And you think Allie took his
money?” “I don’t know,” I said. “My son never wanted for a dime in his
life,” Powell asserted. “OK, so maybe he can tell me who
might’ve done it.” “Probably some other nut who believes
all that bullshit.” I said, “Could be.” Another thud from
somewhere inside the garage. “Or maybe there was something else in
the safe.” I didn’t reply. “Was there?” “I don’t know,” I said. This creep was
more concerned about what Mc-Porter had locked away than he was about his own
son. “Who hired you?” he asked. “Some other nut who believes all that
bullshit,” I told him. He laughed as he looked me over. “He
can’t be paying you much.” I tossed the bloody wad of paper on the
dirty floor. “A guy like you is not going to get too
far. Not down here,” he said. “Nobody is going to give you the time of day.
See, nobody wants you here.” I gathered that he meant Silver Haven,
and not a run-down old gas station, and it was clear he considered Silver
Haven a special place to be. For Harlan Powell, it was a long, long
way from Freehold. He pushed himself out of the chair.
“I’ll tell you what. You keep looking for Allie—” “So you don’t know where he is?” “What I’m saying is you make sure he
doesn’t get dragged into this thing, and I’ll—” An echoing crash from inside the bay
cut off Powell’s pitch. I looked to the open door, and a dented oil barrel
wobbled as it rolled across the floor, coming to a halt when it hit the van. When I turned back to Powell, he had
his money clip in his hand, and a spread of $20 bills and a few fifties. “I’ll run a tab,” I told him. “What do you guys get? A hundred a
day?” “Something like that. Maybe more.” He was several inches shorter than I am
and I’d bet years of standing behind the brute he called Lou had taken the
edge off his game. Not that I could afford to try him now. He was making things more interesting
by the minute, by the sentence. “You go after top dollar,” he added.
“It figures. You’re all the same.” I figured he meant all humans, not just
private detectives. This guy hated everybody but himself. As he slid his bankroll back into his
slacks pocket, he shouted for his goon. Seconds later, Ezra Exxon stumbled
into the room, with the big man behind him. Ezra’s nose was bleeding, and his left
eye was puffed and purple, and a knot was growing on his left temple, and his
little jacket had been tussled and torn. The big man looked at his sledgehammer
right hand, flexed it a couple of times. Ezra should be grateful Lou hadn’t used
the brass. Powell gestured with his head toward
the door, and the big man went out to the SUV. Cold wind swept into the room. “Clumsy Ezra,” Powell muttered. Then he
looked at me. “See what happens when you don’t cooperate? You find you had
some kind of accident. Stumble, fall.” The big man’s tires squealed as he
ripped from the gas station. “Ezra,” Powell said, “drive Terry Orr back to
his Pinto.” Ezra nodded. Powell went to his white Mercedes. “Clean up,” I said to Ezra. “I’ll
wait.” I stepped outside, hoping the fresh air
would wash away the stench. Not of oil, or industry, but of Powell and his
crude play. Fusilli’s dialogue provides most of the
exposition, and Hard,
Hard City describes the relationship between children and parents with a
deftness that’s memorable. If you’ve never read Fusilli before, Hard,
Hard City is a fine way to start. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2005 |
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ă 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Hard
Hard City.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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