Ed Lynskey's Blog: Cracked Rearview Mirror - Posts Tagged "private-eye"

Love him or hate him. Me? I fall in the former camp. Let me tell you why. Today my mother told me that my late grandfather enjoyed reading Mr. Spillane back when they were both young men just after the Second World War. I did not know that about my grandfather. Cool. So, that's a jake enough reason by me. (Is using "jake by me" considered slang today?) Look, when I take up popular fiction, I just hope to be entertained. That's it. Plus, I know of no other American writer who used a finer two final lines to cap a novel than Mr. Spillane did in his debut PI Mike Hammer title, I, THE JURY. I won't repeat the lines here. You can google them easily enough. Or better yet, read the entire PI tale. I picked up a newer title by Mr. Spillane at the library for reading later this week. And I'll know what I'm getting. It's like a T-bone steak dinner during an otherwise crappy work week.

Disclaimer: Your mileage will probably vary.

A drumbeat, please. In no particular order, and away we go...

#1. A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews

#2. Leopards Kill by James DeFelice

#3. Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill

#4. Blonde Lightning by Terrill Lankford

#5. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler

#6. I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane

#7. The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

#8. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

#9. The Night Caller by John Lutz

#10. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles

"On Sunday, January 7, 1968, crime author Leonard “Len” S. Zinberg, perhaps better known by his Ed Lacy pseudonym, suffered a fatal coronary in a laundromat near his 75 St. Nicholas Place residence in north Harlem. He was 56. A widow Esther (1910-86) and a daughter Carla (born in the late 1950s, possibly adopted, and presumably still living) survived him. Zinberg had had a medical history of heart trouble dating back as early as 1960."

For the rest, please go to my article on the author Ed Lacy found on Steve Lewis's Mysteryfile Weblog:
http://tiny.cc/jjose

Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles and Quiet Anchorage

The Zinc Zoo: P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery #6




Hello,
Many of you know I write the Private Investigator Frank Johnson Mystery Series. His stories, some still online, go back over a decade ago. Anyway, the sixth novel in the series, The Zinc Zoo, has just been released in Kindle. The paper edition should be coming along behind the Kindle version. If you dig the hardboiled lit, this one should satisfy your tastes. I'll be posting more developments as they unfold. As always, thank you for considering my novels to read.

Best regards,
Ed Lynskey

You can read the first chapter sample to my private eye novel The Zinc Zoo: A P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery.

Chapter 1

"So you're still boycotting Gatlin's wedding?" Gerald had moved on to a new topic over our cell phone link.

"What I said still goes."

"Frank, no offense, but for a PI, sometimes you ain't got a clue."

"Say what?"

"What does Dreema have to say on it?"

"Nothing much."

"Bull."

"Okay, she says I'll be in tow."

He chuckled in his gruff way. "Then I'll see you there, I expect. Now did you fix things with the IRS?"

"It's all settled, yeah."

"How did you swing that?"

"Simple. I've got a CPA in my corner."

"Damn. Is she that good?"

"That and more, Gerald."

"Does she stay busy?"

"Of course she's busy. She's a CPA. Why?"

"Well, I like to leave my options available, too. Is she taking any new clients?"

"I can ask her if you're in a financial bind."

"Just keep her in mind in case I ever am."

"Okay, but fair warning: she's a professional who does everything aboveboard."

"These days I only fly on the straight and narrow."

"Uh-huh."

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse.

"You got in any new work?" I asked him.

"Nibbles. Give it a day or two. I'll be in touch."

"I know Dreema is pulling long hours."

"You take special care of her, Frank."

"Yeah okay, and I just might tag along with her."

"Just be at Gatlin's nuptials. Later, dawg."

Snapping shut the cell phone, I shook my head. Gerald. One night right after my cousin Cody Chapman died, Gerald had come by the doublewide trailer, his two 1.75 liters of So/Co in paper sacks. There was a played-out quarry behind the trailer park where I lived. We picked our way down the quarry's switchbacks, reached the bottom, and took our favorite pair of sitting rocks. All night we sat there, talked, and sipped. All right, I talked; he just listened. He lent a sympathetic ear, see? At daybreak, he lumbered off to work, and I had plenty of coffee before I left to plan Cody's funeral.

I now palmed my sweaty forehead. Monday at ten and the mercury had spiked into the low 90s. Thinking, I still sat. For the past month, my life had been swept up in a cyclone of crazy events. First I'd tracked down Lois Mercedes' husband, Sylvester, with a slug in his heart at the bottom of a pit. She'd killed him, and I knew it. The Ankara cops also knew it. The evidence ran too thin to arrest her. Instead her Turkish flunky took the rap, and, disgusted, I boarded a jetliner for home.

During my stay in Turkey, my ex-boss Robert Gatlin--yeah, the flamboyant, rich attorney you see plastered all over the media news--had fallen in love with my moneyed client. He proposed, and Lois accepted. Their nuptials were this Saturday. We'd received their engraved invitation, and Dreema Atkins, my better and smarter half, had RSVP'd we'd occupy a pew. I'd pick an appendectomy done with chopsticks over attending a damn wedding, especially this one.

Dreema, also a Pelham native, was a Virginia Tech alumnus who'd aided me with the science on my past detective cases. Then the love bug bit us. For the past month, we'd camped in a 1970s suburb just off Braddock Road in northern Virginia. We hadn't marched down the aisle. Yet. Gatlin's ceremony was like our rehearsal, and that left me a bit nervy. I'd tried marriage once. Paying a hit man to take care of my cheating ex showed how much I'd lost it. I thanked my stars Gerald had intervened. Friends do that.

My present worry was I hadn't taken a new case since my return from Turkey. Gatlin used to toss me the hot potatoes that his clients brought him, but we'd severed ties over Lois. That hurt. I needed to stay busy. Gerald was a "bounty hunter extraordinaire"--his epithet, not mine. We'd teamed up on a dozen bail snatches and split the recovery fee. But I could only endure so much of him. He used a kamikaze approach to life while I was more laid back. On the plus side, I'd earned enough to make the IRS happy and back off. So today I didn't take my meals through a bean chute and don jailhouse orange.

I'd hoped to stay in Pelham. But right before I flew off to Turkey, Dreema and I had agreed to a trial run at cohabitation. Off the bat, she rejected my solution of her moving from Richmond to Pelham again. We'd discussed it.

"I left there once, and I didn't look back," she said. "My return is out of the question."

I peeked into my near empty mug. The dark brown flecks of the coffee grounds swirled as if I was also circling the drain. It was Sunday morning. The previous night I'd booked down I-95 from Pelham. We lounged in our PJs at the kitchenette table. Her three-room flat was a block off the VCU campus, Richmond's flagship university. Her state forensic job entailed cutting up the corpses gurneyed in from the crime scenes. Did she dream of the cadavers? She'd admitted she grew a little finicky only over tweezing out the maggots and beetles feasting in the decayed flesh.

She glanced up from under her bangs. "Can't you stay in Richmond?"

Could I?

Years ago as an Army MP Sergeant, I'd bunked at a modest hotel in Ankara for months. But Ankara back then had felt sane while Richmond left me edgy. I knew why. Earlier in the year, Bea, one of Dreema's girlfriends, had tended an unfussy bar called The Brass Knuckles on the next street over. Bea had issued the last call and, after closing up, tallied the Saturday receipts before she set the burglar alarm. As always, she headed off on foot to her nearby flat. Crêpe Soles was stealthy enough, so she didn't catch his footsteps stalking her.

After putting in a fourteen-hour shift, she'd tumbled into bed still wearing her barkeep clothes. Crêpe Soles--"a squatty man with bedpan breath and nutria teeth under the ski mask," she later told the Richmond PD--had jimmied open her balcony door (no Charlie bar). Then he came in and crawled under the sheet with her. She jolted awake to face her worst nightmare in the flesh.

Later, Dreema skipped over telling me the next part, but filling in the blanks wasn't that hard. Soon after, Bea left Richmond for her parent's house in Danville's suburbs. Dreema had driven the pale-faced Bea who didn't speak on the entire trip. I made a wish for Crêpe Soles to tangle with Gerald Peyton in a dark alley one night.

"Earth to Frank ... I asked what's so terrible about living here? We can rent a bigger flat. I'd like to stay this close to work, but it's not a deal breaker."

"Bea didn't fare so well living here."

"Bea got careless, but I'm careful."

"Uh-huh. Can I find work? I've got no word-of-mouth or network in Richmond."

"Does Mr. Gatlin know any criminal attorneys downtown?"

I nodded as if I hadn't already thought of that possibility. "I suppose he might. Everybody, it seems, is either his friend or a friend of his friend."

"Have you asked him?"

My headshake was slight.

"Well, buzz him while I wash up the breakfast dishes."

"I doubt if he's up this early."

"He's expecting your call. I arranged it."

"Now why doesn't hearing that surprise me?"

Smiling, she used her speed dial and gave me her cell phone. "Talk." She carted our dirty silverware and plates to the kitchenette's sink around the corner. Watching her derrière, the exciting quiver I felt told me why I'd better hang my fedora here. Gatlin was also in the midst of his morning caffeine fix.

"Dreema mentioned you might set up shop there," he said.

"Are any Richmond shysters on your Rolodex?"

"I contacted a half-dozen Richmond attorneys. You're in luck. Three asked for a private detective's services after hearing my glowing recommendation of you."

"You're making it hard for me not to move."

"That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham."

"I'm leaning that way. Gerald said he'd lend me a hand at loading the U-Haul."

Gatlin chuckled. "He might be your compromise."

"How's that?"

"He's relocating to northern Virginia."

I startled. "Why?"

"He can't make go of it in Pelham, so I suggested he survey the Fairfax-Annandale corridor. He did and likes his chances better there."

"Yeah, I bet that's why."

"All right, let's be practical. He's just up the road if I need his assistance."

"Could it be you've been lobbying him to also keep your PI nearby?"

"I'm always a smart lawyer first."

"What's your angle for the compromise?"

"Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can't be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat."

The resentment heated in me, but my voice stayed even. "Have you also scouted a house for us?"

"No, but I know several top-notch realtors."

"This is well and good, but how do I sway Dreema? She's got her heart set on Richmond."

"You'll finesse that part. I can't do all of your work for you."

"Have you suggested it to her?"

"Not a peep. Just pitch it as a compromise. She's a sensible girl who like I said..."

"I know: she's a keeper."

After I thumbed off Gatlin in mid-chuckle, I dropped a dime on Gerald and asked him about his future plans.

"That's my aim," he replied. "Are you filling out change-of-address cards, too?"

"How could I? I just heard about Gatlin's compromise."

"Dreema will go for it."

"Quite possibly."

"It's all good then. You don't lose your clients. Her career isn't hindered, and the big dog is always a cell phone call away from you."

"You can't have enough friends in low places."

He ignored my sardonic tone. "Talk to her when she's in the sweet mood."

"Sweet mood?"

"Do I have to draw you a damn picture?"

"I get you fine. Thanks for the advice, Dr. Love. I gotta go now."

"Good luck, Stud. Later."

****

The cell phone in my hand trilled in the birdsong ring tone Dreema had downloaded for it. She spoke, her tired voice punchless.

"I've still got a bunch of paperwork. Don't hold dinner. Sorry."

"Yeah okay, no sweat."

"Did you talk to Gerald?"

A white fib tempted me, but I resisted it. Tradition said we PIs had to live by our moral code. "I just got off the horn with him."

"He's going to Mr. Gatlin's wedding, isn't he?"

"Gerald never misses a soirée with single ladies, danceable music, and free booze."

"What did he say on your being a no-show?"

"It didn't come up."

"Frank..."

"All right, he told me ‘for a PI I didn't have an effing clue.'"

"I won't say I told you so."

"Gatlin's betrothed is a calculating, ruthless killer. Period."

"Alleged killer and you're the only one who alleges it."

"Funny how Detective Abdullah in Ankara backs me up."

"But he's not invited to the wedding. You are. Better gut it up and go along to get along."

"There's a larger principle at stake here."

"Paying work is also at stake as in you don't have any."

"Touché. I'll mull it over," is how I capped our debate.

I hated it when she was right. Too much idle time had weighed on me. That sucking noise I kept hearing was my PI career going down the tubes. Life had fallen into a rut after I shed my favorite vices, gin and cigarettes. Rewatching the classic film noirs on DVD failed to divert me, and I'd skipped shaving until Dreema groused at me.

We'd discussed adopting another tomcat--while on travel I used to call the feline boarding kennel and check up on my old one--from the SPCA, but nothing more came of it. Several years ago, I'd kept a pet ferret, Mr. Bojangles, I rescued from the neo-Nazis. One night he passed in his sleep, and the next dawn I found him coiled up on the toilet seat lid. My heart was crushed almost as much as when my parents had died. Pets do that to us. Oh yeah, I craved the work for more than to earn my keep.

I headed outdoors. The morning sun glared in my eyes as they slid down our suburban block. When I was in a cynical bent of mind like I was now, I saw it as a gray suburban block. Everything--the houses, cars, and yards--got tarred by the same drab brush. Gerald had ranted it was "the zinc zoo" where the pace turned frenetic as at the zoo, but the monotony was also as boring as gray zinc. He wasn't talking smack, just drawing an analogy of the suburbanite's lifestyle as we both came to regard it.

End of Chapter 1 to The Zinc Zoo: A P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery by Ed Lynskey.

NOTE: If you liked reading Chapter 1 to The Zinc Zoo, please consider marking it "to-read" in your Goodreads account.

The first book in my P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery Series Pelham Fell Here is on sale as a Kindle ebook at $1.99 for Cyber Monday.

Pelham Fell Here "rings true," James Crumley said.

Book description:

Ex-military cop and part-time gunsmith Frank Johnson finds his cousin Cody Chapman killed by a twelve-gauge shotgun. Enraged, Frank wants some answers, and fast. Was Cody involved in an arms smuggling scheme? The mystery deepens and grows dangerous when a pair of murderous deputy sheriffs ambush Frank. After killing them in self-defense, Frank must take it on the lam while he continues his murder investigation. Eventually, he discovers a group of neo-Nazis holed up at a remote castle who may be the ones behind his cousin's murder. Luckily, his bounty hunter pals Chet and Gerald Peyton throw in with Frank to even up the odds.

Excerpts from the Amazon readers's reviews:

"The story transformed itself into a rich, colourful, suspenseful narrative with many layers. The new found captivating pace held my attention to the very last page."
--Toni Osborne

"The action is constant with plenty of surprises along the way."
--Thomas Duff

"A very tight knit mystery read and one that I am proud to recommend."
--Shirley Johnson

"Three-dimensional characters with good dialog make this book a very good read."
--Joe Walsh

"A good way to begin a new series for anyone who likes down to earth tales."
--J.D. Anderson

"I love crime fiction that holds my interest and draws me to the characters. This book fits in that category perfectly."
--mysteryfan

You can read the first chapter to The Zinc Zoo: A P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery by Ed Lynskey.

Chapter 1

"So you're still boycotting Gatlin's wedding?" Gerald had moved on to a new topic over our cell phone link.

"What I said still goes."

"Frank, no offense, but for a PI, sometimes you ain't got a fucking clue."

"Say what?"

"What does Dreema have to say on it?"

"Nothing much."

"Bullshit."

"Okay, she says I'll be in tow."

He chuckled in his gruff way. "Then I'll see you there, I expect. Now did you fix things with the IRS?"

"It's all settled, yeah."

"How did you swing that?"

"Simple. I've got a CPA in my corner."

"Damn. Is she that good?"

"That and more, Gerald."

"Does she stay busy?"

"Of course she's busy. She's a CPA. Why?"

"Well, I like to leave my options available, too. Is she taking any new clients?"

"I can ask her if you're in a financial bind."

"Just keep her in mind in case I ever am."

"Okay, but fair warning: she's a professional who does everything aboveboard."

"These days I only fly on the straight and narrow."

"Uh-huh."

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse.

"You got in any new work?" I asked him.

"Nibbles. Give it a day or two. I'll be in touch."

"I know Dreema is pulling long hours."

"You take special care of her, Frank."

"Yeah okay, and I just might tag along with her."

"Just be at Gatlin's nuptials. Later, dawg."

Snapping shut the cell phone, I shook my head. Gerald. One night right after my cousin Cody Chapman died, Gerald had come by the doublewide trailer, his two 1.75 liters of So/Co in paper sacks. There was a played-out quarry behind the trailer park where I lived. We picked our way down the quarry's switchbacks, reached the bottom, and took our favorite pair of sitting rocks. All night we sat there, talked, and sipped. All right, I talked; he just listened. He lent a sympathetic ear, see? At daybreak, he lumbered off to work, and I had plenty of coffee before I left to plan Cody's funeral.

I now palmed my sweaty forehead. Monday at ten and the mercury had spiked into the low 90s. Thinking, I still sat. For the past month, my life had been swept up in a cyclone of crazy events. First I'd tracked down Lois Mercedes' husband, Sylvester, with a slug in his heart at the bottom of a pit. She'd killed him, and I knew it. The Ankara cops also knew it. The evidence ran too thin to arrest her. Instead her Turkish flunky took the rap, and, disgusted, I boarded a jetliner for home.

During my stay in Turkey, my ex-boss Robert Gatlin--yeah, the flamboyant, rich attorney you see plastered all over the media news--had fallen in love with my moneyed client. He proposed, and Lois accepted. Their nuptials were this Saturday. We'd received their engraved invitation, and Dreema Atkins, my better and smarter half, had RSVP'd we'd occupy a pew. I'd pick an appendectomy done with chopsticks over attending a damn wedding, especially this one.

Dreema, also a Pelham native, was a Virginia Tech alumnus who'd aided me with the science on my past detective cases. Then the love bug bit us. For the past month, we'd camped in a 1970s suburb just off Braddock Road in northern Virginia. We hadn't marched down the aisle. Yet. Gatlin's ceremony was like our rehearsal, and that left me a bit nervy. I'd tried marriage once. Paying a hit man to take care of my cheating ex showed how much I'd lost it. I thanked my stars Gerald had intervened. Friends do that.

My present worry was I hadn't taken a new case since my return from Turkey. Gatlin used to toss me the hot potatoes that his clients brought him, but we'd severed ties over Lois. That hurt. I needed to stay busy. Gerald was a "bounty hunter extraordinaire"--his epithet, not mine. We'd teamed up on a dozen bail snatches and split the recovery fee. But I could only endure so much of him. He used a kamikaze approach to life while I was more laid back. On the plus side, I'd earned enough to make the IRS happy and back off. So today I didn't take my meals through a bean chute and don jailhouse orange.

I'd hoped to stay in Pelham. But right before I flew off to Turkey, Dreema and I had agreed to a trial run at cohabitation. Off the bat, she rejected my solution of her moving from Richmond to Pelham again. We'd discussed it.

"I left there once, and I didn't look back," she said. "My return is out of the question."

I peeked into my near empty mug. The dark brown flecks of the coffee grounds swirled as if I was also circling the drain. It was Sunday morning. The previous night I'd booked down I-95 from Pelham. We lounged in our PJs at the kitchenette table. Her three-room flat was a block off the VCU campus, Richmond's flagship university. Her state forensic job entailed cutting up the corpses gurneyed in from the crime scenes. Did she dream of the cadavers? She'd admitted she grew a little finicky only over tweezing out the maggots and beetles feasting in the decayed flesh.

She glanced up from under her bangs. "Can't you stay in Richmond?"

Could I?

Years ago as an Army MP Sergeant, I'd bunked at a modest hotel in Ankara for months. But Ankara back then had felt sane while Richmond left me edgy. I knew why. Earlier in the year, Bea, one of Dreema's girlfriends, had tended an unfussy bar called The Brass Knuckles on the next street over. Bea had issued the last call and, after closing up, tallied the Saturday receipts before she set the burglar alarm. As always, she headed off on foot to her nearby flat. Crêpe Soles was stealthy enough, so she didn't catch his footsteps stalking her.

After putting in a fourteen-hour shift, she'd tumbled into bed still wearing her barkeep clothes. Crêpe Soles--"a squatty man with bedpan breath and nutria teeth under the ski mask," she later told the Richmond PD--had jimmied open her balcony door (no Charlie bar). Then he came in and crawled under the sheet with her. She jolted awake to face her worst nightmare in the flesh.

Later, Dreema skipped over telling me the next part, but filling in the blanks wasn't that hard. Soon after, Bea left Richmond for her parent's house in Danville's suburbs. Dreema had driven the pale-faced Bea who didn't speak on the entire trip. I made a wish for Crêpe Soles to tangle with Gerald Peyton in a dark alley one night.

"Earth to Frank ... I asked what's so terrible about living here? We can rent a bigger flat. I'd like to stay this close to work, but it's not a deal breaker."

"Bea didn't fare so well living here."

"Bea got careless, but I'm careful."

"Uh-huh. Can I find work? I've got no word-of-mouth or network in Richmond."

"Does Mr. Gatlin know any criminal attorneys downtown?"

I nodded as if I hadn't already thought of that possibility. "I suppose he might. Everybody, it seems, is either his friend or a friend of his friend."

"Have you asked him?"

My headshake was slight.

"Well, buzz him while I wash up the breakfast dishes."

"I doubt if he's up this early."

"He's expecting your call. I arranged it."

"Now why doesn't hearing that surprise me?"

Smiling, she used her speed dial and gave me her cell phone. "Talk." She carted our dirty silverware and plates to the kitchenette's sink around the corner. Watching her derrière, the exciting quiver I felt told me why I'd better hang my fedora here. Gatlin was also in the midst of his morning caffeine fix.

"Dreema mentioned you might set up shop there," he said.

"Are any Richmond shysters on your Rolodex?"

"I contacted a half-dozen Richmond attorneys. You're in luck. Three asked for a private detective's services after hearing my glowing recommendation of you."

"You're making it hard for me not to move."

"That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham."

"I'm leaning that way. Gerald said he'd lend me a hand at loading the U-Haul."

Gatlin chuckled. "He might be your compromise."

"How's that?"

"He's relocating to northern Virginia."

I startled. "Why?"

"He can't make go of it in Pelham, so I suggested he survey the Fairfax-Annandale corridor. He did and likes his chances better there."

"Yeah, I bet that's why."

"All right, let's be practical. He's just up the road if I need his assistance."

"Could it be you've been lobbying him to also keep your PI nearby?"

"I'm always a smart lawyer first."

"What's your angle for the compromise?"

"Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can't be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat."

The resentment heated in me, but my voice stayed even. "Have you also scouted a house for us?"

"No, but I know several top-notch realtors."

"This is well and good, but how do I sway Dreema? She's got her heart set on Richmond."

"You'll finesse that part. I can't do all of your work for you."

"Have you suggested it to her?"

"Not a peep. Just pitch it as a compromise. She's a sensible girl who like I said..."

"I know: she's a keeper."

After I thumbed off Gatlin in mid-chuckle, I dropped a dime on Gerald and asked him about his future plans.

"That's my aim," he replied. "Are you filling out change-of-address cards, too?"

"How could I? I just heard about Gatlin's compromise."

"Dreema will go for it."

"Quite possibly."

"It's all good then. You don't lose your clients. Her career isn't hindered, and the big dog is always a cell phone call away from you."

"You can't have enough friends in low places."

He ignored my sardonic tone. "Talk to her when she's in the sweet mood."

"Sweet mood?"

"Do I have to draw you a damn picture?"

"I get you fine. Thanks for the advice, Dr. Love. I gotta go now."

"Good luck, Stud. Later."

****

The cell phone in my hand trilled in the birdsong ring tone Dreema had downloaded for it. She spoke, her tired voice punchless.

"I've still got a bunch of paperwork. Don't hold dinner. Sorry."

"Yeah okay, no sweat."

"Did you talk to Gerald?"

A white fib tempted me, but I resisted it. Tradition said we PIs had to live by our moral code. "I just got off the horn with him."

"He's going to Mr. Gatlin's wedding, isn't he?"

"Gerald never misses a soirée with single ladies, danceable music, and free booze."

"What did he say on your being a no-show?"

"It didn't come up."

"Frank..."

"All right, he told me ‘for a PI I didn't have an effing clue.'"

"I won't say I told you so."

"Gatlin's betrothed is a calculating, ruthless killer. Period."

"Alleged killer and you're the only one who alleges it."

"Funny how Detective Abdullah in Ankara backs me up."

"But he's not invited to the wedding. You are. Better gut it up and go along to get along."

"There's a larger principle at stake here."

"Paying work is also at stake as in you don't have any."

"Touché. I'll mull it over," is how I capped our debate.

I hated it when she was right. Too much idle time had weighed on me. That sucking noise I kept hearing was my PI career going down the tubes. Life had fallen into a rut after I shed my favorite vices, gin and cigarettes. Rewatching the classic film noirs on DVD failed to divert me, and I'd skipped shaving until Dreema groused at me.

We'd discussed adopting another tomcat--while on travel I used to call the feline boarding kennel and check up on my old one--from the SPCA, but nothing more came of it. Several years ago, I'd kept a pet ferret, Mr. Bojangles, I rescued from the neo-Nazis. One night he passed in his sleep, and the next dawn I found him coiled up on the toilet seat lid. My heart was crushed almost as much as when my parents had died. Pets do that to us. Oh yeah, I craved the work for more than to earn my keep.

I headed outdoors. The morning sun glared in my eyes as they slid down our suburban block. When I was in a cynical bent of mind like I was now, I saw it as a gray suburban block. Everything--the houses, cars, and yards--got tarred by the same drab brush. Gerald had ranted it was "the zinc zoo" where the pace turned frenetic as at the zoo, but the monotony was also as boring as gray zinc. He wasn't talking smack, just drawing an analogy of the suburbanite's lifestyle as we both came to regard it.

End of Chapter 1 to The Zinc Zoo: A P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery by Ed Lynskey. If you enjoyed reading Chapter 1, click on the link to reach The Zinc Zoo's Goodreads page.

You can read the first chapter of The Blue Cheer: P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery. It was the recipient of a starred review in Booklist. "Fast-paced and gripping with well-drawn characters and a vividly described background," BILL PRONZINI wrote about The Blue Cheer.

Chapter 1

A sonic force engulfed the mountainside and echoed up the laurel hollows. Even the treetops quivered. I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin’s roofline at a bursting fireball. The heat’s explosive wave stopped me in my tracks.

Glowing red embers drifted down. The smell of scorched fabric stung my nostrils as I took a deep breath. I struggled to make sense of what I’d just witnessed.

Lately life had been a chain reaction of bizarre events. Tucked in central West Virginia, my cedar log cabin lay in that rural ghetto called “Appalachia.” To others, it was a fly-over scabland. They were wrong. Just the night before, a puma’s howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn’t get any richer than that.

Earlier in the afternoon, I’d burned up a slew of calories slinging my double-bladed axe, its solid helve jarring my palms. Aromatic red oak sat corded to the woodshed’s eaves. Finished at last, I sank the axe blade into the chopping block. I balanced an armload of wood, staggered past the parked Prizm, and caught the door with an elbow. I went inside the cabin. Pieces of bark and pill bugs dribbled to the fir plank floor.

Past lessons had taught me that the woodstove drafted better with its flue open. I lit the sappy pine cones, tipped on kindling and in a few seconds, the red oak strummed into a fire. I closed the hatch and ran a sanity check: smoke detector, ash bucket, farrier gloves, hearthstone tools, and fire extinguisher. The twig broom belonged to the previous owner, a coal miner named Stubbs, a two-packs-a-day smoker whom lung cancer had forced into a hospice in Charleston.

No hard-bitten primitive, I felt grateful for the cabin’s electric and running water. But my FM radio sat quiet. WAMU marketing gurus had bumped late afternoon bluegrass music off their programming. DJs Jerry Gray and Ray Davis, both radio old-timers, no longer broadcast that five-finger picking music. That’d ticked off plenty of listeners.

A Charles Williams novel had then engrossed me until hunger won out. I’d eaten the remnants of browned venison last night, but the pantry stocked such canned delicacies as split pea, creamed corn, and minestrone, while chef’s surprise came in the unlabeled tins. I was foraging for Charlie Tuna when the droning racket started up.

The noise drew nearer. I hurried out the cabin door to the dark stoop. Not yet luminous enough to cast shadows, the moon poked over a tree-fledged summit. My eyes scanned for the unseen buzz, a cross between an ATV and a chainsaw. What the hell was it? I retreated a few paces, stooping to search between the tree branches.

A flying triangle, backlit across the star-pocked sky, glided into sight. A UFO? Whoa, easy, country boy. You’ll freak yourself. A blimp? The breeze batted chimney smoke into my eyes. The bogie, by now a ways in the distance, banked in a languid U-turn. The fact the bogie had robotic smarts unsettled me. Could my .243 rifle knock it down? Not unless a harder target appeared. Gnawing the skin on my thumb pad, I rejected the idea.

What was the bogie? A motorized hobby plane? No, this bogie flew too fast for kids’ stuff. More than likely some Friday night yahoo cruising in his ultra-light aircraft. Such contraptions, I’d recently read in a men’s magazine, flew at 100 feet high and topped 40 m.p.h. That sounded about right.

“Hey up there, hello!” I hollered between my cupped hands. “I say, hello!”

The hum continued tracking downslope. Maybe the natives could give me an explanation. Natives? What natives? Fordham County, West Virginia, now boasted fewer folks than before the Civil War, when McNeill’s Rangers rode these trails. My nearest neighbors, the Maddoxes, lived three miles over the laurel ridge. Andes, the young fellow operating the fire tower on the knob of land between our places, had recently moved back to Racine University in North Carolina.

That’s when the midair explosion occurred and the wall of heat hit me.

I shook my head. Who’d shoot down a manned ultra-light? Second thought told me this’d been no ultra-light. I then had a different, sinister thought. Had a heat-seeking missile zeroed in on a drone and smashed it to bits?

I darted inside the cabin, my boots stamping over the plank floor. Due to the diminished winds over the last 48 hours, odds favored the land lines still up. I rustled up a dial tone. Old Man Maddox grunted a greeting after the fourth ring.

“Johnson here. Were you outdoors earlier?” I asked.

After a cough, Old Man asked me to say again, only louder. I did. “The wife and I are fighting chest colds. We’ve been playing backgammon by the stove. What bothers you, babe?” Old Man used his favorite expression.

“Something blasted a bogie out of the sky. Made a big bang with lots of fireworks. Did you see anything? Hear anything?”

“Nothing, babe. Maybe a fuel tank dropped off a prop plane and detonated. Not unheard of.”

“My guess is a missile took out a military drone,” I said.

Old Man spent a moment thinking. “There’s no airport from here to Elkton. Is Andes on fire patrol?”

“He packed off to school Wednesday. Came by and said you were away. What do you think?”

“Unreal. I can drive up and help you scout the bush, if you like. Got a couple of four-cell flashlights. Just say the word, babe.”

“It can keep till morning.”

“Sleep on it. Good idea. I’ll drop by a little after breakfast. We’ll get to the bottom of things then,” said Old Man.

I hung up. I felt let down. Ages ago, my M.D., violating all manner of ethics and laws, had written me a lifetime prescription for an antidepressant. Happy pills, he called them. I’d always fought depression, always been predisposed to brooding reflections. It wasn’t a true bipolar disorder. Doctors had yet to light up my brain like a Leyden jar. They reserved electric shock treatment as last-ditch heroics to rejuvenate vegetable minds. Until such time, I took a happy pill every night.

I tried to renew my interest in the Charles Williams noir, then strode over to my bookshelves. All of the Golden Field Guide Series—birds, trees, rocks and minerals, wildflowers, and reptiles—stared at me. But nature wasn’t enough to distract me so I went to bed. Sleep, sure. My nerve endings, exposed electrical wires, jittered together. Screw waiting until sunup. Pulling on a CPO jacket, I trudged to the corner cupboard.

I found the Coleman lantern behind the fishing tackle and wickerwork creel. The lantern swished with plenty of gas when I picked it up. I pumped up its pressure, stuck in a lit barbecue match, and fired up its twin mantles. Hissing, they threw out compact hemispheres of light, which I adjusted. I wondered what awaited me down the mountain. The fireball’s mystery had gotten under my skin and I’d never relax until I’d checked it out.

My .243 lay on a deer hooves gun rack. The front drawer to the roll top desk eased out. My fingers roved inside to find a Kel-Tec P-11’s polymer grips. Advertised in Shotgun News as the tightest and lightest 9 mil ever constructed, its knockdown power was impressive. I pocketed it and shouldered through the cabin door.

Radium-tipped dials on my wristwatch glowed on ten o’clock. I walked on the balls of my feet, halted to hold up the Coleman by its wire handle. My red Prizm grazed by the woodshed while my Lamborghini languished in the shop awaiting a tune-up. Yeah, right. I hoisted up the Coleman lantern, scanned a 360, and only spied my breath vapors.

A 10-point whitetail had tramped down from the higher ridges to eat crab apples fallen by the cistern and we’d bonded. I prayed he wouldn’t end up tied to a 4x4’s roof in three days when deer season started. I didn’t spot him at the crab apple tree, however. Unlike me, the buck wasn’t in a rambling mood.

I relied on my mental map to pinpoint the debris spill and crossed the twenty or so paces of my backyard down to the ring of big boulders. Jouncing from rock to rock, careful not to dink the Coleman’s glass globe, I descended into denser shrubbery while I felt through my pants fabric the heat from the Coleman’s porcelain-steel ventilator. Tramping down that dark mountainside, for the first time in weeks I craved a human voice, a gentle and caring female voice. Christ. Next thing I’d go soft and give marriage another fling.

My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear (“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”) signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there’d be real hell to pay.

I smelled no odor of char or ash to orient me and had doubts if anything had reached the ground. Could it be that the ejecta cascading through space had incinerated before hitting the treeline? If so, the drone had been flying higher than I’d first estimated.

Mushy persimmons swatted against my cheeks. I’d be back to pick those delicacies later. Moonlight had washed out all but a few stars. Had any of the wreckage snagged in the treetops? Feeling chillier, I strode faster. At Trout Creek, I stopped and cursed for having overshot my target area.

I did an about face and started back uphill. A witch moth butted into the lantern’s artificial light and my boot mashed down on a round, hard object. I set down the Coleman and scooped up the object. It was a steel cylinder, four inches in diameter and perhaps a yard long. A black, crusty crud pitted it.

I’d handled such hardware before but always prior to their detonation. This was nothing less than a Stinger flight motor case, Uncle Sam’s anti-aircraft weapon lauded for its dead-on balls accuracy. I’d vowed never to hold a Stinger again.

End of Chapter 1 of The Blue Cheer: P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery by Ed Lynskey.

NOTE: If you liked reading Chapter 1 to THE BLUE CHEER, please consider marking it "to-read" in your Goodreads account.

I'm excited to announce the first cool book in my P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery Series Pelham Fell Here is now on sale as an e-book for $0.99 for a limited time.

Here's the book description:

Ex-military cop and part-time gunsmith Frank Johnson finds his cousin Cody Chapman killed by a twelve-gauge shotgun. Enraged, Frank wants some answers, and fast. Was Cody involved in an arms smuggling scheme? The mystery deepens and grows dangerous when a pair of murderous deputy sheriffs ambush Frank. After killing them in self-defense, Frank must take it on the lam while he continues his murder investigation. Eventually, he discovers a group of neo-Nazis holed up at a remote castle who may be the ones behind his cousin's murder. Luckily, his bounty hunter pals Chet and Gerald Peyton throw in with Frank to even up the odds.

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Thanks for your interest!