Rocco Mancuso, federal agent, was the best in his field yet stuck in a dead-end job chasing bad guys who too often tried to kill him. Today it was Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Later this week, it would be West Hills near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Finally, he would fly back to DC, his base of operations, where his boss, Vic the Prick, would bust his balls for doing his goddamn job. It was stressful enough without having an asshole berate him just for the hell of it.
Mancuso had two items on this week’s agenda. First, he suspected a foreign spy was operating in Oak Ridge and planned to find out whether that was true. That was why he was here today in this boring Atomic Energy Commission company town that existed to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. It’s low-rise buildings and ticky-tacky houses sucked vitality out of inhabitants and visitors alike. The second item was to figure out what happened to the three hundred kilos of highly enriched uranium that went missing from the West Hills Recovery Plant in Pennsylvania.
Mancuso stamped his feet, pulled his khaki trench coat tighter around his wiry body to ward off the cold, and glanced at the sign over the door—Oak Ridge Inn. His fifteen-dollar government per diem stretched farther up the road at the Holiday Inn. Located next to a seedy drive-in theater, the Oak Ridge Holiday Inn had no class, but it was clean and cheap. He learned from the front desk clerk during his first stay that the north side of the inn offered a clear view of the outdoor movie screen, where hotel guests could see all the porn action minus the grunts and groans. To each his own. Mancuso promptly requested a room on the south side. He might not be much to look at, but getting kicks from porn flicks that degraded women wasn’t his thing.
One glance through the window of the Oak Ridge Inn told him why this place charged double what he was paying at the Holiday Inn. This place was classy. It’s lobby featured a thirty-foot-high ceiling with rough-hewn wooden rafters. The walls were paneled in oak with a dark polished finish. A huge river stone fireplace burning four-foot-long logs dominated a seating area featuring several red leather chairs and couches on a slate floor. The chill had seeped into his body. He could use that fireplace’s heat right now. Mancuso scrutinized all that was visible before entering. It was one of the spy craft rules etched into his brain. If there was a spy staying here, Mancuso wanted to control how and when they met if possible. Chance encounters could raise problems down the line.
From where he stood, he could tell that the front desk clerk was an attractive blonde with a nice complexion. Mancuso figured she was in her thirties and looked damn good despite the ill-fitting hotel monogrammed blazer. Maybe speaking with a beautiful chick would finally get that damn song out of his head. He didn’t even like Runaway yet Del Shannon’s falsetto had created nonstop head noise all morning. Why a three-year-old 1961 record would plague his mind this morning mystified Mancuso. It wasn’t because of his ex, Carol. She hadn’t exactly run away. Carol spent five years nagging him to stop drinking. Then she simply walked out. They were both Italian Catholics, so he had never taken her threats to divorce him seriously. Catholics didn’t get divorced—at least until then.
So, he had a few beers at night? He worked like a damn dog all day. He needed a few to wash away the filth he waded through every day in a world where US nuclear weapons secrets were every foreign spy’s holy grail. His job was to stop them. Plus, he had the biggest asshole anywhere for a boss. That was why he spent so much time on the road—to avoid dealing with Vic Zanotti. Besides, there was no one to come home to in his small DC flat. He didn’t recall when work became all he had in this life.
Ah. The damn song. The AM radio disk jockey played Runaway while he was driving in from Knoxville this morning. The way the stripped down ‘64 Ford Falcon rattled over the dirt roads on the way here, he would have been better off leaving the crappy radio turned off. Cheap rental cars, cheap hotels, and cheap airline seats—that’s all the government would pay for and even then, the bean counters were on the alert for a misspent dime.
Now he needed to find what Khagga’s business was in Oak Ridge. One of Mancuso’s informants reported a Pakistani guy being in town for over a month with no apparent reason for his presence. When that happened in a government town critical to US nuclear weapons manufacturing, it became Mancuso’s business.

These are the opening paragraphs to, Pernicious Proclivities, a manuscript I am currently working on that takes place in the mid-1960s. What do you think?