Prologue
PrologueThe Von Trapp Family Singers would probably disagree.
To start at the very beginning, for this tale, is not a very good place to start.
Instead of seven angelic, soaring voices, these were just two voices, these two men, their lives colliding in a way that could be called coincidence, or maybe serendipity.
Dumb luck worked, too.
Here’s the deal. Take a guy with a devilish, perpetual, dimpled and scruffy grin who lived life on his own terms, always on the edge, a transient soul who was always on the lookout for the next big score. Translation? A con man. Then take another guy, he who lived by an honor code forged by childhood trauma, but also by his sense of loyalty, handsome, currently clean-shaven, loyal and gay, always seeking to right the wrongs in the name of justice. Translation? A private detective.
What happens when greed and good meet?
Can this odd couple work together, able to use each of their strengths to achieve success, mutual satisfaction? One seeking a big payday, while the other wanting to stop a criminal or two. Are both outcomes possible without anyone, including them, being killed?
Both men—ultimately, though—lived by their own moral code. There could be conflict.
Hmm. This could get interesting. Can a sexy, virile con man with a wandering eye toward the ladies and a hot gay detective with a captain of the NYPD as a lover coexist in a world where neither man trusted the person next to them, perhaps, possibly, probably, including each other. Falsehoods laid bare and hidden motives have a strange way of exposing truths.
No, they were not Oscar and Felix, definitely not sharing an apartment in New York. No need to pick up that cigar on the sidewalk.
They were Todd Gleason and Jimmy McSwain, two unlikely partners-by-default in a doomed-to-fail scheme neither had asked for.
* * * *
We were at the end of the story, weren’t we? The Von Trapp’s had escaped the Nazis.
But what about Todd and Jimmy? Had they climbed every mountain?
Currently both men were raising a pint of Guinness at a dimly lit pub on the West Side of Manhattan called Paddy’s, owned by Jimmy’s uncle. It was actually where the two of them met, so it’s fitting they would end their adventure back where it began. Symmetry at last, after a case that defined asymmetrical.
“Cheers,” Jimmy McSwain said with a cautious smile.
“Cheers,” Todd Gleason said. Dimples on display.
“You made out well. Guess this round is on you.”
Todd’s fingers tapped the unsealed manila folder in front of him. A slight smile across his face. “Can’t say. Besides, McSwain, I thought you didn’t get charged by your uncle.”
“You just don’t like to spend your ill-gotten gains, do you?”
“So, you did get to know me, after all.”
“All too well.”
They clinked glasses, drank again. And in their eyes was a look of remembrance of what they’d shared, separately and together, during this past week. Jimmy found himself looking at the bandage on his new friend’s upper arm.
“You sure you don’t want to see a doctor, Todd?”
“Nah. Barely a flesh wound, like a punch to the gut. I’ll survive. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk,” Todd said with a tough-guy shrug. Then he rubbed his wrist, shooting his cuff to reveal its naked flesh.
“Miss it?”
“Hard to say. I barely knew it.”
That’s when the door opened and in walked two uniformed cops, not their favorite things. Staring right at them. Almost targeting them. Rolf x 2 was about to blow the whistle on them.
Todd did not like the authorities. Jimmy had his issues with the NYPD, too.
“We may want to get our stories straight.”
Spoke both, simultaneously.
Part 1: The Crime
