The Whale

by Lawrence Kelter

  “Explain,” she insisted.

  He took the thumb drive out of his pocket and held it up for her to see. “Wrent pays all the bills for a lot of very wealthy people. The cash accounts he oversees contain more than two hundred million dollars. I took a total of six hundred thousand, evenly withdrawn from more than three hundred separate accounts—a meager two K from each. It’ll hardly be noticed—just enough to pay O’Rourke a quarter mil—which was not a bad consolation prize considering he was about to go up the river one moment and jetting off to Cancun the next. There was a fast one hundred K for Wilcox, which left two-fifty for us. It’s not the big four million score we were hoping for but it’ll give us plenty of time to lie low and figure out where we go from here.”

  “Hmmm. I thought we were going to Fiji,” she said with disappointment.

  “That’s our end game strategy, babe. But I think we’ll need to give our Hollywood angle a try, if we’re going to make that kind of money.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “We’re flying the wrong way, then.”

  Sam grinned. “We have a little business in Switzerland first. Besides I haven’t gone skiing in ages and I need a new watch.”

  “You already have a watch.”

  “I want a genuine Swiss timepiece.” He looked at his wristwatch. “This piece of junk is a knockoff.”

  She giggled, a boozy drunken giggle. “All this alcohol is getting to me, and knowing that I’m not getting thrown into a federal jail…I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders.” She smiled naughtily. “Follow me into the first class lavatory and I’ll give you a piece to knock off.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There isn’t a hell of a lot of room in the lavatory.”

  “Or I could throw you out the window at thirty thousand feet.”

  “You win,” he said, his grin spreading ear to ear as he quickly unbuckled his seatbelt.

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  Lawrence Kelter never expected to be a writer. In fact, he was voted the student least likely to step foot in a library. Well, times change, and he has now authored several novels including the internationally bestselling Stephanie Chalice and Chloe Mather Thriller Series. Early in his writing career, he received support from literary icon Nelson DeMille, who was gracious enough to put pencil to paper to assist in the editing of the first book, and felt strongly enough about the finished product to say, “Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum.”

  He’s lived in the Metro New York area most of his life and relies primarily on familiar locales for story settings. He does his best to make each novel quickly paced and crammed full of twists, turns, and laughs.

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  BOOKS BY LAWRENCE KELTER

  The My Cousin Vinny Series

  Back to Brooklyn

  My Cousin Vinny

  Stephanie Chalice Thrillers

  First Kill

  Second Chance

  Third Victim

  Don’t Close Your Eyes

  Ransom Beach

  The Brain Vault

  Out Honored Dead

  Baby Girl Doe

  Compromised

  Stephanie Chalice City Beat Thrillers

  Skeletons in the Closet

  We All Fall Down

  Ashes to Ashes

  Where the Truth Leads

  Chloe Mather Thrillers

  Secrets of the Kill

  Rules of the Kill

  Legends of the Kill

  Other Novels

  Counterblow

  Kiss of the Devil’s Breath

  Palindrome

  Saving Cervantes

  Season of Faith

  Out of the Ashes

  The Last Collar (with Frank Zafiro)

  Fallen City (with Frank Zafiro)

  As Editor

  The Black Car Business Volume 1

  The Black Car Business Volume 2

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  Here is a preview from The Movie Makers by Gary Phillips, A Grifter’s Song Season One Episode 4.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Reed Bennek appreciated his cup of plain coffee as he gazed at one of his pieces in his study. Goddamn thing wasn’t even a painting. The artwork was a framed sketch on Bristol by the highly collectable Jackson Klemints. He’d bought it a few years ago at a private sale. The price it commanded then was akin to what he’d paid for one of the Lucien Freud oils he had hanging in an upstairs hallway. But to his way of thinking, Freud put in the work, the way he captured mood and the inner essence in his subject’s body poses and expressions in his controlled brush strokes. But this supposed artwork before him? Hell, he’d seen doodles drawn by art directors putting away their third margarita with more style and substance.

  But that’s not why he’d bought the work. It was an investment and he’d been assured by his money manager that this simple effort before him—maybe it was a kite in the air over a sailboat in the water or maybe it was just a bunch of random ass squiggles—would only increase in value over time. Not double what he’d laid out for it, and that had been considerable, but a profit nonetheless. Klemints was a name and Bennek had begun to rake it in when he acquired it. The fourth installment of the Demolisher Road series, The Fate of the Fastest, had made close to five hundred million worldwide. Being the star and one of the executive producers, Bennek in total had banked more than seventy million after being in the four movies. Not too shabby for a working-class kid from Downey, an ex-stuntman and one who’d been listed below the line when the first movie was let out the gate over seven years ago.

  That first one, Demolisher Road, was a low budget B effort about street racers in the ’hood, undercover cops at cross purposes and the smuggling of nanotech. The film, the plot hinting at the use of the machine to enslave humankind, was helmed by a veteran schlockmeister who had employed Bennek as a stunt driver some fifteen years before. The director was a former cutter, a film editor who was known not to require more than a third take from his actors but brought movies in on time and often under budget. The damn thing was the surprise hit of that summer. Thereafter, it was figuratively off to the races.

  But in that initial outing, Bennek’s character in the script was just called Go-To, because of the sweet big-barreled ’68 Pontiac GTO he’d shown up in at the top of the second act. That and the guy he was playing was hinted at being an Iraq war vet. A few crossed wires in his head but a dude you could always depend on to have your back—thus a double meaning to his nickname.

  This was before the top billed in the series walked away during the middle of the second shoot over the ubiquitous creative control issues, which was a cover for his increasingly out-of-control behavior finally biting him in the butt but good. This was before the #MeToo movement when a lot of “boys will be boys” behavior was still overtly tolerated. But while on a coke and hash bender, star George McGooghan had beat that poor woman so bad she lost an eye and no amount of hush money could keep the incident covered up. A hasty rewrite was undertaken and Bennek’s Go-To character was now second billed along with Tyler Roberts whose character began as the roguish master thief anti-hero. Even after Bennek received solid reviews for his performance in the middle-budgeted sequel, it was made clear to him and his reps that for the third outing, he would be playing second banana to Roberts’ character, Johnny “Gears” Holloway. None of that one guy’s name is in the upper right to the other guy’s in the lower left so it was sort of equal billing razzmatazz. That was until Roberts, having done a degree of his own driving in the films, got green screening and reality mixed up in his head, as actors have a want to do. Particularly as he felt competitive to the one-time stunt driver who he felt was trying to upstage him in their scenes together. At any rate, it seemed he came to believe that his being able to do a donut or a J-turn in a controlled setting mea
nt he could actually do it. One evening, leaving a club in the gentrifying area of what used to be the grimy industrial section east of downtown, in the company of a much younger pretty woman, he braked at the stop light in his Porsche 911. It was in a color the dealer called Sapphire Blue Metallic, and it gleamed under the street light like it had been poured whole out of a mage’s cauldron.

  A couple of young men, fans of the two movies, rolled up in a tricked out ’64 Impala. Head nodding was exchanged along with he the revving of engines, aided by the somewhat tipsy woman giving Roberts’ thigh a squeeze. Both drivers smoked their rear tires and tore away from the intersection like starving men racing toward a seven-course meal. The symbolism of the slick Euro machine versus classic Detroit iron not lost on anyone in the two cars.

  Roberts’ fiery death was spectacular, the rave of social media. His Porsche bouncing off a parked van then as the vehicle whipped sideways at more than ninety miles an hour, plowed into the brick wall of a big box store. And just like in the movies, the fuel tank exploded, burning to death the actor and the woman instantaneously against the closed store. Also captured on shaky phone video was the Impala which had angled off a high spot in the curb. The car flipped over with three of its wheels in the air, crashed onto its roof and slid some, pole-axing a light post. Crazily, the passenger in the nox-powered Impala was unharmed and kicking out the door, ran away from the scene. Thereafter he’d been arrested and charged with various crimes including vehicular manslaughter and engaging in an illegal speed contest. Not having the resources to fight the charges, and what with public will against him for “causing” Roberts death, the passenger wound up serving time. The driver had been killed on impact.

  All this mishegoss had raised the stock of the franchise to where Bennek perched financially and career-wise at this moment. His smartphone buzzed on his desk and he retrieved it and glanced at who was calling him. All three of his phones were compartmentalized one from the other, with particular people in his circle only contacting him on one of the particular instruments. This one was his business phone. He slid his finger across the lower portion of the screen and put the phone to his ear.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Bob Ferguson needs to reschedule, Reed,” his personal assistant said on the other end of the line.

  “He give you some alternate dates?”

  “He did.” The assistant, Jeremy, ran them down and also mentioned other appointments Bennek had that might conflict with a given date or time. They worked out another lunch time and the assistant had him hold while he called Rosen’s assistant.

  The new date was confirmed with the studio exec’s office and then Jeremy said, “I’m waiting to hear back on that other matter.”

  “Okay. Ah, when you have time today, can you get over to Strosser’s a get me a pound and a half of pastrami? Rodrigo there knows how I like it trimmed.”

  “You want it before noon?”

  “No, just before five is fine.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  Of course there were more menial tasks for Jeremy to do with it winding up, maybe it would be better if the pastrami got to him before noon. He ended the call and sat heavily behind his desk. To his right were three scripts one atop the other. He’d read them this past weekend. The biopic about the jazz trumpeter was a maybe, and the one about a widower father raising his pre-teen son was a pass. He’d found the script pedantic and cliched, despite the screenwriter having been nominated for an Oscar in the past. The third one was about a gambling used car salesmen who falls down the rabbit hole. Now that was a role, with the proper rewrites and a director or two he had in mind, he could really sink his chops into. Put it all out there. A small budget effort that the monetary returns wouldn’t be all that, but could garner attention in all the right quarters. Finally shaking the image that he wasn’t a real actor, and not just a guy with an easy way in those big budget actioners.

  Bennek sat back, hands now tight on the arms of his banker’s chair. His eyes shifted from his desk top where the two phones resided to the bottom drawer to his right where a third one resided. The business one he’d just used which was also used by his lawyer, agent, manager and the like. The third one was for his mother, sister and niece, his sis’ grown daughter. But that second phone was the pussy line. He couldn’t help but smile at that. Okay, it wasn’t PC but he was no monster like some in this town, beating off in front of some woman trapped in a hotel room or certainly not forcing himself on anybody. Morally and legally there was no need for that. There were plenty of women in town who…well, were around, who inhabited various levels of the Industry. Were they post-feminist gold diggers he’d mused now and then? These were bold chicks, not pretending to be in love or infatuated but out for a good time Those had that second phone’s number.

  He was contemplating the import of what was in the bottom drawer, his attention then shifting to the small stack of scripts. Time to put on his big boy pants he surmised. He picked up the business phone and scrolling through his recent, called a specific number.

  “This is Clay,” said a pleasant voice once the line connected. “That you, Reed?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. You got time for me today? I mean in person, not over the phone.”

  In the quiet, sparsely furnished office where the man calling himself Clay Morrison had answered the phone, inwardly he took a three count. He needed to make sure his pulse was glacial, that he didn’t smile as he believed the listener could “hear” that grin. Rather he made sure he was draped in the mantle of the life couch he pretended to be.

  “Of course, Reed,” Sam said. “I have time for you today…in person it is.”

  Click here to learn more about The Movie Makers by Gary Phillips.

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  Here is a preview from Hell Chose Me by Angel Luis Colón.

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  First Shot, Last Call—Now

  1

  Charlie Ryan’s head cracks against the bar top with a satisfying thud and snaps back up like a rubber ball—blood gushing from the shiny new gash on the bridge of his nose. He crumples to his knees. Sends the barstool his fat ass was resting on not moments ago flying back with a thud against the wall. A dartboard shakes loose and crashes down—darts, chalk, and all. A neon Coors sign vibrates on the nails holding it up—threatens to join the board on the floor.

  We’re at Jimmy’s Bar and Grill in the Bronx—all bar and no grill. A day-drinker’s paradise. Low light. Three televisions showcasing horse races. The smell of smoke and week-old beer. There’s a jukebox in the corner that’s seen better days. No surprise this is the place Charlie hangs his hat. He’s one of those sad cases you think only exist in TV or a movie. Had a good job and a family. Never made many waves. One day he falls in love with the horses and the next—well—the next day there’s divorce, bitterness, alcoholism, and a little over eighty large owed to some interesting people.

  Me? I work for those interesting people.

  I pull my .22 from the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Realize I hadn’t brought my suppressor—that’s what I get for getting caught up with this asshole’s personal life when I did my research. I snatch a handful of his salt-and-pepper hair and yank hard, so he can look at me in the eye. “You screwed up, Charlie.” The space between us gets hot. I twist the fabric of his button-down shirt harder and the top button pops off.

  “Please…” He’s a mess. The teary eyes and snotty nose are going full force. “I got an inside track and everything, man. I can make good, I can…” he gulps. “I have a little girl.”

  The kid defense—always the motherfuckers who walk out on their kids. They love pulling that card. Probably the first time he’s really given the poor thing any real thought in years. I’ve got me a glorified sperm donor here.

  “And you chose the ponies over her a long time ago.” I give him a gentle pat to
the temple with the barrel of my gun. “Tell you what: you tell me how old that little girl is—to the very fucking day—and maybe I’ll have a talk with Paulie.”

  I already know the answer—researched everything. Charlie Ryan, forty-two years old, divorced for three years now. Ex-wife: Rebecca—thirty-nine years old. Daughter: Kira—nine years, three months, eight days old. Good girl. Maintains a B average and goes to ballet twice a week. Thankfully, she’s looks like her mother. Thinking about her gets that white-hot rage in my belly going. These gigs should never be this personal, but deadbeats like Charlie bring out the worst in me. Any other schlub, it’d have been quick. Tag them in an alley or a parking lot after sunset. This asshole, no, he gets a chance to reflect on his sins.

  “I know more about you than you know, Charlie.” I shove the gun against his temple hard. He struggles a little, but the four beers he had before I made my move have caught up with him. He’s a little sloppy. “I know that you’ve got a Master’s in Engineering, about the scar from the emergency appendectomy you had. Shit, I even know about the alleged sexual assault in college that was ‘sealed’ when they couldn’t prove you did it. I know the girl ended up taking a leap from the George Washington years back. You remember that one?”

  “I’m sorry, please. I can fix this.” He tries to pull away from me and I reacquaint his face with the bar. “Billy!” He calls to the bartender who’s been suspiciously missing. Good luck. Billy’s too busy counting out a wad of cash I handed him this morning before he opened the bar.

  I pull Charlie to his feet. “Let’s make a deal. You tell me how old your little girl is, and I’ll walk right out of here. You love her like you say you do then this is cake.” I shouldn’t be messing around like this. There should be a bullet in his head and I should be miles from here by now.