Getting closer...
I’ve been working on the third Tony Razzolito book, on and
off, for what seems like forever. I explained in my last post why it’s been taking so long, so I’m not going to spend time rehashing that here. If you haven’t read my last blogpost, please do - it’ll explain where my head
has been for the last year or two.
Dirty Air should have been finished and released at the end of 2019... at least that was the original plan. It has been both a labor of love and a hard book to write. The ability to focus on finishing the project has been difficult. Not the actual writing, because whenever I do sit down and concentrate on the writing, the story flows from my fingertips fairly easily. I know these characters... every nuance, every personality quirk, everything that makes them tick and makes them think the way they do. It's always helped the stories evolve and sends them down paths I couldn't imagine without having defined characterization. Of course, I have an outline, but it's rough at best. Like many writers, I'm a pantser, I let the personality of my characters write the dialog, which drives the direction of the plot. But as you now know (if you read the last blogpost), I’ve had a lot of distractions over the last couple of years, and making myself sit down to actually do the writing has been the hardest part of writing this book.
I welcome your thoughts and comments😄
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Chapter 1
Sonny Regan had never seen a dead body before. He was standing in an alley in Uptown Charlotte trying to sort through what he was looking at. He and his buddy, Ronnie Stump, were in town for the Coca-Cola 600 and had been enjoying Speed Street, a three-day party extravaganza held the week before one of NASCAR’s biggest race weekends of the year.
The boys started drinking at the campsite they had rented right near The Charlotte Motor Speedway, sometime earlier in the day. They’d taken an Uber into the middle of the city to cap off their night with some good music, food, and of course, more beer.
Ronnie was waiting on the corner for his friend to
finish his business and was starting to get antsy. He walked down
the alley to see what was taking so long. “Hey,” he protested, as he approached
Sonny. “How the hell long does it take you to piss?” He was spent, and the
alcohol was making his head spin. “I gotta get back to camp ‘fore I pass out!”
Sonny ignored his drinking buddy. He just stood
there staring into the lifeless eyes of the man lying behind the trash bin.
“C’mon, zip it up. Our ride’s fixin’ to be here any
min—” He stopped short as he got closer to where Sonny was standing. “What in the hell? Is that a dead body?”
Ronnie’s outburst finally jolted Sonny from his
trance. He looked at his buddy with a pained expression on his face. “Hell,” he said. “I nearabout pissed on him!”
They both stood there looking at the body. It was
that of a man in his late twenties, dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt. He
was wearing a pair of Spalwart track shoes, which was the only article on his
body that hinted toward someone with money. If there was a watch or any other
jewelry, it had most likely been taken by whoever put the bullet hole in the
middle of his chest.
“Sonny, we need to get outta here,” slurred
Ronnie. “We don’t need to be involved in nothin’ like this. Let’s just walk
away and call 911. We’ll tell ‘em that the dead guy is in the alley, but we
won’t tell ‘em who we are. No one has to know we wuz ever here.”
“Won’t work," said Sonny, who was a bit less drunk than his
friend and was thinking a little more clearly. “The cops’ll be able to track
us by way of our cell phone.” He paused and blew out some air through pursed lips. “But I reckon
that we need to call ‘em.”
The two looked at each other. Ronnie started to
sweat and was taking deep breaths. He was swaying ever so slightly as he said,
“I don’t feel so good.” He bent over, held his stomach, and threw up all over
the body. After a full minute of retching up what felt like several gallons of
beer, he dropped down and sat against the cool metal of the trash bin. “Oh,
shit,” was all he could manage to say.
“Damn
Ronnie, you done puked all over him!”
screamed Sonny.
Ronnie couldn’t help himself. He started to laugh
as it struck him how ridicules this whole situation was. He immediately
regretted it. “Ow!” he said as he
doubled over, holding his stomach. “An’ I think I’m fixin’ t’do it agai—” His words
were cut off as his throat tightened up and he began to gag and dry heave.
There was nothing left inside of him. After a minute, the sensation began to
subside and he sat back against the trash bin. This time he sat there in
silence and blew out short breaths.
Sonny had turned away from his friend for fear he
would join him in his spew-fest. Of course, now he was looking right at the
body. Everything Ronnie had to eat and drink all evening was blanketing the
man’s shirt and pants. He moved his eyes away from the puke stained clothing
and concentrated on the man’s face, which was the only vomit-free spot on the
body. Hell, Ronnie had even barfed all over the dead guy’s expensive looking
shoes.
Now that he had a better look at the man’s face,
he thought he recognized him. He wanted to be sure, and he cringed as he thought
about what that meant. He was going to have to check the body. The dead body
that his friend had just thrown up on. He took in a breath and tried to hold it
for as long as he could as he leaned over the man’s torso. He pushed him over
onto his side so that he could check his back pocket for a wallet. He patted
both pockets on the man’s backside, and then rolled him back over so that he
could check the front. Being inebriated made it hard for him to hold his breath
for long, and the rancid smell from the vomit had almost caused him to lose it
twice. And to make matters worse, he didn’t find a wallet or any other form of
ID anywhere on the body… unless it was in his socks or his shoes, and he wasn’t
going to touch either since they were heavily soaked in bile and puke.
Both the boys had been drinking a lot, but he’d always been
better at holding his alcohol than Ronnie. Just the same, he was drunk, so he
wasn’t sure if his eyes were playing a trick on him. After all, the whole city
of Charlotte was NASCAR crazy this week, and he was certainly caught up in all
the revelry, so it could be that he was wrong in what he was thinking.
He sat down next to his friend, who had nodded
off, and nudged him in his side. “Hey,” he said, as he poked his buddy in the
ribs with his elbow. “Wake up. I think I recognize this guy.”
Ronnie started to stir from the constant poking.
He opened his eyes and looked over at Sonny. “What the fu—” The burp that
escaped through his words cut off his protest.
“Goddamn!”
complained Sonny, as he waved his hands trying to stir the putrid air away from
his nose. “Get that stank puke breath
outta my face!”
Ronnie turned his head away. “Sorry,” he grumbled,
as he continued to moan and belch.
“If you can hold your head up long enough, crawl
over there and take a look at that guy’s face.”
Ronnie rolled from his sitting position onto his
hands and knees and moved to where the body was lying. He stared at the face
and then crawled back to where Sonny was sitting. He shrugged his shoulders. “I
don’t recognize him.”
They both just sat there, backs against the cool
trash bin. After a few minutes Sonny looked at Ronnie and said, “I think that’s
Jarrod Trevino.”
Ronnie was still feeling the effects of the nausea
from earlier. “You mean the driver of the Carter-Swanson number sixty-two Ford Motorsport car?”
he pushed out, between shallow breaths. “That
Jarrod Trevino?”
“Yep,” replied Sonny.
Ronnie looked over at the body, then back at his
friend. “Then I reckon we better get on that call to 911.”
Chapter 2
It was the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, and Scott and I had decided to close up shop and start the unofficial beginning of summer a little early.
I'd met Scott during a visit to Charlotte a few years ago. He and I had partnered up on my very first case as a PI. I was pretty green back then and needed a lot of guidance. Scott was nice enough to take me under his wing and helped me solve the case. I learned a lot about the PI business from him, and we'd proven to be a pretty good team. So much so, that I'd ended up moving to North Carolina to accept a position with McHenry Investigative Services, the PI firm that bears his last name, which is only fair since he founded the agency. We’ve been friends and business partners ever since.
My girlfriend, Karen, and I were looking forward
to a fun-in-the-sun weekend at America’s playground, Myrtle Beach. Well,
actually Karen was the one looking forward to a beach trip, it had been more
than a few years since I’d laid out on any beach. My parents were never big sun
and surf people, so of course, I developed other vacation interests based on my
upbringing. Growing up only a few hours away from the Adirondacks, I was more
of a mountains kind of guy rather than the beach type. I was not much of a fan
of lying around in the sun char-broiling my skin while sand worked its way
into my shorts, on a quest to find all the nooks and crannies on the lower half
of my body.
Karen had assured me that this ocean side
community had a lot of other things to do besides sit on the beach, so I was
putting my trust in her for a fun weekend. For all I cared, we could stay in
the room the whole time. Just being with her was all I really needed for an
enjoyable weekend getaway.
My job was to pack the car with our suitcases, folding
chairs, the cooler, beach bags filled with all the beachy stuff that Karen
packed inside of them, beach towels, and the all-important sunhats and
sunglasses.
Karen is a special needs teacher at Double Tree
Elementary School in North Charlotte, and the deal was that I would have
everything packed and ready to go when she got home at four o’clock this
afternoon.
I had all the stuff in the car except the cooler,
opting to wait until right before we left to dump in the ice and fill it up
with the beer for me, the Mike's Hard Lemonade for her, and the food we
bought for the trip.
I glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was only one-thirty, giving me a couple of hours before Karen would
be home from work. Plenty of time to kick back and watch a movie on Netflix
while I waited for her to arrive.
I was settled into my favorite easy chair with a
big bowl of popcorn and a soda, banging on the remote control looking for a
comedy I hadn’t seen before, when my phone started to vibrate on the table next
to me. I knew Scott was on his way to Georgia for the holiday weekend to
visit his mother, so it surprised me to see his name pop up on my caller ID.
“Hey Scott, what’s up? I figured you’d be halfway
to Atlanta by now.”
He sighed into my ear. “I thought so too, but I
just got off the phone with Robin Trevino and she wants to hire us to look into
the death of her husband.”
I was at a loss. “Who is Robin Trevino?”
“Robin Trevino is the wife, or I should say widow,
of NASCAR driver Jarrod Trevino.”
Well that explains why I didn’t recognize the
name. I don’t follow NASCAR, so unless the last name is Earnhardt, whose name
you can’t escape if you live in Charlotte, I wouldn't know the names of any of the drivers. So, it stands to reason that I certainly wouldn’t know the names of their wives.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not familiar with her… or her
husband for that matter. When and how did he die?”
“He took a .45 slug to the chest two nights ago. A
couple of good ol' boys in town for the race this weekend found his body in an
alley near where Speed Street is
going on in Uptown.”
Now even though I wouldn’t call myself a race fan, even I knew about Speed Street. A weekend long party that shut down traffic in the heart of Uptown Charlotte was hard to ignore. It had been on every news broadcast for days.
“What was a NASCAR driver doing at Speed Street? I don’t know much about racing, but I would think that the
drivers themselves wouldn’t have time to be in Uptown during race week. I mean,
shouldn’t they be preparing for the actual race?”
“He and some of the other drivers were there signing photos in an area called the Autograph Zone,” answered Scott. “According to his wife, he was there all afternoon signing his name for a steady stream of fans. She said he called her around seven that evening, saying that he and a couple of the guys were gonna get some dinner and then he’d be heading home. She went to bed and didn’t realize he hadn’t come home until the detectives knocked on her door, waking her up.”
“So, they’re local?”
“Yes,” replied Scott “The Trevino’s live in
Mooresville.”
I’m not well versed on the racing
community, but I do know that a lot of the NASCAR teams are based in
Mooresville, a town just a few miles north of Charlotte. It’s a beautiful area
located on picturesque Lake Norman, right along interstate 77. It’s known as
“Race City USA”, because of the number of prominent racecar teams and drivers
that make Mooresville their home.
“What about the cops? I’m sure they are in hot
pursuit of whoever killed this racecar guy. What does Mrs. Trevino think we can
do that the police can’t?”
“The cops think it’s probably a robbery gone
wrong,” he said.
“Well, they’re probably right,” I shot back.
“She’s not so sure. Apparently there are some
things she didn’t share with the detectives… things she would rather keep out
of the media.”
“Let me guess—she doesn’t trust that the police
can or will keep these things under wrap during their investigation.”
“You’re smarter than what people give you credit
for,” he quipped.
“Hmm… I’m
also guessing that you’ve already agreed to take on her case, correct?”
No reply. His silence said it all. Why did I feel
my glorious beach weekend slipping away? I sighed. “You gonna help me explain
this to Karen?”
“Nope. That’s all you.”
Awesome.
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Well, that's it for now... Obviously it's a story that ties into racing... with a twist😏
Meanwhile, if you haven't experienced the world of Tony Razzolito, PI, yet... click on the links below and give him a try. You might just like what you read - But, of course, I may be a bit biased😎
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