The Last Gig
by Norman
Green
GENRE: Mystery
(detective)
BLURB:
A teenage runaway
from the Brownsville projects, Alessandra Martillo lived with an indifferent
aunt who had taken her in when her mother killed herself, and later, after more
than a year on the streets, a caring uncle found her, took her in, and showed
her she had a chance. That was many years ago, and now Alessandra’s all grown
up, working for a sleazy P.I., repossessing cars, and trolling for waitstaff on
the take. The cases aren’t glamorous, or interesting, but the work pays the
bills. And she’s good at it---if there’s one thing she’s learned since leaving
the streets, it’s how to take care of herself around life’s shadier elements.
When an Irish mobster
named Daniel “Mickey” Caughlan thinks someone on the inside of his shipping
operation is trying to set him up for a fall, it’s Al he wants on the job.
She’s to find the traitor and report back. But just a little digging shows it’s
more complicated than a simple turncoat inside the family; Al’s barely started
on the case when she runs into a few tough guys trying to warn her away. Fools.
As if a little confrontation wouldn’t make her even more determined.
Excerpt:
“Your biggest problem is that you’re
a girl.” That was the first thing he’d said to her back when they started, that
first time she could remember him coming back home. Alessandra had been six
years old at the time, a bit tall for her age and naturally athletic, but
impossibly thin. He was back in Brooklyn after a tour of duty with the MPs on
the Hong Kong waterfront. Tall, dark, and forbidding, that’s how she remembered
him; quick to anger, sensitive to any disrespect, intolerant of any lack of
rectitude in matters of dress or speech or behavior.
She remembered standing in front of
him, trembling, glancing over at her mother for support. Like a lot of project
kids, Alessandra’s mother had been her rock, her bodyguard, her ever- present
protective shield, but right then her mother would not come past the kitchen
doorway. “Beektor,” her mother said, pleading, and her father reddened at the
mispronunciation. “Beektor, she’s so small. Are you sure . . .”
“How long do you want me to wait?”
he snapped. “She’s old enough. Go make dinner.” He did not look in his wife’s
direction to see whether or not he would be obeyed. “Okay, Alessandra,” he
said. “Now you listen to me. You’re a girl, and everyone is bigger than you.
They think they can make you do what they want, you hear me? You have to learn
to defend yourself. Do you understand me? You need to be able to stand up for
yourself. Now pretend I’m a strange man, I walk up to you on the street, and I
grab you. What do you do?” He approached her then, got down on one knee,
wrapped a thick arm around her in slow motion. “I’ve got you now. What do you
do?”
She had heard his voice on the phone
many times, but this
was the first time she had been
confronted with the physical
reality of the man. He was clearly
in charge, and she was terrified
of disappointing him. “I would
scream,” she said, after a
minute. “I would scream for a
policeman.”
“That’s good,” he said, but he did
not release her. “You should scream. But what if there’s no policemen around?
What if they’re too far away to protect you? You need to be able to take care
of yourself.” She was afraid to look at him. “You have something to fight with.
Tell me what it is.”
She could smell the aftershave he
used, feel the smooth warm skin of his arm. She considered his question. “I
could hit you?”
“No, you can’t hit me, you’re too
small and you don’t know how yet. But you can poke my eye out.”
She looked at her hand, resting on
his arm. “Would that hurt?”
“Never mind that. I’m a strange man,
remember? I just grabbed you, and bad things are going to happen unless you can
make me let you go. Do you understand?”
She did not, but she sensed that he
wanted her to say yes. “Yes, Papi.”
“Good. Now we’re going to try it.
No, not like The Three
Stooges.” He released her then. He
held his hand out in front of her, fingers straight and stiff. “Make your hand
like this. No, hard, hard, feel mine. Just like that, hard. Now watch this.”
Still down on one knee, he pushed her back a half step. “Now you pretend you’re
the bad man, and you try to grab me.”
She smiled at that, just slightly.
“No,” he said, “just pretend. I’m
the little girl, you’re the bad man. You’re way bigger than me, I can’t hurt
you. Try to grab me.” She inhaled, took a half step, her hands raised, and
quicker than anything she had ever seen, he jabbed at her face with his
stiffened fingers. “Boom!” he said. “Now tell me what just happened.”
“You poked me.”
“I scratched your cornea. What that
really means is if you were a bad man and I was a little girl, the bad man is
hurting so much he can’t see the little girl anymore, and she’s running away.
Do you understand?”
She did not. “Yes, Papi.”
“Good. Now we’re going to practice.
First in slow motion. I grab you with this hand, slow, like that, and I’m going
to hold up my other hand and you pretend it’s my face, and you jab at it, slow,
slow, hold your fingers stiff. Good. Now a little quicker.” He reached for her
again, holding up his other hand, and she poked at it. “No,” he told her, “keep
those fingers hard and stiff, and jab harder. As quick as you can. Ready? Okay,
go. That’s better. Let’s do it again. Okay, good. Again.”
That’s how it started.
Interview
with Norman Green
1.
What
inspired you to write THE LAST GIG?
It’s tough to be a single woman
in the city, particularly when you have lots of liabilities and no resources.
It’s an environment that makes for a lot of truly tough ladies, and I hope that
Alessandra Martillo does them justice, at least a little bit.
2.
Can
you tell us a little bit about the next books in THE LAST GIG or what you have
planned for the future?
The next couple of novels are about an addict/thief who is
wrestling with himself and his disease, and trying to discover who his is and
why he’s here. He’s caught on on the horns of the dilemma that all addicts much
reach if they want to recover: if he takes another hit, he’s going to die, and
if he doesn’t, he’s going to die. So now what? The first one is called ‘Shadow
of a Thief,’ and it’ll be out this fall.
3.
Can
you tell us a little bit about the characters in THE LAST GIG?
The two protagonists in ‘The Last Gig’ are single women who have
no one but themselves to depend on, at least until they find each other, and
come to trust one another a little bit. What’s interesting to me is how they
respond to pressure, and how the choices they make influence the kind of people
they become.
4.
You
know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and
why?
Lawrence Block, JD MacDonald, both of those guys had the ability
to transcend their genre, and all of fiction, really
5.
If
you could time-travel would you travel to the future or the past? Where would
you like to go and why would you like to visit this particular time period?
It would be nice to have a look, a century or two from now, just
to see if we survive
6.
Do
you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?
Not at the mo… I like cats but their lifespans seem to pass in
no time at all and it’s hell, letting them go.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Norman
Green is the author of six crime novels, most recently Sick Like That. Born in
Massachusetts, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife.
Giveaway:
Digital copy of The Last Gig
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