by Roger Hurn
According to DK, Shamak is still driving a taxi, though I live in hope that one day I’ll turn on Comedy Central and see that the Indians have indeed taken New York – and I don’t mean Sanjay Kapoor and his hoodlums.
As for me, well, I gave my evidence and tried to keep out of the spotlight. It was easy enough as all the other players were making the most of their fifteen minutes … even Detective Joe Cleary, who was everyone’s idea of a tough New York City Police Detective, finally got the juice he thought he deserved. So who needed a surly, down at heel Private Eye pooping on the party? After all, I was nobody’s idea of Phillip Marlowe.
No, the one I felt sorry for was Jezebel. I still had no idea if she’d written the play or not. However, she’d certainly died for it and that was way too high a price to pay for wanting a shot at the big time.
Funnily enough, although Mulwhinney blanked me just as soon as he’d paid my bill, Carmelita sent me a VIP ticket to go and see her in The Girl From Tiger Bay when it opened at The Prince of Wales. I almost made it to the theatre, but when I saw her and Mulwhinney’s names up in lights, I turned around and gave my ticket to a guy on the corner selling The Big Issue. He looked at me quizzically.
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ I said. ‘The ticket’s kosher. It’s just that I don’t fancy sitting through a play that’s probably written by an idiot, who’s full of sound and fury but is really just a twat – and you can tell him I said so.’ It was a melodramatic and probably futile gesture, but it was one I hoped Jez would have appreciated. Then I walked away and spent the rest of the evening getting plastered in a pub but, even though I drank so much I ended up seeing double, I knew I’d never get drunk enough to see Jez again.
***
If you enjoyed reading Bright Lights, Big City you might be interested in Paradise is Murder by Roger Hurn, coming soon from Endeavour Press.
Extract from Paradise is Murder by Roger Hurn
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
Troilus and Cressida Act 3, Scene 3
Chapter One
I was sitting at my desk watching “The world’s funniest cats” on my computer screen and trying to decide how life had reduced me to this when Gemma, the latest in a long line of assistants, looked across at me. She was frowning and holding her hand over the office phone. ‘Do you know anybody called Carly?’ she asked. ‘Only she’s demanding to speak to you and she sounds in a right state.’
I felt my stomach knot and my heart perform acrobatics in my chest. It wasn’t a good feeling and neither was the desperate rush of hope that swamped my brain. I definitely knew a Carly. Until last New Year’s Eve she had been my associate in the Ryan Kyd Private Investigations Agency (motto: We will find the truth for you). Though the way things had been going lately there were those who’d swear that I couldn’t find the truth even if it was wearing a star spangled jock strap and playing the bagpipes. Anyway, Carly had been everything to me until she’d gone swanning off to run a beach bar in Jamaica with a dodgy geezer called Tyrone.
OK, so Carly and I were never actually an item, but I’d been working on that and I was about to make my move when she’d dropped the bombshell that she preferred the prospect of serving cocktails in a tropical paradise with her iffy boyfriend to helping me solve crimes from an office above a kebab shop in downtown Deptford. She may have had a point, but I was hoping against hope that it had all gone tits up in Jamaica and that this was her phoning from Heathrow begging me for her old job back. I was already preparing to give Gemma the boot as I took the phone from her and said as casually as I could, ‘Hey Carls, it’s been a while. How’s it going, kid?’
For the next five minutes I didn’t manage to get a word in edgeways as Carly ranted and railed at the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Actually, it all boiled down to the fact that the Jamaican police had arrested her boyfriend, Tyrone, for murder. Well, I say boyfriend, but it turned out that Carly and Tyrone were now engaged to be married so, technically, he was her fiancé. In my opinion, the Jamaican police had acted in the nick of time to save Carly from a marriage that she would only have come to regret … but I didn’t share this opinion with her. The truth was my heart was singing at the thought of Tyrone being banged up for life. It meant that Carly was back on the market and I wanted to be first in line to stake a claim to her affections.
Frankly, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Tyrone had ended up in chokey. He was always a bad lot … though Carly couldn’t see it. She’s known him since they’d been at primary school and he’d always looked out for her. This didn’t stop him from being a street hood and a gangster though and he’d been the one who’d supplied Carly with a gun that had been used in a fatal shooting in a case we’d worked on a while back. Yet still she made excuses for him and was wilfully blind to his bad side. It drove me nuts.
Anyway, she finally calmed down enough to come to the point of her call. ‘Look, Ry. I hate to ask this, but you gotta come out to Jamaica and help me
prove Ty’s innocence. I can’t do it on my own and the local Feds are useless.’
I swallowed hard. Knowing Tyrone, it was an even bet that he was guilty of whatever crime the police had accused him of and, even if he wasn’t, I had no interest in proving otherwise. I really didn’t like the bloke and he was standing between me and the woman I thought I loved. Still, Carly was desperate and I couldn’t win back her affections if I stayed put in Deptford. It was a no-brainer. I’d go out, make some inquiries and then pick up the pieces when Carly realised that Tyrone really was bad to the bone. Though, obviously, I wasn’t going to put it quite like that to her.
‘Hey, Carls, you’ve got it. I’ll tie up a few outstanding things here then I’ll be on the next plane out to Kingston.’
The relief in her voice took my breath away.
‘Oh God, Ry., you’re the best. And it’ll be amazing to be back working with you again ‘cos, like you always say, “We will find out the truth for you.” And we’d better find out the truth bloody fast because they’ve still got the death penalty here and, if we can’t do something, Ty’s gonna hang!’
If you enjoyed Bright Lights, Big City check out Roger Hurn’s other books here: Endeavour Press - the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.
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Also in the Ryan Kidd series
Business is Murder
Hand of Darkness
The Dead of Winter
Below Zero
Bright Lights, Big City
Also by Roger Hurn:
An Ill Wind
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