He paid for the book, an Overland Press trade edition, and found a seat on a bench. He opened the novel and read the first paragraph.
People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.
Michael closed the book and rubbed his thumb across its cover.
The clouds broke and drops began to fall. He was not near shelter, so he decided it was best to head home. Michael slid the book into his shirt, adjusted the watch cap that was on his head, and went south on foot. He was already thinking about the book, its marriage of story and voice. It had captured him immediately. It had taken him somewhere else.
To anyone watching, he was one of many out on the street, going along, stepping quick against the weather. They couldn’t know his inner life, or his history, or that he was a Washingtonian, born and bred, with a steady job, family and friends. A lover of books. A man who knew who he was and who he hoped to be.
Just another man who came uptown.
Walking in the rain.
Also by George Pelecanos
The Martini Shot
The Double
The Cut
What It Was
The Way Home
The Turnaround
The Night Gardener
Drama City
Hard Revolution
Soul Circus
Hell to Pay
Right as Rain
Shame the Devil
The Sweet Forever
King Suckerman
The Big Blowdown
Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
Shoedog
Nick’s Trip
A Firing Offense
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Danielle Zoller, Dave Constantine, Linnea Hegarty, Margaret Goodbody, Frazier O’Leary, Joe Aronstamn, Jon Norris, Betsy Willeford, Gerard Young, Paul Ruppert, Rick Kain, Mark Billingham, and the many inmates of the D.C. Jail who have let me into their world over the years. I would also like to thank Reagan Arthur, Katharine Myers, Betsy Uhrig, and Sabrina Callahan of Little, Brown; Josh Kendall of Mulholland Books; Emad Akhtar of Orion in the UK; Robert Pépin of Calmann-Lévy in France; and Sloan Harris.
The following organizations do good work and often change lives: the Free Minds Book Club, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Writers in Schools program, the D.C. Public Library Foundation, the Innocence Project, and Open City Advocates. Check them out online if you’d like to get involved.
As always, a shout-out to the readers. I appreciate you.
About the Author
George Pelecanos is the bestselling author of twenty novels set in and around Washington, D.C. He is also an independent film producer, and a producer and Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO series The Wire, Treme, and The Deuce. He lives in Maryland.
Mulholland Books
You won’t be able to put down these Mulholland books.
THE MAN WHO CAME UPTOWN by George Pelecanos
WRECKED by Joe Ide
THE SHADOWS WE HIDE by Allen Eskens
FROM RUSSIA WITH BLOOD by Heidi Blake
LAST NIGHT by Karen Ellis
GOLDEN STATE by Ben Winters
THE STRANGER INSIDE by Laura Benedict
TRIGGER by David Swinson
Visit mulhollandbooks.com for your daily suspense fix.
The Man Who Came Uptown Page 21
