Publish and Be Damned # 237: Will Hoyle

Here at Crime Always Pays, I occasionally post an excerpt from an unpublished manuscript, mainly because I’m a parasite feeding off the talent of others. So I’m delighted to announce that a previously CAP-published exclusive will land on a shelf near you early in 2010, as the good folk at Mercier Press have signed up Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER. Nice one, Kevin.
  Anyhoos, on with the post in hand, being an excerpt from Will Hoyle’s (right) TIME AND TIDE. Will Hoyle has previously featured on CAP here or hereabouts, so feel free to clickety-click when you’re done here …

TIME AND TIDE

1. DON’T TAKE YOUR GUNS TO TOWN
South Boston, MA – 2008:

Guys that look like me don’t do well in prison.
  They just don’t, it’s proven fact. If you’re not one of the blacks or the Mexicans or the skinheads or the chinks, you’re in no man’s land and you might as well kill yourself on the first night because you’d only last two days, maybe a week tops and that’s if you get yourself thrown in solitary. If you’re just an average guy who’s not quite white trash but who’s not exactly white collar either, the only way you even think about taking a long hot shower or eating a peaceful meal at chow time without finding your own dinner fork oscillating in your back is if you’re a degenerate mick convict who at one time worked for my old man, if you’re still loyal to him now. And as blind luck has it, I’m a spitting image of the sonofabitch, the soft-spoken but equally seedy criminal, racketeer, loan shark, gunrunner and convicted cold-blooded murderer.
  Billy Ray Landry.
  I know that his death will mean my death but when you got nothing and when you know he takes away and takes away without ever giving a single thing back, the color of your skin and the status of your prison popularity starts to mean a lot less. When he took away that one thing in the world and came away with a menial forty-five year sentence, up for parole in twenty, the color of daylight, of your own blood starts to mean a lot less to you.
  Leaning against the brick structure of the Kelley’s Pasta Village on the corner of E. 3rd and L Streets, dragging on my Marlboro and slowly working my way into doing what I swore to myself I’d do.
  Still dark, still early.
  The sky a deep blue watery grave, the morning sun a ravenous, reclusive beast. Car horns, ambulances, cop cars screeching and wailing and serenading the city with their monotonous, luminous nocturnes.
  The unmistakable stench of diesel fumes and car exhaust, grime and garbage, dirt and desperation.
  A massive hangover from of a night of blood drunkenness, the smell of Italian food that’s been sitting cold and clumpy throughout the night, forcing my stomach and the world around me to spin against one another like yin and yang.
  I fish my cell phone from my pocket and check the time. Nearly five in the morning, the bitterly cold sea breeze whispering up the port and through the streets, as unseen and unmerciful as the Angel of Death. I stand and wait in this northeastern nebula of a city, crammed and packed into this blue-collar community, this hard knocks haven. Restless, can’t sleep, and honestly who could when you have as much weighing on your mind, your shoulders and your heart as I do? It was a long walk to get here, and I know it’ll be an even longer one into the loving arms of Boston’s finest.
  The brown leather jacket covers the gray wife beater with the frayed edges and the snag and the sweat stains in the armpit and that just barely covers the black Smith & Wesson .44 hiding in the waistline of my jeans. The one Billy Ray gave me, ions ago. Another lifetime ago. The one he used to chase her with down the dark and muddy and lonely Eagle View Road back when I was still a baby. Before I was big enough to actually defend her.
  The one I plan to raise some hell with even though it’s not even loaded.
  Through the thick clouds of cigarette smoke, I squint over at the Exxon across the street, Newhill Plaza opposite the gas station on the corner of E. 3rd. When I cut my eyes back over to the station, I pay close attention to who goes in, and more importantly, who comes out.
  Flailing headlights, the warm buzz of the occasional car and the clunking and roaring and grating motors that propel them, all blazing down L Street ahead of me and all around me. I wait for the cattle to clear the beaten path before I even attempt to cross the street and do what I told myself I had to do.
  What I have to do or I won’t respect myself later tonight or any other night for that matter.
  I run a surprisingly steady hand through the long and unruly dark blond curls on my head and use my dirt-caked fingernails to scratch my dry scalp. I reassure myself it’s just a deep itch and not a nervous tick. I reassure myself that I’m not apprehensive at all because actually getting away with this crime is not something I’m really trying to do anyway.
  I’m the ticking time bomb who will intentionally fail to detonate.
  Now that the sunrise has finally managed to crane its neck up from behind the navy blue skyline of downtown Boston and up from over the top of Southie’s brand new row of condos, I know I look more than suspect as the unrefined, tattooed construction worker type, loitering and staking out the gas station across L Street, the enclave’s main drag. My location is completely intentional but no one else in the world would know that and after I’m apprehended, I’ll probably end up on one of those World’s Dumbest Criminals programs. Maybe I should’ve come later in the day, rush hour maybe when I’d cause a lot more attention. It’s common knowledge that most criminals don’t want to be seen, noticed. But even though I look the part of the lowlife, the grimy and seedy petty crook, I think I’ll just take a seat on the dirty tile floor and light up another smoke and wait until the cops take me willing and grinning to Cedar Junction Maximum Security Prison after I stick-up the Exxon.
  It’s not like I have a deathwish or I’m scared to be a contributing member of society because I have been for the past eight years. It’s just that now she’s gone and she was the only family I had except for Billy Ray.
  I wait and I smoke and I continue to lean against the pizzeria until I see the subtle hints of the sunrise, batting its eye up from behind the John Hancock Tower. That’s when I leave behind any lingering apprehensions along with the shortened cig butt I crush beneath one of my steel-toed Wolverines. That’s when I quickly secure the .44, take a deep breath, wait for the Pest Control van to clunk its way through the yellow light and then cross L Street without waiting for the pedestrian crosswalk sign.
  A jaywalking armed gunman, off to do the Devil’s work.

  © Will Hoyle 2009

Publish And Be Damned # 24: Will Hoyle / BELLA MORTE

As if there weren’t enough outlets on the interweb already publishing unpublished fiction, Crime Always Pays belly-flops right into the deep end. In the second of what will very probably be an extremely short series, Will Hoyle (right) treats us to Chapter One of his work-in-progress, BELLA MORTE. You know where to put your bouquets and brickbats, people …

BELLA MORTE

1: CLAUSTROPHOBIC THINK-TANK

Confined to this crummy apartment, this eyesore in Brooklyn for yet another day. Ramshackle, rundown, rat-infested and mold-ridden and a Middle Eastern super who doesn’t give a wee shite about the lot of it. I set up by the open window because there’s no fire escape. And even if there were a bloody fire escape, it wouldn’t be the smartest place for me to put arse to chair anyway because I’m wanted by the NYPD and probably the feds by now too. The summer heat bleeds through the apartment and makes this dive as smoldering hot as the pit of Hades. I feel like a prisoner to it, a fugitive, trapped in this waiting room, this all too claustrophobic think-tank. But here I stay until the morning comes and I jump on a plane and become one hundred percent Calabrian.
  Haven’t reached out and phoned my family in Calabria, so they don’t even know I’m coming. Not many people know about my connection to them, so Italy’s a much safer bet than trying to make it back to Ma and Da in Ulster. One thing’s for sure … I’ll get to Southern Italy, bury myself in some farm or some church on a wee hill and retire from the business and learn to speak better Calabrese and see the whole country one day but straight away I’m going to do my best to blend in and make up a batch of lemonade out of a truck load of bloody lemons.
  Plan A. Reggio Calabria. San Luca. Mia famigghia.
  I sit tight, hold up in Mirko’s pad, having dressed myself up in his cargo pants and his Levski FC football jersey. Both smell like mildew and stewed cabbage but they’ll have to do until I can pry myself up on my bad leg and change into the new ones that Mirko’s just brought me. Been in these duds all afternoon now. Couldn’t change back into the clothes I wore this morning because they’re still scattered with my blood and Tong blood and all those in between. Been having to hide out, couldn’t use the washer and dryer down the hall on this floor because they’re down the bloody hall, and seen by anyone excluding my St. Petersburg comrade is not something I need to be right now.
  Much to my utter fooking shock, Mirko wasn’t all too happy to see me when I barreled my way into his apartment all bloodied and shot to kingdom shite. Called me all sorts of pleasantries before he reluctantly assembled all his tools and patched me up proper. Did it all pretty sharpish too, or maybe it just seemed that way due to the entire bottle of Zarskaya Vodka I put down to curb the pain of his poking and prying, the gouging and gushing. Had to undress down to my knickers when I let the ol’ bugger dig in and extract the Uzi 9mm rounds and buckshots from my thigh. Then he sewed up the needle dart wound in my shoulder, the knife wound in my foot.
  And every one of his “I told you sos” and “you shouldn’t have done thats” flew in one ear and directly out the other.
  I’m paranoid, shaky, apprehensive of all things excluding the Beretta in my hand. And I’ve already made my legitimate complaints about this but Mirko wrote them off as nagging and decided to blast his unholy Barynya music to drown me out. It made every pooch within earshot of the apartment howl like they’d never see the sun again. The music, if you can even call it that, sucked the big one but apparently, it was all he had.
Now he sits over there with his eyes glued to the tele, a squirrelly smirk on his crooked lips, another one of his god awful Sobranie Black cigarettes blazing between his grimy fingers.
  After perching myself in this spot by the window hours ago, I stand, stretch my legs, and it’s an ill-advise piece of thinking because it sends shockwaves of pain throughout me body. Aye, Mirko patched me up right as rain, suspiciously free of charge until he went to pull the bullets out of my leg and tried to work his other hand up my bare inner thigh. Thought maybe it was an accident until he went to stitch my shoulder and his other hand inconspicuously slid far too close to my left booby. It earned him a swift thumping to his Brillo pad noggin alright. He retained that it was an accident until I shot that down and called it utter bollocks. Then he decided to go with he hasn’t seen me in forever, that he’s missed me, and that he’s a lonely man. I gave him a choice. Patch me up, get me a new passport and driver’s license free of charge or I pull the trigger and make his head into a canoe.
  What choice did the bloke have?
  As I limp over towards him, I glare down at him because I’m still a bit cheesed about it. To try and make amends for his misdeeds, Mirko went out and brought me some fresh clothes, a good pair of scissors, a box of hair dye, and some colored contact lenses. They all sit there next to him on the table just between his ashtray and bottle of vodka. If there was ever a stereotypical, single Russian immigrant living at a dive in Brooklyn, it’d be Mirko. Sunken eyes, salt and pepper hair cut in a buzz, poorly-grown sandpaper beard that spreads like a mangy leprosy across his face and down his neck. Big, flaring nostrils and two front teeth that look right at home with the rats that run rampant inside his walls.
Despite the vast knowledge of medicine he learned in his time lent to the Russian Ground Forces, Mirko’s a scurvy wee wank who pays the bills by making fake passports, fake IDs, and by providing immediate medical attention to the criminal element in the greater New York City area. He also works part-time at Teddy’s Bar over on Berry Street.
  His eyes are glued to the news because he’s apparently fascinated with it. The local stations are running non-stop footage of the crime scenes over the tele. Uniformed peelers and plain-clothed peelers swarming the area, securing the parameter, shooting the bollocks while pretending to give a shite about the untimely demise of the most powerful attorney/philanthropist/criminal mastermind in the city.
  I don’t think they’ve linked this morning’s bloodbath to all the crimes I’ve committed in Charlotte, Virginia Beach, and Maryland in the past few days. Don’t think they’ve matched them to the shootings last year in Providence, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Been a lot of places, done a lot of killing. No, they haven’t connected all the dots just yet but they will. With all the blood samples I’ve left behind over the last few days, they’ll soon know the name Cocoa McGrady and that’s why I have to change it and become a new person and flee the bloody country sharpish. I can’t help but feel like my time here in the US of A has run its course, that my days here are numbered. - © Will Hoyle 2008

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 2,041: Will Hoyle

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
CAUGHT STEALING by Charlie Huston. Marcus Sakey read some of my work and compared it to Charlie Huston. It took me a little while, but I eventually got around to checking him out. Amazing. CAUGHT STEALING is totally unputdownable. Lucky Number Slevin has a similar plotline, so when I’m watching that, I like to pretend I’m watching CAUGHT STEALING, even if only for a scene or two. Seriously, there should be a movie made from the book, for sure.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Tyler Durden from FIGHT CLUB, or One-Punch Mickey from Snatch. I’ve often wondered who would win in a fight. Nihilist guru Brad Pitt or derelict boozer Brad Pitt? I guess I’d end up being whoever won.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I have several books on the IRA and the Catholics of Ulster. Ultimately depressing, but extremely interesting. Sorry to disappoint you ... I know you wanted to hear Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele.
Most satisfying writing moment?
The moment I finished my first book. I didn’t think it could ever be done, especially with the amount of pages I managed to do it in. Nothing to write home about, but for a poet who decided to collect some outlandish thoughts and some moody characters and to luckily tie up all the many loose ends he foolhardily unwound for himself, I was a fox in a hen house. Or a bull in China shop, one or the other.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
HIDDEN RIVER - Adrian McKinty. Strung out Irish ex-cop from Belfast, the Rocky Mountains, a hit squad from the Irish mob, a sexy platinum blond siren as breathless as Norma Jean, and Indian mysticism. What more does a good crime fiction story need?
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
DEAD I WELL MAY BE by Adrian McKinty. Here’s a shocking secret ... I like McKinty a lot.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Being a writer is the absolute best, comparable to being a movie director. Except the movies I’m making form inside my head and I make them come to life on paper. No one will ever see them in the same you light you do. The warm bodies you place into the roles of your characters, the soundtrack you have spinning during your opening and end credits, the directorial tricks that only the recesses of your mind can pull off ... it’s all your creation, yours and yours only. Once you write a few great characters and good strong story around them, I swear, the world could end but you’d always have that book that meant so much to you. No one can take that away.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Dark, pensive. Sad as a Jacobean tragedy but as bloody and gut-wrenching and shockingly brutal as the lingering intermission of a gladiatorial free-for-all.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Well ... all writers have their influences. If I chose to write and no longer read, I’d have my initial style of writing but I’d be forced to add no other spices to it later because I’d no longer have any other gifted writers to inspire me, to fuel my flames. If I chose to read, I could no longer write and therefore this vivid imagination of mine would go to waste. Ultimately, I think I’d go with writing because it’s what I love. A wonderful writer that I took a workshop with told that “writer’s write. That’s it. If they didn’t, they’d go mad.”
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Metaphoric. Poetic. Tangenty. I know that’s not really a word, but then again, neither is strategery, and that worked for George Bush the younger. Well, kinda.

Will Hoyle is the author of KILLING THE SWOON, which is currently under consideration with a number of publishers.