Dedication
Epigraph
This world is a comedy to those that think,
a tragedy to those that feel.
HORATIO WALPOLE
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Prologue
MIDNIGHT
The naked couple ran screaming out of the hotel, covered with fire-extinguisher foam.
Which didn’t attract much attention in Fort Lauderdale.
A window on the top floor shattered. Broken glass rained down from the high-rise, followed by a toilet-tank lid that exploded in the street.
It became quiet.
The nude pair wiped chemical-retardant foam from their eyes and stared down at the broken shards scattered at their feet.
The quiet didn’t last.
Another window shattered. Then another, and another. Toilet-tank lids flying everywhere and crashing in the street like a drumroll. More naked, foamy people dashed outside.
People began to notice. Police and fire trucks arrived. TV vans.
Two men nonchalantly strolled up the noisy sidewalk through ceramic chunks and suds.
“The key to my new life as a private detective is ultra-sensitive powers of observation,” Serge told Coleman. “You must be able to detect the tiniest out-of-place detail . . .”
A hysterical mob ran by, scratching slippery breasts and buttocks.
“Most people walk through life without ever noticing the little clues all around that something’s not right.”
Another toilet lid crashed in front of them and Serge pulled a porcelain splinter from his arm. “In Florida, you just have to filter out the background weirdness.”
MIAMI
The name’s Mahoney. I get lied to for a living. The sign on the door says I’m a private eye, but I mainly keep bartenders and bookies in business.
My best friends—a rumpled fedora and bottle of rye—sat silently on my desk, waiting anxiously for the next case like a weasel-beater in a peep-show booth with incorrect change.
The day began like any other, except it was a Tuesday, not the other six. One of those pleasant days, real nice, right up until it kicks you in the Adam’s apple like a transvestite in stilettos. The air coming through my window was heavy with heat, humidity and double crosses.
Down on the street, people’s lives bounce off one another like eight balls in Frankie’s billiard joint, until one of them lands in the corner pocket of my office. They pay two hundred clams up front to spill their guts about frame jobs, missing identical twins and alimony. Most of them just stink up my oxygen with alibis that are as shaky as an analogy that doesn’t fit.
But this next one was a broad. She knocked on my door like knuckles hitting wood. I told her to have a seat and gave her a hankie. She blew her nose like a British ambulance, and her sob story had more twists than a dragon parade in Chinatown. But I have a soft spot for the farmer’s-daughter types who take a wrong turn out of the dairy barn and end up in Palooka-ville. This dame didn’t know from vice cops on the take for back-alley knobbers, which meant not having that uncomfortable conversation again, and that was jake by me.
My gut said this bird was on the level. She had no priors, skeletons or known associates. A regular Betty Crocker life in the burbs. It all started simple enough with an out-of-the-blue phone call from some mug she’d never heard of. An odd kind of threat. Clearly a wrong number. And some easy green for me. I planned on dishing it for the usual kickback to an off-duty cop named McClusky who put the arm on such jokers to knock off the funny stuff, and I’d still have time to make the eighth race at Gulfstream.
The joker had other ideas . . .
Brook Campanella strolled out the front steps of an office building on the Miami River. A ton of weight lifted from her shoulders. Brook had debated hiring a private eye, but she felt so much better now after her conversation with Mahoney.
