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PM Update to Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Tuesday, October 19: A new freebie for kids, Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday! plus Decisions (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

 Religious publisher Zondervan has a free fun read today for kids from its ZonderKids imprint….
Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday
By: Mike Thaler
Lee’s loose, cartoon-style illustrations in watercolor and ink add considerable appeal, including plenty of speech balloons with pithy comments as well as spot illustrations of characters offering side comments within the short text. — Kirkus Review (Kirkus Review )

Product Description

With hilarious stories and nutty pictures, the Tales from the Back Pew series offers kid’s a unique view of church. Enjoy plenty of giggles with your child—and learn fun, important truths about God, church, and the Bible.Mom is taking me to church this Sunday. I’ve heard a lot about church. You have to stand up, sit down, and kneel a hundred times. It’s called being in the service—I’m too young to be drafted! 

 
Scroll down for more free books….

And don’t miss this page-turner from today’s Free Book Alert sponsor….

Decisions 
R. Doug Wicker
4.0 out of 5 stars – 81 Reviews
Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
$3.99 in the Kindle Store

You won’t find any more political correctness in R. Doug Wicker’s Decisions than you will find in L. Ron Hubbard’s Spy Killer, but the two books also have something positive in common that goes far beyond the fact that two authors’ names meter out so congruently and felicitously:

It’s the high-concept Paranoid Premise, which provides the spine of some of the best suspense novels and screenplays ever written. And Wicker sweetens the deal for readers by setting his action against the backdrop of the exclusive Vai Kai resort in the Fiji Islands.

What’s the Paranoid Premise? I first heard the phrase while reading Amy Wallace’s 2004 New Yorker profile of B-movie screenwriting king Larry Cohen. Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell had summed it up in this description of Cohen’s oeuvre: “Mr. Cohen has mined a career out of one simple question–what’s the worst that could happen?” 

And then, of course, each time the protagonist tries to deal with current “worst that could happen,” the next “worst that could happen” is even worse.


If these sound like the ingredients for a great read, Decisions is a natural for you. Here’s the set-up:

An Agatha Christie inspired confection stays true to its roots, with enough clues and plot twists to keep the reader guessing until the end. Donovan Grant was an air traffic controller until a post-traumatic stress disorder renders him unfit to continue in the profession. He lands the job as pilot for the exclusive Vai Kai resort in the Fiji Islands where trouble arrives in waves. First Donovan starts having inexplicable blackouts, in which he becomes uncharacteristically violent. Then he ferries in a group that includes actress Kelly LaBrecque and her movie producer ex-husband, Sheldon Larsen. Kelly informs Donovan that every person in their group hates Sheldon’s guts. Finally, a hurricane knocks out the lights long enough for the first murder to occur and it looks like Donovan is the guilty party. Kelly, who seems romantically interested in Donovan, jumps to his defense. The novel is airy fun, carried by its two likeable and witty central characters. — manuscript review by Publishers Weekly

Donovan Grant witnessed something no man should have to see—a crime so horrendous with a death count so high that the memories haunt his every waking and sleeping moment, a crime for which he holds himself solely and completely responsible. The images replaying over and over within his mind have cost him his career, his marriage, and a good measure of his sanity.

Now, nearly eighteen months later and totally incapable of making even the simplest of decisions, Grant ekes out a meager existence working at an exclusive resort on the privately owned Fijian Island of Vai Kai. But there are some problems intruding upon this idyllic, decision-free existence: People are being murdered, the island is cut off by an approaching hurricane, and Grant is his own—and everyone else’s—prime suspect. During each additional uptick in the body count, Grant is suffering either from a blackout or a flashback to “That Day.” And then there’s his unfortunate propensity to be found standing over the victims’ bodies while holding the murder weapon in his blood-stained hands.

One woman separates Donovan Grant from total insanity and complete resignation. But Kelly LaBrecque has her own little problem—while Grant has the opportunity in each murder, only she has the motive. Stacking up in the resort’s refrigerated food locker are the bodies of Kelly’s ex-husband and the mistress who broke apart their marriage. It’s as if Grant is knocking off anyone who ever crossed her.

As the murders continue, the evidence against Grant piles up, and the latest choice of victims, the mistress’ milquetoast husband, mean Kelly herself may be next for cold storage, and Grant may be the one who places her there. Kelly and Grant must work feverishly to evaluate the clues and the ever-dwindling number of residents of Vai Kai—desperately racing the forces of nature and the killer that stalks them all.

In the end, Grant will have to come face-to-face with the killer, with himself, and with the demon that has haunted his remorse-filled, guilt-laden mind for far too long.

Click here to download DECISIONS (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
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UK Kindle customers: Click here to download DECISIONS

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Click here for today’s earlier Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Tuesday, October 19: Popular Pulp Fiction, plus R. Doug Wicker Explores the High-Concept Paranoid Premise Among the Palm Trees in Decisions (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

Don’t Miss Today’s Major Event in Horror Fiction: DRACULAS – Read Half the Book Free Right Here … at Your Own Risk!

We don’t want to take any chance on your missing out on a major event that is taking place today in the world of horror fiction. 

Except. Except if … if horror fiction is not for you … please, please stop reading this post.

There will be other great posts for you, but please, not this one.

But if you think you are up to it, we are ghoulishly happy here, less than two weeks before Hallowe’en, to offer our own brand of Trick or Treat.

31,000 words — fully half of the remarkable work of terror that is being unleashed on the world today by four of the world’s most frightening pros of paranoia, terror writers Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, F. Paul Wilson, and Jeff Strand — yes, that’s half of the novel, free directly to you from the authors via Kindle Nation.
But don’t kid yourself.

This lengthy excerpt is free in monetary terms. Won’t cost you a dime. Even if you decide to pull the trigger on the whole book, that’s only going to be $2.99. That’s not much.


But we cannot promise you that, in the depths of your soul, it won’t be much, much more expensive. Please don’t ever say we didn’t warn you.


And … oh yes … Happy Hallowe’en.


By J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, F. Paul Wilson, and Jeff Strand 
4.6 out of 5 stars  – 82 Reviews
Kindle Price:    $2.99 
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

a novel of terror by
Blake Crouch
Jack Kilborn
Jeff Strand
F. Paul Wilson

Draculas copyright ©  2010 by Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson and reprinted here with their permission.


This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson.

   INTRODUCTION

   I grew up reading books where vampires were scary.
   This novel is an attempt to make them scary again.
   When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital.
   This is NOT a collection of short stories. It’s a single, complete novel.
   And it’s going to freak you out.
   If you’re easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein.
   You have been warned.

   Joe Konrath
   October, 2010

For Bram Stoker, with deepest apologies

DRACULAS

DRACULA’S SKULL UNEARTHED IN TRANSYLVANIA! A Romanian farmer discovered a skull with unusual properties while plowing his field near the town of Brasov. The relic, which appears to be ancient and human, has thirty-two elongated, razor-sharp teeth.
—NATIONAL TATTLER

VAMPIRE SKULL A HOAX? Discovered in Transylvania, the humanoid skull with sharp fangs is considered by many to be a fake. Fueling this speculation is the owner’s refusal to let scientists analyze the discovery, claiming it embodies an ancient curse.
—THE INQUISITOR STAR

MILLIONAIRE BUYS DRAC’S HEAD! Eccentric recluse Mortimer Moorecook of Durango, Colorado, has apparently purchased the so-called “Dracula skull” for an undisclosed sum, from the Transylvanian farmer who unearthed it a week ago. It isn’t known what Moorecook, who made his fortune on Wall Street during the late 80s, plans to do with the skull, though many are hoping it will be turned over to scientists for study. Moorecook, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, couldn’t be reached for comment.

—THE DRUDGE REPORT

   Moorecook
   MORTIMER Moorecook opened the massive oak door of his hilltop mansion just as the FedEx deliveryman was reaching for the doorbell.
   “Hi, Mr. Moorecook, I have—”
   “You have my package.”
   “Yeah. Must be special. Only thing on my truck. Never been called out on a Sunday evening before.”
   Mortimer looked at the cardboard box, covered in FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE stickers and some Romanian customs scrawl. His mouth went dry, and his already bowed knees threatened to stop supporting him.
   Finally.
   “Mr. Moorecook?”
   The old man glanced up at the buff FedEx driver, thinking how he’d once been that young and vital. Never could’ve imagined how quickly and completely that sense of immortality deserts you. So much taken for granted.
   “What?”
   “Just need you to sign for it so I can keep my job.”
   Taking the pen in his trembling grasp, Mortimer scribbled in the window of the electronic tracker. Then the box was in his hands. It barely weighed three pounds, but the magnitude of its contents made his arms shake.
   “Shanna! It’s here! It’s here!”
   Mortimer limped through the atrium as quickly as his thin, frail legs could manage, breathless by the time he reached the study. He set the box down on the coffee table in front of the hearth and eased back onto the leather couch just as his legs were about to give out.
   His hospice nurse—a zaftig, forty-something woman named Jenny—rolled his IV bag into the study and plugged the line into his arm.
   “Oh, stop it!” He swatted air in her general direction. “I ought to get a restraining order against you people. Everywhere I go, you’re always stalking me with that thing!”
   But even as he spoke, he could feel the morphine-push flooding his system like a good, wet dream.
   “Mr. Moorecook, you know what happens if we have any lapses between dosages.”
   “Yeah, I might actually feel something.”
   “Is writhing around on the ground in unimaginable pain the kind of feeling you want?”
   Of course not, he thought. That’s the reason I…
   “Mortimer!” Shanna appeared in the doorway of the study. “It’s really here?”
   He nodded, eyes twinkling, then turning cold again as he glanced toward Jenny. “Leave us.”
   Shanna walked past the nurse and came around the sofa. Mortimer could smell whatever body wash she’d used in the shower that morning as she sat down beside him, her brown curls bouncing off her shoulders like an honest-to-god shampoo commercial. She was thirty-five, had been single when she moved out to Durango at Mortimer’s request, but in the eight weeks she’d been here, she’d met a sheriff’s deputy and inexplicably fallen for him. It remained beyond Mortimer’s comprehension how this gorgeous biological anthropologist had seen anything in that redneck, who, as far as Mortimer could tell, was the epitome of what made the world throw-up in its mouth when it thought of Red State America.
   Then again, he was old and dying, and maybe just a little bit jealous.
   “Help me up, Shanna.”
   With the morphine flowing, it felt like he floated over to his desk.
   He opened the middle drawer, glancing out the big windows into the San Juan Mountains beyond a gaping canyon. The peaks were flushed with alpenglow, the snowfields pink as the sun dropped over southwest Colorado.
   Lost in thought, Mortimer hitched up his tailored black pants—so loose now he had taken to wearing the gold-buckled belt left to him by his father—and ran his fingers over the Ouroboros insignia sewn into the breast of his red, silk robe. Then he reached into his desk drawer and took out the bottle he’d been waiting years to open, fighting a moment with the wrapper and cork. At last, he splashed a little of the rosewood-colored liquid into two tumblers.
   “I’m not really much of a whiskey drinker,” Shanna protested.
   “Humor me.”
   Mortimer raised his glass, already catching whiffs of the fierce dried fruits and peat wafting toward him.
   “To you, Shanna,” he said. “Thanks for spending these last few weeks with me. I haven’t been this happy since my Wall Street days, raiding companies. I ever tell you—”
   “Many times.”
   They clinked glasses and drank.
   “That’s disgusting,” Shanna said, setting her glass down.
   Mortimer shook his head.
   “What?” she said.
   “Nothing, it’s just that this is a fifty-five year Macallan. I paid $17,000 for that bottle many years ago, knowing I wouldn’t crack it until a night like this came along.”
   “You paid too much,” she said.
   “Some things are worth the price. Shall we?”
   They returned to the couch, and Mortimer sat down and dug the Swiss Army knife out of the patch pocket of his linen shirt. It shook in his hands as he opened one of the smaller blades.
   “Let me,” Shanna said, reaching for the knife.
   He recoiled. “No!”
   Mortimer inserted the blade and gently tugged it through the tape. He put the knife away and opened the box, pulling out wads of crumpled, foreign newsprint until he felt the smaller box within the larger. He lifted it out, set it on the glass.
   It was some kind of black composite, sealed with a steel hasp on each side. He’d had the box specially made, then sent it to the farmer to ensure safe delivery of the item. Its key hung around his neck on a gold chain.
   He unlocked the hasps and flipped them open, gingerly lifting off the top half of the box, bringing it onto his lap as Shanna leaned in. They could only see the back of the skull, the bone deep brown, heavily calcified, full of hairline fractures and several larger cracks, one square-inch piece missing entirely. He worked his fingers down into the hard black foam that had protected the skull on its journey across the ocean, and carefully lifted it out.
   Shanna said, “Oh my God.”
   Mortimer stared into the hollowed eye sockets, and then the teeth, which more resembled the dental architecture of a shark than a human being.
   Not at all what he’d been expecting, and it didn’t match the artist conceptions in any of the scandal rags. This wasn’t a skull from an old Christopher Lee Hammer film. This was an affront against nature. Mortimer found it difficult to breathe. But he also registered something else, something he hadn’t felt since his diagnosis.
   Excitement.
   “May I?” Shanna asked.
   Reluctantly, Mortimer handed Shanna the skull. He didn’t like it leaving his grasp, had to remind himself that this was what he’d been paying her so handsomely for.
   Shanna examined one of the yellowed teeth.
   “Coffee-drinker,” she quipped, and then her eyes narrowed and Mortimer watched as her inner-scientist took over. “They’re at least an inch and a half long, every one of them, even the molars. Huh, weird.”
   “What?”
   “These canines are hollowed.”
   “What’s the significance?”
   “I don’t know. It’s not dissimilar to venomous snakes.” She opened the mandible. “Look at the articulation. That range of motion is unbelievable. The jaw structure is…reptilian. There are literally too many teeth to fit in this mouth. See how they overlap? They would’ve shredded the lips off, most of the cheek, exploded the gums, ripped apart the ligaments in the mandible.”
   “What are you saying? It’s fake?”
   “It looks real. No doubt. But it’s just anatomically impossible.”
   Mortimer leaned closer. “Is it human?”
   “Does this look human to you?”
   Shanna’s words hung in the air like a crooked painting.
   “So…what is it?” Mortimer whispered.
   “It’s certainly hominoid. But unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Nothing like this exists in the fossil record. This shouldn’t exist.”
   “But it does exist. It must be real.”
   “Look, we’ll have it tested. It’s possible the skull is authentic, but the teeth have to have been implanted.”
   “Do you know what I paid for this?”
   “No, what?”
   “Just give it back.”
   Shanna handed Mortimer the skull and stood up, smoothing out her slacks.
   “Mort, I’m really excited for you. Really. And I can’t wait to get started studying this.”
   Mortimer’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re…going? Now?”
   “I want to stay. But I promised Clay. He wants to take me—wait for it—to the Tanner Gun Show in Denver. We’re supposed to hit the road tonight.”
   “Jesus Christ. He must have elephantine genitalia.”
   “Mortimer!” She gave him a playful bump on the shoulder.
   “What? There’s no other explanation. I mean, really? Another gun show?”
   “Maybe not.”
   Something in her eyes…trouble in paradise? He hoped so.
   He held up the skull, cradling it in both palms. “This is the reason you’re here, Shanna. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
   The mandible was still open. The old man grazed one of his liver-spotted fingers across the points of the teeth—razor sharp. He was sure he was only imagining it, but they seemed to send an electrical current through his body.
   “Mort? You gonna be all right?”
   He looked up at Shanna. Beautiful, youthful, Shanna.
   To be young enough again to satisfy a woman like that.
   Mortimer smiled. “I hope so.”
   Then he pulled the skull into his neck, clamped shut the ancient jaw, and the last thing he felt before losing consciousness were those razor teeth sinking through the paper-thin flesh of his throat.
   Shanna
   JENNY, the hospice nurse, had acted quickly and professionally. Within two minutes, she had bandaged the wound and controlled the bleeding, but that was the least of Mort’s problems. Seconds after stabbing himself with those horrid fangs, he’d dropped to the floor in a violent seizure. Shanna had been ordered to stick something between his chattering teeth to prevent him from biting off his own tongue. She’d tried to use a ball point pen, but her benefactor had snapped it in half, blue ink mixing with the white foam that churned between his lips.
   “Get something under his head,” Jenny told her, her voice up an octave. Shanna removed her jean jacket—a gift from Clayton—and balled it up for Mort to use as a pillow. Mortimer’s hand shot out, grabbing Shanna’s shirt. She yelped in surprise, pawing at his wrist, trying to free herself, but Mort had a grip like stone.
   The warm, acrid smell of urine wafted up as he wet his pants, and the convulsions intensified, his limbs banging against the hardwood floor with enough force to split his skin.
   When the seizure refused to abate after two minutes, the nurse scurried off to call an ambulance.
   When it passed the five-minute mark, Jenny shot Mort full of sedatives and anticonvulsants. At ten minutes, Jenny was practically crying in despair, Shanna right there with her. They each had their full body weight on Mort, trying to pin his bloody hands and feet, but they could barely keep him down, Mort choking and gagging on his own blood, coughing out bits of his lips and tongue that he’d chewed off.
   Twenty-three minutes later, when the ambulance finally arrived, the nurse and Shanna had to assist two burly paramedics to get Mort strapped to a gurney, where they finally jammed a rubber bit between his snapping jaws.
   The ride to the hospital was a blur, Shanna physically and emotionally drained. She managed to call Clay, but got his voicemail and had to listen to his outgoing message of Clint Eastwood saying, “Go ahead…make my day. BEEEEP!”
   She left a monotone message that Mort had had an accident. She was on her way to Blessed Crucifixion Hospital, and he’d have to pick her up there.
   Then she wept.
   Arriving in Durango two months ago, Shanna had thought she’d landed her dream job. Being paid—and extremely well—for pure research. While many of her contemporaries loved field work, Shanna got off on studying what others had found. She was an expert on the evolution of primates, and when the so-called “Dracula skull” had been discovered four months ago, she’d regarded it with the same blanket skepticism as the rest of her colleagues.
   When Mortimer had hired her to research the Dracula skull, searching for its pedigree, she’d had no idea he’d actually bought the thing. For the past two months, Shanna had been poring over research materials, trying to make a case for a human skull with vampire teeth. Other primates had oversize canines, but within the Homo genus, from australopithecine to modern humans, evolution had reduced tooth size with every subsequent speciation. She’d followed various fossil trails, even the barest and flimsiest of leads, but kept coming back to that same conclusion.
   Mort had taken her failures in stride, encouraging Shanna to follow historical and genealogical lines, even though that wasn’t her expertise. Between bouts of sitting with Mort and enduring his endless stories, she had managed to find a few more leads. The latest and most promising dated back to the Middle Ages—the Wallachian Order of the Dragon and its founder, Oswald von Wolkenstein. Supposedly, Oswald had a son with severe birth defects, which might have included dental deformities. There was scant historical evidence to support that rumor, but when combined with some other facts about the era…
   Mort jerked against his restraints, making the cart rattle. The paramedics had pumped enough drugs into him to kill an elephant, but the convulsions hadn’t abated. Shanna wiped away another tear, wondering if she should have seen this coming.
   How could he have done something so ghastly? Senile dementia? Reduced mental capacity because of the morphine? Or had the old man planned to bite himself all along?
   The whine of the ambulance siren faded as the vehicle shuddered to a stop. An intern opened the rear doors and slid out the gurney with one of the paramedics. Jenny, Shanna, and the remaining paramedic stayed behind.
   Jenny touched Shanna’s hand. “You okay?” she asked.
   Shanna nodded, regarding the older, shapely nurse.
   “I’ve been doing this for a decade,” Jenny said. “Never saw anything like that before. You did good.”
   Shanna took little comfort in her words, but she managed a weak smile. “Did I have a choice?”
   “You could’ve fallen apart.” Jenny looked around. “Deputy Dawg coming to pick you up?”
   “His name is Clay.”
   “No offense. That’s just what my ex used to call him. No love lost between those two, let me tell you.”
   “I had no idea.”
   “Before your time. Randall would drink too much in town, and I’d wind up bailing him out, seemed like every other week. Think Clay’ll give me a lift back to Mort’s? I need my car.”
   “I’m sure he will.”
   And then what? Shanna wondered. She’d been planning to break it off with Clay tonight. He was a good guy and they connected—really connected—on a visceral level. But once the heady rush of novelty waned, reality had set in. The more time they spent outside the bedroom, the more she realized how little they had in common.
    But she felt so drained right now. She didn’t know if she had the energy to tell him. Or was she just making an excuse?
   Maybe. Because Clayton Theel was one of the good guys, and she knew he genuinely cared for her. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. But their heads were in such different places. The gun thing, for instance. Guns frightened the hell out of her. But Clay loved them—lived for them. If he wasn’t shooting one, he was modifying one or inventing one. She could not take another gun show, and she might claw her own eyes out if she had to watch Dirty Harry or Unforgiven again.
   “Son of a bitch.”
   Both women turned to the paramedic, who was squinting at his finger.
   “What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.
   “I think the old bastard bit me.”
   Jenny
   JENNY Bolton entered the ER through the automatic doors four steps behind the paramedics pushing Mortimer’s gurney. Though Jenny knew she was tough, she hadn’t yet steeled herself to Mortimer’s eventual demise. Being a hospice nurse meant losing patients—it was how the story ended every time. Much as she tried not to get attached—and then have to deal with the inevitable depression when they passed—Jenny wound up admiring, and even liking, most of the terminal people she cared for.
   Seeing Mort so near death, weeks before his diagnosed time, brought a lump to her throat. This lump was made even bigger by her uncomfortable surroundings.
   Once upon a time, Jenny had worked in this facility, in this emergency room. She’d loved the job, and since Blessed Crucifixion was the only hospital within sixty miles, it had been her sole option for being a fulltime caregiver.
   But last year she’d gotten into a disagreement with one of the holier-than-thou physicians on staff, and his lies and bullshit had led to her dismissal.
   God, she hoped that prick Dr. Lanz wasn’t working tonight.
   “Dr. Lanz! Code blue!” the intercom blared.
   Shit.
   Jenny kept her head down as the six-foot, broad-shouldered Kurt Lanz, M.D. paraded past, looking every bit as self-important as the day he’d gotten her fired. She knew he would have her escorted out of the hospital if he spotted her.
   While Lanz barked orders at his cringing staff, Jenny slunk over to a nearby house phone.
   She reached for the handset, then paused.
   Should I call him?
   Her ex-husband, Randall, had left no fewer than thirty-eight messages on her cell phone since being admitted two days ago for a job-related injury. Her brain-deficient, former significant other—a lumberjack—had somehow managed to cut the back of his own leg with a chainsaw. She wondered if he’d been drinking on the job. He’d fallen into drinking far too much off the job. Drunk on the job seemed the natural next step. He’d sworn time and again that he was off the sauce, but he’d made many such promises during their marriage, only to relapse.
   Aside from the occasional glimpse of his bright red Dodge Ram Hemi driving through town, she hadn’t seen Randall since their divorce was made final two years ago. Jenny hadn’t been responding to his messages, even though they were increasing in frequency and urgency. But now, stuck in the hospital with Randall only two floors above, she might as well bite the bullet.
   Her thoughts were interrupted when the automatic doors opened and a clown entered the ER. At first, Jenny assumed it was a candy striper come to entertain the ill. But then she saw he had a child attached—by the mouth—to his left hand. The girl was screaming through clenched teeth, blood dribbling down her chin.
   A distressed woman followed the clown and the child, patting the girl’s back, and when she locked eyes on Jenny she said, “There’s a nurse!”
   Jenny glanced down at her white uniform. She was about to correct the woman’s assumption with an, “I don’t work here,” but noticed the entire ER staff had surrounded Mortimer, who was coding.
   “You have to help my daughter,” the mother demanded.
   Jenny looked at the little girl, whose teeth were embedded in the skin of the clown’s left hand.
   “Oasis’s braces are stuck,” the woman said.
   “Oasis?”
   “Oasis. My precious little girl. This horrible clown ruined her eighth birthday party, and now he’s going to ruin five thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontia.”
   Jenny appraised the clown. A very sad clown, despite his painted-on red smile and matching rubber nose. He stood six feet tall, six-six with the green fright wig. His green and red polka dot clown suit bulged at the middle—a pot belly, not a pillow—and his size twenty-eight shoes squeaked like a chew toy when he walked. A large, metal button, opposite the fake flower on his lapel, read “Benny the Clown Says ‘Let’s Have Fun!’ “
   In a low, shaky voice barely above a whisper, Benny the Clown said, “Please help me.”
   Jenny fought to conceal her smirk. “What happened?”
   “This terrible clown squirted my little girl and she defended herself. Now she’s stuck on his filthy clown hand.”
   The little girl said something that came out like, “Mmmmhhhggggggggg.”
   “I was making the birthday princess a balloon poodle,” Benny the Clown said, “and she reached up and squeezed my nose. That activated the flower.” Benny the Clown pressed his rubber proboscis and turned his head. A stream of water shot out of the center of the flower, sprinkling onto the tiled floor. “When the birthday princess got squirted, she locked her precious little birthday chompers onto my hand.” Benny the Clown leaned closer to Jenny. “You can’t tell because I have a smile on my face, but I can feel the wire digging into my bone.”
   Jenny nodded, trying to appear sympathetic. “I wish I could help, but I don’t work at this hospital. I’m just here with one of my hospice patients.” She pointed toward the gurney where doctors and nurses swarmed around Mortimer. “You’ll have to check in at the front desk.”
   Even with the painted-on grin, Benny the Clown looked suicidal.
   Jenny hated to turn away any patient in need, but she could be sued for administering care in a facility she’d been fired from. She watched them trudge off, then turned her attention back to the phone.
   Just do it. Get it over with.
   Jenny picked up the receiver and dialed Room 318. She knew it was 318, because every one of the thirty-eight messages she’d received from Randall had begun with, “Hi, Jen, it’s Randall, I’m in Room Three-One-Eight.”
   Before the first ring ended, Randall was on the line. “Jen, is that you?”
   The last thing she expected—or wanted—to feel was comfort at the sound of his voice, especially with all the chaos going on around her. But it was so familiar, like they’d just spoken yesterday. The comfort died in a surge of anger at the memory of all the heartache his drinking had put her through.
   “Hello, Randall. How are—?”
   “You coming to visit?” Randall interrupted. “I’m in room Three-One-Eight.”
   Jenny sighed. She watched Dr. Lanz charge the defib paddles. “Yeah, I know. You said it on every message you left for me.”
   “You listened to them? All of them?”
   “All thirty-eight, Randall.”
   “Thirty-eight? It couldn’t have been anywhere near that many. But I wasn’t sure you were getting them. You been having a problem with your phone?”
   Yeah, you keep calling me. “I’ve just been busy. So how are you doing?”
   “Dry ninety-seven days now. I don’t even want to drink anymore, I swear. I’m a changed man, Jenny.”
   So he’d said in all thirty-eight messages. She was impressed if it was true, but he’d done a lot of lying in his drinking days. And even if it were true—too little, too late.
   “I meant your injury, Randall.”
   “Oh.” His voice suddenly lost the excited, almost child-like tone. “I got seventy-seven stitches. Everyone thinks it’s real ironical that I cut the back of my leg.”
   “You mean ironic, Randall,” Jenny corrected. She’d been the one to teach him the meaning of the word, but he had yet to get the pronunciation right.
   Winslow—a wisp of a woman who became head nurse when Jenny was fired—squirted conductive gel onto Mortimer’s bare, hairless chest. Jenny’s patient was convulsing—v-fib or v-tach. Even from across the room, she could see that Mort’s eyes had rolled up into his skull, the whites protruding like two eggs. Flecks of foam and blood still sprayed from her patient’s mouth, dotting Dr. Lanz’s face and his pristine, white lab coat. Lanz’s expression twisted in disgust as he wiped his sleeve across his lips, and the fastidious, meticulous doctor actually spat over his shoulder.
   Should have put on your face mask, Dr. Jack Ass.
   Jenny spotted Shanna, looking a little green, scurrying through the doors into the main hospital. Everyone in the ER looked on as Lanz applied the paddles, even Benny the Clown, Oasis, and her mother.
   “Jenny? You there? Hello?”
   Jenny only turned her eyes away for a second, trying to gather herself, not ready to see Mortimer die. Rude and self-important as he was, she’d found things about the old man to admire, and even like. She also wondered when she would work again. This was a small town, and hospice nurses weren’t in constant demand.
   Full of shame at the selfish thought, she forced herself to look back, to say a final, silent goodbye.
   She was shocked to see Mortimer—standing—on top of the gurney, restraints broken off and dangling from his ankles and wrists, his mouth wide and—
   Is he hissing?
   The sound came from deep in Mortimer’s throat, less like a threatened cat, more like a tea kettle coming to boil. It kept rising in pitch until it became a shrill whistle, the noise unlike anything Jenny had ever heard.
   It was inhuman.
   “Jenny? What’s wrong?” Randall said.
   “Oh my God.”
   “What? What, Jen?
   Mortimer’s teeth. Something was happening to them. They were falling out—no—he was spitting them out, spitting them at Lanz and the nurses who were frantically trying to coax him off the gurney.
   “Randall, I have to go. There’s something happening in the ER.”
   “You’re here in the—?”
   She hung up the phone and started toward Mortimer. No doubt Randall would be trying to call her back on her cell, but she had the ringer turned off—the hospital took its no cell phone rule seriously.
   Mortimer abruptly stopped hissing, and Jenny could hear Dr. Lanz ordering him down off the gurney.
   Stiff as a plank, Mortimer fell face-first onto the floor.
   Jenny rushed to him. She didn’t care anymore about hospital protocol, or Lanz having her thrown out. Mortimer needs me. Jenny had never seen anything like this in twenty-five years of health care.
   She pushed her way through the nurses surrounding Mortimer and knelt at his prone body.
   “Jenny Bolton? What the hell are you doing in my hospital?” Dr. Lanz demanded.
   “This is my hospice patient,” she said, touching Mortimer’s neck and seeking out the pulse of his carotid. To her surprise, she didn’t have to press hard. His entire neck was vibrating, his artery jolting beneath her fingers like a heavy metal drum solo. The only thing she could compare this to was a crystal meth OD, the heartbeat raging out of control.
   Jenny patted the old man’s back, checking to see if he was conscious.
   “Mortimer, can you hear me? It’s Jenny. I’m right here. We’re gonna help—”
   I’m going to help him. Somebody get security.”
   She felt Dr. Lanz’s hands grip her shoulders, dragging her away from Mortimer just as her patient grabbed her hip.
   Jenny felt instant pain, and not only from the pressure of Mortimer’s grip. Something sharp was digging into her skin through her uniform.
   That can’t be Mortimer’s hand.
   It was more like a claw. A bloody, ragged claw. Jenny stared, mouth agape. Mortimer’s finger bones—the phalanges—were extending out through his fingertips, splitting the skin and coming to five sharp points.
   The old man hissed again, a high-pitched keen, and when he turned his head to look at Jenny, calm, stoic Nurse Winslow shouted, “Sweet Jesus Christ!”
   Mortimer’s cheeks exploded like a grenade had gone off inside his mouth, white points bursting through his lips, shearing flesh, digging rents into his face.
   Oh my God. Fangs.
   He’s growing fangs.
   His new teeth began to elongate—an inch, two inches, bursting through his bleeding gums in rows that ended in wicked, dagger-like tips. They shredded Mortimer’s face into jagged strips, and he began to snap his jaws, chewing through the inside of his mouth, grinding off his cheeks all the way back to his earlobes, making room for his monstrous new dentata.
   Then Mortimer’s lower jaw unhinged, thrusting forward and hanging open like some perversion of an angler fish. He stared at Jenny, his eyes wide, pupils dilating beyond anything human, spreading until they eclipsed the whites.
   For the first time in her life, Jenny screamed a scream of abject, primordial terror.
   She jerked back, trying to pull away from Mortimer’s grip, but his sharp, bony fingers had embedded themselves into the meat of her hip. She watched her skin stretch through the holes in her clothing—stretch, but not tear—and realized that the bones protruding from Mortimer’s finger tips were barbed like fish hooks.
   Then he jerked his hand back, taking Jenny with it, knocking her onto her butt, her face inches from his snapping jaws.
   Mortimer rolled on top of her, like a lover, blood and saliva dripping onto Jenny’s face and neck. She reached up to push him away, but as terror-stricken as she was, Jenny couldn’t bring herself to touch him. It was like willingly sticking your hand into a box of angry rattlesnakes. Even as his jaws drew near, Jenny’s revulsion wouldn’t allow her to fight back. She stretched out her hand—her face imploring—to Dr. Lanz, who stood within reach. But he shrank away from her beckoning fingers, retreating into the safety of the nurse’s station.
   This is it, Jenny thought. I’m going to die.
   “Get the fuck away from my wife!”
   Jenny turned, watching her bear of an ex-husband limping toward her, his hospital gown flapping from the speed of his approach.
   He raised something large and red over his head.
   “Smile, motherfucker!”
   Mortimer’s misshapen head jerked up as Randall swung the fire extinguisher, connecting with the jagged nest of teeth. A clang resonated over the screams of the onlookers, and Mortimer flew back, his terrible claw disengaging from Jenny’s hip, several of his fangs breaking free and tinkling like icicles on the tile.
   Jenny found herself being dragged across the floor, Randall’s hard, calloused hands under her armpits, pulling her to the water cooler.
   “You okay, babe?”
   She started to respond, but then saw Mortimer, or whatever he had become, rising to his feet. His head swiveled on his shoulders one hundred eighty degrees, taking a quick, predatory scan of the emergency room.
   His eyes locked onto Oasis and Benny the Clown as they retreated through the opening automatic doors.
   Mortimer crouched, then leapt after them, soaring three meters into the breezeway.
   As the doors slid closed, Jenny heard the most God-awful screaming and Benny the Clown shouting, “No! I’m getting bitten! Again!”
   His shoes were frantically squeaking and blood sprayed the automatic glass doors, which opened and closed over and over.
   As Mortimer feasted on Benny the Clown’s neck, little Oasis desperately pulled on Benny the Clown’s arm, trying to disengage her braces, shaking her head like a rabid dog while her mother tugged on her waist. Suddenly the child broke free, falling backward onto her screaming parent.
   Mortimer’s eyes zeroed in on the movement, and his head jerked up, blood draining out of his mouth and down the front of his shirt like a sieve.
   He dropped Benny the Clown and hissed.
   Oasis’s mother was trembling. “Please,” she begged. “It’s her birthday.”
   Mortimer attacked Oasis, savagely biting her arm, and tossing her back into the ER.
   Then he burrowed his ravenous jaws into her mother’s stomach, tearing into intestines, pulling out her glistening liver and snacking on it like a slice of watermelon.
   Randall stood in front of Jenny. “What is that goddamn thing? A fucking dracula?”
   Mortimer abandoned Oasis’s mother and moved back into the ER, lured by two large men in softball uniforms, one with a black eye—probably a casualty of playing the game while drinking beer. They’d been screaming at Mortimer to leave the woman alone, and now the monster had obliged them. Apparently realizing their mistake, they turned and ran through the ER, pushing through a pair of double doors and disappearing into the bowels of the hospital.
   Mortimer pursued, bounding after them on all fours, his body stretching out like a cheetah.
   Then the ER stood silent except for the groans of the dying and the injured.
   Jenny turned to ask Randall something, but he was already moving away from her, limping toward the automatic doors.
   She grabbed his arm. “No, Randall,” she pleaded. “Please. Stay with me.”
   “I’m just going out to my truck,” he said.
   “Why?”
   “I need my chainsaw.”
   He pulled his arm free, starting toward the doors again.
   “For what?” Jenny called after him.
   “I’m gonna cut that son of a bitch in half.”
   Lanz
   KURT Lanz, MD, rose from where he’d crouched behind the nurse’s station.
   What…what had just happened?
   He surveyed the carnage of the ER—his ER—trying to comprehend what he’d witnessed, but his mind kept balking. All he saw was the blood. God, you so quickly got used to blood in an ER, but this…the sheer quantity. It had sprayed everywhere, Pollacking the walls and soaking the privacy curtains and sluicing down to join the pools—pools—on the floor.
   And that thing…it had come in as Mortimer Moorecook in cardiac arrest, as good as dead until he’d applied the paddles. No, not as good as dead—way dead. But he couldn’t bill for a resuscitation without at least one defib jolt, so he’d hit him with 300 joules and the guy had come off the table like some wild—
   The screams reached him then, and a woman’s voice, close by, shouting, “Kurt! Kurt!”
   He looked and saw skinny little Janine Winslow at his shoulder, nurse’s uniform splattered with red, eyes bulging, skin chalky, chattering away at ninety miles an hour.
   “That’s Doctor Lanz, Winslow.”
   Hell, he didn’t even think of himself as “Kurt.” He wasn’t about to let this mosquito of a woman do it, even if she had given him head a couple of times when he first arrived. Proper respect was integral to proper functioning.
   Not that you could expect proper anything at Blessed fucking Crucifixion Hospital. How the hell had he wound up here?
   Oh, right.
   Money.
   Nobody with decent chops wanted to practice out here in the middle of nowhere. So hick hospitals like Blessed Crucifixion put a lot on the table—nearly twice what big metro hospitals offered. Lanz had owed six figures worth of education loans coming out of training. This was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
   He knew what the hospital was thinking: Get the sucker out here, seduce him with our country charm, let him put down a few roots, and he’s ours for life.
   No fucking way. He’d suffer in silence and sock away for a few years, then get the hell out of debt and the fuck out of town. To tell the God’s honest truth, Blessed Crucifixion was lucky to have him. He was way over-trained for a hick community ER. Like hiring Picasso to teach a ladies’ auxiliary art class.
   Winslow kept going. “Oh my god! Oh, my god! What do we do? This is awful! I’ve never seen—”
   He grabbed her bony shoulder and shook her. “You shut up and get a grip, that’s what you do!”
   That seemed to break through and she quieted. Good. Now…time for him to get a grip. He looked around again, focusing.
   The good news was that the thing that had been Moorecook was gone; the bad news was that it had escaped into the hospital instead of the parking lot. But at least it was out of here.
   An inpatient—a big guy in a hospital gown—was limping out the exit. Smart fellow. If Moorecook came back, Lanz would be right on his heels.
   The little girl was kneeling on the floor by her mother and screaming. With good reason: Not only had her left arm sustained a deep gash, but her mom lay flat on her back with her intestines spread over her torn abdomen like a wormy apron. She stared blindly at the ceiling as one leg gave a weak kick or two.
   The clown lay unmoving in a huge pool of red.
   The EMT who’d brought in Moorecook stood behind Winslow. A new LPN and two orderlies—Ralph and Benjamin—stood behind him. All awaiting instructions. That insubordinate bitch-nurse Jenny Bolton stood back, looking horrified. He’d deal with her later.
   Okay. This was his ship and he was captain. He pointed to the orderlies, then to the mom and the clown.
   “Get gurneys ready to move those two to the morgue.”
   “But they ain’t been pronounced,” one said. Ralph? Benjamin? He never could tell them apart.
   “They will be in a minute.” To the LPN: “Get the little girl’s wound cleaned up and ready for suturing.” To the EMT: “Help her.”
   “Hey, I don’t work here.”
   “Then get lost.”
   The EMT held up a finger, showing a puncture that had already stopped bleeding. “But the old guy bit me. I need a tetanus. And penicillin. And hepatitis. And rabies. Did you see that goddamn guy? Fucking give me every shot you got!”
   “You’ve got a forty-eight-hour window to get boosters. Make yourself useful or get lost.” He turned to Winslow. “Call security and get everyone down here, then call the sheriff. I need to speak to him.”
   He wanted armed guards here in case Moorecook returned. He’d have them kick Jenny Bolton out too.
   He stalked over to the clown. Glazing eyes stared out of his white-face makeup. His throat was a gaping, red ruin. His costume was soaked but Lanz could still read Benny the Clown Says “Let’s Have Fun!” on the big button.
   Not a lot of fun going on here.
   He closed Benny’s eyes and motioned to the orderly. “To the cooler.”
   He heard the little girl start to scream and saw the EMT and the LPN dragging her to the treatment room. Her kicks and screams grew more frantic the farther she was moved away from her mother.
   Sorry, kid, but that wound needs closing.
   He looked down at the mother: as dead as Benny.
   He still wore the latex gloves he’d donned at the start of Moorecook’s code blue. Ignoring the fecal smell from the torn intestines, he parted the loops. The abdominal cavity was filled with blood.
   “Good lord,” said a woman’s voice. “Did he get the aorta? How could he bite that deep?”
   He looked up at Jenny Bolton. “What the hell are you still doing here?”
   “My patient is still here.”
   “Your patient is a goddamn monster.”
   “What happened to him?”
   “You tell me.”
   “I have no idea.”
   “Then you’re of no use to me. You’re a GOOMER.”
   Even though the acronym referred to annoying, unwanted patients—Get Out Of My Emergency Room—he figured she’d catch his meaning.
   “I’m waiting for my husband—ex-husband.”
   “Then wait outside. I—”
   The doors flew back and Lanz almost screamed, fearing Moorecook’s return. But he managed to bite it back when he saw the two fat softball players stagger into the ER. Both were blood soaked. The bearded one was limping as he half-carried the younger blond guy.
   “Oh, God!” Jenny said.
   Then Lanz saw why: The blond guy’s left arm was missing at the elbow. He was squeezing the stump, trying to stanch the hemorrhage.
   “He bit his arm off, doc!” the bearded one said. “That animal bit his fucking arm off! And he bit me in the ass!”
   As the pair struggled past, Lanz saw that the man’s ample right buttock was missing a

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Tuesday, October 19: Popular Pulp Fiction, plus R. Doug Wicker Explores the High-Concept Paranoid Premise Among the Palm Trees in Decisions (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

I’m not sure if we should call this Throwback Tuesday, Politically Incorrect Tuesday, or Pulp Fiction Tuesday, but sometimes there’s a little baggage that goes along with a great yarn. Depending on your source, the L. Ron Hubbard novella that leads this morning’s fresh new additions to our listing of free titles in the Kindle Store should sit between Elmore Leonard and Ernest Hemingway on your virtual shelves or, in the alternative, should be skipped unless it is part of a consciousness-raising course on racist, misogynistic stereotypes in popular pulp fiction of the 30s….

But first … a word from our sponsor….

Decisions 
R. Doug Wicker
4.0 out of 5 stars – 81 Reviews
Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
$3.99 in the Kindle Store

You won’t find any more political correctness in R. Doug Wicker’s Decisions than you will find in L. Ron Hubbard’s Spy Killer, but the two books also have something positive in common that goes far beyond the fact that two authors’ names meter out so congruently and felicitously:

It’s the high-concept Paranoid Premise, which provides the spine of some of the best suspense novels and screenplays ever written. And Wicker sweetens the deal for readers by setting his action against the backdrop of the exclusive Vai Kai resort in the Fiji Islands.

What’s the Paranoid Premise? I first heard the phrase while reading Amy Wallace’s 2004 New Yorker profile of B-movie screenwriting king Larry Cohen. Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell had summed it up in this description of Cohen’s oeuvre: “Mr. Cohen has mined a career out of one simple question–what’s the worst that could happen?” 

And then, of course, each time the protagonist tries to deal with current “worst that could happen,” the next “worst that could happen” is even worse.


If these sound like the ingredients for a great read, Decisions is a natural for you. Here’s the set-up:

An Agatha Christie inspired confection stays true to its roots, with enough clues and plot twists to keep the reader guessing until the end. Donovan Grant was an air traffic controller until a post-traumatic stress disorder renders him unfit to continue in the profession. He lands the job as pilot for the exclusive Vai Kai resort in the Fiji Islands where trouble arrives in waves. First Donovan starts having inexplicable blackouts, in which he becomes uncharacteristically violent. Then he ferries in a group that includes actress Kelly LaBrecque and her movie producer ex-husband, Sheldon Larsen. Kelly informs Donovan that every person in their group hates Sheldon’s guts. Finally, a hurricane knocks out the lights long enough for the first murder to occur and it looks like Donovan is the guilty party. Kelly, who seems romantically interested in Donovan, jumps to his defense. The novel is airy fun, carried by its two likeable and witty central characters. — manuscript review by Publishers Weekly


Donovan Grant witnessed something no man should have to see—a crime so horrendous with a death count so high that the memories haunt his every waking and sleeping moment, a crime for which he holds himself solely and completely responsible. The images replaying over and over within his mind have cost him his career, his marriage, and a good measure of his sanity.

Now, nearly eighteen months later and totally incapable of making even the simplest of decisions, Grant ekes out a meager existence working at an exclusive resort on the privately owned Fijian Island of Vai Kai. But there are some problems intruding upon this idyllic, decision-free existence: People are being murdered, the island is cut off by an approaching hurricane, and Grant is his own—and everyone else’s—prime suspect. During each additional uptick in the body count, Grant is suffering either from a blackout or a flashback to “That Day.” And then there’s his unfortunate propensity to be found standing over the victims’ bodies while holding the murder weapon in his blood-stained hands.

One woman separates Donovan Grant from total insanity and complete resignation. But Kelly LaBrecque has her own little problem—while Grant has the opportunity in each murder, only she has the motive. Stacking up in the resort’s refrigerated food locker are the bodies of Kelly’s ex-husband and the mistress who broke apart their marriage. It’s as if Grant is knocking off anyone who ever crossed her.

As the murders continue, the evidence against Grant piles up, and the latest choice of victims, the mistress’ milquetoast husband, mean Kelly herself may be next for cold storage, and Grant may be the one who places her there. Kelly and Grant must work feverishly to evaluate the clues and the ever-dwindling number of residents of Vai Kai—desperately racing the forces of nature and the killer that stalks them all.

In the end, Grant will have to come face-to-face with the killer, with himself, and with the demon that has haunted his remorse-filled, guilt-laden mind for far too long.

Click here to download DECISIONS (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
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UK Kindle customers: Click here to download DECISIONS

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

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The 25 Newest Free Book Titles in the Kindle Store 

Spy Killer
By: L. Ron Hubbard
Added: 10/19/2010 4:01:12am
Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday
By: Mike Thaler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Living Rich by Spending Smart: How to Get More of What You Really Want
By: Gregory Karp
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Chosen Ones
By: Alister E. McGrath
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Naomi and Her Daughters: A Novel
By: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Truth About Managing People
By: Stephen P. Robbins
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life
By: Geri Scazzero
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions
By: Jeff Manion
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Malacca Conspiracy
By: Don Brown
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Never Blame the Umpire
By: Gene Fehler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Mozart's Sister
By: Nancy Moser
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity
By: R. C. Sproul
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
How to Not Make Bad Decisions
By: Sydney Finkelstein
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Stumbling On Wins in Football
By: David J. Berri
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Chinatown Beat
By: Henry Chang
Added: 10/16/2010 2:01:04pm
Every Word (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Shuffled Row (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy & Fear
By: Osho
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
An Unwanted Hunger
By: Ciana Stone
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Psalm 23 Mysteries
By: Debbie Viguie
Added: 10/13/2010 2:01:17pm
Quiet As They Come (Free Story for Kindle)
By: Angie Chau
Added: 10/13/2010 4:01:25am
Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace
By: Eric Wight
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Lucky for Good
By: Susan Patron
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Relentless (Dominion Trilogy #1)
By: Robin Parrish
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
By: Bill Hybels
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Tahn: A Novel
By: L. A. Kelly
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Sin's Daughter
By: Eve Silver
Added: 10/09/2010 4:01:20am
CEB New Testament
By: Common English Bible
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
By: James R. Benn
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition
By: B&H; Publishing Group
Added: 10/07/2010 4:01:07am
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform
By: Amazon.com
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Mr. Darcy's Diary
By: Amanda Grange
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN [Keeping Mr. Right] (Optimized & Ad-Free)
By: Francine Saint Marie
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Sandman Slim with Bonus Content
By: Richard Kadrey
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Intervention
By: Terri Blackstock
Added: 10/04/2010 2:01:40pm
Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
By: Bruce Springsteen
Added: 10/03/2010 2:01:31pm

PM Update to Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Monday, October 18: 5 Afternoon Free Book Additions! plus Mortal Sin, from the Jake Lassiter series of hard-boiled legal thrillers (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

No need to wait until morning when we’ve got five fresh new additions our listing of free contemporary titles in the Kindle Store this afternoon….
But first … a word from our sponsor….

Mortal SinIf you’ve been reading along with us on your Kindle you are probably well aware already that Paul Levine is a great, really smart storyteller with a very original and often twisted sense of place and people that comes alive on every page in his Jake Lassiter series. If today’s post is your first introduction to Lassiter, this weekend’s Free Kindle Nation Short excerpt from Mortal Sin is a wonderful place to begin.

But the truth is, with the Lassiter series, it doesn’t really matter where you start. I mean, you gotta start at the beginning of a book, don’t get me wrong. But whether you start with this one, Mortal Sin — which is my favorite so far — or go back all the way down the alley to begin with To Speak for the Dead, I think you’re going to laugh out loud, and Jake is going to make you think, and you’re probably going to want to have a beer with him. If those things do not happen, well, it’s you, it’s not me. And it’s certainly not Jake.

Here’s the set-up for Mortal Sin, or click here to begin reading the free excerpt:
Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter has an ethical dilemma that isn’t on the Bar exam. 
He’s sleeping with Gina Florio and defending Gina’s husband Nicky in a wrongful death suit.  Complicating the issue: Nicky is a mob-connected and homicidal in his own right. 
It all begins when environmentalist Peter Tupton freezes to death on Florio’s property on the hottest day of a sweltering Miami summer.  Hired to defend Florio in a civil suit, Lassiter becomes convinced that Tupton’s death was no accident. 
The trail of evidence takes Lassiter deep into the Everglades, where Florio has hatched a scheme to bring casino gambling to an Indian reservation.  But that’s only a cover for a more sinister ploy that oozes corruption, blood, and money.  One false move, and Jake will be gator bait. 
  
It’s the toughest case yet for the ex-linebacker, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things. 

Hard-boiled and philosophical, Jake lives by his own rules.  In a world of deceit, perversity, and mayhem, he risks body and soul for truth, justice and the Lassiter Way. 
WHAT DO THE CRITICS SAY ABOUT MORTAL SIN? 
Engaging…lively…colorful.  The plot races with mounting tension.”  – Miami Herald 
“Just the remedy for those who can’t get enough Spenser and miss Travis McGee terribly.”  – St. Petersburg Times 
“‘Mortal Sin’ may not be better than a trip to Florida, but it’s the next best thing.” – Detroit Free Press 
“Fun…the action is non-stop.”  – Chicago Tribune

(The Jake Lassiter Series)
by Paul Levine


List Price: $2.99

Click here to download MORTAL SIN (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
*  

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Chosen Ones
By: Alister E. McGrath
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Naomi and Her Daughters: A Novel
By: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Truth About Managing People
By: Stephen P. Robbins
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life
By: Geri Scazzero
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Malacca Conspiracy
By: Don Brown
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm

Final Hours for Amazon’s Giveaway of 5 Free Kindles

 

We originally posted this information on Amazon’s giveaway of 5 free Kindles back on September 28, and now we are down to the final hours as the contest closes this evening, October 18, 2010 @ 11:59 pm (PDT).

To enter just follow this link from the Amazon Kindle Facebook page:

In appreciation of our Kindle Facebook fans, we are giving away five free Kindles. All Kindle fans on Facebook, who are at least 18 years of age and U.S. residents, are eligible. Five randomly selected fans will each receive one free Kindle. Visit the ‘Kindle Giveaway’ tab to enter now.

Here’s the link to enter: http://www.facebook.com/kindle?v=app_116587858398042&ref;=ts

Good luck!

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Monday, October 18: Secrets, Sisters, Spirituality, and Football as a Metaphor for Everything, plus Mortal Sin, from the Jake Lassiter series of hard-boiled legal thrillers (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

A new free offering in the Lancaster County Secrets series, Nancy Moser’s highly rated inspirational romance Mozart’s Sister, and several other new leadership, business and inspirational titles lead the fresh new additions our listing of free contemporary titles in the Kindle Store this morning….
But first … a word from our sponsor….

Mortal SinIf you’ve been reading along with us on your Kindle you are probably well aware already that Paul Levine is a great, really smart storyteller with a very original and often twisted sense of place and people that comes alive on every page in his Jake Lassiter series. If today’s post is your first introduction to Lassiter, this weekend’s Free Kindle Nation Short excerpt from Mortal Sin is a wonderful place to begin.

But the truth is, with the Lassiter series, it doesn’t really matter where you start. I mean, you gotta start at the beginning of a book, don’t get me wrong. But whether you start with this one, Mortal Sin — which is my favorite so far — or go back all the way down the alley to begin with To Speak for the Dead, I think you’re going to laugh out loud, and Jake is going to make you think, and you’re probably going to want to have a beer with him. If those things do not happen, well, it’s you, it’s not me. And it’s certainly not Jake.

Here’s the set-up for Mortal Sin, or click here to begin reading the free excerpt:
Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter has an ethical dilemma that isn’t on the Bar exam. 
He’s sleeping with Gina Florio and defending Gina’s husband Nicky in a wrongful death suit.  Complicating the issue: Nicky is a mob-connected and homicidal in his own right. 
It all begins when environmentalist Peter Tupton freezes to death on Florio’s property on the hottest day of a sweltering Miami summer.  Hired to defend Florio in a civil suit, Lassiter becomes convinced that Tupton’s death was no accident. 
The trail of evidence takes Lassiter deep into the Everglades, where Florio has hatched a scheme to bring casino gambling to an Indian reservation.  But that’s only a cover for a more sinister ploy that oozes corruption, blood, and money.  One false move, and Jake will be gator bait. 
  
It’s the toughest case yet for the ex-linebacker, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things. 

Hard-boiled and philosophical, Jake lives by his own rules.  In a world of deceit, perversity, and mayhem, he risks body and soul for truth, justice and the Lassiter Way. 
WHAT DO THE CRITICS SAY ABOUT MORTAL SIN? 
Engaging…lively…colorful.  The plot races with mounting tension.”  – Miami Herald 
“Just the remedy for those who can’t get enough Spenser and miss Travis McGee terribly.”  – St. Petersburg Times 
“‘Mortal Sin’ may not be better than a trip to Florida, but it’s the next best thing.” – Detroit Free Press 
“Fun…the action is non-stop.”  – Chicago Tribune

(The Jake Lassiter Series)
by Paul Levine


List Price: $2.99

Click here to download MORTAL SIN (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
*  

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

The 25 Newest Free Book Titles in the Kindle Store 

The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Mozart's Sister
By: Nancy Moser
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity
By: R. C. Sproul
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How to Not Make Bad Decisions
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Stumbling On Wins in Football
By: David J. Berri
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Chinatown Beat
By: Henry Chang
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Every Word (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
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Shuffled Row (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy & Fear
By: Osho
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
An Unwanted Hunger
By: Ciana Stone
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Psalm 23 Mysteries
By: Debbie Viguie
Added: 10/13/2010 2:01:17pm
Quiet As They Come (Free Story for Kindle)
By: Angie Chau
Added: 10/13/2010 4:01:25am
Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace
By: Eric Wight
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Lucky for Good
By: Susan Patron
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Relentless (Dominion Trilogy #1)
By: Robin Parrish
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
By: Bill Hybels
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Tahn: A Novel
By: L. A. Kelly
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Sin's Daughter
By: Eve Silver
Added: 10/09/2010 4:01:20am
CEB New Testament
By: Common English Bible
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
By: James R. Benn
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The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition
By: B&H; Publishing Group
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Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform
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Mr. Darcy's Diary
By: Amanda Grange
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FORTUNE IS A WOMAN [Keeping Mr. Right] (Optimized & Ad-Free)
By: Francine Saint Marie
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Sandman Slim with Bonus Content
By: Richard Kadrey
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Intervention
By: Terri Blackstock
Added: 10/04/2010 2:01:40pm
Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
By: Bruce Springsteen
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Outlander: with Bonus Content
By: Diana Gabaldon
Added: 10/01/2010 4:01:02am

Free Kindle Nation Shorts – October 17, 2010 – A New Free “Suspense-Filled Sunday” Feature: An Excerpt from Mortal Sin (a Jake Lassiter mystery) by Paul Levine

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily 2010

There are all kinds of suspense novels, but I discovered my own favorite kind in the mid-80s, long before I ever heard of Paul Levine.

The same month I opened a bookstore in Boston I read Carl Tourist SeasonHiaasen’s first novel, Tourist Season. Call me shallow, but I was attracted by the cover with those lurid, attractive Miami colors. I’m not going to recommend that you buy the Kindle edition, because it is ridiculously priced at $12.99 and you can click on the original mass-market cover at right and pay anywhere from a penny to $7.99 for a new or used print copy.

If you haven’t read Tourist Season, and you pick it up, you may experience something like what I experienced when I first read Hiaasen. I laughed out loud about every three pages, but that’s not all. I rolled along in the hands of a great, really smart storyteller who made his own twisted sense of place and people come along on every page. That’s what Hiaasen continues to do in nearly every outing. It’s what Bob Parker did in his Spenser novels (but seldom in his other books).

Mortal SinAnd it is what Paul Levine does in his Jake Lassiter series. And in the same way that this is true for Hiaasen and Parker, it is true for Levine that it doesn’t matter where you start. I mean, you gotta start at the beginning of a book, don’t get me wrong. But whether you start with this one, Mortal Sin — which is my favorite so far — or go back all the way down the alley to begin with To Speak for the Dead, I think you’re going to laugh out loud, and Jake is going to make you think, and you’re probably going to want to have a beer with him. If those things do not happen, well, it’s you, it’s not me. And it’s certainly not Jake.

Actors
Paul Levine flanked by Lassiter co-stars Gerald McRaney and Robert Loggia on “location” in New Orleans.

Paul says he always imagined Tom Selleck as Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer.  But NBC cast Gerald McRaney in the role for the 1995 televison movie, “Lassiter: Justice on the Bayou.” 


Ah, you didn’t know there was a bayou in South Florida?  The
Lassiter co-star Tracy Scoggins
network moved the setting from Miami to New Orleans and changed the title of the book, which had been To Speak for the Dead

“One of the main characters the author had killed off also managed to survive on screen. Other than that,” Levine tells Kindle Nation, “the movie was perfectly faithful!” 
Hired as a consultant by NBC, Levine was asked how much control he had over the project.  “I had complete control over where I deposited the check and nothing else.” 


One upside: Levine got to play a patron in a strip club. 

“I didn’t have any dialogue, but I lit a stripper’s cigarette on the first try.”

Here’s the set-up for Mortal Sin, or scroll down to begin reading the free excerpt:
Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter has an ethical dilemma that isn’t on the Bar exam. 
He’s sleeping with Gina Florio and defending Gina’s husband Nicky in a wrongful death suit.  Complicating the issue: Nicky is a mob-connected and homicidal in his own right. 
It all begins when environmentalist Peter Tupton freezes to death on Florio’s property on the hottest day of a sweltering Miami summer.  Hired to defend Florio in a civil suit, Lassiter becomes convinced that Tupton’s death was no accident. 
The trail of evidence takes Lassiter deep into the Everglades, where Florio has hatched a scheme to bring casino gambling to an Indian reservation.  But that’s only a cover for a more sinister ploy that oozes corruption, blood, and money.  One false move, and Jake will be gator bait. 
  
It’s the toughest case yet for the ex-linebacker, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things. 

Hard-boiled and philosophical, Jake lives by his own rules.  In a world of deceit, perversity, and mayhem, he risks body and soul for truth, justice and the Lassiter Way. 
WHAT DO THE CRITICS SAY ABOUT MORTAL SIN? 
Engaging…lively…colorful.  The plot races with mounting tension.”  – Miami Herald 
“Just the remedy for those who can’t get enough Spenser and miss Travis McGee terribly.”  – St. Petersburg Times 
“‘Mortal Sin’ may not be better than a trip to Florida, but it’s the next best thing.” – Detroit Free Press 
“Fun…the action is non-stop.”  – Chicago Tribune
Scroll down to read the free excerpt,
or


(The Jake Lassiter Series)
by Paul Levine


List Price: $2.99


An Excerpt from 
Mortal Sin

(a Jake Lassiter mystery)


By  Paul Levine

Copyright 2010 by Paul Levine and reprinted here with his permission.

Chapter 1
Thy Client’s Wife

ON A STIFLING AUGUST DAY OF BECALMED WIND AND SWELTERING humidity, the Coast Guard plucked seven Haitians from a sinking raft in the Gulf Stream, the grand jury indicted three judges for extorting kickbacks from court-appointed lawyers, and the Miami City Commission renamed Twenty-second Avenue General Maximo Gomez Boulevard.

     And Peter Tupton froze to death.
     Tupton was wearing a European-style bikini swimsuit and a terry cloth beach jacket. Two empty bottles of Roederer Cristal champagne 1982 lay at his feet. His very blue feet. Two thousand six hundred forty-four other bottles-reds and whites, ports and sauternes, champagnes and Chardonnays, Cabernets and cordials-were stacked neatly in their little wooden bins.
     A high-tech air-conditioning system kept the wine cellar at an even 56 degrees and 70 percent humidity. Hardly life-threatening, unless you wandered in from the pool deck sopping wet, guzzled two liters of bubbly, and passed out.
Cause of death: exposure due to hypothermia. Which didn’t keep the Miami Journal from seizing on a sexier headline:
ON YEAR’S HOTTEST DAY,
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST
FREEZES TO DEATH
     The medical examiner reported that Tupton’s blood contained 0.32 percent alcohol. If he’d been driving, he could have been arrested three times. But he’d been swimming, then sipping mimosas on the pool deck. When he stumbled into the wine cellar, he must have kept drinking, this time leaving out the orange juice.
     Cheers.
     “He was a most disagreeable man,” Gina Florio said, dismissing the notion of the late Peter Tupton with a wave of the hand. It was a practiced gesture, a movement so slight as to suggest the insignificance of the subject. When the hand returned, it settled on my bare chest. I lay on my back in a bed that had a bullet hole in the headboard. The bed had been Exhibit A in a case involving a jealous husband and a .357 Magnum, and I picked it up cheap at a police auction of old evidence.
     I stared at the ceiling fan, listening to its whompety-whomp while Gina traced figure eights with a blood-red fingernail across my pectorals. A crumpled bed sheet covered me from the waist down. Her clothing was simpler; there wasn’t any. She reclined on her side, propped on an elbow, the smooth slope of a bare hip distracting me from the hypnotizing effect of the fan. Outside the jalousie windows, the wind was picking up, the palm fronds swatting the sides of my coral-rock house.
     A most disagreeable man. In earlier times, she would have called him a dickbrain.
     Or if there were clergy on the premises, simply a birdturd.
     But Gina was a sponge that absorbed the particulars of her surroundings, the good, the bad, and the pretentious. Lately, she’d been hanging out with the matrons of the Coral Gables Women’s Club. Finger sandwiches at the Biltmore, charity balls at the Fontainebleau, tennis at the club. Discussions of many disagreeable men. Mostly husbands, I’d bet.
     “A swine, really,” Gina said. “A short, bald, lumpy swine who mashed out his cigarettes in my long-stemmed Iittala glasses.”
     “Iittala, is it?”
     “Don’t mock me, Jake. Finnish, top of the line. Nicky likes the best of everything.”
     “That’s why he married you,” I said, without a trace of sarcasm.
     “You’re still mocking me, you prick.”
     Prick. Now, that was better. You can take the girl out of the chorus line, but …
     “Not at all, Gina. You Ye a name brand. Just like Nicky’s Rolex, his Bentley, and … his Iittala.”
     “What’s wrong with my name, anyway?”
     Defensive now. She could play society wife with the white-shoe crowd at Riviera Country Club, but I’d known her too long.
     “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve liked all your names. Each suited the occasion.”
     “Even Maureen? Rhymes with latrine.”
     “I didn’t know you then. You were Star when I met you.”
     She made the little hand-wave again, and her butterscotched hair spilled across my chest, tickling me. Her movements hadn’t always been so subtle. When her name was Star Hampton, she jumped and squealed with the rest of the Dolphin Dolls at the Orange Bowl. She had long legs and a wide smile, but so did the others. What distinguished her was a quick mind and overriding ambition. Which hardly explained why she chose me-a second-string linebacker with a bum knee and slow feet-over a host of suitors that included two first-round draft choices with no-cut contracts and a sports agent who flew his own Lear. Then again, maybe it explained why she left me.
     We were together two years, or about half my less-than-illustrious football career, and then she drifted away, leaving her name-and me-behind. When the gods finally determined that my absence from the Dolphins’ roster would affect neither season ticket sales nor the trade deficit with Japan, I enrolled in night law school. By then, Star had sailed to Grand Cayman with a gold-bullion salesman, the first of three or four husbands, depending if you counted a marriage performed by a ship’s captain on the high seas.
     I hadn’t heard from her for a few years when she called my secretary, asking to set up an appointment with Mr. Jacob Lassiter, Esq. She wanted her latest marriage annulled after discovering the groom wasn’t an Arab sheikh, just a glib commodities broker from Libya who needed a green card. We became reacquainted, and Gina-though that wasn’t her name vet-kept drifting in and out of my life with the tide.
     Sometimes, it was platonic. She’d complain about one man or another. The doctor was selfish; the bodybuilder dull; the TV newsman uncommunicative. I’d listen and give advice. Yeah, me, a guy without a wife, a live-in lover, or a parakeet.
     Sometimes, it was romantic. In between her multiple marriages and my semirelationships, there would be long walks on the beach and warm nights under the paddle fan. One Sunday morning, I was making omelets-onions, capers, and cheese-when she came up behind me and gave me a dandy hug. “If I didn’t like you so much, Jake,” she whispered, “I’d marry you.”
     And sometimes, it was business. There were small-claims suits over a botched modeling portfolio, an apartment with a leaking roof, and a dispute with a roommate over who was the recipient of a diamond necklace bequeathed by a grateful thief who had enjoyed their joint company during a rainy Labor Day weekend. And, of course, the name changes. She had been born Maureen Corcoran on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. A mutt name and a mutt place, she said long ago. So she changed her name and place whenever she deemed either unsuitable. She called herself Holly Holiday during one Christmas season, Tanya Galaxy when she became infatuated with an astronaut at Cape Canaveral, and Star Hampton when she dreamed of a Hollywood career.
     Finally, she asked me to make it official: Maureen would become Gina.
     “It goes well with Florio, don’t you think?” she had asked. “And Nicky likes it.”
Nicky.
     What was he doing today? Making money, I supposed. Wondering whether he was going to get sued by the estate of one Peter Tupton. Maybe worrying about his wife, too. Had Gina said she was going to see her lawyer?
     Their lawyer, now. I could see Gina cocking her head, asking Nicky if it wouldn’t be sweet to hire Jake Lassiter. You remember Jake, don’t you, darling?
Sure, he remembered.
* * *
     Before he was filthy rich, Nicky Florio used to hang around the practice field. He was hawking someone else’s condos then, and he’d deliver an autographed football at each closing. If he couldn’t get Griese, Csonka, Kiick, Warfield, or Buoniconti, I’d sign my name. And theirs.
     Nicky was a great salesman. He pretended to love football, always looking for the inside dope on the team. Injuries, mostly. How had practice gone? What was Shula’s mood? I’d give him a tip now and then, knowing what he was up to, but I never bet on games. Well, seldom. And I never bet against us.
* * *
     Nicky probably balked when she mentioned me. I need another lawyer like I need another asshole. Besides, your old boyfriend’s just an ex-jock with a briefcase.
     He was right. I don’t look like a lawyer, and I don’t act like a lawyer. I have a bent nose, and I tip the scales at a solid 223. My hair is too long and my tie either too wide or too narrow, too loud or too plain, depending on the fashion of the times. I’ve hit more blocking sleds than law books, and I live by my own rules, which is why I’ll never be president of the Bar Association or Rotary’s Man of the Year. I eat lunch in shirtsleeves at a fish joint on the Miami River, not in a tony club in a skyscraper. I laugh at feeble lawyer jokes:
     How can you tell if a lawyer is lying?
     His lips are moving.
     And I do the best I can to inflict the least harm as I bob and weave through life. Which made me wonder just what the hell I was doing with Gina yet again.
     If Nicky had said no, Gina would have waited, then tried again. When the neighbor sued over the property line, Give Jake a chance. I picture Nicky Florio running a hand through his black hair, slicked straight back with polisher. He’d squint, as if in deep thought, his dark eyes hooded. He’d shrug his thick shoulders: Sure, why not, he can’t screw it up too bad.Putting me down, building himself up. Hire the wife’s old boyfriend, something to gloat about at the club, tell the boys how he tacks a bonus onto the bill, like tossing crumbs to a pigeon.
     To Nicky, I was a worker bee he could lease by the hour. He could buy anything, he was telling me, including Gina.
     Well, who’s got her today, Nicky?
     Was that it, I wondered, my infantile way of striking back? Hey, Lassiter, old buddy, what are you doing in bed with Maureen, Holly, Star, Gina? Don’t you have enough problems, what with the Florida Bar on your back? What would the ethics committee say about bedding down a client’s wife?
     With all the single women available, what are you doing with a married one? South Beach is chock-full of unattached women, leggy models from New York, Paris, and Rome.
     Downtown is wall-to-wall professionals in their business-lady pumps, charcoal suits, and silk blouses. The gym has an aerobics instructor plus a divorcee or two who brighten up when you do your curls. So what’s with this destructive, nowhere relationship mired in the past?
     “Jake, what are you thinking about?” Gina asked.
     “Star Hampton,” I answered, truthfully. I rearranged myself on the bed to look straight into her eyes. “Do you remember the time you hit me?”
     “Was it only once?”
     “Yeah. You were leaving me for some cowboy. A rodeo star named Tex or Slim.”
     “It was Jim. Just Jim.”
     “No, Jim was the Indy driver.”
     “That was James,” she corrected me. “Or was he the tennis pro?”
     “You hit me because I didn’t beg you to stay.”
     “I don’t remember,” she said.
     But I did.
* * *
     We’d been living together in my apartment on Miami Beach. She stepped out of the shower, her hair smelling like a freshly mowed field. She kissed me, soft and slow, then said she was leaving. I told her I’d miss the wet towels balled up on the bathroom floor. She let fly a roundhouse right, bouncing it off my forehead, cursing as she broke a lacquered nail.
     Good kiss, no hit.
     She dressed quickly and tossed her belongings into a couple of gym bags. Then she said it to me, a parting line I was to hear time and again. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said, heading out the door. “And maybe I won’t.”
* * *
     “Slugged anybody lately?” I asked.
     She laughed. It was the old laugh. Hearty instead of refined. “Gawd, I was so young then. Did you know I turned thirty last April? You think I need a boob job? Am I starting to sag?”
     She sat up, stretched her long legs across the bed, and hefted her bare breasts, one at a time, her chin pressed into her chest. The streaked blond hair hung straight over her eyes. Outside, the wind was crackling the palm fronds. Only three o’clock, but it had gotten dark inside the bedroom. I peered out the porthole-sized window. Gray clouds obscured the sun as a summer squall approached from the west.
     “Jake! You’re ignoring me.”
     So was Nicky, I thought. Maybe that was why she was here. Or was it just for old times’ sake?
     “Can we be friends again?” she had asked when she showed up at my office for a lunch appointment.
     “Friends?”
     “Friends who screw,” she explained.
     Which, come to think of it, is what we had been from the beginning. After all these years, I was still dazzled by her beauty, the granite cheekbones, the wide-set deep blue eyes rimmed with black, the body sculpted by daily workouts with a personal trainer. Attention must be paid to such a woman, I thought.
     She dropped her breasts, which, as she well knew, sagged not a whit. “Jake?”
     “Tell me more about Tupton,” I said.
     “Ugh! No more talk about business.”
     “I thought that’s what this was about.”
     “Come on, Jake. That was an excuse. I missed you.”
     She rolled on top of me and grabbed a handful of my sunbleached hair. “You get better-looking every year. I don’t know why I talked Nicky into hiring you. You’re too tall and too tanned and too damn sexy”
     “That’s why you talked him into hiring me. And here I was hoping it was for my legal acumen.”
     “It’s for your amorous acumen.” She let go of my hair and began nuzzling my neck.
     “Look, Gina, you’re just bored. It’s an occupational hazard of the haut monde wife.”
     Her teeth were leaving little marks on my earlobes. She whispered in my ear. “If you think I don’t know what that means, you’re trés trompé. My second husband took me to Paris. Or was it my third?”
     “C’mon, let’s do some work-unless you want me to charge you two hundred fifty dollars an hour for-“
     “A bargain at twice the price.”
     “Gina. I’m serious.”
     “I know you are. You’re suffering from postcoital guilt.”
     “Really?”
     “I’ve had therapy,” she said proudly. “My next-to-last ex-husband was a big believer in self-growth.”
     “C’mon now, tell me more about Tupton.”
     She sighed and rolled off me, her hair trailing across my chest. Her back toward me, I admired the twin dimples at the base of her spine. Then she turned to face me, her full lips pouting. “We invited him to the pool party to soften him up. Nicky’s bright idea. Why fight the guy, waste thousands on legal fees-“
     “What better use for your money?”
     “… when maybe we could reason with him, show him the good life, serve him some grilled pompano-“
     “And chilled champagne.”
     “Jake, stop it! If you don’t want to fool around anymore, treat me like a client.”
     “You want me to pad the bill?”
     “No, I want you to screw me.”
     “Gina!”
     “Okay, okay. Fire away.”
     “So you invited Tupton to a pool party.”
     “Along with a bunch of stuffed shirts, Friends of the Philharmonic, the opera and ballet groups. I haven’t seen so many bobbed noses and tummy tucks since the Mount Sinai Founders Ball.”
     “A society crowd.”
     “Business, too. With Nicky, a party can’t just be a party. We had some of the big growers plus a Micanopy chief or two. Nicky always says if you want to do business in the Everglades, you’ve got to make friends with the Indians and the sugar barons. And, of course, we invited Tupton, the turd.”
     Dropping all Gables Estates pretenses now. More like Star Hampton, who once shared a  two-bedroom Miami Springs apartment with five stewardesses, none of whom could scrub a pot.
     “I’ve seen his name in the paper,” I said. “What did they call him, an ‘environmental activist’?”
     “A turd!”
     “The Journal said he was executive director of the Everglades Society. A pretty nice obituary.”
     “A shithead.”
     “I assume he wasn’t fond of real estate developers the likes of Nicholas Florio,” I said.
     She placed a hand on my stomach. “All Nicky did was send some surveyors onto the Micanopy Reservation. He’s been doing business with the Indians for years.”
     “The reservation’s in the Big Cypress Swamp, so Tupton was probably concerned that-
     “Who cares! I mean, the Indians have something like seventy thousand acres out there. It’s all mucky. Yuk! Who would want it?”
     “Nicky, I guess. He’s probably going to improve the environment by draining the groundwater, chasing out the birds and alligators, and building ticky-tacky condos on rotten pilings.”
     “Jake, that’s not fair. He’s got a planned community on the drawing board. Something that would enhance the environment. That’s what the brochures say.”
     “Maybe the buildings would even last until the first hurricane.”
     “Don’t let your feelings about Nicky interfere with your good judgment, Jake.” She let her fingers do the walking, or maybe it was a slow dance under the sheet, a soft stroking of me farther south. “Anyway, Tupton files a suit against Nicky’s company for not having all the right permits. But Nicky wasn’t dredging or anything, just surveying, for crying out loud! I gotta tell you, Jake, these bird-watchers and gator-loving econuts are real wackos. They’ve protested against the oil companies for making seismic tests and the airboat tours for disturbing the tadpoles. And Tupton, talk about holier than thou, he comes to our house wearing jeans and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, like some urban fucking cowboy. I’ll bet the dipshit makes thirty-five K a year, tops.”
     “Made,” I said. “He’s not cashing any more checks. And I remember when you shook your booty for fifteen bucks a game at the Orange Bowl.”
     She withdrew her hand and studied me. “You disapprove of me, don’t you, Jake? You never say it, but I disappoint you.”
     I listened to fat raindrops plopping against the window. The wind whistled through gaps in the barrel-tile roof. “Nothing and nobody ever turns out the way you think.”
     She turned away from me, either to express her displeasure or to show off her profile.     “And what did you think, Jake, that I’d be doing brain surgery now? I just count my blessings that I’m not dancing tabletops in one of those dives near the airport.”
     In the distance, a police siren sang against the wind. “Maybe I’m just jealous that you’re with Nicky, and this is the way I show it.”
     “You? Jealous?” She laughed a throaty laugh, her breasts bouncing. “Since when? You never cared. You never once said you loved me, not even when it was just the two of us. We were close, Jake, or don’t you remember?”
     “I remember everything,” I said. “The Germans wore gray. You wore blue, and I missed the boat.”
     “The boat?”
     “The one to Grand Cayman-others too, I imagine. I never could keep up with you.”
     She turned back to me and brought an elbow down into my stomach. Not hard, but not soft either. I let out a whoosh. “Jeez, what’s that for?”
     “You jerk! You big, dumb jock jerk! You never asked me to stay. You think I wouldn’t have stayed? You never cared!”
     “Who says I didn’t care?”
     “Me! I say it. You didn’t care.”
     “I cared,” I said softly.
     “Then you’re a double dumb jerk for never saying so.”
* * *
      Gina sat on the edge of the bed, craning her long neck and blowing cigarette smoke into the air. She’d been quitting smoking ever since we met, probably longer. Self-discipline was not her strong suit. It took her another half hour to tell me the rest of the story.
     She had put on what she called her sweet face and served Peter Tupton a pitcher of mimosas to loosen him up. Nicky lent him a swimsuit, and before you knew it, there he was frolicking in the pool with a couple of Junior Leaguers from Old Cutler Road.
     “Is there a Mrs. Tupton?” I asked. Without a wife and kids, the value of the wrongful-death case would plummet.
     “There is, but he didn’t bring her,” Gina told me.
     “Why not? Were they separated?” An impending marital split could limit the damages, too.
     “Tupton said something about Sunday being her day to spend at Mercy hospital. She’s a volunteer with child cancer patients.”
     Oh shit. When the surviving spouse is an angel, tack another digit onto the verdict form.
     “Any little Tuptettes?”
     “No. They’d been married a couple of years. No kids yet.”
     Be thankful for small blessings.
     “How’d he get into the wine cellar?”
     She exhaled a puff into the draft of the ceiling fan. “Beats me. When he first arrived, Nicky gave him a tour of the house, including the cellar, which isn’t a cellar at all or it’d be under five feet of water. It’s a custom-built room off the kitchen. Lots of insulation, custom wood shelving, a couple thousand bottles. He must have come back into the house from the pool. Maybe the jerkoff wanted to steal a Château Pétrus 1961. Or maybe he was looking for a place to pee.”
     I was trying to figure it out, but it made no sense. There was plenty to drink outside, where it was also warm, and tummy-tucked women in bikinis lounged poolside. “Why would he wander into a freezing room soaking wet, settle down, and drink two bottles of champagne? Did he lock himself in?”
     “Impossible,” she answered, tossing me the hand again. “The bolt slides open from the inside. Apparently, he didn’t want to leave.”
     Or couldn’t, I thought.
     The rain had stopped, and the wind had died. Outside the window, the late-afternoon sun peeked from behind the clouds, slanting shadows of a palm frond across the room. In the chinaberry tree, a mockingbird with white wing patches was yawking and cackling. Mimus polyglottos, Doc Charlie Riggs called him, using the bird’s Latin name. Mimic of many tongues. My mocker is a bachelor. They’re the ones who sing the songs. Maybe that’s what I was doing, too.
     “Who was the last person to see Tupton alive?” I asked.
     Gina looked around my bedroom for an ashtray. She seemed to consider the question before answering. “Nicky, I think.” She appeared lost in thought. There being neither an ashtray nor Iittala glassware on the premises, Gina dropped the cigarette butt into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. Her eyes brightened. “Sure, they were both sitting in the kiddie pool drinking the mimosas, Nicky trying to charm him. I remember thinking that Nicky must be making progress, maybe getting through to him. Then they walked toward the house together, going into the kitchen. That’s the last I saw him. You’ll have to ask Nicky what happened next.”
     I intended to do just that. As Nicky’s lawyer, I had to be ready for anything. I had to “zealously” defend my client. It’s in the Canons of Ethics, you can look it up. Just now, the lawyer inside me-the guy who sees evil and deception, artifice and mendacity-had a lot of questions to ask. And so would the state attorney, I was willing to bet.
     The death of Peter Tupton was just a bit too bizarre. Words like “inquest” and “autopsy” and “grand jury” were popping into my head. And motive, too. What was it Doc Riggs always said? When there’s no explanation for the death, always ask, cui bono, who stands to gain.
     Hey, Nicky Florio, this may be more trouble for you than just a wrongful-death suit that’s probably insurance-covered anyway. You could be up to your ass in alligators.
     Gina was up and getting dressed. She wriggled into her ultratight jeans and shot me a look. “Jake, why are you smiling?”
     “Didn’t know I was.”
     “You were. Your blue eyes were crinkling at the corners, and you had that crooked grin you used to sweep me off my feet.”
     “So that’s what did it. I thought it was my witty repartee aided by ample quantities of Jack Daniel’s.”
     She was looking around the room for her bra. “No. It was your smile. That and shoulders I could lean on.”
     “Since then, one’s been separated, the other dislocated, and I’ve torn a rotator cuff.”
     She found the bra, red and frilly, in a tangle of bed sheets. “Just now, you were almost laughing. What were you thinking about?”
     “The Canons of Ethics.”
     She gave me a shove. “No, really.”
     “Okay, then. The Ten Commandments, or at least one of them.”
     “Which one?”
     “Something about thy client’s wife,” I said.
Chapter 2
Self-inflicted Pain
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN MR. LASSITER?” ASKED WILBERT FAIRCLOTH.
     “Since he was a pup,” Doc Charlie Riggs answered.
     “May we assume that constitutes many years?”
     “We may,” Charlie said, wiping his eyeglasses on his khaki shirt. His old brown eyes twinkled at me. “When I was chief M.E., Jake was a young assistant public defender. Well, not as young as the others, since he’d spent a few years playing ball, though heaven knows why. He wasn’t very good, and he blew out his anterior cruciate ligaments.” Charlie scratched his beard and shot me a sidelong glance. “Anyway, when he began practicing-law, not football-we were on opposite sides of the fence. I’d testify for the state as to cause of death, the matching of bullets to weapons, that sort of thing, and Jake would cross-examine on behalf of his destitute and very guilty clients. He always did so vigorously, if I may say so.”
     “No one is questioning Mr. Lassiter’s competence,” Faircloth said.
Good. Not that it was always that way. New clients, particularly, are suspicious. They want to see your merit badges-diplomas from prestigious universities, photos with important judges, newspaper clippings laminated onto walnut plaques. I don’t have any. No letters from the Kiwanis praising my good works. I don’t have a family, so no pictures of the kiddies clutter my desk. If anyone wants to examine my diploma from night law school, they can visit my house between Poinciana and Kumquat in Coconut Grove. The sheepskin isn’t framed, so the edges are yellowed and torn, but it serves a purpose, covering a crack in the bathroom wall just above the commode. I like it there, a symbolic reminder of the glory of higher education, first thing every morning.
     I don’t give clients a curriculum vitae or a slick brochure extolling my virtues. I just tell them I’ve never been disbarred, committed, or convicted of moral turpitude, and the only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity-I didn’t know the guy I hit was a cop.
I keep my office walls bare except for a couple of team pictures and a black-and-white AP wirephoto from some forgotten game. The sideline photographer caught me moving laterally, trying to keep up with the tight end going across the middle. The shutter must have clicked a   split second after my cleats stuck in the turf. My right leg was bent at the knee in a direction God never intended. Nobody had hit me. It’s one of those rare football photos where the lighting is perfect and you can see right through the face mask.
     My eyes are wide, mouth open.
     Startled. No pain yet, just complete astonishment.
     The agony came later. It always does.
     What had been perfectly fine ligaments were shredded into strands of spaghetti. Doc Riggs gave me the photo on the day I retired, which is a polite way of saying I was placed on waivers and twenty-seven other teams somehow failed to notice. Because he always has a reason for everything, I asked Charlie why he went to the trouble of having the photo blown up and framed.
     “Why do you think?” he asked right back. Sometimes, his Socratic approach can be downright irritating.
     “You want me to remember the pain so I don’t miss the game so much.”
     “No, you’ll do that without any prompting. As Cicero said, Cui placet obliviscitur, cui olet meminit. We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.”
     “Okay, so why-“
     “Most of the pain we suffer we inflict on ourselves,” he said.
     I still didn’t understand. “You want me to be cautious? Doesn’t sound like you, Charlie.”
     “I want you to examine the consequences of your actions before you act. Respice finem. You have a tendency to …”
     “Break the china.”
     “Precisely. And usually your own.”
     I knew I’d never be a great lawyer. I lost most of my cases as a public defender. The clients-I didn’t start calling them “customers” until they could pay-either pleaded guilty, or a jury did it for them. Occasionally, the state would violate the speedy-trial rule, or witnesses wouldn’t show, or the evidence would get lost, and someone would walk free, at least for a while.
     I can still remember my first jury trial. State of Florida v. Monroe Shackleford, Jr. Armed robbery of a liquor store. Abe Socolow was the prosecutor. More hair then, but same old Abe. Dour face, sour disposition. Lean, mean Abe in his black suit and silver handcuffs tie. “Can you identify the man with the gun?” he asked.
     “He’s sitting right over there,” the store clerk answered, pointing directly at Shackleford.
Outraged, my saintly client leaped to his feet and shouted, “You motherfucker, I should have blown your head off!”
     I grabbed Shackleford by an elbow and yanked him into his chair. Sheepishly, he looked toward the jury and said, “I mean, if I’d been the one you seen.”
* * *
     Wilbert Faircloth appeared to be studying his notes. “Dr. Riggs, did there come a time when you and Mr. Lassiter became friends?”
     Charlie fidgeted in the witness chair. He’d been in enough courtrooms to know that Faircloth was attempting to discredit Charlie’s favorable testimony by showing bias. It’s the oldest trick in the cross-examination book.
     “I took the lad under my wing, showed him around the morgue,” Charlie admitted. “He watched me perform a number of autopsies, didn’t toss his lunch even once. It took a while, but Jake learned the basics of serology, toxicology, and forensic medicine.”
     “The question, Dr. Riggs, was whether the two of you became friends.”
     Charlie turned his bowling-ball body toward me. He had a mess of unkempt graying hair, a bushy brown beard streaked with gray, and eyeglasses mended with a fishhook where they had tossed a screw. He wore brown ankle-high walking boots, faded chinos, a string tie, and a sport coat with suede elbow patches. He gave the appearance of a bearded sixty-five-year-old cherub. Charlie never lied under oath or anywhere else, and he wasn’t going to start now. “Yes, I’m proud to be his friend, and as far as I know, Jake’s never done anything unethical.”
     “Ah so,” Faircloth said, mostly to himself, smiling a barracuda’s smile. Wilbert Faircloth was in his mid-forties and razor thin, even in a suit with padded shoulders. He had a narrow black mustache that belonged in Ronald Colman movies and an unctuous manner of referring to the judge as “this learned Court.” After a mediocre career defending fender benders for a now-bankrupt insurance company, he became staff counsel of the state bar.
Now Faircloth was making a show of thumbing through his yellow legal pad. He rested the pad on the railing of the witness stand and fiddled at his mustache with the eraser of his pencil. “Would grave robbery be ethical to you, Dr. Riggs?”
     “Objection!” I was on my feet. “Your Honor, that’s beyond the scope of the bar complaint. It’s ancient history, and no charges were ever filed.”
     Faircloth looked pleased as he approached the bench, cutting off my view of the judge.   “The witness opened the door, and as this learned Court knows, I may walk through it if I please. In addition, I will demonstrate a pattern of misconduct.”
     Judge Herman Gold peered into the courtroom, empty now except for my old buddy Charlie, the slippery Wilbert Faircloth, and little old grave-robber me. Judge Gold had retired years ago, but you couldn’t keep him off the bench. He accepted appointments to hear disciplinary cases against wayward lawyers, bringing as much of the law as he could remember to the deserted courthouse after hours. It was past 9:00 P.M. now, the grimy windows dark, and little traffic sloshed through the rain below us on Flagler Street. With its ceiling of ribbed beams and portraits of judges long since deceased, the huge courtroom was cold and barren as the old air-conditioning wheezed and cranked out dehumidified air.
     “Overruled,” Judge Gold pronounced, squinting toward the clock on the rear wall. He had missed the opening of jai alai at the fronton on Thirty-sixth Street and was not in a pleasant mood. “Past actions are relevant in aggravation or mitigation of the present transgression.”
     “Alleged transgression,” I piped up.
Judge Gold ignored me and gestured toward Charlie Riggs to answer the question. I sank into my chair, armed with the knowledge that I had a fool for a client.
     “What was the question?” Charlie asked.
     “I’ll happily rephrase,” Faircloth offered. “To your knowledge, did Mr. Lassiter ever commit the crimes of trespassing, grave robbery, and malicious destruction of property?”
     “It wasn’t malicious,” Charlie answered, somewhat defensively. “And it was my idea. I was his partner in crime… .”
     Great, Charlie, but they can’t disbar you.
     “And besides, it was for a good cause,” Charlie Riggs continued. “By exhuming Philip Corrigan’s body, we were able to ascertain the identity of his killer.”
     “But Mr. Lassiter didn’t obtain court permission for this so-called exhumation, correct?”
“Correct.”
     “Just as he didn’t obtain court permission for the blatantly illegal surreptitious tape recording in this case, correct?”
     “I’m not familiar with this case, Counselor.”
     “Ah so,” Faircloth said, as if he had elicited a devastating admission.
     On his way out of the courtroom, Charlie patted me on the shoulder and whispered,   “Vincit Veritas. Truth wins out.”
     Damn, I thought. Truth was, I committed a crime.
     We took a brief recess so the judge could call his bookie. When we resumed, my backside hadn’t even warmed up the witness chair when Wilbert Faircloth announced, “Mr. Lassiter, you have the right to counsel at this hearing. So that the record is clear, do you waive that right?”
     “Yes.”
     “Do you do so freely, knowingly, and voluntarily?” Faircloth asked in the typical lawyer’s fashion of using three words when one will suffice.
     “Affirmative, yessir, and friggin’ A,” I answered. One of these days my sarcasm was going to get me in trouble. Maybe this was the day.
Faircloth seemed to puff out his bony chest. “The hour is growing late, so I suggest we cut to the chase without further ado.”
     “I’m all for skipping the ado,” I agreed. Judge Gold gave me a pained look, or maybe he just had stomach gas.
     “Now, sir,” Faircloth continued, “did you or did you not surreptitiously tape-record your own client, one Guillermo Diaz, on or about February 12, 1993?”
* * *
     I remembered the day. It was cool and breezy. I should have gone windsurfing. The black vultures soared effortlessly around the windows of my bayfront office, lazing in the updrafts. Thirty-two stories below, the predators in double-breasted suits were toting their briefcases to the courthouse. Birds of a feather.
     Guillermo Diaz was chunky and round-faced with a nose somebody hadn’t liked. He wore loafers with elevator heels, a short sleeve knit shirt that was stretched taut against his belly. He had soft white hands and hard black eyes. He was harmless-looking, which made him better at his job. His job was killing people.
     Diaz worked with a brute named Rafael Ramos who was twice as big but only half as tough. Together they were hired to shake down a horse trainer in Ocala who borrowed sixty thousand dollars from their boss at 5 percent interest. A week.
     The trainer figured he’d pay it back quickly out of winnings, but his nags had an annoying habit of either finishing fourth, tossing their riders, or suffering heart attacks in the backstretch. With interest accumulating at three thousand a week, before compounding, the debt soon reached a hundred grand. When the trainer couldn’t pay, Diaz and Ramos headed north on the Turnpike in a blue-black Lincoln Town Car.
     Diaz joked that they should lop off the head of Ernie’s Folly, a three-year-old filly, and leave it in the trainer’s bed. “Just like in the movie.”
     Ramos was puzzled. “What movie?”
     “Jesus, with Pacino and Brando. ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.'”
     Ramos stared blankly at him.
     “You know, you gotta get out more,” Diaz said.
     Guillermo Diaz hated working with someone so stupid. He had to do all the thinking himself. What can you talk about with someone like Rafael Ramos, who sits there cleaning his fingernails with an eight-inch shiv? Playing Julio Iglesias tapes all the way up the turnpike.  Jesús Cristo! Julio Iglesias.
     Make him an offer he can’t refuse. Though it started as a joke, riding through dreary central Florida past the orange groves and into the scrubby pine country, the idea sounded better all the time. Outside of Okahumpka, Diaz aimed the Lincoln toward the exit ramp. Ramos didn’t even notice. He was humming along to “Abrázame.” Diaz found a hardware store in a strip shopping center and bought a chain saw from a pimply clerk who tried to sell him tree fertilizer plus fifty pounds of mulch on sale.
     Back in the car, Ramos asked, “Fuck we need a chain saw for?”
     “The horse.”
     “What horse?”
     Diaz explained again, and Ramos started whining about his new white linen guayabera, and what a mess it would be. Diaz was so tired of the bellyaching, he agreed to forget about the horse-they’d just use the saw to scare the guy. The noise alone would make him shit his pants.
     “No need to chop him into pieces,” Diaz said. “Not like in that movie with Pacino and the guy in the shower.”
     “The movie with the horse?”
     “No, different movie. Pacino’s a Marielito in this one. More Cuban than you. Smarter, too.”
     They stopped at a service station, and Diaz filled the small tank on the chain saw, dribbling gasoline onto his patent-leather loafers. At the hors