Dirty Work (Rapid Reads) Read online

  Advance praise for

  DIRTY WORK

  “A little man with a huge heart and a huge chip on his shoulder, Gulliver Dowd swaggers into the crime fiction world and takes his place with the great investigators. Smart, vulnerable, wounded, heartbreakingly hopeful, I just adore his company. This is a staggering achievement. Bravo!”

  —Louise Penny

  DIRTY

  WORK

  REED FARREL COLEMAN

  Copyright © 2013 Reed Farrel Coleman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Coleman, Reed Farrel, 1956-

  Dirty work [electronic resource] / Reed Farrel Coleman.

  (Rapid Reads)

  Electronic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 9781459802070(pdf) -- ISBN 9781459802087 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads (Online)

  PS3553.O47443D57 2013 813’.54 C2012-907306-7

  First published in the United States, 2013

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952476

  Summary: PI Gulliver Dowd searches for the daughter he didn’t know he had, who has gone missing under mysterious circumstances.

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

  For Ellen W. Schare,

  my favorite school librarian

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The phone rang. Gulliver Dowd hurried to his desk as fast as his stubby, uneven legs would carry him. As he hobbled along, he shook his head. What good were cell phones if you didn’t keep them in your pocket? He hated cell phones. In fact, he hated nearly everything these days. It seemed he had been angry ever since his sister Keisha had been murdered. Gulliver still recalled the old message on her phone.

  Hi. I’m not home right now, but if you leave your name, number and a short message, I’ll get back to you. That is, if I survive my shift. Peace and love.

  The first thing Gulliver had done after the funeral was erase that damn message. He had begged his sister to change it. He didn’t approve of her tempting fate. He told her life was hard enough already. But that was her way. Keisha was tough, a fighter. Tell her she couldn’t do something, and she would show you she could. That was half the reason she’d become a cop. People had said she would never make it. But her early life in foster care had taught her not to worry about fate. Problem is, things go wrong. It doesn’t matter why, they just do. They go wrong for everybody sooner or later. Things had gone very wrong for Keisha. Deadly wrong.

  One day she didn’t make it back to the station house at the end of her shift. They found her empty patrol car on Pennsylvania Avenue in Brooklyn. Its engine was still running. Her partner turned up at the Brookdale Hospital emergency room. He was barely conscious, his head bruised and bloodied. He couldn’t remember what day it was or how he’d gotten to the hospital. He couldn’t recall what had happened to him or where Keisha was. Two days later, they found her body behind an abandoned building on Livonia Avenue. Her hands were tied behind her. She had a bullet in the back of her head. The forensics report said she was on her knees when she died. Gulliver couldn’t get that image out of his head. He hated thinking that she had died alone and afraid.

  It had been six frustrating years. The NYPD had come up empty on Keisha’s murder. He knew the cops had worked the case hard. When another cop is killed, they go all out. It didn’t matter that Keisha was an African-American woman. Or that she had only a few years on the job. Every cop knows the next person to get killed in the line of duty could be him. There were hundreds of clues to begin with. There are always lots when a reward is offered. But none of them worked out. The case went cold very quickly.

  In a weird way Gulliver owed a debt to his sister’s killer. He didn’t like thinking that, but it was the truth. And Gulliver Dowd always faced the truth. No matter how ugly. No matter how hurtful. No matter what. When you looked like he did, you had to be honest with yourself.

  Gulliver was so short that his reflection filled up only the bottom half of a mirror. That half showed him how cruel God was. Gulliver looked as if he had been built from mismatched body parts. His arms and legs were too small, even for his squat body. His hands were too big for his arms. His fingers, too small for his hands. His head, too big for his height. But the cruelest thing God had done was to give Gulliver a handsome face.

  “What a waste,” he’d heard a girl say during his first year in college. “What a waste.”

  Her friend agreed. “A pity.”

  Pity. The thing he hated most. If his face had been as ugly as the rest of him, people would have just turned away. People do that. They turn away from people in wheelchairs and autistic kids at the mall. They don’t like being reminded of how much harder life could be. They don’t want to know that in the next moment everything could be taken away from them. But people didn’t turn away from Gulliver Dowd. Not at first. First they stared. Then they turned away. The looks on their faces said the same things those two girls had said back in college. What a waste. What a pity.

  So Gulliver never turned away from the truth.

  And if his sister hadn’t been murdered, he wouldn’t have become a private investigator. He wouldn’t have gone from being someone who was always bullied to someone with a black belt in karate. For the first two years of karate his body ached. But he loved the training. His teachers didn’t care about his looks. They cared only about results. If Keisha hadn’t been murdered, he wouldn’t have learned knife fighting from a retired Navy Seal. He wouldn’t have learned to shoot or gotten a handgun carry permit. It was easier to become an astronaut than get a gun permit in New York. Gulliver did it by getting a job as a gem courier. It was dangerous work to carry jewels on the streets of New York City.

  “Who is going to think anyone would trust me with diamonds and rubies?” Gulliver asked when he applied for the job. “No thief is ever going to think, ‘Hey, that little guy’s carrying a few million worth of gems.’ ”

  And Gulliver got the job. It paid well and suited his schedule. He still did some work for his old company when things were slow and he needed extra money.

  Keisha’s killer had taught Gulliver a lesson. If a brave, well-trained cop with a gun could be taken from her patrol car in daylight and shot dead, no one was safe. Gulliver meant to find the person who’d killed his sister. That’s why he had gone through all the training. If the cops couldn’t find the animal who had murdered his little sister, he would. He had pictured the murder in his head thousands of times. He started to picture it now, but the phone rang again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He waited for the caller to speak, but all he go
t was silence.

  Tired of waiting, he finally said, “Gulliver Dowd Investigations.”

  “Is something wrong, Gullie? I can hear it in your voice,” came the response. “What’s the matter?”

  Gullie. With both of his adoptive parents and Keisha gone, only one person still called him Gullie. His oldest friend. His only friend, Steven Mandel. Gulliver called him Rabbi. He couldn’t remember when he’d started to call Steven that or why. Maybe because as a kid, Steven was wise and generous beyond his years.

  “What’s the matter?” Rabbi repeated.

  Gulliver lied. “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Gullie, I know you for thirty years. It’s Keisha, right? You were thinking of what happened to her.” That was Rabbi. He had always been able to see into Gulliver’s head and heart.

  Gulliver confessed, “It was six years ago, Rabbi. And it still hurts like it was yesterday.”

  “I know it hurts. But maybe it’s time to move on with your own life, Gullie. Stop looking for the killer. Keisha wouldn’t want you to spend your whole life—”

  “What are you calling about?” Gulliver cut him off. They had this talk about once a month. About how Gulliver should get on with his life. It never got very far. He was never going to stop hunting for his sister’s killer. Besides, what else was there? If it wasn’t for the rage that drove him, he might have nothing.

  “I’ve got a client who’s interested in hiring you,” Rabbi said.

  “Who’s the client? What’s the job?”

  “Since when did that matter to you?”

  Gulliver agreed. “Good point.”

  “Meet me at Black and Blue Steaks at nine. Should be interesting.”

  “At least your client has a sense of humor,” Gulliver said.

  Rabbi was confused. “How’s that?”

  “Black and Blue is on Little West 12th Street. He even picked a street to match my size.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Gullie.”

  “Can’t help it. It’s a God-given gift like the rest of me.”

  Rabbi hung up without another word.

  The name of the restaurant, Black and Blue, was an inside joke. It referred to the way some people liked their steaks cooked—charred black outside, a juicy bluish-gray inside. But it also referred to the neighborhood. It had once been home to most of Manhattan’s underground sex clubs. Many of them were for people who liked their sex rough or kinky. The clubs were still there. They were just a little deeper underground.

  How did Gulliver know? It was his business to know. He never knew where he’d find a lead to his sister’s killer. Besides, he was a finder by nature. Built with his nose low to the ground, like a hound. You would think his looks would work against him. The opposite was true. People dismissed him. He was often treated with amazing disrespect. Some people shouted at him as if he was deaf. Some people spelled in front of him, like he was a preschooler. Some people spoke slowly, as if he was short on brains. He might be short, a bit malformed. But he was not deaf, not a child. He was also not stupid.

  The thing that bugged him most was when clients asked, “What should I call you?”

  “Gulliver,” he’d answer, “or Mr. Dowd, if you’d like.”

  “No, I mean, no one calls you people midgets or dwarfs anymore. It’s little people, right? So you’re a little person.”

  “I am Gulliver Dowd, and if you call me anything else, you can take this job and shove it up your ass.”

  Gulliver had no time for labels. What did it matter what he was called? It wasn’t going to change anything. He fell into a category of one: himself. He didn’t want to be part of a group. Being in a group wasn’t going to straighten out his body or gain him respect. He’d come into the world by himself. He lived by himself. He would probably die that way.

  Gulliver got to the restaurant on time, and there was Rabbi, all six foot three of him. Gulliver came up behind him and gave his old friend a playful kick to the back of his left knee.

  Rabbi acted like he didn’t see Gulliver. “Did someone let their poodle off the leash?” he said.

  “Screw you, Rabbi.”

  “You know, Gullie, most friends shake hands when they greet each other.”

  “Really? I’ll have to try that sometime. Maybe I have a complex about my height.” Gulliver hung his head in mock shame. “I’m too big to be a helper monkey and too small to be a jockey.”

  “That line is getting old, Gullie.”

  “I’ll work on a new one.”

  “Let’s eat.” Rabbi turned to the hostess and said, “Reservation for Mandel, party of two.”

  The hostess was like many women in Lower Manhattan. She was thin, edgy and pretty in a pierced and tattooed way. She acted as if the world could show her nothing new. Then she spotted Gulliver, and her blue eyes suddenly sparkled. She looked at him as if he were a three-legged rescue puppy. Yeah, he got that a lot.

  “No petting allowed,” Gulliver snapped at her.

  The sparkle went out of her blue eyes. “This way… gentlemen.”

  She walked them through the crowded main part of the steakhouse. It was all very modern and noisy. She led them to a smaller, more private dining room. In here the tables were far apart, the décor more old world. The tourists were in the main room. The real players sat in here. In the main room, the object was to see the beautiful people and be seen by them. In the smaller room, the objective was business, only business.

  Steven Mandel was an entertainment lawyer. He wasn’t a player, but many of his clients were. None were hugely famous, though many were quite rich. Some were soap opera actors or minor rock stars. Some of his writer clients were pretty famous and well to do. But today, being a famous writer was kind of like not being famous at all.

  “So when do we meet my new employer?” Gulliver asked.

  Rabbi said, “Steak now. Business later.”

  Gulliver read the menu. He smelled charred meat, sweet fried onions, earthy creamed spinach. But he also smelled trouble. Gulliver knew something was up when an expensive French wine was delivered to the table.

  “We didn’t order this,” Gulliver said.

  “Compliments of the house.” The wine steward showed Gulliver the dusty label.

  Gulliver nodded. The steward gave the bottle to the waiter. The waiter poured some into a bell-shaped glass. Gulliver liked cheap vodka much more than red wine. But that didn’t mean he didn’t like red wine at all. He also knew the difference between cheap red wine and the kind that cost hundreds of dollars a bottle. He pulled the glass closer. Sniffed it. Swirled it. Sipped it. Swished it and swallowed. He approved, nodding yes to the waiter. The waiter poured a full glass for Rabbi and then one for Gulliver.

  “Gullie, you know your wine.”

  “The trick isn’t knowing, Rabbi. It’s looking like you know.”

  As they ate, Gulliver looked at his friend with wonder. Rabbi had been such a gangly kid. Now he was movie-star handsome. He looked like a young Kevin Kline with a more Jewish nose. Like a movie star, Rabbi attracted women the way a magnet attracts iron. It was too bad that the women he met were never right for him. In a way, Rabbi was more alone than Gulliver.

  When they pushed their dinner plates away, the hostess returned. Gulliver realized she was quite good-looking in spite of the piercings and body ink. Rabbi also noticed.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, “would you please follow me to the Club Room for an after-dinner drink?”

  They were led down a narrow hall. Then up a creaky staircase. At the top of the stairs they entered another world. Very old boys’ club. Puffy leather sofas, wing chairs, green glass ashtrays. The walls were covered in walnut panels. Coats of arms and paintings of foxhunts hung on the walls. A bar was at one end of the room. The hostess stood behind the bar and asked the men what they would like to drink. Rabbi ordered a pricey tawny port. Gulliver ordered Chopin vodka. They sat at a vacant table.

  When she arrived with their drinks, Rabbi reached for his wallet. She sai
d, “That has already been seen to, Mr. Mandel.” She smiled at him. All of her edginess and downtown cool had vanished. Rabbi had that effect on women. Gulliver might as well have not been there. When she became aware that she was staring, she spoke. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen…”

  She retreated. Rabbi watched her go. Gulliver watched Rabbi watching her. His friend wasn’t very choosy when it came to women. They all loved him, and he loved them all back. It was easy to figure out which one he was going to love tonight.

  After she was gone, Rabbi said, “You know, Gullie, I was thinking about your parents today.”

  “Really? I thought you were thinking about boning the hostess. My guess is her favorite color is leather.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Gullie. Like I was saying, I was thinking about your parents today.”

  “My parents meant well. But meaning well wasn’t enough. It all went wrong,” Gulliver said. “Their beliefs were a mash-up of old folk songs and public-service announcements. They were going to change the world by being nice people. By adopting the runts of the litter that not even their own mothers could love.”

  “I loved your parents. They were the kindest people I ever met. It wasn’t their fault that they were already old when they adopted you and Keisha.”

  “I know. I loved them too. But all their kindness earned them was an early grave.”

  Rabbi raised his glass. “To your folks.”

  “To my folks.”

  They clinked glasses and drank. Gulliver asked when they were going to get down to business. Rabbi said he wasn’t sure.

  “I never met the person hiring you. She is a friend of one of my biggest clients. All I was told was that she owns this place. That’s all I know.” Rabbi shrugged. “I’ll call you tomorrow to see how it went. Take care of yourself.”