Praise for Rich Zahradnik
“Last Words
sizzles like the fuse on a powder keg. Hero reporter Coleridge Taylor is
gritty and unstoppable as he plumbs the mean streets of New York City during
its darkest days.”
– Paul D’Ambrosio, author of Easy Squeezy,
winner of the Selden Ring Award and a
Pulitzer Prize gold medal finalist
“Rich Zahradnik is a superb craftsman…Rich in intrigue.”
–Jeff Clark-Meads, author of The Plowman and Tungol
“I didn’t realize how much I missed seedy gritty corrupt
crime-ridden New York City of the 1970s till I read Zahradnik’s debut thriller.
Last Words captures the palms-out
politicians, the bully cops, the not-so-hapless homeless, the back-stabbing
reporters of a city on the brink. The pace speeds up; the whispers and clues
and leads all come together for a big empty-the-revolver and fling-the vodka bottle
finale. Well worth the trip back in time.”
–Richard Zacks, author of Island of Vice and Pirate Hunter
LAST WORDS
By Rich
Zahradnik
A CHILLING
RETRO-MYSTERY BROUGHT TO YOU
BY A
STUNNING NEW VOICE
In March of 1975, as New York City
hurtles toward bankruptcy and the Bronx burns, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams
police precincts and ERs. In LAST WORDS
by Rich Zahradnik (Camel Press, $12.49 paperback; $4.95 Kindle), Taylor
searches for the story that will deliver him from obits, his place of exile at
the Messenger-Telegram. Ever since he was demoted from the police beat for
inventing sources, the 34-year-old has been a lost soul. A break comes at
Bellevue, where Taylor views the body
of a homeless teen picked up in the
Meatpacking District. Taylor smells a rat: the dead boy looks too clean and
he’s wearing a distinctive Army field jacket. A little digging reveals that the
jacket belonged to a hobo named Mark Voichek and that the teen was a spoiled
society kid up to no good, the son of a city official. Taylor’s efforts to
learn Voichek’s secret put him on the hit list of three goons who are willing
to kill any number of street people to cover tracks that just might lead to
City Hall. Taylor has only one ally in the newsroom, young and lovely reporter
Laura Wheeler. Time is not on his side. If he doesn’t wrap this story up soon,
he’ll be back on the obits page—as a headline, not a byline, in Rich
Zahradnik’s LAST WORDS.
RICH ZAHRADNIK is the author of the Coleridge Taylor Mystery series published by Camel
Press. He was a journalist for 30-plus years, working as a reporter
and editor in all major news media, including online, newspaper, broadcast,
magazine and wire services. He held editorial positions at CNN, Bloomberg News,
Fox Business Network, AOL and The Hollywood Reporter, often writing
news stories and analysis about the journalism business, broadcasting, film
production, publishing and the online industry.
In January
2012, he was one of 20 writers selected for the inaugural class of the Crime
Fiction Academy, a first-of-its-kind program run by New York’s Center for
Fiction. He has been a media entrepreneur throughout his career. He was the founding
executive producer of CNNfn.com, a leading financial news website and a Webby
winner; managing editor of Netscape.com, and a partner in the soccer-news
website company Goal Networks. Zahradnik received his B.A. in journalism and
political science from George Washington University.
LAST WORDS
By Rich Zahradnik
Camel Press
October 1, 2014;
$12.49 paperback; $4.95 Kindle
ISBN- 978-1603812078
AISN: B00NY8TK2Y
Excerpt from
LAST WORDS
By Rich Zahradnik
The orderly rolled the gurney onto an elevator. Taylor
stepped on, too. The orderly read his press pass. It expired in three months,
and if Taylor couldn’t get back on the police beat by then, he’d lose it and all
the access it gave him. Doors all over the city would slam shut. The thought
chilled him.
“Coleridge Samuel Taylor.”
“Just Taylor.” He hated the literary ornamentation of his
name.
“Name’s Jackson.”
The autopsy room looked like any operating theater with its
silver-domed lights, trolleys of medical instruments and glass- fronted metal
cabinets. The acrid smell of disinfectant was even stronger here.
A second orderly came in and helped Jackson shift the
wrapped body onto a table, both of them grunting.
“Jesus, this body is frozen stiff,” Jackson said.
The second orderly shrugged and left, as if moving bodies
was his only job.
“You said he died of exposure, right?” Taylor leaned in.
“Yeah, but he feels like ….” The orderly frowned. “The last
time a body came in frozen solid like this was when a jumper went into the
Hudson back in January.” He pulled the sheets open near the neck. The corpse
was still dressed and the orderly fingered the material of the outer clothing.
“The coat and sweater are cold but not frozen.” He slid his hand inside the
sweater. “The undershirt feels like it’s iced right to him. The skin is
frozen.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Taylor looked from the orderly to
the body on the slab. “It’s like he froze from the inside out. Or his outer
clothes were put on after he froze.” He made a note of this. “Be interesting to
hear what the pathologist makes of it.”
“Not much if he thinks he’s cutting a homeless boy. How are
you going to do a story on a dead nobody?” The orderly sighed and turned away.
I’ll find out what
makes him a somebody. Getting frozen in your underwear and dressed by another
person might do the trick.
“You gotta be a big somebody to get your death notice in the
papers here.”
This victim’s story already bothered him. The boy was going
to disappear. Taylor was watching it happen. No last words for the family. No
notice taken anywhere by anyone. It had happened before, with Billy. This was
going on now in Taylor’s city. There was no excuse for it.
“When did the body come in?”
“Night watch. Three, four in the morning.”
“You’re just now rolling him in?”
“No room at the inn. Kept the body outside in the
ambulance.”
“What if they got another call?”
“Couldn’t. No one to replace the driver’s going off shift.
Poor bastards had to take a cab back to their house. These budget cuts are just
crazy. So we kept him cold out there. The guys just came back to get their
wagon.”
“Where’d they pick him up?”
“The Meatpacking District.” Jackson looked at the body
again. “I’ll tell you one thing. I doubt they’ll be cutting today. It’s going
to take a whole shift to defrost him. Very strange. Or plain bad luck.”
Only the facts interested Taylor. They’d explain how this
boy froze from the inside out, the cause and effect. Nothing unlucky. Nothing
strange.
Jackson pulled off the sheet. The dead boy wore an army
field jacket similar to Taylor’s. Threads hung at the edges of the rectangle
above the left breast pocket where a name patch should have been.
“Whatever the name tag said, it wasn’t this kid’s,” Taylor
said. “He’s too young for the military.” Could be the father’s, Taylor thought.
Or maybe the boy bought it at the Army-Navy. Taylor would check all that out.
The jacket had seen a lot of wear and tear. Some of that might be from life on
the street.
“Now that I think of it,” Jackson said, “it looks like the
one I got when I fought in Europe. You don’t see these as much. Thing never was
warm enough.”
Jackson was right. The boy’s jacket featured lapels instead
of a circular collar and the fabric looked thinner. The kid wore dungarees,
patched the length of both legs, more patches than jean material really. The
“V” of a blue sweater, probably wool, showed under the jacket.
Jackson nodded at Taylor’s jacket. “You a vet?”
“No.”
“Just like the look?”
“No.” The implication stung, as if his was a fashion
statement. His brother, trained to fight somewhere cold in Europe, was ordered
to Vietnam. Billy didn’t need the heavy jacket, or didn’t want to pack it, or
had wanted to leave something behind with his older brother. Taylor wasn’t sure
which. He gave it to Taylor and never came back. Maybe because of the question,
the teenager became his brother Billy for a moment. Another kid forever lost to
his family. The boy was the same height, though slighter and younger. What was
younger when you were dead?
The orderly was saying something, forcing Billy’s face to
fade, replaced by that of the dead boy. This face was smooth, without lines,
and the nose straight. His lips were full, almost pouting, and his gray eyes
looked directly into the bright overhead lights, unblinded and blind. His hair
was thick, long and clean, which was odd. If this kid was homeless, it should
have been matted and dirty.
“Look at this.” Jackson pointed to the jacket’s right
sleeve.
More than twenty national flags were sewn down the outside
of the right arm of the field jacket, from the shoulder to the cuff. France,
Italy, USA, East Germany, Canada, the USSR, West Germany, Red China, and
countries some Taylor couldn’t identify.
Taylor walked around the table. “Same on this side. No unit
or rank. Those were cut away a long time ago. Just more flags. It’s like the
UN.”
Thousands of army field jackets hung in the closets of New
York vets, the families of the dead and even ex-hippies, but none would look
like this one. Taylor knew people would remember it. This was starting to look
like a story he could follow.
Jackson left the room. Taylor checked the boy’s left hand,
leaned in to get closer and used his Bic pen to lift the fingers. They were
smooth, almost feminine, with telltale signs of civilized living—clean,
well-trimmed fingernails. Not a speck of dirt under any of them. The fingers on
the right hand were the same. This kid wasn’t homeless, or hadn’t been for
long. The field jacket would lead to someone who knew him, who could tell his
story. He listed the countries of the flags he could ID and descriptions of
those he couldn’t.
“I thought we were rid of you, Taylor.” Dr. R. Martin Quirk,
the assistant coroner, stood inside the door. Taylor looked from Quirk’s long
face to the stubby fingers that seemed imperfect instruments for prodding
inside bodies, even dead ones.
“This kid wasn’t homeless,” Taylor said.
“What do you know? Don’t turn this John Doe into another of
your page one specials. I’ve got six homicides in the cooler, bodies piling up
in the emergency room—high priority, cops shooting civilians—and five
accidentals, old people who froze to death in their apartments. I’ve got to cut
them all anyway. They won’t let me put ‘unpaid Con Ed bill’ as cause on the
death certificate.”
“Will you at least check the ‘missing’ list?”
Quirk always claimed to be overworked, but he was just plain
lazy.
“That’s a cop’s job.”
“They won’t.”
“I’m not their master, thank Christ. Why don’t you do it?
You’re the reporter.”
Taylor decided not to disabuse him of that notion. From his
jacket’s right pocket, he pulled out and opened the collapsible Polaroid he
carried for capturing a scene when a click was faster than taking notes. A
snap-flash and Taylor held the instant photo, a black square until it
developed. In two minutes, chemicals and metals would resolve into a color
picture of the dead boy’s face. He needed it to track down who the kid was.
“I’ll call you to get cause of death.” He put the developing
picture in his coat pocket next to his wallet and went straight through the
double doors without glancing back.
Why didn’t the boy show the wear and tear of rough living?
He might have been a recent arrival on the street, a runaway who didn’t bargain
on the freezing weather and died almost as soon as he ran. A sad story.
Newspaper readers loved sad stories, even if they said they didn’t.
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