Christopher J. Lynch is a Southern California native living in Los Angeles. He has written for The Daily Breeze, Beach Magazine, Arthritis Today Magazine, LA Weekly and others -- but that's not why we're here.
We're here to read an exclusive excerpt from his debut novel One-Eyed Jack, a hard-boiled, LA-style, crime fiction novel set in modern-day South Bay that follows the adventures of John Sharp, aka One-Eyed Jack, a professional extortionist -- a man who will keep any sort of secret you might have...for a price.
But Jack’s no ordinary scoundrel lurking in the shadows. He’s a sophisticated entrepreneur, a serious business man who relies on a clever mixture of high-tech tools and old-fashioned deception to identify and then compromise his targets.
But when a routine case of infidelity takes an unexpected detour, One-Eyed Jack soon finds himself caught in a tangled web of double-blackmail, commodities manipulation, Russian mobsters and rescuing the woman who had once been his target.
To find out what happens, you'll have to read One-Eyed Jack by Christopher J. Lynch. In the meantime, check out the excerpt below which Christopher has generously shared with the LA Books Examiner. Enjoy!
Warning: Contains adult language.
*Reprinted by special arrangement with the author, Christopher Lynch. Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Lynch. Additional information about Lynch and his work is available at his website: http://www.christopherjlynch.com/
ONE EYED JACK
An excerpt:
I make my living by keeping secrets.
Actually, I make it by letting others keep theirs.
That’s right, I’m that guy. The blackmailer, the extortionist, the guy you never see and wish you had never heard from. I’m the one who sees into the dark corners of your soul, the parts of your life you want to remain hidden.
Fancy yourself a religious man who attends church every Sunday, but who has a propensity for porn shops the other six days of the week? Don’t worry; the congregation will never know as long as you keep tithing into my collection plate. Let’s call it a “Sin Tax.”
Got a shady lawyer pushing a bogus personal injury suit through the courts for you? You’ll get your settlement - as long as I get my cut.
An extra-marital affair with your secretary? You guessed it; pay the piper.
All and all, it’s a decent living. Please note that I’m using the adjective as it applies to monetary as opposed to moral terms. But, it’s not an easy trade, and it has its share of risks. I’ve had my nose broken twice, my ribs fractured, and have had any number of close encounters with automobiles that came speeding out of nowhere trying to kill me.
But I could usually figure out who did it. And then, of course, all of the dirty little secrets would come out, and in living color. I’m sure I’ve been the cause of numerous divorces over the years, as well as terminations of employment, and plenty of fraud convictions. But that’s how you keep people honest; you make them pay up.
And if you think I’m a slime, at least I’m a slime with good manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John Sharp, a.k.a. "One Eyed Jack", a moniker I assure you wasn’t the result of a birth defect or running recklessly through the house with a pair of scissors. Several years back I made the mistake of not researching one of my targets very carefully. He was a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills who had a predilection for young male prostitutes. He had a very successful practice, a couple of nice houses, a trophy wife, and several country club memberships. He was, as I liked to say, my kind of man; "a man with a lot to lose".
What I hadn’t figured on was the fact that one of his patients happened to be a Russian Mafioso who was on the lam and having his identity altered by the good doctor. The doc had his Mafioso client sick his pit bulls on me and the next thing I knew I was being informed that I saw way too much of this world, and that the situation would soon change. I woke up a couple of hours later in the hills above Los Angeles and found I was seeing a lot less, fifty percent if you want to do the math.
* * *
Hawthorne, California was a densely populated suburb located in the southwest end of Los Angeles County. It was a blue-collar town of modest homes, easy access to freeways, and convenient shopping. The Los Angeles International Airport was within earshot of the town, and the noise and congestion it spawned had not only driven down property values, but also given rise to numerous low-rent motels. The Peacock Motel was just one of these establishments.
Low-slung and nondescript, the Peacock was the sort of place you never really noticed. It was set back off the main boulevard just far enough that you could easily miss it if you weren’t paying attention. The parking lot was along the side of the building, and several overgrown Magnolia trees offered copious amounts of shade but more importantly, cover. People could reasonably assume that no one would spot them as they pulled into the parking lot, exited their cars, and took up residence for an hour or so. People felt safe here, and anonymous. People felt they could get away with anything at the Peacock.
But people were often wrong.
I happened to consider the Peacock a bit like my own little happy hunting ground; a lair of lust well stocked with a steady stream of those escaping sexual boredom. The owner, Amit, a Pakistani national, was beholden to me and served as my own little safari guide, advising me when new quarry happened to be on the prowl.
It just so happened that I had done a little research into Amit’s brother-in-law and co-owner of the Peacock, Habib. I struck upon the fact that Habib had overstayed his student visa. As a foreigner from a desperate and limiting third world nation, our Habib felt – as many others before him had - that he might as well just stay in the good old land of opportunity to stake his claim and realize the American dream.
I presented this fact to Amit and obliquely reminded him that in a post 9-11 world, a dark complexion and turban did not bode well for someone who had overstayed their welcome. Presented with this fact – and the documentation to back it up – our friendly Pakistani proprietor immediately launched into the standard medley of denials, admissions, threats, pleas, cajoles, and finally, groveling. Eventually, he offered a substantial amount of money. This would have been the easy route for me to take, but like all successful entrepreneurs, I realized that I had to continually re-invest in order to grow my business.
To this end I offered up a rather elegant deal to my fellow businessman; I would keep mum regarding his brother-in-law’s dubious immigration status, and he would feed me a continual stream of leads regarding those who had chosen to go outside the bounds of matrimony.
Amit was incensed at having to strike such a deal with the infidel and let loose with a stream of expletives in Urdu that I’m sure suggested I perform an anatomical impossibility. But in the end he was a practical man, and we agreed he would contact me as fresh game arrived. I had watched the Peacock long enough to know that one or two new regulars a month would not be an unreasonable quota to expect from him.
It was a Tuesday morning, just after 7:00 a.m. and Rosecrans Avenue was jammed with cars heading in both directions as people dropped their kids off at school or headed in to work. I was parked in a vacant dirt lot just next to the Peacock. The lot held several rows of cars that some enterprising person had plastered with “For Sale” signs. I had a set of similar signs in my vehicle for just such eventualities and had taped them to my side windows thirty minutes earlier. From here I had a perfect view of the motel parking lot, the office, and most importantly, all the doors to the rooms.
My vehicle of choice for these “Sneak and Peeks” was a 2002 Ford Windstar Mini-Van. It was light blue in color, faded, scratched, and looked like about a million others on the road. People couldn’t stand to look at it, let alone remember it.
And even if someone were to take notice of it and copied down the plate number, they would quickly discover that it was registered to “Clive’s Used Auto Sales” and was carried on the dealership’s inventory list. It seems old man Clive had a sweet little set-up with “Ace Speedometer Service” where, for a fee, and through the use of a master reset chip and a bootleg program, Ace could sweep back the miles on an electronic odometer, thus increasing the sale price of the vehicles. Virtually every heap Clive unloaded on his unsuspecting patrons had had its mileage “cut”, a crime that carries with it federal penalties and jail time, along with the seizure of the business and all of its assets.
I showed Mr. Clive a list of VIN numbers that had suffered this nefarious fate and he readily cut a deal. I could have full and unrestricted use of the mini-van while he maintained the title, registration, and insurance. All and all, it was a very tidy set-up.
And before you think Ace Speedometer got off the hook painlessly; I’m into them for four bills a month lest the beans get spilled and they join old Clive in the poky. The four hundred comes in handy and just about covers my fuel costs.
At about 7:10 AM a woman in a late model silver Camry pulled into a spot in the parking lot of the Peacock. I had been given a heads up on the vehicles to watch for, as well as the standard time of these trysts. I was seated in the middle seat of the mini-van behind a Canon XL-H1 with a 6X HD zoom. It was mounted on a tripod that bolted to the floor. A Fire Wire connected it to a laptop on the seat next to me, and gave me a real-time view on the laptop’s screen. The camera was aimed through the van’s windshield, and had been rolling for the past couple minutes, capturing the Camry as it pulled into the lot and parked.
I peered into the viewfinder and adjusted the controls to zoom into a close-up of the license plate. I held it there for several seconds before widening back out. The camera’s date/time clock was running, but I always kept the van’s radio on as well. It was tuned to a local news station that gave the time, weather and traffic conditions every couple of minutes. This was picked up on the camera’s audio track. I found that the sound of the newscaster’s voice added another level of authenticity to the tape.
The woman in the Camry stayed put and made no motion to exit the vehicle. Through the rear window of the vehicle, I could see the silhouette of her as she raised her two arms level with her shoulders and made a pulling motion between her hands. I had seen this same motion enough times before to know what was going on; she was removing her wedding ring.
A few minutes later, a dark blue Ford pickup pulled into the lot and swung in quickly next to the space occupied by the Camry. The driver’s door opened a few seconds later and a man in his late forties to early fifties came lumbering out. He was a big man with fleshy features: arms, chest, neck, head. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a rust colored golf shirt. The shirt was wrinkled and untucked in the back. If he was wearing a belt I couldn’t see it, as everything seemed to sag over his waist like bread dough over the lip of a bowl. He had dark curly hair going gray, and dark challenging eyes. Through the viewfinder I caught the look of a puffy, reddened face that had never missed last call. A half-smoked cigar hung loosely from his lips. He took a quick look out to the street and then to the lot where I was stationed. I didn’t move a muscle and he never saw me watching him. His eyes said that they didn’t care if I did; he couldn’t give a shit about what the rest of the world thought about him.
He angled toward the Peacock’s tiny office and glanced over at the Camry briefly. He shot a knowing smirk to the woman inside, and then he continued on to the office.
While he was checking in, I took the time to zoom in tight on the truck’s license plate. The woman in the Camry still had not budged, nor did I expect her to until the last moment; that’s just the way women were in this sort of thing.
I panned back out and was able to take in the whole scene: both cars, the man in the office, and the line of doors to the rooms that faced the vacant lot where I was stationed.
The man finally emerged from the office tossing a key in his hand. That was how backward the Peacock was; the doors to the rooms still used keys instead of cards. He spat out his cigar on the pavement and didn’t bother to step on it to crush it out. He reached a door to a room just to the left of the spot where the two cars were parked and jammed the key into the deadbolt. From where I sat, I would have a perfect shot of the two of them.
As soon as the door to the room opened, the woman’s car door flew open like a loose shutter in a windstorm and she made a beeline to the room, as fast as you could make a bee-line hobbling in high heels. She stopped just long enough to click her key-fob and the Camry blinked and honked.
She was about the same age as the man but dressed much nicer and more professional. She had on a nice light gray business suit with a white blouse and black heels. Her hair was blond and well coiffed, and I could imagine her several hours after this rendezvous standing in front of a bored crowd cycling through a presentation of PowerPoint slides.
I zoomed in closer on the two of them, and was tight-in when she made one last quick turn to look around to see if anybody had spotted them. It was a crucial mistake as I captured an irrefutable image of her face as she looked back toward the camera.
Bingo!
They entered the room quickly and the door slammed shut. I could almost hear the deadbolt being slid closed.
I shut off the camera after a few seconds and watched as the laptop continued rendering the stream. I had a high-end program that I used with a fast sampling time. After a few keystrokes, the first of the DVDs began burning. As this was going on, I began disconnecting the camera from its tripod, and then the tripod from the floor.
The first DVD ejected and I popped another blank into the tray. I stowed the camera just as the second DVD finished burning.
I took each of the DVDs and put them into the special sleeves I had printed up for just such occasions. The sleeves read:
Contact me at: www.yoursecretsaresafe.com if you don’t want these to be made public. You have 24 hours.
I exited the mini-van and strode over to the Peacock parking lot. As I got closer to the rooms, I could hear the muffled groans of the man as he went at it just a few feet away.
After carefully placing a DVD under the windshield wiper of each of the subject’s cars, I turned back toward the vacant lot and to the rows of cars.
Just as I was getting close to the lot, I could see the head of a man bobbing through the glass of some of the vehicles as he walked between the rows. He had cut over into the row I was parked in and was heading straight towards my van. He might have been someone just checking out the vehicles, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Something didn’t feel right about the way he was moving.
I cut into the gap between the van’s driver door and the other cars, and we came face to face.
“Sh*t!”
His name was Troy Harper; thirty-seven years old, married, two children, good job, and with an addiction to young prostitutes. He had found a DVD on his windshield after patronizing the discreet services of the Peacock about two months ago. He was on the hook for three bills a month and had vowed to track me down and kill me. In his hand was an aluminum baseball bat. I didn’t see a softball in his other hand, and I didn’t think he was looking for a pick-up game.
“You son of a b*tch!” he hissed.
He was a tall, lanky man with an angular face and a nose that said he had bobbed when he should have weaved. His gray eyes were cold with vengeance as he stomped toward me, his footfalls kicking up dust with every step. He was dressed in blue jeans and a light blue work shirt with his name over the left pocket. He had on a denim jacket that was unbuttoned and open across the chest. I judged the distance between us to be about a car-length and a half, and closing fast. When he was even with the back of my van, I reached into my jacket, pulled the unit out, squared myself, and took aim at the gap between his jacket. I fired.
Two steel darts shot out of the front of the Taser gun. Thin wires, the thickness of a cat’s whiskers, trailed behind them. The report was no louder than a child’s cap gun, and no one would hear it above the sound of the traffic that roared by.
The darts hit him mid-torso and penetrated his skin. Sharp barbs on the tips of the darts held them in. Instantaneously, electrical pulses designed to mimic and interrupt the neural and motor skill centers of the brain began pulsing at fifteen to twenty cycles per second.
His body jerked into convulsions, arms flying out from his sides as if drawn by invisible strings. The bat slammed into the side of a black Infinity, putting a nice dent in the side panel and instantly
reducing the car’s resale value. It dropped from his hand as his body twisted and corkscrewed into the
ground helplessly. I let go of the trigger and stepped toward him, kicking the bat away from him in the process. Saliva dribbled down his chin and a growing wet spot had formed in his crotch.
“Your three-hundred dollars a month just doubled a**hole! Try this sh*t again and the video of you with those girls will be on the internet in a matter of minutes!”
I hit the trigger one last time for good measure, pulled out the darts, and headed back to the van.
Like I said before, this wasn’t an easy trade.
*Reprinted by special arrangement with the author, Christopher Lynch. Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Lynch. Additional information about Lynch and his work is available at his website: http://www.christopherjlynch.com/
Or "One-Eyed Jack's" website: http://www.yoursecretsaresafe.com ...if you dare.
Read Chapter One is a special feature at Frank Mundo's LA Books Examiner where authors, from emerging to bestsellers, share an excerpt of their latest books.
Frank Mundo is the author of The Brubury Tales (foreword by Carolyn See) and Gary, the Four-Eyed Fairy and Other Stories. Don't forget to subscribe to my emails and follow me on Twitter @LABooksExaminer for the latest updates to LA Books Examiner.
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