We are delighted to welcome author Jack Getze to Omnimystery News today.
Jack's fourth Austin Carr mystery is Big Shoes (Down & Out Books; September 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt, the first chapter. And from now through the publication date of September 15th, you can pre-order Big Shoes at a special price of just $2.99 for Kindle.
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THE BIG THING ABOUT MY TEMPORARY business partner, Angelina "Mama Bones" Bonacelli: her routine professional consultations can easily deteriorate into criminal activity and violence. Breakfast appointments have been raided by the FBI. Her Power Point presentation to a Jersey state racing commission last summer ended in a fist fight, then later in the parking lot, automatic weapons fire. As a Jersey shore racketeer with direct ties to what's left of a once powerful New York crime family, Mama Bones packs an abundance of local power, not to mention a loaded nine-millimeter.
For me, Austin Carr, mild-mannered bond salesman, our association has been terrifyingly problematic. Bullets, knives and poison keep turning up at mutually occupied locations and joint functions. In fact, I am lucky to be alive — charmed, really — and I've decided I need a new temporary partner or a new livelihood. Trying to explain these concerns to Mama Bones last month, following the funeral of one Heriberto Garzia, a man murdered before my eyes, Mama Bones told me to take a vacation. Think about my future, she said. Don't rush into drastic change. Maybe when Vic gets better you'll feel different, she said. Not likely. Her son Vic — my real business partner, who Mama Bones is subbing for — remains physically wounded and mentally unstable following an earlier, unrelated shootout. Unrelated except that minutes before being shot, both gunshot victims — Heriberto and Vic — were talking to me.
I did take several weeks off, per Mama Bones' strong suggestion, but the results are not what she'd hoped. An exhaustive detailing of past events and stern logic worked against her, particularly a list I made of her associates, men either murdered or who disappeared over the past three years. There weren't that many names. Okay. But it was a list. Honestly, only a suicidal fool would stay. So this morning, Wednesday, June 25, my vacation is over. I'm here to tell Mama Bones the bad news: Bonacelli Investments will have to do without me. I've sold my last tax-free bond.
I avoid a doublewide trailer set hastily on concrete blocks in our back lot, then park my black Toyota Solara near our brick building's rear entrance. Some Cadillac SUV owner has taken my spot, a white-outlined space that says RESERVED is big blue letters. Must be some meth head. I'm no big shot, I'm Austin Carr, chairman and fifty-one percent owner of Bonacelli Investments, formerly Carr Securities, a regional brokerage firm. We only have one office. We sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds and the kind of insurance that wraps around investment products.
Inside my firm's back office, key employees Jerry and Pat welcome my return with muted celebration. They wave. "What's with that trailer out back?" I say. "The thing is taking up half our parking."
"Ask Mama Bones," Jerry says.
Great. "Is she here this morning?"
"No," Jerry says. "She's still down at the diner." He glances at his large stack of paperwork, then back up at me. "She hasn't been coming in until after lunch. And before you raise a stink in front of the salesmen, you better know that's Gianni's Escalade in your reserved parking spot."
Gianni Rossi. Mama Bones' nephew, bodyguard and pistol-packing crime lieutenant. Probably next in line to her illegal gambling throne. Looks like I must resign myself to another small humiliation.
"Is Gianni here?" I ask.
"He's with Mama Bones at the diner."
Mama Bones now owns Branchtown's landmark Pardon Me Diner, strategically situated across Monmouth Street from our municipal courthouse and police headquarters. Four blocks from our offices. I wave to my friends and newer brokers in the big sales room on the way, but I'm out the front door and down the street in fifteen seconds, passing on the way another of Mama Bones' centrally-located businesses, Domenic's Bail Bonds.
Not many people walking on the sidewalks of Branchtown this late in the morning. A few shoppers. We had an unusually cold and snow-filled winter with lots of snow days, and the kids are in class through the end of June. The streets will be more crowded next week, and packed for the Fourth of July.
Inside the diner, I don't bother asking directions, remembering where the diner's old office was. I discover Mama Bones behind the closed door next to the Pardon Me's newly expanded kitchen. Vic told me his mother was born in 1945, which makes her seventy years old this year, but she's exercising briskly on a tread mill as I barge in. Mama Bones wears leopard-patterned leotards. Jeez, she's neither flabby nor weak as I imagined. More stocky and hard.
From his seat on a plastic-covered orange couch, Gianni Rossi aims a shotgun at me. He's wearing tan shorts and a gorgeous blue Tommy Bahama camp shirt, acting all business, however, racking a shell into the pump-action weapon, ready to blow off my head despite having known me for years. Or maybe because he's known me for years. I once rescued him from an electric meat smoker. Maybe that will help.
Mama Bones glares at me as she flips off the NordicTrack. "You don't knock?"
"Sorry," I say. "I wasn't sure you were in here."
"All the more reason, Smarty Pants."
Mama Bones always wears ankle-length black dresses. There's one draped over the back of the swivel desk chair. Like her Italian accent, the simple garb is designed to make her appear weak, maybe out of touch, when in fact Mrs. Angelina Bonacelli — a widow since 1994 — is tougher than week-old tomato pie.
"I wanted you to know as soon as I made up my mind," I say. "I'm not coming back to work at Bonacelli Investments. I'm done."
Mama Bones hops off the treadmill, wraps a beach towel around her shoulders and chest, then hurries to hide behind a cherry wood desk that matches the woodwork on the orange couch. "I'm glad you're back," she says. "I can't spend no more time running Vic's business. I got too many problems."
I shake my head. "Mama Bones, didn't you hear me? I said I'm done. I've given it a lot of thought, careful consideration like you suggested, but I need to quit. Heriberto being killed in front of me changed things. Forever. I can't take the violence. Luis agrees with me. He said he would talk to you."
Luis Guerrero is more than my closest friend. In this context, and many times before in my life, the bartender and owner of Luis' Mexican Grill is my spiritual advisor. Luis was not a witness to Heriberto's murder at the racetrack, but he was on the scene soon after, showing up in time to see the murderer — a gangster called the Turk — and help me safely get away. That wasn't the first time Luis saved my life.
Mama Bones glances toward Gianni. "You hungry?"
"I could eat," he says.
I get the feeling Mama Bones is not taking me seriously.
She brings her dark eyes back to mine. "We need to talk. How 'bout some lunch?"
"Mama Bones, I need you to under — "
She waves her hand. "You are not walking away from Vic's investment business today or tomorrow, okay? Maybe next week. Maybe next month. But not today. He needs you. And I need you. Vic ran away from the rehab hospital. Nobody can find him." She scowls at Gianni. "And a bad fire chased my friends into that trailer you saw. Plus Johnny the Turk Korsay is on some kind-a rampage, had his crooked cops arrest Luis."
"Arrest Luis?" I say. "For what?"
"For Heriberto's murder, what do you think, huh?"
"But the Turk killed Heriberto. I saw him."
"Yeah, and that's why those crooked cops probably gonna come after you next."
Gianni and I slide into the big corner booth at the Pardon Me Diner minutes later, order menus and a pot of coffee. Mama Bones will dress and join us. Our view across the restaurant's eating area and through the floor-to-ceiling windows is primarily of Branchtown's municipal courthouse. Across Main Street, the century-old gray building sports Roman columns and marble steps, but also stands alongside Mr. Basil's Hot Dog Shack, Mr. Basil and his wife Becky taking customers' money through a cut-out slot in a six-foot red wiener. The whole city is like that, a hodge-podge of old and new, fancy and poor, bright paint and weather-worn marble façades. For me, Branchtown's ancient and eclectic architecture conjures old brown and white photographs of America during the 1930s and our Great Depression.
I get tired of the silence. "So how did Mama Bones end up with the Pardon Me Diner?"
Gianni's gaze stays on the front door. "Before the previous owner skipped bail eight years ago, he mortgaged the place to Mama Bones," he says. "You remember Croc Tierney, our ex-mayor? Spent his bribe money at the racetrack?"
"Yeah. He was indicted with all those other Jersey mayors, zoning commissioners and rabbis, right? That FBI sting on construction bids, zoning changes. I remember because there were charges of organ selling, too, and that made national TV."
"Whatever," Gianni says, "Croc made payments to Mama Bones for years through a numbered account in Panama, but they stopped. Croc probably figured the property wasn't worth what he owed."
"I can tell she likes the place."
Gianni nods. "Yeah, she figures the location will help her bail bond business."
"A free meal with every bond?"
"Including dessert and beverage."
Gianni and I smile, but indeed the Pardon Me Diner throbs with customers. Nice menus, too, the back cover featuring a story about her family and a black and white, high school photograph of a young Mama Bones, her dark eyes and creamy skin in a strikingly pretty, three-quarter profile. She's wearing a starched white blouse with an exaggerated man's collar like an old movie star from the middle of last century. Maybe Natalie Wood in Rebel Without A Cause.
Speak of the Devil. Dressed now in her all black widow's outfit, Mama Bones catches me and Gianni still smirking over her marketing plans. She folds her arms across her chest, poses standing above our table, scowling like a school principal, her two faces side by side before me — one from the past on a menu, the now-face here live — producing a tender portrait of aging. Mama Bones' basic Mediterranean beauty still holds a permanent grip.
"If you two smarty pants are through making jokes," she says, "maybe we could figure out what we're gonna do about Luis, four homeless women and the Turk."
"What homeless women?" I ask.
"My friends in the trailer."
I nod like her information makes sense. "How's Vic? Before he disappeared, I mean. Was he getting better?"
Mama Bones slides into the booth next to Gianni and glares at him again. "Vic is gonna be okay. He says he's confused about life, but who isn't, huh? This crazy world. But Vic is more than confused. He's acting like a mamaluke, dressing up, giving speeches. Last weekend we found him at Branchtown High School talking to an assembly."
"I have everyone looking," Gianni says. "Everybody."
"Vic is gonna be fine," she says. "My problem, yours, too, Austin Carr, is the Turk. He's mad that I know he shot Heriberto, mad because Luis called me that night, not the police like he told you. That makes me the one who got Turk out of his jam. I sent his favorite two cops, Davenport and Lindsay, to pick him up, but he's worried I'll use the information against him, I guess. Maybe with New York. Also, what I hear, the Turk thinks you saw something that night could hurt him."
"I saw him murder Heriberto," I say. "What's worse than that?"
"I don't know. But he doesn't worry about Heriberto no more. The report those two cops filed says they found Heriberto's body in the trunk of an abandoned car, so there's no investigation of the Turk. And now those two cops grabbed Luis, trying to frame him, or wanting to know why Luis called me that night. The Turk asking questions through the cops."
I'm impressed with Mama Bones' knowledge, and frankly wonder at her sources of information. I can see why my mentally unstable and currently missing partner Mr. Vic thinks his mother sometimes reads minds.
"You gonna ask how come I know so much police business?" she asks.
What? How could …
"We know lots of cops," Gianni says. "Including Davenport and Lindsay. Both are Lieutenants in the Seaside County Prosecutor's Gambling Enterprises Unit. Turk pays them more, but they're also on Mama Bones' payroll. Or extortion list, whatever you want to call it."
I am not soothed. In fact, I am washed over by another wave of discomfort. I should not ask questions the answers to which I do not want to hear. That inside trading investigation last year taught me there are pieces of intelligence it's best not to collect. Then again, Mama Bones and Gianni didn't need to explain how they know so much. They both volunteered a lot. I worry something's going on.
"How come you're telling me all this?" I ask. "I know I kind of asked, but this is your … uh … family business stuff. I'm an outsider."
Mama Bones shakes her head. "Not no more, Smarty Pants. Until Vic gets better and can run that bond shop again, you gotta work for me. Me and my homeless friends need your help."
Gianni smiles from inside that spectacular Tommy Bahama camp shirt, his calm manner a visual underlining of Mama Bones' words. In fact, Gianni's confident grin is more formidable than the shotgun.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Jack Getze
Former Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Getze is Fiction Editor for Spinetingler Magazine, one of the internet's oldest websites for noir, crime, and horror short stories. Through the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Syndicate, his news and feature stories were published in over five-hundred newspapers and periodicals worldwide. His short stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir and Beat to a Pulp. Getze is an Active Member of Mystery Writers of America's New York Chapter.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at website and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Big Shoes by Jack Getze
An Austin Carr Mystery
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Jersey Shore broker Austin Carr wants out of the stock and bond business but un-hooking from his mobbed-up partner won't be painless. Angelina "Mama Bones" Bonacelli is best known for professional consultations that deteriorate into criminal violence, breakfast appointments raided by the FBI and one particular Power Point presentation to a Jersey state racing commission that ended in automatic weapons fire.
Good thing she likes Austin.
She just won't let Austin out of the business. Plus Johnny "The Turk" Korsay is on a rampage and had his crooked cops arrest Luis, the bartender Austin's best friend. Why? Because Austin saw The Turk kill Heriberto. And now he's gunning for the stock broker.
It's another brush with violent death and a sexy redhead for Austin Carr when Mama Bones and her rival Jersey associate of a fading New York crime family battle for the future of imported sex slaves, boardwalk tourist business and surprising horse racing secrets, past and present.
— Big Shoes by Jack Getze
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