We are delighted to welcome author Ron Felber to Omnimystery News today.
Ron's third book in the Jack Madson crime trilogy is Dark Angel (Barricade Books; May 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt from the first chapter.
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San Francisco, California
November 2016
RINGO'S WAS A DIVE, WAS THERE another way to describe it? But like Obama used say about Chicago arm twister, Rahm Emanuel 'yes, he's a little bastard, but he's my little bastard.' So it was with Ringo's. Just off the docks, three blocks from the Catholic church where Yankee great Joe DiMaggio was baptized, its décor consisted of yellowed newspaper clippings of the 'Yankee Clipper' pasted on whitewashed walls and the reproduction of Bellow's painting of Jack Dempsey being knocked out of the ring by Luis Firpo circa 1923, this a favorite amongst the sailors, drunks, drug dealers, and whores that patronized the place. But during these past three months with my prospects for work as a private investigator dried up as a desert gulch, Ringo's had become my dive at least until I could get back on my feet again.
So far as the job itself most days handling the dual role of bar tending and bouncing were routine. Besides, I preferred working days when it was slow, wanting to keep my dance card open for cool San Francisco nights when North Beach, Sunset, and Soma came to life and I could hit the clubs. In that respect, Frisco had its charm with plenty of unattached ladies eager to party.
But on this particular afternoon, the tide was running rough. You could feel it prowling the room like an unanchored menace; hear its steady drone like a vibration in your ears. More crowded than usual, the regulars looked uglier, the walk-ins more aggressive, with Sergei Maslov — an enforcer for what passed as the Russian mob these days — staggering around the room more sinister today than pathetic.
"When she come home from store wit gross-ry, I
smack her in mout' like you do-it dawg … BAM!" he demonstrated with the flip of his backhanded. "'What dis for?' she ask-it, wit nose bleed-ink an' gross-ry everywhere on floor. 'Dat my luv-ee girl is for next time you do-it some-tink wrong!'" he roared with laughter, downing his umpteenth shot of the day, washing it down with a swig of Anchor Steam.
Of course, I despised Sergei to the quick though I didn't show it, a win some-lose some smile curling the corners of my lips as I sipped Glenlivet from a coffee cup quietly watching.
That's when a sixty-something Nam vet dressed in weathered army shirt, pants, and boots blunders through the back door, plops down onto a bar stool, and looks across the room to me.
"Jack Daniels straight up," he says.
I nod, take a last pull from my coffee cup, eyes still
locked on Maslov while taking the temperature of the alchy regulars, walk in tourists, Outlaw gang members and biker groupies, that populated Ringo Jennings' paradis sur terre. Far from finding a scintilla of amusement in Sergei's tough guy act, what I'm really doing as I pour the Vet his drink is sizing the Russian up since the odds of a confrontation are increasing exponentially.
"Thanks, pal," the Vet muttered taking down the first Jack then touching the rim of his glass for another.
God how I hated guys with Maslov's physique — short, muscular, stout as a fireplug — I calculated, generous as I filled the old man's glass taking note of the Bronze Star pinned to his shirt. Sergei had no neck so he could absorb a punch. His legs were like tree trunks so taking him to the ground wouldn't be easy and wasted on meth and booze like he was, he'd be numbed to pain so getting him to quit would be no walk in the park, either. 'Guess you're going to have to kill the motherfucker,' I concluded, carefully watching the Nam burn-out raise his glass in a toast while Maslov stomped up from behind.
"Airborne Ranger, where have you been?" the old man sang-out turning to the clientele while Maslov's weight shifted, front to back foot, ready to pounce. "I been around the world three times and ba-ack again!" he lustily proclaimed, downing his drink, then appraising the man in front of him, laughing as he swung around to face me, the mirror, and Jack Dempsey.
"Fucking Rangers is not-tink but pack of cowards," Maslov taunted, staggering backward. "All-ways vuz, all-ways vill be!"
The Vet tapped the rim of his glass again. I poured. Then swiveling around on the bar stool, he gazed straight into the Russian's face, threw the Jack down, wiped his lips dry, and smiled. "Airborne Ranger, Airborne Ranger, how did you go?" he began, belting the lyric out like a battle cry. "In a C-130 transport plane fly-in' low!" he roared, pounding the beat out, closed fist onto the bar, to the delight of everyone — bikers, derelicts, crack whores — but not Maslov.
Glowering at the old man, now laughing along with his newfound audience, the Russian launched a powerful round-house punch that knocked him stool-to-floor then began pummeling him with bone-shattering kicks to his legs, head, and upper torso. Caught off guard and helpless, the Vet used elbows and arms to cover himself but Maslov was savage in his attack, a twisted grin stamped across his face as he climbed onto his chest, positioning himself to inflict maximum damage.
If I possessed a sixth sense, I'd always assumed it wasn't located between my ears, but like an axe the malice in the room had fallen and strange as it may seem I'd already hopped the bar in anticipation of the assault, ripping Maslov off the old man with a level of strength surprising even to myself. And during that moment of abandon, I swear, everything around me turned red, blood red, and like a man possessed I seized Maslov by the throat with my left hand while driving rights straight into his face, not knowing or caring whether he lived to tell about it. "I-don't-like-bullies!" I seethed, pounding his face, one head-snapping blow escalating beyond the other until, sated, the demon flew from me as suddenly as he'd arrived, my vice-like grip around Maslov's throat relaxing as he dropped unconscious against the bar, head lolling to one side, his face a bloody mask of flesh, bone, and cartilage.
Coming back after one of the blackouts I'd begun experiencing lately was like parachuting from a plane several thousand feet up and landing on solid ground again. Like the petit mal seizures I'd begun researching, it was as if my soul deserted my body during those mind-bending episodes leaving it to perform whatever deeds it desired until I awakened with only the foggiest recollection of what had gone on.
I peered down at the Vet who lay on the floor, semi-conscious, blood gushing from a broken nose, sans front teeth. I used to be a cop, I remembered grimly, a deputy sheriff who transported federal prisoners, and carried the scars to prove it. There's the mark of a shotgun wound on my left side, a gouged-out patch of twisted flesh that I'm told could be rendered invisible by a plastic surgeon. But no surgeon could make the scars inside me disappear, I'd begun to ponder lately, for that an exorcist seemed more in order.
"You okay?" I asked kneeling on the saw dust covered floor beside him.
He sat up, pushed his tongue through the gap where his front teeth had been, then began collecting each tooth from the floor. "Fuck you," he answered, tossing them one at a time into his mouth like Chicklets, swallowing them down.
My first reaction was to laugh, but the Ranger's ballsy reaction raised no more than a chortle, my attention diverted by two young women staring at me from across the room. They smiled. I responded likewise. Dressed in halter tops with black-studded pencil dresses and spike heels, even they couldn't compete with the wail of approaching police sirens that tore me away in time to see four cops burst through the door. Guns drawn, they were expecting a cell of Uzi-toting ISIS terrorists, I imagined, but found only me.
The first to enter was Markus Henderson, a 6'10" former Frisco State basketballer, thick in the middle these days with large soulful eyes, head crowned with a disproportionally large Afro and a mustache that resembled some species of Lepidoptera.
"Second fight this week, Tough Guy," he said holstering his Glock 9mm. "Keep it up and we're gonna close this shithouse permanent."
"Can't argue that," I answered, eyes doubling back to the girls, giggling now, sexier than ever. "I'll just tell Ringo that Frisco's Finest shut us down for the day."
"Sergie, is it?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Cuff him," Henderson instructed his white partner as paramedics and a gurney trundled past him on their way to the fallen vet.
"Fuck you," the Ranger growled when they tried to put him on a stretcher, walking unaided toward the ambulance.
"Hey!" I called out, toting the shot of Jack Daniels to him as cops stuffed Maslov into the back seat of a patrol car. "No fightin' men tougher than the Airborne Rangers!"
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Photo provided courtesy of
Ron Felber
Ron Felber has worked as a deputy sheriff, transporting federal criminals, and has fought Golden Gloves. The recipient of the UPI Award for fiction, he began his writing career with articles based on his experiences for True Detective magazine. Felber was educated at Georgetown University, Loyola University of Chicago, and Drew University, where he earned his Doctorate. He currently teaches creative writing at Drew University's Caspersen School of Graduate Studies.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at RonFelber.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Dark Angel by Ron Felber
A Jack Madson Crime Novel
Publisher: Barricade Books
In a world where money is measured in billions and success by the control one wields over entire nations, Jack Madson is back!
Called upon to investigate a series of "case closed" suicides at Princeton University, the quiet university town is rocked by the emergence of a serial killer forcing Madson to contemplate the unthinkable — a link between the suicides, murders, and a CIA "black ops" genetics engineering project carried out in laboratories eight stories beneath Forrestal Campus.
— Dark Angel by Ron Felber. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
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