Between the Devil and
the Deep Blue Sea
by James Gaffigan
We are delighted to welcome Irene Gaffigan, widow of the late thriller writer James Gaffigan, to Omnimystery News today.
Gaffigan always had a dream of writing and publishing a book, and although he wrote four manuscripts during his life, he never got the opportunity to have them published. However, that dream is now becoming reality as Irene Gaffigan is making sure his manuscripts will see the light of day and become published novels.
His first novel is Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (BookBaby; October 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt, the first chapter.
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IT WAS WARM FOR MID-OCTOBER. THE mild weather hung on tenaciously like the smattering of elderly couples who still insisted on their daily constitutionals along the boardwalk, despite 30 m.p.h. wind gusts buffeting them from the ocean and eclectic assortment of characters they might encounter along the way. It was as if the seedy bohemian types lounging on the benches and the fitness folks in their snazzy get-ups and hard-wired to the beat of a different drummer via headphones didn't exist … or the few hardy souls surfcasting down there in the roaring thunder of the waves for that matter.
The golden agers stubbornly clung to each other in the tangy salt air as they continued their journey together along the wooden-planked walkway. There was a younger couple on the boardwalk this afternoon and they too, strolled along arm-in-arm. She was in her forties, in sneakers and jeans, her brown hair blowing wild above the bandage above her forehead, burying her face in the turtleneck sweater and turned-up collar of the nylon jacket she wore.
He was in his mid-fifties, similarly attired to his companion and had the classic Roman nose. His curly hair was going silver and much of it missing on top, but that didn't seem to bother him as he didn't try to conceal the aging process with hair pieces or coloring. Besides, the neatly trimmed beard surrounding his round pleasant face had already turned silver and gave him a distinguished look. He might have been wise to cut back on his pasta intake, but nobody's perfect and after what he had been through these last few years, it was a miracle he was still here at all. His stocky build and rolling gait suggested an opera singer or perhaps a foot soldier in Caesar's legions.
Cries of gulls echoed in a leaden sky as these two walked together on this boardwalk which seemed to go on forever, stretching off toward the horizon. The woman withdrew her arm from the man's as she stopped to lean against the railing.
"Where am I?" she asked, staring out at the waves as they thumped in on the sand not fifty yards away.
"Long Beach," was the man's wind-tossed reply.
"What am I doing in California?"
"No, this is Long Beach, Long Island … you're in New York."
She watched some sea gulls circling lazily high up in the sky, others hanging motionless nearby, suspended in the stiff breeze. "What am I doing here?" she asked, her apprehension rising.
"You were a mugging victim on a street in Manhattan. Do you remember anything about that?"
"No," the woman answered. "Look, is this some kind of joke?"
The man smiled at her, thoughtfully stroking his beard as he replies, "It might be. It all depends on your point of view. See, you didn't just beam down here to Long Beach from the Starship Enterprise or anything like that — at least I hope you didn't. You have a whole history behind you and every step you've taken along the way is what's gotten you to the very spot you're standing on. Each of us is on a journey through life that's often treacherous and ambivalent, or worse. But it's our own unique journey, and if we are willing to struggle and work hard — the point of view where it all makes sense finds us."
"Pop psychology in a nutshell?" she smirked. Looking away from him and staring out at the immensity of the wave-tossed sea, ashamed and hurting all over. "Sorry. I wasn't trying to hurt you, it just slipped out. I don't know where that came from."
‘Hey, that was great!" he said, patting her arm. "We got lucky. That was your gatekeeper or guardian, or whatever you want to call it popping out. He likes to stay in hiding, but he feels threatened under these unusual circumstances. He was forced to come out and reveal himself for a moment. I've met him before during the last few days."
"Who am I? Why can't I remember my own name?"
"Relax, relax," he soother her, looping his arm back in hers. "It'll be alright. You've had a nasty crack on the head … a brain concussion. It's only a temporary loss of memory. It's like somebody opened a window and the wind blew all your files all over the place. You're files haven't been lost, they've only been misplaced. You'll start to sort things out and start to remember. Maybe in bits and pieces at first and not in the original order, but you'll remember. You'll see."
"Who are you?"
"A motorist saw the mugging take place. By the time she managed to get there you were lying on the sidewalk unconscious and the muggers had taken off with whatever they could grab off you. Your head was bleeding. This good-Samaritan — who also had been a mugging victim — rushed you to the nearest hospital emergency room. You had no purse or any ID. The motorist found this card near your body and turned it in to the ER people. Do you recognize it?" he said while handing it to her.
‘Haven House', the card said. ‘Jed Marolla M. D., Director'. It was an old card, limp, creased and smudged with lipstick on one corner and some writing on the back in ball point pen which also didn't register with the woman. "Are you Jed Marolla?" she asked as she held the card up to her nose and sniffed it. The faint traces of perfume were familiar, but who or what or when eluded her.
"Yes, I am. That card is at least three years old."
"How do you know that?"
"Because that card has our old address on it, and it was three years ago that we lost the lease on our building in Manhattan and that's when we looked around for a new home and relocated out here to Long Beach, which wasn't an accident mind you; it was so we would be here for you when you arrived.
"That's us, over there," Jed said, pointing over toward a blue-domed squalid splendor — plaster patches damp and cracked. A stuccoed Gothic Moorish circus tent of a thing, looming up in a heap of 1920's-era beach bungalow cottages and their Spanish tile roofs with the gulls circling around overhead in the salt-sprayed mist.
The cracker box modern apartment buildings were easy to spot. They had been slapped together and thrown up on speculation in great haste and profusion during the last boom, in an attempt to cash in on the condo market before it dried up. They stood out there now, mostly unoccupied, cheek-by-jowl and crowding up the boardwalk — so many balconied beggars looking for a handout.
"In a way," Jed continued. "It was fortunate you ended up in the hospital emergency room when you did."
"You mean, because of the blow on the head and the loss of blood."
"They were glad to get rid of you, given the situation of central city emergency rooms these days. The telephone number on the old card is still linked to the new. We're partly government funded and required to take so many referrals anyway. When the stabilized you and did the work-ups — that's when they found the other things. None too soon I may dad."
"What other things?"
"Well, for one thing, you're a walking toxic waste dump. Did you know that?"
"No."
"The blinding headaches and nausea and memory lapses you were experiencing before the mugging aren't all from hangovers. You also have abnormally high levels of led and mercury. It will be interesting if we can find out how they came to be in your system."
"I have no idea," she said tenderly touching the bandage on her forehead.
"Then there is the drug and alcohol problem itself," said Jed.
"How would I know about that," the woman said. "I don't have needle marks or a perforated septum — do I?"
"There's a history … signs of neurological and physiological damage from drug abuse. You've only been out here a few days and there are withdrawal symptoms already. You don't deny that there is a problem — do you? That you have a dependency?
The woman glanced over at the blue-domed building. "I am not an addict," she said. "Is this one of those drug addict places?"
"Haven House is full of damaged goods — both clients and staff. We are all damaged people who have been brought into the world and raised by other damaged people. It's only a matter of degree of dysfunction. Our approach is based on the premise that we are not born or raised in a vacuum. The family situation has a lot to do with how our personalities are formed and how we develop or fail to develop. Haven House can be your family for now."
The woman glanced down at the lipstick-smudged card. ‘Wait a minute. I'm remembering something … something about condos?"
"Good," said Jed. "It can be fragments, images or sounds … anything at all. It can be something that sounds totally idiotic.
"There's a flash … a gunshot. Somebody gets their head blown off."
"The mugging, the city streets — is there some connection there?"
"No, no, I don't think so. Condos and a murder … only the murder didn't take place in a condo. It was in a house high up on a hill somewhere … in the kitchen of the house. Could I be hallucinating?"
"Could be," Jed said. "It'll come to you … it'll all get sorted out."
"What's the date?"
"October fifteenth."
She felt pain surging up behind her eyeballs. "Something is just about to happen — or just did."
"The sense of time is all jumbled up in your mind," said Jed. "Relax and don't try to fight it no matter what your gatekeeper does. Let it flow … whatever comes to mind."
"Yes," the woman replied staring out at the mist-shrouded, turbulent ocean, "it's starting to come back to me."
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Born in New York City in 1939, James Gaffigan grew up in Douglaston Queens, was a graduate of St. Johns University and lived on Charles Street in Greenwich Village, where he launched The Charles Street Newsletter. Jim also wrote a play titled The Jar (Jury Assembly Room), produced and directed by his sister, Catherine Gaffigan. After moving to Edison, New Jersey for a time, Jim taught English at a few of the local colleges before retiring to Vermont, where he lived in the resort town of Ludlow the last decade of his life.
The first of Gaffigan’s four manuscripts to be published is Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a psychological mystery-thriller based on Long Island, New York and in Echo Pass, Colorado.
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
James Gaffigan
A Psychological Thriller
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