2017 Red Ribbon winner, The Wishing Shelf international book awards (Adult-Fiction).
A tattoo artist is pursued by the man of her dreams, but her biker-gang friends mistake him for a hit man out to get her.
It's 1995, and Galen Randall, the world'...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's Wednesday and time for the weekly edition of LOU'S TATTOOS. Today chapters ten and eleven are presented for your enjoyment. Happy reading!
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Just before noon, Lou O'Malley emerged from therevolving doors of her office building onto the sidewalk, where she joined thelunch hour traffic. A few minutes of brisk walking landed her in front of aposh storefront art gallery with a modern metal sculpture in the window. Itseemed to Lou that the bus stop behind her, reflected in the window glass, wasas attractive as the "art" inside the display window.
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She looked at her watch. Still plenty of lunch hour remaining. She went inside.
The frigid air of the Winged Venus Gallery was not early as cold as the three snobs standing near the reception desk. The swanlike gallery employees barely concealed their instinctive sneers when Lou, the ugly duckling, dared paddle into their exclusive pond.
Ignoring them, Lou studied a picture on the wall. She moved to the next picture and studied it. One of the swanlike snobs was also studying that picture. She was skinny, wearing a dress better suited to a symphony concert than a storefront at noon, and she extended her swan neck enough to look down her nose at Lou.
"Excuse me, you're in my light," said the swan.
Lou stared at the woman for two seconds, then simply backed away andheaded for the door.
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In the evening of the same day, twilight coated the city in gray, and the tiny window-lights of late-working office drudges gradually became visible. A few miles away from the downtown skyscrapers, on a stretch of Bay Shore Drive known for prostitutes and adult video stores, the evening descended upon police barricades, yellow crime scene tape, and the flashing lights of patrol cars circled around a small group of police officers. The road ran only yards from the waterfront in this part of town, and the police officers had gathered around something bulky at the water's edge. The sun dipped below the western horizon, turning the bay waters to black.
Yet another patrol car arrived silently, lights flashing, and parked. Officer Falconi got out of the newly arrived car and joined the group at the shoreline. As he edged through the small crowd, he could see the object of their discussion was a fifty-gallon oil drum festooned with seaweed, dripping salt water.
Another officer, Salazar, approached with a crowbar and pried at the top of the metal drum.
"Whattawe got?" Falconi asked.
"Commercial fisherman got this tangled in his net," Salazar said. "From the smell of it after a few minutes on deck in the sun, he thought he better call us."
The metal lid gave way under his crowbar, and Salazar removed the barrel's top.
"Pew!"
"Whuff!"
"Ugh!"
"Sheesh!" Everyone within yards of the oil drum reacted to the overpowering odor coming from inside it.
Salazar covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, accepted a flashlight from Falconi, and looked inside the dark drum. After a moment, he backed away and Falconi looked in. Then they both backed off, and others in the group closed in around the open drum.
Salazar spoke first. "Well, I guess that explains why there's been nothing interesting on his phone tap lately. I was hoping he'd just gone back to Colombia. Somebody else's problem for a while, y'know?"
"He's nobody's problem now," quipped Falconi.
"You noticed how he was cut?"
"Yeah, it's got Petruccio's signature all over it."
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They watched two coroner's technicians wheel a gurney and a slick, black body bag past the group of police officers and gawkers, to collect the contents of the drum
"I think our pal, Buddy, must have been in Miami long enough to seethis guy — long enough to negotiate and then terminate the negotiations,"Falconi said. "And if he was here that long, somebody knows it. That's thesomebody we have to find."
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: That's chapter ten. Don't forget to vote by clicking that little gold star, and leave a comment - at least let me know if you had a laugh or chuckle. Now, scurry on to chapter eleven!
