GLADYSS OF THE HUNT
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Fuck-Up
Manhattan Loverboy
Dogrun
Suicide Casanova
Chinese Takeout
Unlubricated
East Village Tetralogy
The Swing Voter of Staten Island
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx
Mesopotamia
Dedicated to my mother, Honora Agnes Burke
© 2014 Arthur Nersesian
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
| A Dark Passage bookPublished by Verse Chorus PressPO Box 14806, Portland OR 97293[email protected] |
Cover design by Mike Reddy
Interior design and layout by Steve Connell/Transgraphic
Dark Passage logo by Mike Reddy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nersesian, Arthur.
Gladyss of the hunt / Arthur Nersesian.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-891241-99-4 (e-book)
1. Detectives — New York (State) — New York — Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3564.E67G53 2014
813'.54 — dc23
2013047864
Come now, son, you must understand what sort of island this is. No mariner approaches it by choice, since there is no anchorage or port where he can find a gainful market or a kindly host. This is not a place to which prudent men voyage.
—Sophocles, Philoctetes
Contents
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
Bernie Farrell wasn’t one of the nineteen who died the night Sandy hit Staten Island. In fact he survived nearly a month after that lethal storm surge. He’d been in bad shape when he retired, because of injuries he’d suffered on the job, and since he was too damn bull-headed to get proper treatment, let alone physical therapy, I’m sure his health had declined further over the years. Reports indicated that for three excruciating weeks after the storm he had camped out in his ramshackle home in New Dorp Beach without electricity, a charged cell phone, or any kind of heat, foraging for whatever food he could find. Apparently he became isolated toward the end. I still don’t know why he ever moved out of his spacious, rent-controlled Manhattan apartment—or how he wound up down there, in the middle of nowhere. No one I knew kept in touch, let alone visited him. Still, you couldn’t feel sorry for him. I’m sure he wanted it that way. Even his immediate neighbors seem to have avoided him. His body was finally discovered when a FEMA housing inspector, after repeated attempts to check for damage, peeked below his window shade, past the can filled with empty liquor bottles, and saw his legs splayed out on the filthy kitchen floor.
I wish I could’ve cried for him. I should’ve felt bad, but after the Blonde Hooker case we went our separate ways, and I was in an awful place. A self-help book I read on depression at the time said it was important to avoid triggers, so I put a big red traffic cone in front of him and everyone else who’d been involved in the whole affair.
Shortly after hearing of Bernie’s death—during the family New Year’s Eve party, before I could welcome in 2013—I had a major falling out with my bipolar brother. It wasn’t so much the fight that bothered me, it was realizing how bad things had gotten. That night I did something I never do—I went home and got seriously drunk. And that was when I found myself carefully piecing together the whole fucked-up mess that had begun almost a decade earlier. Ultimately it really was all Eddie O’Ryan’s fault.
We were both rookies, and after graduating from the police academy O’Ryan and I had been dumped into the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit attached to the One-Four in Midtown South. It wasn’t a bad area, but crowd control on Times Square during New Year’s Eve of 2003 was stressful enough—everyone was still waiting for that next big terrorist attack.
Afterwards, in his studio apartment, we had our own little countdown and popped the cork on a small bottle of champagne. Though Eddie was a little bland, he had rugged good looks and at work he always had my back. The single detail I found most appealing about him was the fact that he was taller than me—at six foot two, I found it difficult to find men I could look up to. He wasn’t a bad kisser and the mood was perfect.
Slowly clothes came off: my shirt, bra, pants, panties. His fingers migrated subtly southward. I had made up my mind to finally get it over with. Quickly we moved from his tiny sofa to his king-size bed, a shiny brass affair that looked like some kind of sexy chariot. As his giant spear rose over me, I started backing away nervously.
“This is actually my first time,” I confessed.
“First time at what?”
“It!”
“Gladyss, are you kidding me!”
“I wish I were.”
“Wow!