Nightcrawler (Trackers #1)

Chapter Two

RAVEN

Book title: Mobile Dick

Author: Anna Groves

Publisher: Self-published

Genre: MM mystery/detective/police procedural

Review/rating by Nightcrawler: 2 stars

Synopsis:

The story of a down-on-his-luck detective seeking revenge on the perpetrator who’d somehow managed to cut off his leg with a lawnmower at their first encounter. This injury leaves our central character with mobility issues which hamper his ability to bring the fiend to justice.

My Review:

I’ll begin my review with an actual quote from the book so you’ll get an idea of the level of reader engagement, far greater, I might add, than my own.

“Oh, yes, it was true that the detective in this story had two holes with which to breathe but, to my utter chagrin, when he took off his fedora, they were not located on the top of his head but were simply mere nostrils in his face.”

That’s right, dear readers, should you decide to pick up this 2-star book and actually take the time to read it, you will find that it doesn’t have a blowhole, though, it certainly blows chunks! Call me Ish…I’m in hell. With all of this book’s claims to be a novel about a detective named A. Tabb who’d lost his lower left leg after somehow ending up under the blades of a lawnmower the perpetrator was using as a weapon, all I can say is: PUH…LEEZE!

The lawnmower attack, though, not central to the mystery/police procedural angle to this story, is more interesting than the many ludicrous examples of A. Tabb using cabs and Ubers for his car chases as he tries to catch…yes, you guessed it…his white whale. When he finally catches up to his quarry, the man is dealt with quickly and almost bloodlessly…no great whale tales here.

In summary, without giving away spoilers, at the back of the book, the author has included a teaser for book two, called Old Can in the Sea. I can’t wait for that one…boy, it sounds riveting.

I’ll simply end this by clarifying my 2-star review of Mobile Dick explaining why it doesn’t earn a negative star review. I gave the book one star for plot, though, it had more holes than Swiss cheese, and one star for the disability angle which added interest to the story. I don’t mean for my words to sound glib here. Anyone dealing with a disability deserves all the respect we can give them. However, after reading this novel cover to cover, I would urge them not to use their Uber drivers or cabbies as stunt drivers.

I laughed as I logged out of my Nightcrawler account on Bestreads, proud of yet another review which would be read by an ever-expanding group of my avid followers. Ever since writing my reviews of terrible books after being horrified by the stuff some of these Indies called literature these days, I’d started gaining followers, clamoring for my thoughts. I didn’t think I was actually doing a disservice to the authors involved by highlighting their books in my reviews. Who was I to imagine being the one to move markets? Besides, the obscure books I reviewed would probably never get seen by John Q. Public if it weren’t for reviewers like me, one-stars notwithstanding.

I shoved my iPad into my duffel on the passenger seat of my truck before glancing around the empty street. I hoped I hadn’t missed anyone walking up to the intricately crafted and closed iron gates of the Encino mansion’s driveway on Hesby Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. I went wherever my recoveries from GMS Insurance took me but most of the time, that meant staying somewhere on the west side of L.A.

Grayson, Mallory, and Simms insured a variety of precious and extravagantly expensive objects and that’s what made a person in my line of work feel necessary. As far as explaining my contentment with my job, there was always something new, always a new scumbag to hunt, always a new object to retrieve on behalf of my employer.

It was still early, two hours before dawn, and it was warm and cozy inside my big, black, Dodge Ram 1500. The truck still smelled new but then again, it was the first new vehicle I’d ever purchased. After earning a nice commission—though, not as nice as the one I would have earned had I recovered the Mulberry diamond from Lyle Trench earlier this year—I’d simply walked into a showroom one day and written a check for the vehicle. I loved having the benefit of the limousine tint on its windows and the horsepower under its hood. The best part about it was the high profile which allowed me to look down into the passenger seat of most cars and trucks driving beside me.

It was powerful to have that advantage over other drivers and just one more way I felt safe. Growing up on the vast Navajo Nation lands at the western most portion of the reservation not far from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, keeping safe hadn’t always been easy. The rez was safe enough but the high school my mother had insisted I attend to learn the ways of the white man’s world after elementary, wasn’t easy.

There was bigotry everywhere, but white teens weren’t always welcoming to brown folks like me, especially with the Tea Party making noise where they’d camped out on Arizona’s southern border, even though there were sure enough of us around. I could pass for white, especially with the blue eyes I’d inherited from my half-Caucasian mother and a name like Robin which she called me. I hadn’t reclaimed my Native American name until I moved far away to California where a boy of barely nineteen could call himself whatever he wanted when starting over.

I reached over to the cup holder and plucked my steaming hot green tea from the console, bringing it to my mouth and once again glancing around. The quiet residential neighborhood where both the owner and the perpetrator lived was one of the richest in southern California, certainly on this side of the hill. Once you crossed over and dropped down into the Valley, leaving L.A. proper in the rearview, a wide network of cities spread out for twenty miles square. The sprawling San Fernando Valley consisted of everything from multi-million-dollar estates to seedy ghettos marred by gang graffiti.

The world-famous Universal Studios back lot as well as Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Studios where television and movies were brought to life was a part of the hub and bub of Valley life. It had sprung up around the movie industry a hundred years ago, carved out of orange groves and avocado farms. The movies they made here weren’t all Mickey Mouse or Marvel comics, though. In the 1970s, the Valley had the dubious reputation of being the place where over 90 percent of all pornography produced and distributed in the U.S. originated, earning the famous monikers of Silicone Valley and the San Pornando Valley .

The only reason I knew so much about the Valley’s reputation was because I’d been doing a lot of research on it. I smiled, thinking about how I’d reacted when my assistant, Judy, had handed me a copy of the Paul Thomas Anderson film, Boogie Nights, and told me to do my research in preparation for this job. Apparently, the object I’d be recovering had close similarities to props used in the original film. My research revealed that the silicone penile prosthetic used by Mark Walberg in the film Boogie Nights is currently locked safely away in the actor’s safe. The film’s producers allowed him to keep the prop when they’d finished filming that final scene in the movie when Dirk Diggler unzipped his pants in front of a mirror to admire it.

I wondered whether the very large boob prosthetic I’d be retrieving from the thief who lived inside the house I was parked in front of, would be willing to part with it. The prop was insured by its owner with GMS to the tune of a cool quarter of a million bucks. According to my research, Gemma Monroe, arguably the queen of 1970’s porn, had the fake boobs fashioned by a French prosthetic maker to fit like a glove over her own rather large bosom and they’d literally launched her porn career into the stratosphere. She was also rumored to be the first female porn actress to shave a runway into her…I shuddered. The mere idea of that part of female anatomy held absolutely no interest for me. Nor did giant boobs for that matter.

I was one of those gay men who could honestly say, I’d never taken a poke at any of my hags, not that there were a lot of those around. I didn’t count Judy Mendez in my description of hags and even though she was both my assistant at GMS and my best friend, I wouldn’t think of coming onto her. And if I’d dared call her a hag of any kind, she would have beaten my ass, and I would have deserved it.

Judy was thirty-six, married to a fantastic guy, and the mother of two young children, all of whom meant the world to her. Her husband Luis was a stay-at-home dad who cleaned the house, took wonderful care of their kids, Sofia and Rafi, and cooked amazing Mexican dinners from recipes passed on to him from his mother. He’d been happy to quit his job as a cable technician and stay home when he learned what Judy would be making when we’d moved from a smaller insurer to GMS.

Moreover, since leaving my family in Arizona ten years ago and going to work for a small bail bondsman in Van Nuys where Judy had been running the office, she and Luis had become more of a family to me than simply friends. I’d been there to witness their meeting, their marriage, and the birth of their children. Now, I ate over at their house at least two times a week, often helping out with Sofia and Rafi’s homework at the kitchen table while Luis and Judy laughed and shared kisses at the stove.

Some days, I watched them and longed for a partner who was as loving, with a relationship as strong as they had. Judy insisted I was a good man who needed a man of my own. At twenty-nine, I wasn’t sure that’d ever happen. As usual, the moment I began feeling like she was right, I put it out of my mind and turned my focus to the present and what I was supposed to be doing. Oh sure, every once in a while, I’d see a guy who did it for me in every way. I’d come into contact—literally—with one such guy outside the Capitol Records building about six months ago. Miguel Huerta was the epitome of a guy I could see myself with, minus the attitude of course.

I sighed, knowing he had no interest and picked up the file folder I’d brought with me and flipped it open, once again getting an eyeful of the large silicone prosthetic tits I was determined to recover from James Passantino. Gemma Monroe claimed Passantino—her former boyfriend—stole them from a safe she kept in her home while she was in the hospital for a short overnight stay. Though he didn’t live in her house, he did live in his own right next door. Monroe told GMS he had a housekey and passcodes to enter through her wrought iron gates that barred entry from the street.

James Passantino had developed some sort of pizza rolls—a recipe his Italian mother had perfected—and gone on to figure out how to produce them commercially. They were in every freezer section in every grocery store across America including all the big box stores out there. With distribution nationwide, Passantino’s pizza rolls and in fact, an entire line up of frozen Italian treats from breadsticks to gelato, had made him rich and very attractive to Gemma Monroe. She’d fallen in love with him shortly after he’d bought the Encino mansion and become her neighbor.

As Gemma tells it, when Passantino’s very Italian wife had left Italy and come to join her husband in the states, he’d literally been caught with his pants down. Catching him sunbathing nude with Gemma in his backyard hadn’t been the kind of reunion either James or Isabella had planned when she’d turned up. Gemma had no idea James was married and had ended the relationship that day. And even though James had filed for divorce and begged Gemma to forgive him, Isabella had stayed on to make both of their lives miserable.

When Judy pulled up a long list of domestic complaints and LAPD calls out to the Passantino house since Isabella’s arrival in California, I’d been almost reluctant to take this job. I hated getting involved in domestic situations and avoided them at all costs. When Judy found a final divorce settlement in which Isabella agreed to take half of James’ net worth with a caveat that after receiving it, she’d be compelled to go back home to Italy and never return, I agreed to retrieve Gemma’s boobs. I looked at the two mansions, both hidden behind heavy, defensive gates and moss-covered walls, and then looked back down at the file.

Pictures Judy had given me, showed the porn star in her heyday along with current photos of her. Monroe had been barely legal when she’d started in the business and was now a very well preserved sixty-three. Up close photos of her face showed me that she’d had some work done over the years and had lived a clean life. Nothing in the file said she had a history of substance abuse which would have marred her near-perfect skin. She didn’t possess many of the lines and wrinkles one would associate with a woman in her sixties. In fact, had I been a straight guy in the prime of my life, I might have asked her out. She had a pretty face, if not grandmotherly, with a sweet smile and approachable demeanor. She didn’t appear to be a nasty, former porn star looking to defraud GMS, and my employer must have agreed with her.

Or maybe collecting premiums for the 250,000 face value of the policy since taking it out with them ten years ago, explained their willingness to not only use me to recover the prosthetic but make it available to other bounty hunters. The 25,000 dollar reward had gone live on the GMS website three days ago and I planned on collecting it myself. That’s why I was parked outside Gemma Monroe’s estate this cold November morning. I shut the file and set it aside, once again scanning the street before looking back at the houses. Passantino’s had a light on in the bedroom which hadn’t been there a minute or so before and I wondered what he was doing up so early. I stared at the window before looking at Gemma’s house where all the lights were still off.

I’d been out here three times since Judy had put the file on my desk seven days earlier. GMS always gave me or whichever investigator was working on a recovery several day’s head start before making a bounty public, so that company employees could have a crack at a recovery before others got involved. In my earlier recons, I had mapped out Passantino’s routines, getting a feel for what his day consisted of. The multimillionaire had a pretty boring routine, getting up early to jog most every day, spending a few hours at his office in Westwood three days a week, and then coming home with lights out around nine-thirty or ten. On Saturday he’d had a shave and manicure at an upscale Bel Air salon, and on Sunday night, he’d hosted a dinner party which had broken up at around eleven. Pretty routine stuff for a wealthy, single man.

During my recon, I had observed Gemma’s activities in a passive way—if I’d been sitting outside watching—since they were neighbors, it was hard not to. She’d driven out through the automatic gates of her home in a sleek, newer model Mercedes several times, always made up and dressed to kill. She seemed to lead an active social life, though, I hadn’t observed her return to the house with any men. While I was surveilling Passantino’s house, I hadn’t noticed any gentlemen calling on her either, unless you could call the pool boy and the Amazon delivery guy gentlemen. The pool boy had a clicker which opened the gate whereas the Amazon guy had to stop at the gate and use the speaker outside to call her before the gates were opened for him.

I sighed, dragging my gaze away from Passantino’s house and checked out the street once more. An early morning jogger was coming up the block dressed in dark sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt with sweat stains marring an interesting male build. This guy was tall—very tall—but in the dim light right before dawn, I couldn’t make out much, except that he looked finer the closer he got. He had dark hair and a square jaw—two things that totally did it for me in a man. He looked familiar which was strange since I rarely worked on this side of the hill. Still, it was kind of nice being able to admire a guy openly when I knew he couldn’t see me watching. I knew it was stalker behavior, but I didn’t care.

When he was half a block away, I tore my gaze away from him and looked back at the house, sighing with regret. I was on the job and I needed to keep my focus where it belonged. The light in Passantino’s house was still on and I figured he was either working at his desk or working out. Either way, he was a hell of an early riser.

Looking at my smartwatch, I noted it was just after five-thirty. One glance at the horizon to the east, and I could see it was getting brighter. It would be dawn soon and with some luck, the gates would open and I’d be there to intercept Passantino and hopefully the giant boobs which he was intending to sell.

Judy and I had been scouring websites where expensive items were listed for sale. The sites weren’t exactly Etsy or Amazon where vendors were verified and kicked off the platform if they got too many buyer complaints. These were more… the black-market kind…the kind where you paid for an item with cryptocurrency or cash in suitcases. The kind of sites the FBI regularly monitored for terrorist activity…where extremist groups often plied their trade or simply went to launder money to further their cause.

Gemma Monroe’s tits had popped up three days ago and yesterday afternoon, the small green box which indicated their availability, had turned red meaning they’d either been sold or withdrawn from sale. Since I had no reason to believe the thief had decided not to sell them, that meant Passantino would be making his move to hand the boobs over to the seller. All I had to do was wait for him to drive out of the gate, hope he wasn’t just going to the grocery story, follow him to the buyer’s location, and stop his car with some ruse to make the recovery.

I turned and looked back at the street, hoping to get a closer look at the jogger when I saw him stop just at the edge of Passantino’s property, bend over at the waist, and put his hands on his knees, seemingly to catch his breath. He was a big guy, bigger than I’d thought when I’d seen him farther away, and he was so close, I could see the sweat dripping off his hair.

He looked right, toward Passantino’s house, still bent over. When he straightened, a bolt of lightning shot through me. I knew this man! It was Miguel Huerta—or Trigg as he liked to be called—that bounty hunter who’d nearly gotten the jump on me when I took Lyle Trench down six months ago. As I watched him from my truck where I sat frozen in shock, he looked right at me…

…and smirked.