I reach for Shana, but what my fingers touch are ruffled, cool sheets where she’d been. Shana, the woman I’ve loved since we were both sixteen. The thing is, sometimes love isn’t enough. Not nearly. As she says, “We’re vampires now, and live only by night.” She’s gone home to her husband and little girl. She’s safe there, with them, away from me. Safe because I’m a dangerous man and dangerous to be around.
Danger is something I’ve lived with since my first day on the job. It’s what I lived with during my two tours in Afghanistan, what I lived with working undercover. That kind of danger is like an old friend to me compared to what’s ahead of me, hiding in the shadows, in the grit beneath the city’s fingernails. In Afghanistan or on the street, I knew what to expect, always knew where trouble would come from or from whom. Not now. These days I wait for the phone to ring because my life is no longer only about my problems. My energy is no longer wasted on insignificant cases or making arrests that changed absolutely nothing. These days, the city’s problems are mine to own, mine to solve, mine to make disappear.
For the moment, my concern is coffee, enough of it to clear my head, to wash away last night’s bourbon and memories of Shana. I need a clear head because what woke me up was one of “those” calls. A call from Joe. That’s not his real name. It’s the name I gave him. Joe is the well-mannered, manicured flunky in the expensive suits who passes down my assignments from on high. He never says it right out, never tells me over the phone. This morning’s call was no different.
“Yeah, what?” I answer.
“Come in, Nick. We need you.”
“Where?”
“The tire shop.”
“Coffee first.”
“No time.”
“Make time.” I hang up.
It’s like that. I try to figure out what’s coming, what he’s going to put on my plate by deciphering the screams of sirens, reading between the headlines, checking the net. Working UC, I could read the city’s pulse, see its future like a Coney Island mystic. But with Joe’s assignments, it doesn’t work that way. The problems I’m needed to solve are the ones that have yet to see the light of day, the ones only a handful of powerful people know about. The problems that never get to be problems because I make them go away … by whatever means.
Downing my coffee, gazing out at the Verrazzano Bridge, at lower Manhattan, I feel last night begin to vanish like a fever dream. I ride the elevator to the garage from my Bay Ridge condo, think about the rush hour traffic, and hop on my Norton. Easier to weave through traffic between here and the South Bronx on a motorcycle than in my GTO. The classic British bike, the muscle car, even my condo were willed to me by my Uncle Kenny. He died on 9/11. It was at his memorial I first me Shana. I guess there isn’t enough bourbon or coffee to ever make me forget her.
The tire shop in the Bronx is near Yankee Stadium. The tire shop where Joe first offered me the job. The place where I first turned it down. I walk in and Joe’s there, smiling.
“Sit down, Nick, you’re needed.”
“I always am.”
“Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.”
Sleepless City, A Nick Ryan Mystery Book #1
Genre: Private Investigator
Release: July 2023
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link
When you’re in trouble, you call 911.
When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan.
Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud. In fact, they don’t talk about him at all.
He doesn’t wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York.
Nick Ryan can find a criminal who’s vanished. Or he can make a key witness disappear.
He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.
He’s the mayor’s private cop, the fixer, the first call when the men and women who protect and serve are in trouble and need protection themselves.
With conflicted loyalties and a divided soul, he’s a veteran cop still fighting his own private war. He’s a soldier of the streets with his own personal code.
But what happens when the man who knows all the city’s secrets becomes a threat to both sides of the law?
About the author
Called a hardboiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, Reed Farrel Coleman is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two novels, including six in the Jesse Stone series for the estate of Robert B. Parker. He is a four-time recipient of the Shamus Award and a four-time Edgar Award nominee in three different categories. He’s also received the Scribe, Audie, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry Awards. He lives on Long Island with his wife.
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