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  KILLERFEST

  A Novel By

  Lawrence De Maria

  Killerfest, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

  Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2013

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

  book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information, email [email protected].

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by St. Austin’s Press

  (305-409-0900)

  www.lawrencedemaria.com

  Special thanks to my website designer, Nancy Kreisler, and to two editors,

  Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson,

  whose sharp eyes and insights have improved this and other novels.

  Other thrillers by Lawrence De Maria:

  SOUND OF BLOOD

  MADMAN’S THIRST

  CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

  LAURA LEE

  HURRICANE FATS

  SIREN’S TEARS

  Dedicated to Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

  – and others –

  would not have been possible,

  and to my sons,

  Lawrence and Christopher.

  Good men, both.

  What Media Critics Are Saying

  JANET EVANOVICH (New York Times No. 1 Best-Selling Author): “Real women, real villains and real heroes make Lawrence De Maria’s SOUND OF BLOOD a terrific read. As with JAWS, you won’t want to go near the ocean – but the land isn’t much safer.”

  WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS: “SOUND OF BLOOD is a rollicking good adventure mystery with all the essential ingredients: an intrepid private eye, bizarre murders, international intrigue, missing documents, gorgeous women and slippery financial dealings

  FLORIDA WEEKLY: "Suspense, gritty scenes, clever banter, the visceral rendering of Staten Island and a dogged private eye combine to make MADMAN'S THIRST and Jake Scarne a strong contribution to the tough guy tradition."

  JOHN CRUDELE (NEW YORK POST): CAPRIATI'S BLOOD is a "taut, contemporary chiller" spiced with "a touch of Bourne, a dash of Bond and a sprig of Spenser."

  What Readers Are Saying in Unsolicited Reviews

  SOUND OF BLOOD: “I'd give this book more stars if I could. A well-written, good read. Characters fit well together. Storyline flows and time flies while you are reading. You won't want to put it down.”

  CAPRIATI’S BLOOD: “De Maria has written another fantastic read. His written style using humor along with his serious side is very entertaining.”

  MADMAN’S THIRST: “A captivating novel on several fronts. Readers of many persuasions will enjoy this one. (And yes, they are thrillers, joy rides even veteran escapist readers won't want to put down.)”

  LAURA LEE: “I never know if I will find the mystery genre interesting since there is always a basic premise where you know there will be a killer in the group of characters. This one kept me guessing. Enjoyed thoroughly.”

  HURRICANE FATS: “Slick as a whistle suspense, with a cast of familiar demons (vicious mobsters and their torpid minions, Ponzi scheming financiers) together with unexpected heroes and a plot with enough twists and turns to dizzy a race car driver. One heck of a lot of fun as the plot unfolds and you watch Cole Sudden's character enlarge with revelations that bend and stretch the concept of moral justification to paint a picture of a protagonist whose complexity far surpasses the one dimensional (if beloved) James Bond. I can't wait for the movie.”

  CHAPTER 1 – SHISH KEBOBS

  The first thing Ralph Arhaut did after depositing the royalty check from Schuster House was buy a new car. Or rather, a new used car. He understood, of course, that the three-year-old Audi wasn’t going to truly impress anyone at the Haverford Country Club. But the metallic blue A5 sports coupe was a vast improvement over the tan 1995 Chevy Caprice in which he arrived at the club for his last book signing. Back then, the kid at the valet station under the portico of the 175-year-old clubhouse looked at that relic, with its smoking exhaust pipe and peeling paint, with disbelief and ill-concealed disdain. Taking Arhaut’s keys as if they were coated with the West Nile virus, the snotty bastard quickly drove the Caprice to the far reaches of the club parking lot before it could contaminate any BMW or Mercedes that might pull up.

  That earlier book gig had been humiliating in other respects. Arhaut still cringed at the memory. The Haverford Ladies Book Society traditionally invited only “established” authors to their once-a-month meetings. They were, after all, in John O’Hara country, on the Main Line west of Philadelphia. (Not that Arhaut believed any of the vapid women he met at the club had ever read John O’Hara.)

  Only the intercession of a college friend had secured Arhaut’s first invite. The friend, whose name was Perry Wells, was now a rich Philly lawyer living in Bryn Mawr with a wife named Buffy and two adorable children whose names also ended with a “y” – although for the life of him Arhaut couldn’t remember what those names were or whether the brats were male or female. He and Perry hadn’t seen each other since graduating from Villanova University. But they got stinking drunk together at their 10-year reunion the previous October during Homecoming Week.

  Actually, Arhaut knew that “friend” might be too strong a word for Perry. In college, they were not that close. Perry belonged to a fraternity, while Arhaut, even then artistically inclined, was shunned. But Perry, who had trouble stringing two sentences together even when sober, latched on to Ralph in freshman English with the grip of a Titanic passenger coming upon a floating deck chair. Ralph helped Perry earn a gentleman’s “C” in the course. And a gentleman always repays his debts.

  When he learned that his old pal was a struggling novelist living in a row-house apartment in South Philadelphia, Perry strong-armed the marbled-mouth Buffy into tendering an invitation to one of the book club luncheons. In January. When half the club members with any brains were in Florida or the Caribbean.

  But Arhaut couldn’t complain. His first novel, published, miraculously, by a small regional Southern press after 59 rejections, was a heavily researched literary tome whose main characters lived in a small Polish town in 1939 just after the Nazi invasion. Beset on one side by the onrushing Wehrmacht and on the other by the Red Army, just about everyone in the book died horribly, if nobly. It was, Arhaut believed, an important slice of history that had to be told. Life and Death in Polgradsky garnered solid reviews, but few sales.

  Buffy and most of the other 30 or so ladies had listened politely to Arhaut’s impassioned renderings of rapine and pillaging, but one old biddy, who had to be 90, kept asking him to speak louder. By the end of his presentation the author was shouting like a German tank commander. Finally, the torture ended and the women applauded politely.

  Afterwards, he sat at a table and signed and sold copies of his books, which he’d lugged in himself in a cardboard box. One of the women who purchased a copy was the old lady with the hearing problem.

  “If you want my opinion,” she brayed loudly as she forked over $20, “I think the Poles and the Jews got what they deserved.”

  Her perfume was overpowering, a tear-inducing citrus smell with a woody subtext. The middle-aged woman who stood beside the old lady rolled her eyes.

  “Come along, Mother. We’re holding up the line.”

  The elderly crone wouldn’t be deterred.

  “Your father was right,” she snapped. “That damn Roosevelt ruined this country.”

  In truth, they weren’t holding up much of a line. Arhaut sold 17 books, none of which,
he assumed, would ever be opened. They were mostly “pity purchases” made by women with too much money and time on their hands. They brought his total book sales, worldwide, to 458.

  A light snow had fallen during his presentation and Arhaut ruined his only pair of Italian leather loafers stepping into a slush puddle while getting into his car. He suspected the valet had positioned the vehicle with the puddle in mind.

  Arhaut’s publisher dropped him a month later and he became resigned to putting his next work, a half-finished World War II novel about an affair between an Italian Army nurse and a German officer in Rommel’s Afrika Corps, out as an e-book on Amazon.

  Then, unbelievably, good old Perry came through again.

  During a break in a deposition in New York City, several lawyers who were comparing the advantages of their respective Kindles, Nooks, iPads and other reading devices asked Perry what books he was currently reading. Perry, whose non-legal literary tastes ran to the sports pages, drew a blank until he remembered Life and Death in Polgradsky, which was still taking up room, unread, on his night table. But his friend’s novel sounded erudite and he lavishly praised it, as well as its “genius” author. When asked what the novel was about, Perry, whose quick thinking often justified his $750-an-hour billing rate, said that describing the remarkable plot would “give too much away” and thus bordered on the “unethical.”

  Suitably impressed, the other lawyers quickly downloaded the e-book version of Life and Death in Polgradsky, which had been discounted to $4.99. One of them just happened to work for a white-shoe firm that also represented Sebastian Quimper, the best-selling mega-author who had sold more than 155 million books worldwide and was just then adding several more co-authors to his stable of fiction writers. As boring and as off-putting as its theme was, Life and Death in Polgradsky achieved a kind of literary cachet in the law firm. A partner even bought a hard copy of the novel, just to let it lie around the office as a cultural symbol.

  When Arhaut first got the call from one of Quimper’s literary representatives suggesting that he was being considered as a co-author, his first instinct was to take the high road and point out that he wasn’t a writing hack. But, facing imminent eviction and mounting car repair bills, he wisely kept his mouth shut. Then the rep described the standard Quimper co-author royalty split and the average book sales of the last 15 collaborations. Arhaut did the math. Twenty-five percent of a lot of money was a hell of a lot better than 100 percent of no money.

  Did Arhaut have anything in development that might fit Quimper’s audience? Perhaps a thriller?

  Arhaut knew and despised Quimper’s audience. But he quickly said he was in the early stages of polishing his C.I.A. spy novel.

  Great. When could Mr. Quimper see a chapter?

  Arhaut, his phone hand shaking, said that he was heading to Europe and the Middle East for a week of “final research.” Would that be a problem?

  Of course not, the rep said as the desperate writer struggled to control his bladder.

  After ringing off, Arhaut immediately downloaded some recently co-authored Quimpers for style guidance and spent the week holed up in his apartment dashing off a chapter containing as much sex and bloody mayhem as he could imagine. It wasn’t that hard, considering how grounded he was in the activities of the German and Russian armies in Poland. He also plugged in scenes from his Afrika Corps love story and just changed nationalities, names, dates and locales. The resulting chapter was presumably a lead-in to a book about America’s battle against Middle Eastern terrorists.

  This will be a cinch, Arhaut realized when he’d finished the chapter. It’s really not that hard to write badly. I just won’t edit or rewrite. But in one small rebellious act, he called the still-to-be-written book From Here to Tehranity, knowing the publisher would undoubtedly change the title.

  Arhaut realized the “novel” was a total sell-out of his talent, but he also believed it was superior to most of those penned by his rival hack co-authors. He sent the chapter off, and only a week later was invited to New York to meet the great Sebastian Quimper. Not for breakfast, or lunch or dinner. For five minutes, in a conference room at the Park Avenue headquarters of Schuster House, Quimper’s publisher.

  The great man didn’t even sit down. He breezed in, shook hands and wished Arhaut well in “his new career” and then was gone. The nitty-gritty of finishing and editing his book was left to Arhaut and some Schuster representatives. To Arhaut’s amazement and chagrin, no one even bothered to change the title and six months later From Here to Tehranity rose as high as No. 4 in The New York Times list of bestsellers. It would have gone higher but for the fact that other Quimper books occupied the three top spots.

  Yes, a lot had changed in the 15 months since Arhaut threw his car keys to the valet. Same little twerp, but no sneer this time. Wait until next year, you piss ant, Arhaut thought. You’ll be parking my Bentley. That’s if I even deign to come back here.

  It was a glorious late April day, and Ralph Arhaut, bestselling author, was speaking, not before 30 bored women, but a full room of a hundred or more “fans” at the Haverford Country Club at what was now billed as a “lecture.”

  He didn’t even have to bring any books. Schuster House had arranged for an assistant to fetch boxes of them from a nearby Barnes & Noble to meet the expected demand for signed copies of From Here to Tehranity. The assistant, ensconced in a nearby room, had already stamped Sebastian Quimper’s signature in the books. After the luncheon, Arhaut would add his own, along with a suitably personalized comment.

  Buffy Wells greeted Arhaut like a long-lost brother, kissing him on both cheeks. Sitting next to him on the dais, she explained that after lunch she would formally introduce him, using biographical material provided by his publisher. The bio material was perhaps even more fictional than his book. For his part, Arhaut was told by Schuster House to extol Sebastian Quimper’s literary genius and describe the extensive mentoring and collaborative process that, after many excruciating months, produced From Here to Tehranity. Since his entire collaboration with Quimper had taken up all of five minutes, Arhaut would have been lost without the script provided by the Schuster flunkies back in New York. Some of them should write novels, he thought after digesting it.

  For all of that, Arhaut was having a very good time and was on his second gin and tonic. Unlike the last time, everyone treated him like royalty. He was dressed for the part, and was in uniform. With a rumpled corduroy jacket, black turtleneck and jeans – cowboy boots, of course – he even felt like a successful writer.

  And he knew he was about to be even more successful, and richer. Just that morning his new agent, selected from dozens who beat their way to his row house after the news got out about his Quimper connection, informed him that Schuster House wanted another thriller featuring his indestructible C.I.A. agent, ex-Navy Seal Rick Torrent. It wouldn’t be long before he was financially secure enough to go back to real writing.

  Arhaut just knew there was another Life and Death in Polgradsky in him.

  He looked out at the tables of women eating shrimp cocktails and drinking white wine. He didn’t see the deaf anti-Semitic old lady. Perhaps she’d died. Too bad. He’d prepared a stern moral riposte in case she, or anyone else, voiced another ethnic slur. He still regretted not saying anything the year before, when he needed the old crone’s $20. Now, as a bestselling author, he could afford to take the high road, damn it.

  Waiters were beginning to serve the lunch entrée. It was shish kebob, which didn’t thrill Arhaut. It looked and smelled delicious as it went on nearby plates, but he was afraid his hands would get sticky when he ate. That might present a problem when turning the pages during the damn book reading. He started to think of a funny line he could use to charm his audience if that happened.

  For he had scouted some of the guests. A couple of very attractive women were giving him looks that he suspected were meant to secure an invitation to perhaps a private literary session. Arhaut, recently retur
ned from a book tour, had quickly learned the erotic power of bestselling success, and was anxious for more experience. One woman, in particular, a tall patrician brunette, was eye-fucking him so blatantly he began to get a hard on. That wouldn’t do when I stand up to read, he thought. Then he laughed. Hell, in this crowd maybe it would.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  It was Bunny Wells, who laid a warm hand on his leg, just inches from his firming organ. Jesus! Not her, too. He wouldn’t go there. Perry had done too much for him.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said, quickly. “Oh, good, here’s our food. I’m starving.”

  Arhaut turned in relief to smile at a waiter who was thoughtfully stripping the meat and vegetable kebobs off his skewer. He noticed that no one else was getting such dedicated service. Another perk of fame. Maybe I won’t get that messy, he thought gratefully.

  “Thank you,” Arhaut said.

  “Challah Akbar!,” the waiter shouted in reply and plunged the empty skewer so forcibly into Arhaut’s throat it came out the back of his neck.

  Arhaut made a sound somewhere between a gurgle and a burp. As he toppled backwards amid a cacophony of female screams, his arterial blood spurted upwards, most of it landing on the $2,500 off-white Tadashi cocktail dress Buffy Wells had purchased just for the occasion.

  After another thunderous “Challah Akbar!”, the waiter sprinted out a side door and jumped into a nondescript black van.

  ***

  “Did you remember to shout the phrase?”

  The waiter was in the back of the van stripping off his uniform and peeling the fake moustache from above his lip.