Starr Lights Out

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84344-702-3
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Ryan Rossetti and Jake Thomas were the two Major League-bound rivals on their high school baseball team. Until Ryan hurt his pitching arm and landed a $10 dollar an hour life as a house painter. Lucky Jake made it all the way, and he and his $10 million signing bonus are heading back for a publicity-motivated homecoming weekend. But he's got a nasty surprise in store: Ryan is involved in an intense, addictive relationship with Jake's fiancé Christina, who now faces a choice between love in a Brooklyn tenement or a heartless marriage on Easy Street. None of the three have any idea what's about to play out in the streets they once all called home. Lights out is vintage Jason Starr, a razor sharp crime novel that brilliantly combines biting social satire, explosive suspense, and honest, revealing human drama.

Jason Starr is the author of Cold Caller, Nothing Personal, Fake I.D., Hard Feelings and Tough Luck followed by Lights Out, The Follower, Panic Attack, Savage Lane and his latest novel, Too Far. He was born in Brooklyn in 1966 and still lives in New York City.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Starr, Jason

Leseproben

1 The day Jake Thomas came home to Brooklyn, Jake’s parents, who still lived three houses down from Ryan Rossetti and his parents in Canarsie, hung out a huge banner connected to trees on either side of the street, which read: welcome home jake, our hero. Ryan had to drive right under the banner on his way to work, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if ‘JT fever’ hadn’t been sweeping through the neighborhood all week. It seemed like everyone was wearing THOMAS 24 jerseys and Pirates hats, and hundreds of cars proudly displayed brooklyn loves jake bumper stickers, a giveaway from a Ralph Avenue dealership. Some stores had posted eight-by-ten glossies of Jake in their windows, and Pete’s Barber shop on Avenue N was giving free shaves to anyone who showed a Jake Thomas baseball card. Pizzerias, restaurants, bars, delis, and even a nail salon had their own Jake Thomas specials, and the Canarsie Courier was running a cover story about Jake called ‘Brooklyn’s Son Returns,’ so Ryan had to see an annoying picture of Jake – smiling widely with his fake choppers – in newspaper dispensers everywhere. Ryan cranked the volume on his Impala’s CD player, shouting out lyrics of Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre.’ A few minutes later he double-parked in front of a deli on Flatlands and went inside for his usual ham-and-egg on a roll and black coffee with four sugars. At the register, Andre, the high school kid who worked there, said, ‘Jake Thomas home yet?’ ‘Dunno,’ Ryan said, shaking his head as he dug into his pocket for money, although he’d already put a five on the counter. ‘Yo, you hear? There’s gonna be a block party for him later.’ ‘Really?’ Ryan said, playing dumb. Jake’s mother had been planning the surprise party for weeks, and Ryan’s mother had been up late last night cooking five trays of her famous lasagna. ‘Yeah. Eighty-first Street’s gonna be closed off. Gonna be free food, music, dancing, all that shit.’ ‘Oh, right,’ Ryan said. ‘I think I did hear something about that.’ ‘I’m goin’, man,’ Andre said. ‘Gonna meet JT up close, shake his hand, get my picture taken with the NL batting champ. Yo, you think if I bring him a bat he’d sign it for me?’ ‘Why not?’ Ryan took his change and returned to his car. Several minutes later he pulled into the driveway of a house on Whitman Drive in Mill Basin. Leaving the CD player on, he ate his breakfast, but when he was finished eating he didn’t get out of his car. He always told himself that if he turned off the CD player or radio in the middle of a song it would mean bad luck. So he waited for the last lyric of the Mobb Deep joint and then, timing it perfectly, shut the ignition. Carlos and Franky were already setting up the drop cloths downstairs when Ryan entered the house. In the bathroom, Ryan changed out of his street clothes – a sleeveless T-Mac jersey over a plain black hooded sweatshirt, baggy Pepe jeans, a San Antonio Spurs baseball-style cap worn sideways over a black do-rag, and not new but very clean Nike Zoom LeBron IIs – into his white painting clothes and old paint-covered sneakers, and then returned to the living area and started helping Carlos and Franky with the wall repair. It was the second day on this job and it was going to be a tough one. The house was average-size – three bed, two bath – but the old owners must not have painted in years, because there was peeling paint everywhere, and lots of bubbles needed to be sanded down. Ryan and the other guys had spent all day yesterday scraping and spackling and they’d gotten through only half of the downstairs. The upstairs wasn’t in as bad shape so there was a shot they could start laying on the primer by the end of the day. Ryan got to work, spackling, when Carlos said to him, ‘Jake Thomas come home yet?’ Carlos was Ryan’s age – twenty-four – with a thin mustache and tuft of hair on his chin. He’d been asking Ryan about Jake all week, and Ryan had been trying not to pay too much attention. ‘Dunno,’ Ryan said without looking at Carlos. ‘But he’s coming today, right?’ ‘Guess so.’ ‘What?’ ‘I think so,’ Ryan said, louder. ‘Hey,’ Carlos said. ‘If I bring you a ball in tomorrow, you think you can get JT to sign it for me?’ ‘Don’t bust chops,’ Franky said. He was a big guy, a few years older than Carlos and Ryan. ‘It ain’t for me, man,’ Carlos said. ‘It’s for my little cousin – he loves baseball. I told him I work with Jake Thomas’s homeboy; he was like, ‘Hook me up, yo.’’ ‘There’s gonna be a party for him later on my block,’ Ryan said. ‘Why don’t you stop by if you want an autograph?’ ‘I don’t know the guy, man,’ Carlos said. ‘I don’t wanna go up to him and be like, ‘Gimme your autograph.’ Come on, man, do me this one favor. It ain’t for me – it’s for my cousin. He’s, like, eight years old and shit.’ ‘He can’t get everybody autographs,’ Franky said. ‘He probably’s gotta get autographs for a thousand guys already, right, Ry?’ ‘It’s all right,’ Ryan said, working the scraper hard against the wall. ‘Bring the ball in tomorrow and I’ll ask Jake to sign it.’ ‘Thanks, man,’ Carlos said. Then he said to Franky, ‘See? It ain’t no big deal.’ They worked for a while without talking. Carlos’s box in the corner was playing top forty – Avril Lavigne’s new song. Then Franky said, ‘So where’s he coming in from?’ Ryan knew Franky was talking about Jake, but he pretended to be lost. ‘Who?’ Ryan asked. ‘Jake Thomas,’ Franky said. ‘Oh,’ Ryan said. ‘Pittsburgh, I guess.’ ‘He got an apartment there or something?’ ‘I think he rents a house,’ Ryan mumbled. ‘What?’ ‘He rents a house,’ Ryan said louder. ‘Probably a friggin’ mansion,’ Franky said. ‘The guy’s gotta be making, what, a couple mil a year now, and wait till he’s a free agent – he’ll break the fuckin’ bank. The Pirates sucked this year, but Jake was freakin’ spectacular. What’d he end up at, three fifty-three?’ ‘Three fifty-one,’ Carlos said. ‘Three fifty-one,’ Franky said. ‘Jesus, that’s like a DiMaggio number. And he had, like, twenty-five homers, hundred ribbies.’ ‘He got twenty-two jacks,’ Carlos said. ‘Twenty-two home runs,’ Franky said. ‘And what’d he get last year, twenty?’ ‘Seventeen,’ Carlos said. ‘That’s all right,’ Franky said. ‘At least the numbers are goin’ up. And the guy steals bases and’s got that rifle arm. You see that one they showed on ESPN last week, when he threw out the guy trying to go first to third on that ball in the gap?’ ‘Yeah, ’gainst the Cubs,’ Carlos said. ‘The guy’s got a fuckin’ gun,’ Franky said. ‘I swear that ball was, like, five feet off the ground the whole way. I bet he could’ve been a pitcher if he wanted.’ He turned to Ryan and said, ‘Hey, JT ever pitch in high school?’ ‘Little bit,’ Ryan said. ‘Who was better, you or him?’ Carlos asked. ‘Me,’ Ryan said confidently. ‘You ever pitch to him in a game?’ ‘Little League, intra-squad – shit like that.’ ‘You struck him out?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘But he got some rips off you too, right?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘Hey, you think JT is gonna make the Hall someday?’ Franky asked. ‘Keeps playin’ the way he is he’s gonna,’ Carlos said. ‘Look at the numbers he’s puttin’ up,’ Franky said. ‘You gotta admit those’re Hall of Fame numbers. Guy hits what, three fifty-one last year? Jesus.’ Carlos and Franky continued talking about how great Jake was and Ryan tried to block out the noise, thinking about Christina. She looked so beautiful last night in the backseat of his car, with the lamppost light in her eyes. But then, before he dropped her off, she started crying. He really should throw her a call to make sure she was okay. Then he snapped out of his thoughts when Franky said, ‘Hey, Ry, you think JT is gonna come play in New York someday?’ ‘How the hell should I know?’ Ryan said, wishing they’d shut up already. ‘I don’t know,’ Franky said, ‘I thought maybe he said something about it to you or...