I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the PRESTON NOIR by Sean O'Leary Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Title: PRESTON NOIR
Author: Sean O'Leary
Pub. Date: June 10, 2023
Publisher: Sean O'Leary
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 204
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/PRESTON-NOIR
Read for
FREE with a Kindle Unlimited membership!
Preston Noir follows Private
Investigator Rufus Warhol as he tries to find a missing teenage girl while
attempting to balance the consequences of having an unpaid debt to a local
crime boss, a drug-dealing brother, and a drug-addicted sister.
This is a page-turning, fast-moving
crime novel in the style of Peter Corris or Peter Temple’s Jack Irish
thrillers.
The deadline for the unpaid debt sets
the cracking pace as Rufus tries to navigate through all his problems and get
some clean air. His sister is causing him problems and his ex-girlfriend is
sick of lending him money. His brother is done with him and all Rufus really
wants to do is get wasted and go see Died Pretty at the Croxton Park Hotel.
But he and his brother put their
differences aside when their sister is used as a pawn to get the debt paid.
They race furiously against time to find her and put an end to all their
problems once and for all.
Chapter
One
Rufus Warhol opens his
beautiful blue, now bloodshot eyes. Lifts his head gently off the pillow and
sighs softly. His breathing is slightly laboured. Head lifts higher and his
back comes with it but he falls back down smiling. Not yet. He tries again,
succeeds. Pushes his back against the wall, sits up straight. Reaches for his
cigarettes on top of the chest-of-drawers, the red lighter. Puts the ciggie in
his mouth, lights it. Blows smoke straight ahead.
He reaches for the mirror, steadily
brings it onto his lap. Finds a twenty note on the same chest-of-drawers. Rolls
it up, sticks it up to his nose, lifts the mirror and snorts, not a line, but
randomly across the mirror hitting his target at will. He jerks back and drops
the whole operation, lighted ciggie too, onto his lap. Jumps up holding his
cock.
‘Nearly burnt my fucken dick,’
he says snorting laughter while stomping the cigarette into the parquetry
floor.
He gets off the bed, pulls on
a pair of black Levi’s, sans underwear, walks into the kitchen, turns the
kettle on. Goes to the fridge and gets the milk. Reaches into the cupboard for
his bag of ganja and rollie papers. Sits down at the Formica table, covered in
used coffee mugs, a saucer used as an ashtray, a crumpled-up piece of paper, Sunday’s
form guide from the Herald-Sun and a Coles brochure he brought in from the
letterbox.
Gets back up, goes into the bedroom
to grab his ciggies and lighter. Mixes the ganja with a cigarette and rolls it
up and lights it. Takes a huge toke on the joint and his eyes roll back a bit
in his head, ‘fuck’. He gets up and turns the kettle off. The mighty Rufus.
Unstoppable. Puts three lumped teaspoons of coffee in a small mug, pours the
hot water and adds just a dob of milk, one sugar. He had a Nespresso machine
but it fucked up and he can’t afford a new one until some new cases roll in. He
sits down and takes another toke on the joint. That piece of paper, the reason
for the early morning snort, to prepare. He reaches for it, unfolds it. Jersey McManus 11 am Preston Society.
Fucken Scottish cunt.
***
A few suburbs away in Brunswick,
Nic Warhol looks at his body in the full-length mirror in his bedroom. He wears
white Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts. Admires his long, strong, lithe athletic
torso. He’s a marathoner, not a sprinter. He’ll kick your arse slowly, make it
hurt. He does his stretches. Basic stuff for his core. He’s old-fashioned. He
does squats with his back flat against the bedroom wall. He does fifty, slowly,
so it hurts, so it’s good for him. He stops. Does another fifty. Does some
breathing exercises with his hand held across his chest, inhaling deeply then
counting out, one and two and three and four while exhaling, his chest rising
and falling. His breathing is now under control. He puts on a black silk
dressing gown and walks down the hall to the kitchen. Reaches for Weet-bix and
bran and puts them in a bowl. Goes to the fridge and removes a carton of skim
milk, pours it over the cereal. Goes to the cupboard, takes out a packet of
green tea. Turns on the kettle and eats his cereal while waiting for the kettle
to boil.
His mobile rests on the wooden
kitchen table, it starts to vibrate and he checks the caller ID. Jersey
McManus. He ignores it. His girlfriend Ly walks into the kitchen straight from
the shower, her long, straight black hair, shining wet, a towel around her, she
reaches around Nic’s chest, drops her head in front of him, her wet hair
falling across his face, the towel drops away as she kisses him wetly on the
mouth.
***
Rufus walks back into his
bedroom, goes to the corner of the room and picks up his cheap K-Mart stick
vacuum and vacuums up the cigarette he crushed out earlier. He hasn’t had a
good high paying client for a while. Jersey keeps him in ganja and speed and,
on rare occasions, some H on a kind of retainer for his services as a private
investigator but even that’s running thin. He lives alone in a one-bedroom
apartment above Back to the Futon on High Street, Preston South. They’re good
digs. Good not great. He’s barely making the monthly rent. Living not far from
where he grew up on Cooma Street.
Rufus gets in the shower and
wishes he could get some straightforward infidelity cases but these days any
dickwad with a mobile can do it. Rufus has a great rep for being discreet but
he also sometimes ends up fucking the client. Women like him. He is tall and
raffish, a wiry, muscular, strong body. He had fought as an amateur boxer and
turned pro but quit because his girlfriend at the time couldn’t stand it. His
father said his straight right hand was a thing of beauty. Rufus is preppy
looking, floppy light brown hair, killer smile. Everyone likes him on first
greeting, it’s what happens after that that sets him apart. He disappoints
people, lets them down, gradually.
He gets out of the shower,
dresses in blue jeans, white t-shirt under a dark blue cotton shirt with a
brown suede jacket. Puts on black suede shoes. Walks down the stairs from his
apartment and onto High Street. He starts walking north.
Everything is changing he
thinks as he looks around, they’re going to gentrify his old suburb of Preston.
He can feel the hipsters and young families coming. There’s already a barber
with a hipster beard working out of a container on High Street, Preston South.
He walks across High Street where they’re building a huge apartment complex. He
can almost feel the food trucks idling behind him, waiting to cross Bell Street
into Preston. He wonders what they’ll think of the two-dollar shops, cheap
bakeries, Cash Converters and the market.
Rufus knows Preston. He knows
every café, every cheap Vietnamese restaurant, the Asian nail joints with the
girls wearing their little masks, the beautiful, shiny black girls in the
African hair extension place, the eyebrow threading place, the town hall with
names of the war dead chipped into the concrete memorial, the library, yes, the
two-dollar shops and the smell of hot bread from the warm bakeries. The
protection money paid over steaming bowls of Pho. The gambling dens at the back
of cafés and other small businesses. The massage places and the ones which give
their male customers a happy ending. He knows the markets where his father had
a stall for half-a-century. The Aboriginal legal service. The job networks. The
paint warehouses, the buildings and shops that constantly change tenants.
Tobacconists, chemists. The shutdown curtain factory. All of it. The private
schools that somehow seem out of place. All of it. He goes into the tobacconist
and buys a pack of Peter Jackson 20’s. He buys these cheaper cigarettes because
they still give you the hit at the back of your throat when you draw in the
smoke.
High Street narrows when you
cross Bell Street, it somehow becomes darker, something unspoken, something
unknown, something perhaps criminal lies beneath the surface. Rufus, the
private investigator looking at all the angles. The drifter; the grifter. Walks
into Preston Society.
Jersey sits at a table for two
on the right-hand-side. There are a few occupied tables further back in the
dark. A guy reading the paper on a stool at the front of the shop while
occasionally looking at the street life through the window. The tall blonde
girl smiles willingly at Rufus and he smiles back and says,
‘Get me a latte, strong. Thanks,
babe’
Jersey with a black and white
cloth cap on his head. Andy Cap Rufus thinks, remembering the old English
cartoon about the drunk little man that his father likes. Jersey always wears a
hat of some description, hates the fact he went bald. He has a black leather
jacket on over a black shirt, both expensive looking and shiny. Rufus pulls out
a chair opposite him, says,
‘Jersey.’
‘Rufus.’
‘Why the need to speak to me?’
‘Your brother owes me forty
large.’
‘Oh, shit, Jersey, not that
ridiculous cheap criminal talk. He owes you forty-thousand-dollars, forty
grand. Large, what the fuck is that?’
Rufus smiles broadly.
‘I lent him, one year ago,
forty grand, to get him started in
his little entrepreneurial business.’
‘His drug dealing, yes. He
paid you back in less than two months and he set it up with Madam Phan behind
him too.’
‘I want my commission.’
‘Wasn’t part of the deal from
what I…’
‘Forget what you heard. He
owes me forty grand and I want you to get it or I call in your marker plus the
forty grand.’
‘Jersey, I work for you as an
investigator, that’s why you supply me my er, my goods, my…’
‘It’s over Rufus. You haven’t
done anything useful for me for a while now. I want you to become useful again.’
‘You must know he hates my
guts. My brother and I we…’
‘Family Rufus, the things we
do for our family.’
‘And if I say no.’
‘You know. I don’t have to spell it out. There’ll be some violence
and then you’ll work for me, dealing or wiping down tables or something else
until you pay it all back. I’ve been running a tab on you for years. I know
what you owe me, right down to the last little line of speed, the last joint
you smoked in that dump you live in.’
‘I worked for you, gave you
information and…’
‘Useless information. Truth is
you haven’t done anything useful for me for a long time. You’re not so shmick
anymore, Rufus. The fancy jeans and shirts and jackets, they’re fraying at the
edges, the soles of your shoes are wearing thin. The famous constitution not
holding up like it used to. Getting the cold sweats for the first time in your
life. Hangovers, previously unheard of. Time to pay up, son.’
‘Can’t do it. Won’t do it.’
‘You’ve got fifteen days. The
forty grand your brother owes me plus twenty-grand you owe me. Fifteen days
Rufus or I act, boyo.’
Rufus stands up pushing the
chair back and leans down into Jersey’s face, says,
‘You fucken Scottish…’
Jersey raises his hand in the
air. Two big men, dressed identically in black puffy jackets, stand up and
begin walking from the dark at the rear of the café. Rufus sits down. Jersey
waves the hand. The men return to their seats.
‘Forty thousand in fifteen days,’
Rufus says.
‘Your brother, with the help
of that Vietnamese goddess, Madam Phan, has turned into a major player. He’s
got the money, you just have to get it.’
Rufus pushes the chair back,
the waitress brings his latte, he says,
‘Sorry babe, won’t be needing
it. This gentleman will pay. Won’t you Jersey.’
Jersey squints his eyes,
tightens his mouth but Rufus turns and walks out.
About Sean O'Leary:
Sean O’Leary has published five short story collections, My
Town, Walking, Wonderland, Tokyo Jazz and Other Stories and This is Not a Love
Song. His novella Drifting was the winner of the ‘Great Novella Search 2016’
and was published in September 2017. He has published over forty short stories
in literary and crime fiction journals. His crime novella The Heat, set in
Darwin and Bangkok was published in August 2019. His interviews with crime
writers appear online in Crime Time magazine. His crime novel Going All the Way
is out now and his crime series featuring Indigenous investigator, Carter
Thompson includes, City of Sin and City of Fear. The third book, City of Vice
drops in late 2023.
He has worked in a variety of jobs including motel
receptionist, rubbish removalist/tree lopper, farm hand and night manager in
various hotels in Sydney’s notorious, Kings Cross. He has lived all over the
bloody place but now resides in Melbourne, thinks that test cricket is the
greatest game of all and supports Melbourne Football Club (a life sentence). He
writes like a demon, loves travelling, is mad about photography, does some AI
art and tries to walk everywhere.
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Giveaway Details:
2 winners
will receive a finished copy of PRESTON NOIR, International.
Ends July
11th, midnight EST.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
