Excerpt from The Violent Gentleman by Danny O'Leary

 

Prologue

Devils take all shapes and forms. Angels too. At six foot nine, Jeremiah O’Connell came in two sizes, big and tall, and he could be devil one minute, angel the next. His clothes were expensive but practical, beard tidy not fussy; his hair was partway to getting long, and it framed an action hero square face and grey eyes. When he laughed, which was often, the sound was filthy, smoky and joyful. But if you called him a nasty bastard, you wouldn’t be the first, and nor would you be the last. One problem. Jerry wasn’t psychic. If he’d been psychic, then maybe he’d have stayed away from Cedar Tree Avenue on that warm LA night. Then again, knowing him, maybe not.

Chapter One

Cedar Tree Avenue was typical for this part of LA: long, straight and shabby, with sparse palm trees either side of a wide street and a canopy of power lines overhead. Neglected buildings were either dull grey or a beige the colour of soggy cardboard. Sidewalks were strewn with litter and abandoned furniture.

This was a street where breeze blocks and corrugated iron were the preferred building materials. Where the twinkling lights and vibrant colours of Santa Monica, Westwood and Beverly Hills were close enough to touch but might as well have been a thousand miles away for all that they meant to those who called it home.

At night, it was even less appealing. Christ, Jerry had thought, looking left and right as he drove, taking in the neglect, what a shithole. He was hunched over the steering wheel of the Prius, a nondescript silver thing that he hated but drove anyway, because sometimes you had to bite the bullet and play safe by keeping things inconspicuous. He’d affixed an Uber sticker in the rear window, just to complete the picture.

Ah. There it was. The strip club he was looking for. It went by the name All Fur Coat, except the ‘T’ of ‘coat’ was missing. All Fur Coa . . .

He selected a space and reversed into it, adjusting a wing mirror in order to ensure that he could see behind as well as ahead. Old habits. And now to the task at hand.

He pocketed his phone and was just about to go to work when something outside caught his eye. From where he was parked, he could see the club’s front entrance, but also a side door. Now, Jerry knew a lot about clubs. Having started his working life on the doors back home in Essex, what he didn’t know about clubs wasn’t worth knowing – so that side entrance would be used by the girls. Probably there was a more private and secure rear door for when they wanted a smoke, but they’d use that side entrance when they needed to score – just for ease, just for the speed of it. Right now, there was a geezer hanging around it. A Latino looking guy, he wore a black denim jacket, black jeans, hair slicked back. A tattoo poked out from the neck of his Tshirt, curling up behind his ear. But it wasn’t the clothes that gave him away. It wasn’t the dark, leathery skin, pitted, like he’d been left out in the sun. It was just the look of him: the watchful eyes. The mouth, crooked and spiteful. Not far away was a black Ford Falcon, sprung low. Gleaming and ostentatious, it was a drug dealer’s car. Even so, Jerry probably wouldn’t have given it another thought but for the fact that the guy looked so agitated. Like he had something more than just a drug deal on his mind. Jerry took a deep breath, checked his watch and decided that the job could wait a few minutes. He was going to see how this panned out first.

He didn’t have to wait long. The door opened, out came a girl and right away the neck tattoo guy was in her face, closing off her retreat into the club as he backed her up against a wall. His face was contorted, voice raised but not quite shouting. His shoulders were thrust back, fists clenched by his side.

Jerry exited the car and wandered across, pulling his camel hair coat around him. It was the girl who saw him first. Neck Tattoo noticed the way her eyes widened, and he wheeled to see Jerry approach. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ There’s a time and a place to steam in and knock a geezer down, but this was not that time. Jerry would probably never see the girl again and the last thing he wanted was to make life harder for her by clomping her boyfriend. Instead, he simply stared. That was it. Just stood and stared, flint eyed. And when Neck Tattoo looked back at Jerry, he saw no fear, no heightened state, no fight, no flight – nothing. Jerry might as well have been ordering a skinny latte for all the emotion he showed. He’d learnt his trade back in the day; he’d learnt it on the job. The hard way. And nobody knew better than him that the moment you showed fear you were dead.

‘I was just going to give her phone back,’ said Neck Tattoo, all but backing down in the face of Jerry’s hulking presence. ‘That’s all.’

The girl’s eyes flitted from Jerry to Neck Tattoo and then back again. ‘Give me it then.’ ‘I don’t have it with me,’ growled Neck Tattoo over his shoulder. ‘You called Janice,’ she said. ‘Told her you were here to return my phone.’ ‘I just wanted to speak,’ said Neck Tattoo. He was trying to sound bruised. Lying. Jerry cleared his throat and then spoke for the first time. ‘Look, mate, leave it for the night is my advice. Get the phone another time, hand it in to the club. Time to move on, yeah?’

The girl jutted her chin in thanks, turned and slammed back into the club. Neck Tattoo sniffed, and although he looked mollified, Jerry could see that his eyes blazed. For a moment or so, the two of them stood looking at one another in the otherwise empty parking lot, the night still and warm around them.

‘Time to move on, yeah?’ repeated Jerry meaningfully.

Neck Tattoo looked at him for a moment more and then brushed past, stomping to his car. Jerry watched as it fired up with a blatting sound that seemed to vibrate the air around them, followed by a blast of music. With a screech of tyres, it pulled out into the traffic of Cedar Tree Avenue, leaving a mini cyclone of fastfood wrappers in its wake. Jerry thought that was the last he’d ever see of that guy. He was wrong about that.

A Violent Gentleman by Danny O'Leary. Published by Orion Publishing

He does what's right. Not what's easy. Jeremiah O'Connell made his name solving problems in London and now does the same in LA. The problems other people can't or won't touch? They're the ones that end up at Jerry's door. Suddenly Jeremiah has problems of his own when he sets out to right a wrong and finds himself on the hitlist of one of LA's most feared drug gangs. As the stakes rise, so does the body count, and Jerry has the fight of his life on his hands. Now, with high-class escort Noah in tow, Jeremiah must revisit his old London stomping grounds and assemble his team in order to wage all-out war on the streets on Tinseltown...

Wonder Valley and Skid Row by Ivy Pochoda

In 2009, I moved from my hometown of Brooklyn to Los Angeles, a city that still manages to be both familiar and unknowable to me. To someone accustomed to walking or taking the subway, the shape of Los Angeles was mysterious—a place I couldn’t visualise even as I traversed it. As I drove on the freeways and returned to my strange hilltop apartment in Echo Park, I was struck by the amount of outdoor living, tent encampments, permanently parked camper vans, and derelict cabins that I encountered. This was a city, in places a fancy one, yet people lived in the elements. This made Los Angeles even more mysterious, gave it a texture I hadn’t expected, a secret soul.

After two years in LA, I moved to the Arts District, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood just east of Downtown. Between Downtown and the Arts District is Skid Row. Every day I drove or rode my bike through Skid Row—a sprawling homeless community of tents, shelters, medical and social services, murals, missions, and churches. And soon, what at first glance seemed to be a dirty, chaotic place began to reveal itself as a true community. Patterns began to emerge. When I looked closely, I was able to see that different encampments had different characters, different personalities. Here were activists. Here were artists. And here were the hopeless and the helpless. I began to pay attention to the society on the streets, to the shape and depth of the neighborhood. I never imagined I’d find inspiration there.

Then one night I emailed LAMP —a homeless shelter, arts organization, community center—and offered to teach a creative writing course. I had no idea what to expect when I turned up for my first class. Would my students be conventionally homeless, like many of the people I saw unable to help themselves on the streets? Would they be rehabilitated? Would they be lucid? Smart? Capable? The truth was they were all of these things. Each of them was on a journey and each showed up with a story to tell, whether one drawn from life or summoned from wild inspiration.

Theirs are the stories that inspired me when I began to write Wonder Valley. Their voices crept into my head, making me wonder if there is a moment that you can pinpoint when things begin to unravel, a specific place in time that is your undoing, regardless of whether or not it is your fault. This is what all the characters in Wonder Valley have in common, a need to discover if there was a specific instance that made their lives spin off course and if knowing that grants them the possibility for redemption.

So my novel became something of a crime story—because no one in Skid Row has a life that has not been touched by crime in some way, whether as a victim or a perpetrator. Crime is a fact of life down there. It’s a daily job to avoid falling prey to those who want to take advantage, to the lawlessness after dark. But it’s also a daily job to work to overcome the mistakes of your own past, to understand that you are not simply the sum of the choices you’ve make and the things that have happened to you. That there is agency in the world beside chaos.

Because no one’s story begins in Skid Row, mine couldn’t either. I had to follow my characters out of downtown Los Angeles and into the places that brought them there—the Mojave Desert and the tony west side of town. I had to go back in time, looking for that misstep that sent their stories in motion.

Wonder Valley is a patchwork, because that’s how I see Los Angeles, layers upon layers, stories that intersect and recoil, neighborhoods that touch but are unknown to each other. It’s a story that I hope suggests that even in the lowest circumstances there is the possibility for beauty and joy. Because that is precisely what I found.

Ivy Pochoda is the author of Wonder Valley, published by The Indigo Press on 20th September 2018. She will be speaking at Festival America on 25th September. For tickets: festivalamerica.co.uk

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda (Indigo Press)

When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.  During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars. The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls.  There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harbouring a dark secret. There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

More information can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @ivypochoda.