Snippet the second: TRG draft 2
Garrett, a half-drunk pint of Rolling Rock and another likely to follow hard behind. Moisture gleaming on the side of the glass and a bubble of quiet around him. The Vines was busy, night rolling on, but no one much bothered him. Up on the makeshift stage at the far end of the room, a heavy-set transvestite in a red garter belt calling himself ‘Heavenly Kevin’ was murdering an already wounded Barry Manilow number. Garrett wanted a smoke, but not badly enough to stop drinking.
He stared into the mirror behind the bar, remembering the long grey-lit table he’d sat in front of that afternoon, Lieutenant Saganowski, Lieutenant Morgan, two suits he didn’t know, probably from the OPC, all of them with flat, dead eyes.
“You left your post,” Saganowski said. “You left it and Officer McDermott died from his injuries. If you’d rendered assistance, he might still be alive.”
“That’s speculation,” Morgan cut in. “We don’t know that.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Officer Garrett was in pursuit of a suspect.”
“He didn’t radio it in. He didn’t call for backup. He didn’t even report the explosion at the site or summon help for Officer McDermott. He hasn’t been able to tell us anything about this suspect.”
Garrett said nothing. It went that way for a long time.“Trouble, Charles?” Back to the present, and the bartender, Marcel. A tall, elegant man whose parents had fled war in the Cote d’Ivoire when he was a child.
“Why do you always call me ‘Charles’, Marcel? No one does that.”
“Your parents did. I’ve always assumed they were people of intelligence and decency and so they must have had good reason.”
“Dad got his kicks cracking skulls on Union Plaza with the 7th and Mom was a Vicodin ghost. I wouldn’t set much store by their opinions.”
Marcel shook his head softly. The movement was like the mating dance of a stork. “Painful memory, Charles?”
(Unspellchecked, check label before washing, investments may go down as well as up, etc.)
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Hello, whoever you are. I'm Sean Cregan, author of the gothic-punk contemporary urban thriller The Levels, and this is my "official" site. Here you can find out about the book and its sequel and poke around in the extras available for reading and downloading. If you want to reach me, leave a message on the Wall (for which you'll need to take two seconds to register - don't worry; I'll only spam you with the most discerning of adverts for Viagra and Cambodian mail-order brides - or if you've already done that, to log in) or you can seek out my personal tumblelog here, or my Twitter account, because I'm woefully bad at answering email.