The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Dwyer Murphy
- Language: English
- Genre: Private Investigator Mysteries
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Tommy Carvalho was featherweight champion in the Police Athletic
League when he was fifteen years old. That might not sound like
much of a title to you or me, but for Tommy it was a point of pride. He
married young, straight out of high school, and developed an addiction to
Vicodin that he managed to kick, possibly by reminding himself that for a
span of time in his golden youth there wasn’t another boy on the South
Coast of Massachusetts who could knock him down. The marriage ended
after a year. He still saw his ex-wife regularly and liked to cook her dinner
once or twice a week, without asking questions about how she spent the rest
of her time or affections. We had never been very close growing up, but
Tommy was part of my Thursday evening pickup basketball game. Most of
the year we played at the Y, but in summer we went to the beach. It was five
a side, full court, and Tommy was an able if slightly undersized wing who
liked to run. He had a carelessness about him on the court that I always
admired. Whenever I pulled a rebound, I looked for him streaking down the
sidelines.
In the time since he cleaned up, Tommy had taken over as the head of
Parks and Recreation. He was the one who had suggested laying the new
blacktop on the public beach courts several years before, and whenever we
wanted to play late, he carried a master key to turn on the lights. We would
all throw in a dollar or two afterward, toward the electricity bill. It seemed
to me he had settled into a nice, tranquil life, all things considered, and it
surprised me that summer when he brought up the possibility of escape. At
first, I took it for a joke, but after he kept finding ways of steering the
conversation back in that direction, I decided there was probably more to it.
“You should take a vacation,” I suggested. “Go somewhere warm. Have
a cocktail.”
“I don’t want a vacation,” he said. “We’ve got beaches right here.”
“Then go somewhere cold. Fly to Iceland. It’s light out all night.”
“I’m not some goddamn tourist,” he said.
That was the problem. When you got right down to it, Tommy had a lot
of pride.
“Well,” I said. “Tell me where you want to go.”
“Somewhere they won’t find me.”
“Who’s they?”
The question only made him upset. In addition to the pride, Tommy had a
temper. We were sitting at a table outside Alphonse’s café, across the street
from the playground. The court lights were still on, and they cast a strange,
sidelong glow over Tommy’s gaunt features.
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