Head

By Vincent Zandri

Be careful who you play a practical joke on. It could cost you your life.

When a drunken man named Chuck (aka Chuckles) decides to play a joke on his barfly buddy, Timmy (aka Buddha), by drawing a rather accurate rendering of the male anatomy on Buddha's dusty black BMW, all hell breaks loose. You see, it only takes a couple of minutes for Chuckles to realize he's created the stunning artwork on the wrong car. In fact, the car belongs to an underworld executioner known only as Rod Last Name Not Known.

What follows is Chuckles and his buddy, Jones, being kidnapped by Rod and made to endure unspeakable torture. But will the two have their revenge on the mafia thug?

Read on and find out.

For fans of Charlie Huston, Don Winslow, Jim Crumley, Robert B. Parker and more, this is yet another raw, hard-boiled, noir, suspense-filled short read from Thriller Award and Shamus Award bestselling author, Vincent Zandri.

Also look for a long bonus sample of the ITW Thriller Award and PWA Shamus Award winning novel, Moonlight Weeps, inside this read.

"Sensational...Masterful...Brilliant." —New York Post

"The action never wanes." —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting." —Harlan Coben, bestselling author of Six Years

"Tough, stylish, heartbreaking." —Don Winslow, bestselling author of Savages

"Non-stop action." —I Love a Mystery

"Vincent Zandri nails reader's attention." —Boston Herald

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Zandri
• Release date: Apr 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781536551488

Vincent Zandri

"Vincent Zandri hails from the future." --The New York Times “Sensational . . . masterful . . . brilliant.” --New York Post "Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting." --Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years "Tough, stylish, heartbreaking." --Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Savages and Cartel. Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for MOONLIGHT WEEPS, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and AMAZON KINDLE OVERALL NO.1 bestselling author of more than 60 novels and novellas including THE REMAINS, EVERYTHING BURNS, ORCHARD GROVE, THE SHROUD KEY and THE GIRL WHO WASN'T THERE. His list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, Polis Books, Suspense Publishing, Blackstone Audio, and Oceanview Publishing. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, his work is translated in the Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese. Having sold close to 1 million editions of his books, Zandri has been the subject of major features by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Business Insider. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and the FOX News network. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the "Best Books of 2014." Suspense Magazine selected WHEN SHADOWS COME as one of the "Best Books of 2016". He was also a finalist for the 2019 Derringer Award for Best Novelette. A freelance photojournalist, freelance writer, and the author of the popular "lit blog," The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, CrimeReads, Altcoin Magazine, The Jerusalem Post, Market Business News, Duke University, Colgate University, and many more. He also writes for Scalefluence. An Active Member of MWA and ITW, he lives in New York and Florence, Italy. For more go to VINZANDRI.COM

Book preview

HEAD

VINCENT ZANDRI

Nothing personal, it’s just business.

~ Otto Berman, infamous gangster

HEAD

Fucking Chuck. Charles. Chuckles.

He’s a pisser, let me tell you. Especially when he gets drinking the Jamie. Jameson that is. He’s a nut for it, and it brings out the devil in him. So, that night at Lanies Bar, he thought it would be funny to head outside in the cold and draw a big cock on Timmy's car, because Timmy loves his black Beemer more than he loves himself. Timmy AKA Buddha. And let me tell you something, Buddha loves himself like a heated dog loves humping. So, you can imagine how much he loved that second-hand black Beemer. But still, Chuck thought it would be hilarious if he ran his fingers through the dust that coated the front door while Buddha was inside the bar downing his sorrows in vodka and Heineken.

As for me—your humble narrator and younger of the three amigos—I’m Jones or Jonesy, as they nicknamed me. I stood back and watched while drinking my beer, my leather coat keeping out the cold winter wind, my scruffy face needing a shave, and my black skull cap, work boots, and jeans covering a stocky body making me look like an off-duty Longshoreman, even if I was a writer by trade. 

I also couldn’t stop laughing. Here’s the thing that took me by complete surprise. Fucking Chuckles is an artist. He might not be much in the brains department, and he might be a little soft in the middle and balding on top, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t draw the most anatomically correct cock you ever did see. It was a real thing of beauty to behold. Something only a visual artist would appreciate. And probably a lover of porn. It was a long cock, curved for dramatic effect, with a big floppy ball sack and a lightning strike vein running along the shaft. He even took the care and time to add a patch of pubic hair to the masterpiece. 

Fucking Chuckles . . .

Sure, as he created it, I smoked the shit out of a cigarette and stole sips from my long-necked Budweiser, but like I said, I was also laughing my ass off. Chuckles had that talent. He could make even the nastiest of people laugh. It was a gift. He didn’t take shit seriously. Everything was a joke to him. A sixty-three-year-old high school kid, that was Chuckles all right. A dude who never stopped getting himself into trouble; and a dude who, because he was always getting himself into trouble, never stopped entertaining.

Like the time he put a bumper sticker on the back of his insurance coworker's car. The bumper sticker said, HONK IF YOU’RE AS GAY AS I AM! Poor bastard didn't know the sticker was there until three days later when a passerby pointed it out to him. Some gay dude walked up to him on a street corner and said, Honk, honk, big fella. What did the co-worker immediately think? He thought, Fucking Chuckles.

So, when Chuckles completed the cock rendering, I knew he could hardly wait until Buddha came out of the bar which would be any minute since he had to get home to the girlfriend or his ass would be grass. We both stood outside the bar, drinking our drinks, smoking our butts, freezing our asses off in the Albany mid-winter, but laughing too. Snickering like two little kids who’d just rang their neighbor’s doorbell and took off.

But I’d be goddamned it wasn’t Buddha who exited the bar and approached the black Beemer. Instead, it was a dude by the name of Rod Last Name Not Known. Chuckles and I nearly shit ourselves. Rod was one of those big, scary, mysterious dudes who came into Lanies every now and again, sat by himself, never spoke a word to anyone, just played his Quickdraw, drank his red wine, and kept all to his lonesome. I mean, everyone knew who he was and what he did for a living, something that could make you dead, very quickly; but no one dared talk to him about it for fear of pissing him the fuck off. So, we all kept our distance from the big mafia thug.

Tonight, he was dressed in his usual black pants, patent leather shoes, and black leather coat with a shirt and tie underneath, his thick black hair slicked back on his round head. When he approached the Beemer and caught sight of the cock, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was