O'Casey's War

By Patrick O'Sullivan

O'Casey's War

 

After four years serving in the South Pacific John O'Casey knows the score.

 

Take one step into another man's jungle and the rules get real simple, real fast.

 

Kill or be killed.

 

That's why, once O'Casey's heels kiss New York concrete, he keeps moving.

 

Moving up 5th Avenue, toward the mansion of Josiah Stride, the crooked Wall Street alchemist whose wartime profiteering turned lead into gold and American boys into casualties.

 

Stride, like the rest of the country, thinks the war is over.

 

Like hell it is.

 

Fans of Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer may find John O'Casey's ugly mug appealing.

 

This story originally appeared in "Fiction River: Pulse Pounders Adrenaline".

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dunkerron Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781625600172

Patrick O'Sullivan

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN was the OHL and CHL rookie of the year in 2002 and the AHL rookie of the year in 2005. He remains the all-time leader in games, goals, assists and points for the Mississauga/Niagara franchise in the OHL. He played 334 games over eight seasons with the Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild and Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL. He played in three World Junior Championships and is all-time second in games played for the USA in tournament history. He scored the gold-medal winning goal for the United States team at the world junior championships in 2004, the first gold medal in the team's history. The 30-year-old now lives in southwest Florida with his wife and two sons. GARE JOYCE is a senior writer for Sportsnet Magazine. A former writer for ESPN: The Magazine and The Globe and Mail, Joyce has won four Canadian national magazine awards and been a finalist 21 times. He is author of seven books of sports non-fiction, including When the Lights Went Out, Future Greats and Heartbreaks and The Devil and Bobby Hull. Under the nom de plume G.B. Joyce, he has written two mystery novels, The Code and The Black Ace.

Book preview

1

The sky had begun to spit like it only spit in New York, an insulting rain that wasn’t hard enough to wash the rubbish from the gutters, but wet and cold enough that he wished the low clouds would just open up and get on with it. O’Casey rolled his collar tight and tugged the brim of his homburg low. He flipped the spent butt and watched the falling star arc to sputter against the rain-slick pavement.

The doll was a complication. He hadn’t expected her to tag along to Josiah Stride’s penthouse, but then maybe a Broadway show and dinner at the Colony was the going rate nowadays. O’Casey hadn’t been in New York since ’42, and a lot had changed since then.

A car backfired, and a dog barked, and a tin can rattled against a curb, and then O’Casey was alone again, alone with the city, and with the night. Shadows stained the sidewalks, a December chill frosted the streetlamps, and a shroud of low fog began to rise from the pavement.

A solitary cab passed hissing and O’Casey lost sight of the gilded entry door and the bundled-up doorman warming his hands beneath the wind-whipped marquee.

O’Casey lit another smoke. He settled deeper into the shadows, letting the darkness seep into his bones, letting the cigarette cloud fill his lungs, letting the boiling knot forever twisting in his gut grind his molars together. When he let his breath out long and slow a thin cloud of frost and smoke disappeared into the shadows waiting between the flickering streetlamps.

He’d give it another hour.

Dolls like that didn’t spend the night.

Not with guys like Stride.

Stride’s penthouse address was top drawer, old money material. Brick, six stories, the top three all Stride’s. Wall Street barons had been calling this joint home since the days of Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, and Morgan.