The Dragon's Last Gasp

By Woude' Wood

Set during the post-Vietnam war era . the main character survives an inner city environment plagued with alcoholism and poverty. He is a quiet, educated, street wise recovering heroin addict who decides to move to stately Lakewood Ohio. It is a small reserved town, mostly composed of white burgher-types. It is integrated with blacks and some immigrants who are, for the most part, peaceable. Peace, though, had eluded the big city nearby in recent months. During this time the city lies in the grip of a serial murderers rampage against young women. The Dragons Last Gasp opens up on Clevelands streets, Woude Woods first novel, where you ride shotgun on a classy American suspense/detective fiction.

Woods hero, Paul Long drives a classic vintage Fleetwood as he canvasses Clevelands inner city following the terrifying trail inside the killers stomping grounds. He and a childhood friend are determined to find out what happened to someone named Marcie --- one of the killers victims. She is tied to his own history of psychological and emotional experimentation with drugs and addiction-a hard, unforgiving bondage. Woods narrative is as sleek as the automobile Paul drives. The story reaches a stirring emotional level as Longs own inner struggle and the demons from his past are revealed.. He rubs elbows with street pharmacists, with local cops, with the night and its constituents searching for clues and tracking leads in the ghetto, stalking a killer who seems uncannily familiar. In addition, Wood manages to touch a raw nerve with his startlingly clear portrayals of the people living in the street. Chasing the Dragon will affect the reader profoundly.

Wood builds up suspense and grit. His pictures of the cityscapes create a sense of forboding, preparing a surprising, unexpected and explosive showdown. The Dragons Last Gasp cycles through the classic icons of detective fiction with a deft touch. There is a fascinating blend of machismo coupled with deep-thinking. The heart of its hero is hypnotic, yet his presence is fundamentally sound and assuring in the night. The book thus succeeds not only in coming to grips with the Dragon, it brings justice home as secrets are exposed in the finale make it unmistakeably clear that this is indeed the Dragons last Gasp!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479778379

Woude' Wood

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Woude’ Wood grew up in the inner city housing projects near 55th street. In the Cedar/Central neighborhood, his father died at 52. His biological mother also died when he was six years old. Woude’ credits his second mother, Lillian, as the person who instilled in him the will and determination to survive and succeed in life. He graduated from East Tech High School, the same school that famed Olympians Jesse Owens and Harrison Dillard graduated from. He struggled for many years with alcohol and heroin addiction. He attended Cuyahoga Community College and Capital University, earning his degree at 38. He retired from Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, Juvenile Division as a probation officer. Wood is an avid runner. He currently lives in Bay Village, Ohio.

Book preview

THE DRAGON’S

LAST GASP

WOUDE’ WOOD

Copyright © 2013 by Woude’ Wood.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4797-7836-2

Ebook 978-1-4797-7837-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 03/23/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

115940

CONTENTS

Acknowledgment

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

When the publisher emailed me the total galley for the front and back cover of this manuscript-I was overcome with emotion. Dragon’s Last Gasp is a personal affirmation. I have learned first-hand that one has to be determined to blossom in the soil that one is planted in. Among us old –school fellas, there exists the notion of staying down. If your origins are the same as ours, you know the essence of those two words. I thank my Creator for sustaining my life on this earth long enough to fulfill a dream. I thank my mother Lillian, for rescuing my older sister, my younger brother and my self. I hope to see them on the other side. I thank Blackjack, Slip, and Shorty for always being there. Of course, without my children all seven of them and the woman who bore them I might have faltered along the way in this journey-thru it all I knew they were depending on me to be a man and a father. I thank Mary Jo, my purest friend for supporting me in any endeavour. I thank Blood for watching over me way back when, my BFF, and to Two -Mike C for not letting me quit. I thank Josephine for picking up where Lillian left off.

Most of all, I thank Lilbit for believing in me and encouraging me to stay down……….

I

Paul glanced at his wristwatch—4:00 am. He had to get some rest soon. It bothered him about Harvey. The entire episode completely blindsided him. There had to be some reason why he exploded.

He sat up in bed and swung his legs around. Planting his feet on the floor, he gave his thighs a peremptory pat. If he was going to get any answers, he’d better get shakin’. He needed to find Ella—he could sleep anytime.

He quickly dressed in what he had worn to work earlier; a black raw silk shirt; gray baggy slacks, pleated and cuffed; a black snakeskin belt with a pair of square-toed gray lizard-skin string ups. Closing the door to his apartment, he turned the key, gave the knob a firm tug to make sure it was locked, and proceeded down the hall.

He momentarily fixated on the ornate pattern of the Oriental rug carpeting the lobby. The smell of the cedar woodwork and the wrought iron balcony gave the old brick six-suite apartment building a turn-of-the-century flavor. Collectively, all of it stirred an odd nostalgia inside of Paul. He moved there when he first got clean. Lakewood was a small town; the community, multiracial and multicultural, was comprised of Middle East immigrants, families from Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. There were Africans and Europeans; many were from Ukraine. Whites dominated Lakewood. Paul Long was honest about himself to the leasing agent. He squandered a lot of years using heroin, drinking cough syrup with codeine and other opiates. It cost him a marriage, the absence, for a time, of his children, and finally a job that he abruptly quit while in a drug-induced state of paranoia.

After twenty-six detox programs and ten treatment centers, including one nearly fatal overdose (the paramedics later told him that after shooting Narcan into his veins with no response, they were prepared to use the paddles before pronouncing him dead)—through Providence or God and a program—he was a survivor. He was trying to reconstruct his life.

There is a quiet calm at four in the morning. The calm was unable to camouflage the deadly violence that struck Greater Cleveland in recent months. In fact for almost two years this community was plagued with a string of baffling and mysterious homicides. The night was cool. I should’ve worn my leather jacket, Paul thought to himself.

His destination was the Mount Pleasant neighborhood near East 116th Street. The area around the Park—one that his parents had taken him to as a child, one that he had taken his kids to, one that he wanted to take his grandchildren to as soon as he was given some. Recovery placed that desire within the realm of the possible. It was slowly reconnecting him with those loved ones collaterally damaged by his illness. He thought about the irony of the police finding Marcie’s body there.

There were two basketball courts in the Park. During summer afternoons, the young black boys could be seen shooting hoops; the blazing sun made their dark bodies glisten as the sweat poured. Under the shade of the sycamore trees, you could see smoke ascending from the heavy wrought iron grills that the city dotted all over the Park. The smell of charcoal and barbecued pork ribs filled the air.

The murders convinced Paul that something unusually heinous was at work in this neighborhood. His interest was more than casual. There was Marcie’s passing and the discovery of her body in the Park. It affected him on many levels. He needed to know what happened, how it happened. Three other people were murdered, their half-naked bodies hid under the brush—they were all women. Ella knew one of them. Tonight he would look for answers, and then there was the incident with Harvey.

This was his town. He was born in its bowels near East Thirty-Six and Cedar. He and his family lived in a side-by-side duplex that they shared with aunts and cousins. His grandfather had given them the house. In the late forties, he constructed a new home on Bartlett Street, a lovely middle-class neighborhood that bordered Shaker Heights, Ohio—fifty years ago it was the wealthiest community in the United States!

Paul respected his grandfather. Burl was a man of practical, grounded vision. Paul believed he was a man ahead of his time. He was one of the first blacks to drive a bus for the Cleveland Transit Authority before it morphed into the modern-day RTA system. Paul smiled as he recollected the times when he stood at the corner of East Fifty-Fifth Street and Quincy Avenue, waiting for his grandfather to pull up to this stop. He could board without having to drop the 15¢ into the collection box like all the other patrons. Even now, he could see his grandfather’s wide grin of surprise as he waved Paul to the bench in back of him or the one directly across the aisle from his cab seat. It was clear to the other passengers that this was his grandfather. Paul liked the audible his grandfather made approaching each stop. East Fifty-Fifth street! Woodland Avenue, next! Cross-town!" he would blare; turning the big steering wheel, he guided the huge bus to the curb. A proud man, his dress was conservatively impeccable. Grandma kept his shirts lily white, the collars starched hard as cardboard. Paul could never recall seeing him when he wasn’t wearing a necktie. He was a Republican—strange for a black man in those days. Grampaw (all the kids affectionately sounded out the phonics) believed in hard work, the sanctity of the political process, and God. He preached in church on Sundays and sold real estate part-time. He watched Meet the Press and Face the Nation on weekends too. He followed the presidential elections with close scrutiny, reading the newspapers every day. Yes, Paul decided, Grampaw was a man ahead of his time.

His grandfather always reminded him to sit up straight. Unable to contain his excitement his legs joyfully swung back and forth. Paul would ride until his route brought him back to where he boarded. Grandpa released a handful of quarters from the gadget belted to his waist. He carried it to make change for the fares. Clutching a fistful of silver, he placed the shiny coins into Paul’s hands, gave him a big hug, and sent him on his way home—until the next time. These were the snippets of happiness, brief yet enduring, that Paul remembered. They still put a lump in Paul’s throat and tugged at his heart. Paul often contemplated what would have become of his life had he