City of Rose

  Praise for

  “CITY OF ROSE has my favorite kind of hero, a tough guy romantic with a smart mouth and a dark past. Terrifically written, and populated with rich characters, this book had me by the throat from page one.”

  —Chelsea Cain, New York Times bestselling author of ONE KICK and HEARTSICK

  “Brilliant…CITY OF ROSE, Rob Hart’s latest Ash McKenna novel, is as sharp as the devil himself. Hart is a master storyteller who can turn a city into just as vital as any flesh and blood character.”

  —Brian Panowich, author of BULL MOUNTAIN

  Praise for

  the first Ash McKenna novel

  “The New York of NEW YORKED is a place of heartbreak and murder that I highly recommend you visit.”

  —Josh Bazell, author of BEAT THE REAPER

  “Outstanding...I loved this novel. It may be the most quixotic hard-boiled I’ve read in ages. With clever nods to Chandler and lots of muscular metaphors, Hart has written an achingly lovely farewell to one man’s past.”

  —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

  “Hart’s debut is a terse, grim, gritty, quickly moving noir that deftly explores post-9/11 New York...Ash is a wrecking ball of an investigator, a direct descendant of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Edgy... relentless pacing and strong sense of place.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “There are good action scenes, nice offbeat characters, but what lingers is the swoony dialogue... Noir with a tingle of doomed but sweet romance.”

  —Booklist

  “A bloody valentine to a New York fast disappearing, this debut is an urban noir populated with memorable characters.”

  —Library Journal

  “A hard-boiled crime novelist in the vein of greats like Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, not to mention modern masters like Lawrence Block and Dennis Lehane.”

  —Staten Island Advance

  “The literary version of THE WARRIORS.”

  —Lyndsay Faye, author of THE GODS OF GOTHAM

  “One part Dennis Lehane, one part Lee Child, and one part pure Rob Hart.”

  —Jenny Milchman, author of COVER OF SNOW and RUIN FALLS

  “With a deft eye for the dirt under its polished fingernails, Rob Hart finds the rotten core inside today’s Big Apple.”

  —Todd Robinson, author of THE HARD BOUNCE and editor of THUGLIT

  “New York is a verb, and the chase is on. You won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough.”

  —Suzy Vitello, author of THE MOMENT BEFORE and THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES

  “A masterful debut… this is a book that sticks with you.”

  —CrimeSpree Magazine

  “Clever, witty, full of attitude—but never full of itself—Rob Hart’s debut novel doesn’t waste a syllable.”

  —David Corbett, author of THE DEVIL’S REDHEAD and BLOOD OF PARADISE

  “Like a sucker punch to the guts before you turn the first page.”

  —Matthew McBride, author of FRANK SINATRA IN A BLENDER and A SWOLLEN RED SUN

  New Yorked

  The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella

  From one of the brightest new stars in crime fiction comes the riveting new Ash McKenna novel. Ash has stepped away form his former life of violence, living in Portland, working as a bouncer at a vegan strip club — given Portland’s genial atmosphere, he hasn’t had to hit anyone in months, and he’s quite happy about that. So when Crystal, one of the dancers, asks for help finding her daughter, Ash is hesitant. The girl, Rose, was snatched from daycare by Crystal’s junkie ex-husband, and Crystal doesn’t want to involve the cops. This job sounds like cake, but Ash reluctantly declines. A few hours later, Ash is tossed in a trunk, put on his knees behind a warehouse, and threatened at gunpoint to stay away from Rose. Unfortunately for his abductors, they don’t realize that threatening Ash McKenna has the exact opposite effect from what they intended. Ash sets out to get the girl back. The hunt stretches from drug dens on the outskirts of town to the halls of government. City of Rose continues one of the most compelling new crime fiction series, by one of the freshest literary voices in the genre.

  To my parents. Despite what reading this book might lead you to believe, they did an excellent job raising me.

  “Now you run on home to your mother and tell her... tell her everything’s alright. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”

  —Shane

  It’s a sloppy punch, thrown from the shoulder and not the hip, in an arc broadcast so widely it may as well be lit in neon. It catches me on the side of my face, below my ear, and to anyone watching it looks like a good land, but truth is, I barely feel it.

  The vintage-T-shirt-wearing asshole who threw it shakes open his fingers, eyes on fire at his newfound ability to be a tough guy. Jumping and hollering in his too-tight jeans, a goofy smile warping his patchy facial hair.

  His garage band friends, thoroughly satisfied that he’s dominated me, grab him by the arms and make a big show of pulling him away. Like they’re doing me a favor, holding back the beast.

  It’s almost enough to make me laugh.

  “That’s what you get,” he says, slurring his words. “Fucking faggot with your faggy fucking hat.” He yanks his arms free, points at me, and puffs out his tiny bird chest. “Next time I come back here I won’t go so easy on you.”

  They wait for me to say something but I just shrug at them. There’s not really an appropriate response to that kind of thing that doesn’t involve taking his teeth. And there was a time I would have seriously considered that. Instead I watch them saunter down the block, the three of them laughing at the navy-blue night sky.

  Control your anger before it controls you.

  Inhale, exhale.

  There are a few people outside now, pretending to smoke cigarettes but really watching what happened, probably bummed there isn’t blood on the ground. I tip the brim of my straw cowboy hat at the spectators and head back into Naturals.

  Now that those three idiots have been cleared out and people are finishing their smokes, it’s fairly empty inside. Three men and two women nurse drinks at the bar running the length of the right wall. To the left, two young couples hover at the foot of the elevated stage, a fight not enough to draw them away from the view. The high-top tables surrounding the stage are empty, a few of them scattered with temporarily abandoned drinks.

  Calypso is up on the stage, dancing to “Under Pressure” by Queen and Bowie. The couples around the stage toss dollar bills as she sweeps around and sticks her ass into the air, wraps her hand around the shiny brass pole, and dips, whipping her curly brown hair off her face. Her dark skin is nearly black in the dimness, the thin fabric between her legs glowing in the black light.

  Tommi is behind the bar staring at me, pretending like she wasn’t just peeking out the window. I sit at the bar and she sets a glass of ice water down in front of me, picks up another glass to clean.

  “Want some extra ice for that face, Ashley?” she asks, leaning into my full name like it’s supposed to make me feel inadequate.

  “Did that guy hit me? I hadn’t noticed.”

  She puts the now-clean glass along the back wall, in front of the glittering rainbow of liquor bottles, and places her hands on the bar, her thick arms laced by worn tattoos. She leans toward me so I can hear her over the music.

  “I’m a pacifist,” she says. “And you know I don’t want trouble in my place of business. But you’re allowed to defend yourself. Especially with some asshole trying to stir shit up and act big. Everyone here is going to vouch for you and say it was self-defense.”

  Pacifist. Right.

  Tommi keeps a gun loaded with blanks duct taped to the underside of the bar, to the
left of the slop sink. The Condom, she calls it. Better to have it and not need it. Strange sort of pacifism.

  The thing I want to tell her is that if I hit the guy, best-case scenario is I hurt him enough that he sics a lawyer on me or on the bar, because he seems like the type to do that.

  Worst-case scenario is I start hitting him and can’t stop. She doesn’t need that kind of weight. Neither of us do.

  “They’re gone,” I tell her. “No one’s hurt.”

  “You could have gotten hurt.”

  “Doubtful.”

  The song ends. Next up is “Wasted Life” by Stiff Little Fingers. Calypso has good taste in music. With the mirrors behind the bar and the mirrors running along the back of the stage, it looks like there’s an army of naked women twirling around us.

  Tommi shakes her head. “Funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Word was you were a tough motherfucker. The guy who recommended you called you dangerous. I figured, maybe a guy like that could be useful. Instead I get a guy who lets people punch him in the face and says twenty words a night.”

  I take a sip of my ice water, so cold it makes my teeth hurt. “Disappointed?”

  She laughs, a sound that rumbles like it’s coming from the bottom of a cave. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’re not what I expected.”

  I shrug, take another sip. Feel a slight swell of warmth on the side of my face.

  The song ends and Calypso goes about picking up clothes and crumpled singles while Carnage waits in the back by the door to the kitchen and dressing room, wearing her patchwork schoolgirl outfit, red Mohawk spiked up into the air nearly a foot off her head, pointy like a buzz saw.

  The trick is Elmer’s Glue, she told me once.

  It’ll be quiet in the bar until Carnage gets on stage. This is a low-budget operation. Rather than paying a DJ, which Tommi can’t do, the girl coming off the stage goes to the dusty iPod hooked into the speaker system and queues up the next few songs for the girl going up on stage. Not exactly elegant, and there’s something very awkward about silence in a strip club, but it works for now.

  “So, when are you going to tell us more about yourself than your name, cowboy?” Tommi asks.

  I hold up my hands and count on my fingers.

  She asks, “What’s that?”

  “Think I hit my twenty words for the night. What needs getting done?”

  She shakes her head, this time like she really is disappointed in me. She says, “Check the bathrooms and straighten up downstairs. Got more beer coming in tomorrow.”

  Another thing Tommi can’t afford yet is a janitor.

  I begin to push away from the bar and Tommi leans close to me again, says, “Also, talk to Crystal before you leave tonight. She needs a hand with something, thought it might be in your wheelhouse.” She arches an eyebrow. “Though after tonight, I’m wondering if she might be wrong.”

  Rather than ask for an explanation—because, truly, I don’t care—I tip my hat at her and head off.

  Carnage’s song starts up, some metal thing I don’t know, and she proceeds to hurl herself around the stage. Launching herself off the pole and catching herself on the thick-gauge chains that extend from the corners of the stage into the ceiling. Stopping herself just before she topples into the crowd.

  She winks at me as I walk past. The asshole I kindly asked to leave had been making a grab at her, which sparked our little showdown. I give her a nod and knock loudly on the door for the ladies’ room. No answer, so I duck in and it’s mostly clean. I’ll give it a once-over when the place is locked up.

  The men’s room destroys any hope I might get off easy. Someone missed the toilet by a wide margin, forming a puddle on the wide gray tiles in the back corner. The room smells sharply of ammonia. I head back into the restroom alcove, open the small service closet, and roll the mop and bucket in.

  Get to work cleaning up some drunken asshole’s piss.

  You want to get the true measure of a town? The strip clubs are a good place to start.

  Back home, six months and a million years ago, I’d only been to one strip club, out in some industrial section of Queens. It was an anonymous building that disappeared into the night sky, the red brick painted black.

  There was a big line out front. The line didn’t seem to move. I was there for a friend’s bachelor party and someone in our group knew the owner, so we got to skip the line. Then we got “bottle service,” which meant two bottles of middle-shelf vodka and some containers of orange juice and cranberry juice, like you’d buy in a supermarket. I went and sat at the bar and ordered a whiskey, spent the rest of the night brushing off the women who were insisting on separating me from my money through the mechanism of lap dances.

  It was like a plague of tanned and glittery flies buzzing about, and when you thought the swarm was gone, it would loop back. The night took a bad turn when the bachelor passed out, and a handful of girls proceeded to dance all over him in some private corner, then insist to us they were owed several thousand dollars for their trouble.

  But that’s New York, and fuck you if you can’t cope.

  Portland’s polarity is completely reversed. The strip clubs here aren’t hidden behind black paint, tucked away in otherwise-abandoned neighborhoods. They look like bars. Sometimes you don’t even know what it is until you walk inside, where you find an equal mix of men and women. Sure, you get the weirdos who are attracted to places where naked women congregate, but going to a strip club in Portland is like going to a bowling alley most other places.

  There are no lap dances. The strippers aren’t even allowed to touch you, by law. There’s a difference between a guy who thinks he can cop a feel and a guy who knows it’s against the rules right off the bat.

  Lowered expectations keep the temperature down.

  My absolute favorite part about the strip clubs here, though, is that any place in Portland that serves alcohol also has to serve food. And this is a town where they take their food pretty seriously. I have yet to eat a bad meal I didn’t cook myself. Every menu in this town includes at least one instance of the word “artisanal.” Like if you aren’t making your own pickles you may as well give up.

  There’s one club where the guy who owns it also owns a cattle farm, and you get a solid steak for a few bucks and eat it while women take their clothes off for you. There’s an observation about the American psyche in there somewhere, for someone smarter than me to make.

  I don’t work in that club.

  Naturals is all vegan. This isn’t even a new concept—Tommi was the third person to think animal-free products and boobs would make a good combination.

  Most of the furniture is secondhand and the stage creaks when the music is low. The carpet very badly needs to be replaced. I try not to think too much about the carpet. People seem to like the food, which is mostly hummus plates and black bean tacos and cumin-dusted popcorn. Tommi is trying to crack the code on stuff like vegan cheesy nachos, but it isn’t going so well.

  She also has designs on the vacant storefront next to the club. Once the money comes pumping in she’ll knock down the wall and expand. Any day now. Until then it’s a low-key endeavor.

  But Tommi is dedicated. She takes the name of the place so seriously she won’t even hire dancers with bolt-on tits. Again, probably an observation there worth making.

  This is not the job I dreamed about when I was a kid—archeologist—but as a layover, it’s not so bad. It’s enough money to keep me alive long enough to figure out where I’m headed next.

  Which is hopefully: Someplace else, soon.

  The stainless steel surfaces of the closet-sized kitchen are gleaming by the time I’m done with them. This is the one thing that’s not supposed to be my job, but Sergio had to cut out and I offered to do it, because what the hell else am I going to do with myself besides sit alone in my apartment and stare at the wall?

  It’s been nearly two hours of cleaning and fixing stuff and everyone is gone and
the only thing left to do is lock up, and I figure I’ve successfully avoided Crystal, but as I step out of the kitchen she’s sitting at the bar, like she materialized out of thin air. I’m not even sure where she’s been this whole time I was working.

  She’s in street clothes, which means a black T-shirt and tight gray jeans, the two of them not meeting, so there’s a thin strip of cream-white skin around the middle of her. Black-and-white canvas sneakers on her feet and a small red purse sitting on the bar next to a bottle of beer. Her black hair is shaved down to stubble on the side of her head that’s facing me, and on the other side it’s draped like a curtain, reaching down to the middle of her back. Her face is flush and pink, freshly scrubbed free of makeup.

  The way she sits, her back is arched a little, like she’s posing for someone across the room. But she always seems to sit like that.

  She gets up as I approach, and her voice and posture are normal, but her eyes, blue-green like tempered glass, are concentrating real hard, like she’s carrying something that might shatter if she drops it.

  “Hey, Ash. How’s your face?” she asks.

  As I get close I’m flooded with the smell of her. Something citrus.

  “I’d say the guy hit like a girl, but you could probably hit harder,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t laugh at that, asks, “Can we go outside?”

  We step out and I pull down the front gate and clasp the thick padlock. The street is deserted, streetlights glaring yellow in the misty air. It smells like the ocean.

  Crystal pulls out a slim cigarette and places it between her lips. She looks up at me as she fumbles with a small white plastic lighter. “I know these are a little girly, but would you like one?”

  The truth is, yes, seeing a cigarette and I can feel the handjob tug of nicotine at my brain. But I resolved to stop pumping my body full of poison. Because in the not-too-distant past, my blood was mostly a mix of whiskey, nicotine, and whatever drug I had most recently gotten my hands on.