‘It’s easy to see what the fuss is about. Sanders’ prose is sharper than a switchblade … It’s like Raymond Chandler, Lee Child and Elmore Leonard rolled into one.’ —Sydney Morning Herald on American Blood

ISBN: 978 1 76106 559 0

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ONE

Marshall said, ‘So what’s the problem, Ray? Tell me a story.’

Ray Vialoux drained his wine and picked up the bottle with his other hand before he’d even set the glass down. The place had only been open for two months, and Marshall thought that Vialoux might be setting an early precedent in terms of consumption. He watched Vialoux fill his glass to the rim and then lean forward to sup the first mouthful, like taking the foam off a pint of beer. Last time they’d seen each other was 2010, but Vialoux seemed to be aging in overdrive: bloodshot and pale, neck and jowls too stringy for a man not yet fifty. He looked like he’d eaten nothing for a week and then driven here at a hundred miles an hour with no windshield.

Marshall said, ‘Going off body language, I have to assume it’s pretty bad.’

Vialoux slid his glass aside, looked at his arms folded on the table. Shirtsleeves pushed back and a shabby bloom of cuff at his elbows. He scanned the room slowly, hunched and looking out from under his brow, like the burden of things going wrong was too much for normal posture.

He said, ‘I didn’t know who else to talk to, so you’re it.’

He gave Marshall half a smile, like his situation – whatever it was – still had a funny side. They were in an Italian restaurant down in Sunset Park. The dining room was the converted bottom floor of a two-story clapboard house on a corner site, fronting Fourth Avenue. Marshall hoped the place would survive. He and Vialoux were the only customers, and Marshall’s presence didn’t count for much as far as the check was concerned. He was still on his first beer, some kind of micro-brew label he’d never heard of, but no doubt a sensible offering in gentrified Brooklyn, where the local denizens would take a photo of the can and then put it on Twitter. They had a table near the back of the room, Marshall in the forward-facing chair so he could see the door, a row of windows on his right showing the cross street: quiet and dark, the blacktop shiny from late-evening rain. Every now and then a car went by with a hiss of groundwater.

Vialoux looked at his arms some more, seeming embarrassed. ‘Anyway. Thanks. I know it’s been a while, so I appreciate it.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet.’

‘Yeah, well. You showed up. That’s a start. Where you been, anyway? You were UC, right?’

NYPD, undercover.

The worst years of his life.

Marshall nodded.