PAYBACK meets COLLATERAL
meets the mean streets of Atlanta, Sergeant Malcolm Hobbs and his X-Men
Homicide Squad in this tale of suspense
In the dead of night, an
Atlanta neighborhood erupts in sudden violence and introduces a new case file
for Sergeant Malcolm Hobbs and his elite X-Men Homicide Squad. This
investigation exposes evidence that takes on an extremely personal note for the
X-Men when the identity of the victims are Harold Castle and Lamont Hendricks,
tough but respected members of the Atlanta Police Department’s Narcotics
Enforcement Unit or NEU.
Meantime, Fabrice Mousassi is
an ex-con in town with a few days to kill some crooks. With no honor among
these thieves, he needs to settle the score and right the wrong done to him and
his partner-in-crime, Julianna Delacroix. They don’t want the entire $25
million; they didn’t earn that. They only want the share that they did earn. No
one will stop them from getting what’s theirs. Not their former colleagues, not
the police and not anyone else who dares to challenge the Mousassi-Delacroix
team. No one.
The head-on collision between
the unstoppable forces of Team Mousassi-Delacroix and the immovable objects of
the X-Men Homicide Squad is inevitable and something has to give. The intensity
of these entities and the connections they reveal with the seedy sides of
Atlanta’s criminal underworld spurs the pursuit for revenge and its multimillion-dollar
payday on one side and justice to solve the crimes in the swiftest manner
possible on the other.
However for Hobbs in
particular, this maze reignites still healing wounds from his painful past that
may finally explode and eventually lead to his professional and personal
disintegration.
Cortez Law III is the author
of four independently published books. The romance novel, My Brother’s Keeper
(2001) and the Atlanta X-Men Homicide suspense/mystery novels, The Serialist
(2010), Kremlin Tide (2014) and Cold Lick (2015). Cortez presently resides in
the Metro Atlanta, Georgia area. Please visit him online at
http://www.cortezlaw.net
***
e-mail:
metrobbb@windstream.net
Smashwords Author Profile:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/CortezLawIII
Smashwords Book Page: Cold
Lick:
Amazon Author Page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/cortezlawiii
Q & A: AUTHOR
1) What is the origin of Cold
Lick?
I started from several
genesis points if you will. One of them was the missing persons angle in
particular missing children. Not so much from a when did it happen, but more
from what happens later in life perspective. Two and I guess three
simultaneously, I always want my main characters to deal with issues of faith.
So I combined, let’s say, ‘complications’, in the police department with how
those complications affect the biblical faith of some of the Atlanta
detectives. Fourthly, I wanted some highly motivated criminals operate from a
revenge motif that drove the story’s narrative with increased momentum. Like
the book cover copy states: “…The head-on collision between the unstoppable
forces of Team Mousassi-Delacroix and the immovable objects of the X-Men
Homicide Squad is inevitable and something has to give…”
2) How important is family to
these characters?
Family, you hope with all
people, is a critical facet to their daily lives. If all else fails, aside from
God Almighty, man you pray for that strong family support. God doesn’t error
with his choices of family relationships. He put us all where we’re supposed to
be and that includes our different nationalities, races, ethnicities and cultures.
For the Cold Lick folk, I get to play the role of creator with the little ‘c’.
As such, there’s a common brokenness that we real people can certainly relate
to and like the realms of fantasy and reality, tragedy and pain and hurt to
varying degrees will always present it and themselves until the Lord says
that’s enough to death and the grave. But how they all deal with it I hope
strengthens their characters and encourage us all in the real world that
despite those negative or challenging circumstances, we too can overcome evil.
Oh, and better to do it with good like the Bible teaches. Some find out that’s
easier said than done and the chips fell like a mountain everywhere.
3) Do you ever have writer’s
block?
Ah, that age old question.
I’ll tell you what, I’ve experienced its first cousin called, Time Management.
A writer writes; that’s what he does. But man, if I don’t clock myself every
day and that means the allotment of so much time per checklist item for the
day, I wonder where the time went. The potential time drain? The marketing!
Whew! When you start from scratch to build that brand that no one has ever
heard of, you have to spend a GREAT deal of your day doing just that. As an
independent writer/solopreneur, you have to balance the craft of writing with
the varied components of marketing. You want my writer’s block, there it is.
Marketing! LOL!
4) You write crime stories.
How do you handle the gruesome details of homicide cases especially for the
Christian reader?
For one thing, I don’t
believe I step over into excess with descriptive crime scenes. Of course I
describe what the detectives see, but I don’t think there’s an elaborate
overkill to it. I’d like to classify my stories as a ‘PG-13’ movie rating and
not today’s PG-13, which I think can be more of an ‘R’ rating. I give enough to
establish what’s there, the detectives or forensic/crime scene professionals
assess the findings and I move on. Same with the action sequences.
5) What are your goals as a
writer?
What I’d like to do, to
achieve is create some variance in the AACM and AAM, those being the
African-American Christian Market and the African-American Market or General
Market. By variance, I simply mean a greater range of genre success in the
market. These markets love the romance stories of several characters trying to
find the right man or woman, but is that all these markets want? Where are the
other mysteries, suspense/thrillers, horror, science fiction and fantasy
writers/stories? Denzel Washington, Wil Smith, Wesley Snipes, Morgan Freeman,
Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne and their African-American peers don’t headline
romantic stories every time out at the box office. The flip side is also true
with Halle Berry, Vanessa Williams, Kerry Washington, Angela Bassett, Gabrielle
Union, Viola Davis and the list goes on and on. They don’t only star in various
romantic tales. Diversity is the word. Writers of shared mindsets with me face
an obstacle that few have conquered. Namely Walter Mosley and I can think of
few others with his longevity. Maybe the time has come for that diversity to
take some ground in the market. In addition to all of that, I pray for readers
of other racial backgrounds who enjoy stories of mystery, suspense and thrills
while simultaneously just as absorbed by the humanity of the characters in the
world in which they live.
Excerpt:
1
Intersection of Foundry &
Elm Streets
Vine City Neighborhood
Atlanta, GA
3:45 A.M.
Irving ‘Smack’ Black, Jr.,
‘membered one of his movie heroes Gordon Geico or Gekko or whatever his name
been was great philosophizin’, he ain’t never lied, ‘cause greed was good.
Whether it been was Wall Street or insurance, he ain’t never known greed to be
anything other than good. Right now, this homeboy was good and greedy and
hopefully a little lucky, in additional. Lucky enough not to squeezed the
trigger on his .380 semi-automatic. It been chillin’ in his front pants beneath
his black hoodie hidin’ under a short brown leather jacket liked bottles of
Cristal in a bucket a ice durin’ a Saturday night 70s ‘Blue Lights in the
Basement House Party’ in the SWATs. He needed a breathin’ mask after all that
been was done in his thinkin’.
He chilled with his back
kissin’ the rear fender of a suped up 90s Cadillac and he faced a ol’ school
Toyota Corollary. He kept quiet ‘cause this part of Atlanta was so fulled up
with drugs and all that came with it that it was always bein’ raided by Red Dog
and Narcotics Units of the ATL. They gots good reason to be out in Vine City
and so did he. He peeped around the left side of the fender and there it been
was: Like fifty yards away at Foundry and Vine Streets, couple a brothas eased
down Vine and stood next to a apartment compound and the bent down ‘Stop’ sign.
They watchin’ everything and everyone and everybody and everywhere and all them
other everys.
His breathin’ raced now. He
ain’t never prayed much in his 37 years mainly ‘cause again he was so lucky in
his job. Plus, his .380 ain’t a bad god to have at his side whenever he needed
a loyalty friend. Ain’t let ‘im down befoe, why tonight gotta be
dysfunctionality at all? Dysfunctionality. Yeah, the sistahs gave up the lovin’
to a brotha with a good vocationary. Yeah, they did. He told himself to chill
that and checked out the scene down the street. That’s it. Bags of cocaine and
thick wads of cash like a sistah in baby-got-back-Apple Bottom jeans! He tasted
the Cristal now!
Just as he started to shuffle
backward toward the curb for the right side of the Caddy, a black van cruised
straight up at him. He ducked and crawled under the Caddy. After the van passed
him, his right hand founded the .380 and showed it with a stiff arm. He aimed
lyin’ on his stomach tryin’ to spot a better view with another car parked in
front of him. Motor oil and gas stanked on the pavement below him, which meant
it was on his leather coat! Ain’t that some dysfunctionality chitlins with corn
kernels and dirt at the bottom of the pot? Focus, G’!
As the van slowed down near
the buy, he heard convo’. A little get-to-know-ya’ small talk from the van ‘foe
the real deal jumped off. Now, two brothas in dark clothes popped out the front
of the van. Red light, stop; yellow light, caution and slowed down…the green
ain’t comin’ fast enough for everybody, anybody, somebody, nobody and all the
other bodys includin’ him. Well, that changed like now, a’ight. He strained to
slide with the grit and grime and gas and oil under the Caddy. That’s when a
little somethin’, somethin’ jumped off with raised voices and gun hammer
clickins. Yeah, it was on now.
From his snake belly crawlin’
spot, the van brothas gots the drop on the local homies. One man snagged the
big blue canvas bag and the other latched on to the second black canvas bag.
And the van boys gots on black masks, likewise. He needed to flow with his plan
‘foe them Red Dogs and Narcs crashed the party. Ain’t no house lights flicked
on yet and that was mo’ luck and mo’ good.
Then ta-a-dow! What was goin’
on with a dark four-door sedan stoppin’ at the corner a Graves and Foundry.
Might be APD U.C. The driver kicked a little gas and made the short trip up
Foundry and stopped in front a the van. Two mo’ dudes in baggy dark clothin’
and black masks announced they presence like Santa Claus and Rudolph at Xmas.
‘Cept they used .9mms aimed at the van boys. Man, this ain’t no good. He didn’t
figure on usin’ his own black mask hidden in his inside jacket pocket since he
black as night moreover, but with all this noise now, he ain’t got no choice.
He flipped his vision on the
scene and into his jacket pocket, the scene, his jacket pocket, the scene, his
jacket pocket. Then shots shocked his body like he got shot! His head slammed
into the under the carriage of the Caddy. He froze liked a snow cone. Voices
panickin’ and like God in the Bible said, “Let there be light” and there been
was in a house needin’ Extreme Makeover ‘Hood Edition. He scrambled like eggs
in a cast iron pan to his feet. Now, he tripped out so bad he wanted to snag a
handful a ol’ cigarette butts layin’ ‘bout and smoke ‘em right there. Heart
beatin’ and sweat pourin’…body and mind quittin’, but naw, he ain’t goin’
nowhere without the score, baby.
Mask on and his mind tellin’
him he had heart, he breathed three times, bended down and ran along the parked
cars and the concrete curb with the .380’s hammer cocked. From the front of the
Caddy, he saw two men down on the ground. The van brothas. The dark sedan dudes
pointin’ them shiny black 9 mils at them apartment/stop brothas ‘bout gave ‘im
a Fred Sanford, “This is the big one”, heart attack momentumum. They arguin’
somethin’, somethin’ ‘bout, ‘Can’t take the money, fool!’ When he started
risin’ up, mo’ shots woked up the dead or alive. This time the apartment/stop brothas,
unarmed, they fault, just died. Them dark sedan dudes tripped out now. They
runnin’ for they sedan when mo’ lights turned the night into a Smoky the Bear
fire. Seconds after that and he ran along that curb behind cars so close they
right across from him now, he down low and aimed again when mo’ shots from some
brothas on his side of the street tap danced the road and the dark sedan. Funny
thing was though he ain’t heard no laughin’, the dark sedan dudes ain’t fired
back in self-defensive. All they done was run to the sedan with both bags in
hand. Then mo’ shots breaked some of the sedan’s windows. The driver dropped
his bag as the sedan rolled through the shootin’. Footsteps pounded the
sidewalk for him and he hated to do it, but he ducked under another car and
played dead. Those feet ran passed and behind him. Screamin’, shoutin’, guns
firin’, feet runnin’, tires squealin’. Chaos, man. Again, through that snake
belly spot, the brothas who done did the shootin’ and runnin’ ran across the
road and dragged the two apartment/stop brothas down Elm Street and outta
sight. It was now or never, Irving.
He checked the area
everywhere and all those other everys. Saw the black canvas bag ‘bout three
feet in front of ‘im. The blue bag just sat next to the two dead van brothas.
Too far away and now mo’ sirens, mo’ sirens, mo’ sirens, mo’ sirens. He dove
for the bag that was closest. He heard mo’ gunshots around the corner. Luckily
for him, he ain’t parked around that corner. He fastwalked west on Foundry and
hung a quick left on Sunset Avenue. That’s where he parked his tricked out
green Mazda Hatchback 323 that would make them West Coast Customs and Pimp My
Ride TV shows proud. His imagination seen cops and ambulance on the scene now.
The gunshots stopped. So did the screamin’, shoutin’, runnin’ and squealin’.
Peace, man. When he unlocked his Mazda, he thew the bag on the passenger front
seat. Still hyped all over, he lost the temptation not to check inside. Was it
been the drugs or the money? Unzipped the black bag, either one was a solid,
and hello Benjamins! He laughed lookin’ around as he did. This was easier than
he ever thought it could been was. It all been a part of his philosophizin’
strategically that went down a somethin’, somethin’ liked this: Firstly, ‘Done
did unto others befoe they done did unto himself’. Secondarily, ‘Life helped
them who then helped themselves’. Thirdarily, and the bestest one, ‘Revenge was
a dish bestest served by takin’ everything from anyone, everyone, someone but
not no one 365/24/7’. Yeah, baby!
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