The Space Coast Tatler: a novel
Status: Finished, edited, available to a good publisher.
A feisty, old newspaper publisher who hustles at pool and carries a gun. His young, green reporter who clumsily attracts trouble. A kleptomaniac who speaks to ghosts. A rocket engineer who works at a McDonald’s. Motorcycle gangsters who clean up for a dirty politician. A banker who hides fissile materials in a safe-deposit box. A billionaire who plots to blow up Kennedy Space Center.
They populate The Space Coast Tatler, a thriller story about a couple of the last of America’s great, intrepid journalists, who stumble onto and then dig up a domestic terrorism plot.
As the era of ink-stained wretches of journalism fades, there’s still small-town editor-publisher Mac MacGregor, who believes his defiant, little, weekly, tabloid newspaper on Florida’s Space Coast, full of crime news, entertainment news, and beach babes, still can make a difference. His new crime reporter, Stevie Guthrie, took the job fresh out of college because he figured Mac’s feisty little rag just might offer a journalism apprenticeship like no other—and because no one else would hire him.
When Mac has Guthrie dig into an old, unsolved roadhouse murder mystery, the young reporter discovers evidence of a plot to blow up Kennedy Space Center, involving a nutcase billionaire, a corrupt politician, and a gang of biker thugs. Before long, Guthrie and Mac are in a race to break the biggest story of the paper’s history—and to stay alive long enough to publish it.
Excerpt:
“Water please,” Paisley whispered, his weak breath barely forming words.
Wedge brought him a glass of water.
“Do you have a straw?”
“What?”
Paisley raised his hands. His palms and fingers were swollen, covered with blisters, scabs and dried blood.
“A straw. I can’t.”
Wedge went back into the kitchen. Fortunately, Gliesa grabbed straws, napkins, plastic forks and ketchup packets by the fistful every time she went to Wendy’s or someplace. So they had a drawer full. He stripped one and brought it back.
“Thank you.”
“Lemme tell you something, you little puke,” Wedge said.
“My name is Charlie.”
“Listen, Charlie. You have no idea what you’re into. So tomorrow, we’re going to the bank, you’re going to get this stuff for me, and then I’m going to let you go. And you’re never going to say a word about this to anyone. Understand?”
Paisley nodded.
“Or we’ll be back. Understand?”
Paisley nodded, with his eyes closed now.
Wedge got comfortable in the chair and fell asleep. So he didn’t notice when Charles Paisley drew his last breath.
Wedge awoke around 4 a.m., his back hurting like hell and his shoulders all stiff. He shuffled into the bathroom, took a couple Oxys, and came back to shake Paisley. The fat man didn’t respond. Not one bit. Wedge checked for a pulse.
“Well, fuck,” he said.
An hour later, on the edge of a swampy pond, Wedge, Mitch, and Boo dragged Paisley’s body out of Boo’s truck and left it for gators to feast upon.
Wedge had Paisley’s keys, but he wasn’t sure yet what to do with them.
