Little Mountain

Bob Sanchez writes like Carl Hiaasen on speed…Only a few novels have made me laugh out loud, but this is one of them. 

—Midwest Book Review

A madcap criminal caper…Perfect for those who like their eggs scrambled, steak rare and thrillers hammy.

—Kirkus Discoveries

Masterful writing with marvelous metaphors.

—Kaye Trout’s Book Reviews

Wonderfully zany, fun,
action packed…I highly recommend
this book.

—Reader Views

Bob Sanchez hits all the right notes in this zany comedy that will keep you turning the pages—and laughing out loud!

—Leslie Meier, author of the Lucy Stone mystery series

One cool debut.

—David Daniel, award-winning author of
The Marble Kite
and
Reunion

A masterpiece of comic writing.

—Kathryn Mackel, author of
The Hidden

You wrote a book? That’s nice, dear. I hope it doesn’t have any dirty words.

—The author’s mom

Seamy and steamy...a page-turner

—Ruth Douillette

Fun, quirky, and simply enjoyable.

—
Rebecca’s Reads

What I like best about Sanchez's writing is it's obvious he's having fun.

—
Wayne Scheer

"Getting Lucky" is a great summer
read,
a beach book with plenty of sass, saavy and surprise character twists.

—Jack Shakely

Copyright © by Bob Sanchez 2011.
All rights reserved.

Also by Bob Sanchez:

When Pigs Fly
(Read a
sample chapter
)

Getting Lucky
(Read a
sample chapter
)

Blog:

bobsanchez1.blogspot.com

Contact:

[email protected]

LITTLE MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER ONE

Lowell, Massachusetts, 1990

Viseth Kim took a last long drag and filled his lungs with smoke.
Across the street from the park where he stood, a row of tenement houses crowded together behind a row of street lamps.
He’d paid a dollar for a nine-year-old boy to do what the boy would have done for free: put rocks through a street lamp. Behind the dead light was Bin Chea’s house. Only the flickering blue glow of a television showed any sign of life on the first floor. The second and third floors were dark. Dim light showed through from the back of the fourth-floor apartment,
then
a light went on in front. The silhouette stood at the window, then disappeared.

        
Finally, the signal.
Show time.
The smoke drifted out of his nostrils. The cigarette hadn’t calmed Viseth any, and his muscles tightened. He didn’t
have
to do this. He’d gotten half payment, enough to get to California, and he wouldn’t risk jail.

         But he wanted the whole thousand. He picked up the shotgun at his feet, reached for the shells in his shirt pocket, and loaded them the way he’d been shown. Would he get away from there in time? And why the hell did the landlord have to live on the top floor?

         There’s a lot of money and shit stashed in that house, his friends said. We should team up and split everything. You don’t know this guy, Viseth said. You fuck
up,
you don’t know what he’ll do to you. He’s got guys’ balls bronzed, you know like baby shoes? So there was no chance he’d use only one barrel and save the other one for holding up the place. Too much could go wrong, and this was guaranteed. No time to fool around. Just pull the trigger and split.

         He slipped between two parked cars, but a moan broke the silence. What was
that
? Through the front windshield on his right he saw the face of a girl, an American teenager with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around a boy’s bare back. He stared, fascinated at the girl’s look of ecstasy.

         Viseth rubbed at his crotch. “I should finish that job for you, boy,” he said.

         The girl’s eyes opened, and she looked at him out of the corner of one eye. He suddenly remembered his real business. He shifted the shotgun to his left, hoping she didn’t notice it. Her friend was too busy to turn around.

         This could really ruin things. Time to take a stroll, maybe they’d be gone in a few minutes. His own girlfriend never liked to stay where they’d been seen making out in his car, especially when--

         Behind him the lovers’ car engine started, a radio blared with the screech of an electric guitar, and tires squealed. When he looked around, the car was at the bottom of the hill and racing through a stop sign.

         If she hadn’t seen the gun, he was okay. Probably she didn’t. Yeah, she had other things on her mind. He ran back to the house and hoped he’d avoid the lights of passing cars.

         Inside the front door, he sat for a moment on the stairway that led to the upper floors. The step squeaked under the weight of his body. Would any of the tenants hear him sneak up the stairs? Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this business. His nerves tugged at his muscles and wrapped his guts into an aching ball.

         Through the walls came sounds of laughter from the television. Off-and-on blue light flashed under the door of the first-floor apartment. No hall lights were on. Viseth felt his way up the stairs, holding the railing with his right hand and the shotgun with his left. The stock of the shotgun felt slippery with the sweat from his palm. Why the man wanted it done this way Viseth had no idea and didn’t care to ask questions. His heart thumped like a pipe on a garbage can. On the third floor, he began to hear the hum of an air conditioner from the top floor above him. Did Massachusetts have the death penalty? Would they execute a Cambodian or just send him to jail? Just send him to jail, maybe, if they caught him.
Couldn’t be worse than the refugee camp in Thailand.
Thai guards had shot anyone trying to cross the barbed-wire fences in either direction. Smugglers often paid the guards to look the other way, but the price was too high: five times the cost of a camp whore.

         On the top floor, he stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead, then off his hands. He wiped the shotgun’s moisture onto his shirt, which clung to his skin. He still had time to back out, but he raised a shaking hand--

         --and rapped on the door.

         Through the door came a muffled yell and a pause. He raised his shotgun as the door opened wide.

         The victim stood paralyzed by the sight of two barrels aimed at his face. Viseth stood paralyzed by the sight of this old Cambodian man he’d been paid to shoot. The man had white hair, and one eye looked puffed from a beating.
So that’s how--

         His mind went blank for an instant, then his finger twitched and squeezed.

         The night exploded. The butt of the shotgun smashed into him and sent a wave of pain flooding into his shoulder. The man went down on his back, and now he was red from his shoulders up. An old woman screamed. The room smelled of gunpowder and fresh blood and chicken soup. At the kitchen table, another man stood up, put a wallet in his pocket, and looked at him.

         “Follow me,” the man said, and they hurried down the stairs.

CHAPTER TWO

Detective Sambath Long didn’t
think the first-floor hallway looked like a murder scene. It was well-lighted and clean, though slightly musty, and it was still hot at midnight. The odor of garlic seeped through the walls
and
pervaded the hallway. An orange cat stalked unconcerned by his presence, looking like a mouse cop.
Mouse Cop.
Sam smiled. Even the pets policed the place.

         But by the third floor, a different smell filled the air, one that grew worse with every step. It reached into the folds of Sam’s brain and dredged up memories of Cambodia, of boiled swamp water, of a dead neighbor rotting on the path to the rice field. By the time he got to the fourth floor, the stench reached down and twisted his gut. It had to be his imagination at work; no homicide victim would smell so bad so soon.

         Five years before, a bomb had blown up a Cambodian couple in their New York apartment. They had been Khmer Rouge, a book had said. The book turned out to be wrong, but the man and his wife were still dead. How often did it happen: mistaken identity, hasty revenge?

         Sergeant DeVito stood at the doorway to ward off the curious. “What took you so long, Sam?” he asked. “Wilkins said you’d be right out.”

         Sam looked at his watch: Twelve-oh-five Saturday morning. In less than six hours he would be up again for his regular shift. “Wilkins called me only--” The victim lay on his back, the remains of his face a bloody pulp. Sam’s throat burned with a late dinner that didn’t want to stay down. “--twelve minutes ago,” he whispered.

        
A half
dozen officers milled about, which was too many. An evidence tech snapped the victim’s final pose while another waited to take a set of fingerprints. Sam took a deep breath, then knelt down and scribbled in his spiral notepad.

         The man was perhaps in late middle age, an Asian with thinning white hair and a slight build. He had no visible marks besides the immediate injuries--no tattoos, no old scars. The M.E. would have more details later. The victim’s right hand was mangled as though he had tried to stave off the buckshot. His left hand had dirty nails and an old bandage on the thumb. He wore gray slacks and a white shirt that was open at the throat and spattered with blood, a pair of mismatched socks, and brown shoes worn down at the heel. Several stitches had broken and loosened the soles, which looked only one short walk from wearing through.