The Tavoli Social Club

[James Grace]

Hi I would be really grateful if you could provide feedback on my first few chapters. It's a murder mystery set in heaven...

ONE

When is dead not dead?
Is it when the blood continues to rush and the lungs still blow, when the cold still bites and the noise keeps on at just a decibel too much? Or is it something else, something far less obvious.
Could it not be that life is part one, the introduction, the incubation, the womb period for what was yet to come?
If Bruno had have been asked these very same questions just three and a quarter minutes beforehand, he may well have had no answer to give. At this precise moment in time however, he could at the very least hazard a guess.
“Okay,” he said, wondering why he wasn’t crying. “So I’m dead!”
“Pretty much, in a nutshell, that’s about it, yes” replied the stranger. And this girl certainly put the strange in stranger.
She had shoulder length blond hair that captured both light and shadow in the peaks and troughs of its subtle waves. Her eyes were a chalky blue, soft and wandering. Her eyes never truly met his, and given they were sat on what appeared to be his very own living room sofa, floating in a space filled with nothing else but space, Bruno was at a bit of a loss as to where her attention was actually drawn.
Her long dress would have looked more at home on a lady thirty years her senior. The floral pattern didn’t scream young and rebellious. More like old and well to do. She was a handful of kilos under the average weight for a girl of her age, which he reckoned was twenty five, give or take.
“I must be going crazy,” he sighed, resting his forehead in the palms of his hands, his elbows perched on his knees. A tattoo of an orchid dripping in blood ran the length of one forearm.
“You don’t seem crazy to me,” she said with a gentle pat on the shoulder. It reminded him of his mother’s consoling touch, the one he secured every time he undercut her expectations with his high school test results.
“I don’t seem crazy to me either, but then again the wacko’s always the last to know.”
His left hand tingled with pins and needles. He flexed his fingers for a while and when that failed, he hung his palm over the side of the chair arm, hoping gravity’s pull on his blood would restore the feeling of normality at a greater pace.
“I’m sorry,” said Bruno, definitely intrigued, but oddly without the slightest hint of panic. “You keep telling me I’m dead, but you’re giving me little else to go on here, lady. How long ago was it that I died? I mean, how did I go?”
The stranger fixed her gaze onto Bruno, pulling her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I must apologise for my rudeness, I really haven’t shown you the civility that you so rightly deserve, given the circumstances,” she said in what sounded like a Scandinavian accent. It was the first Scandinavian accent that he’d heard outside the medium of television speakers. “It’s just that I’ve been expecting my Mother and I was assured I was on the rota to receive her today.”
“Your Mother?” he asked, bemused.
“Cancer,” nodded the girl gravely.
“Your Mother has cancer?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” she corrected with a wave of a forefinger. “Had cancer, Bruno. The word you are looking for is had. H. A. D. Had.”
Time to put an end to this crazy talk once and for all he decided. The time was definitely nigh for some straight talking.
“Look, I don’t know where I am or what the fu..ff….ffff…..f.”
No matter how much Bruno tried, the noun just wouldn’t depart his lips.
“The word that you’re looking for, that awful, awful word, is no longer a part of your vocabulary. You must live under different rules now that you’re here. You’ll soon see that language of that sort is not a part of this place.”
As a New Yorker, okay, ex-New Yorker it seemed, the F-Word was a part of his every day vocabulary. He used it as a positive, a negative, an insult and an accolade, when supporting the Mets, hailing a cab or getting divorced. He could speak it in his mind, close his eyes and see the letters, but something smothered his capacity to articulate, his ability to roll out the sound.
“You mean I can no longer swear, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” she said. “But why would you wish to use such language, given the beauty of the place?”
With eyebrows raised, Bruno glanced at the nothingness beneath him, above him, before him and behind him, a look to either side painting an identical picture.
“Yeah, it really is something to behold,” he said with more than a heavy helping of sarcasm.
“Me, you, my sofa. Wow, what a view.”
“But you haven’t arrived yet,” she pointed out with a giggle. “You can’t see what’s not there yet to be seen. We’re outside; inside’s where the good stuff is.”
“So I’m dead then?”
“As disco,” she nodded.
“Right, I can believe that. But why are we sitting on my sofa?”
“Because Portman believes it helps with the adjustment, you know, less of a shock I guess, having your own sofa to wait on, something that you recognise, something homely and familiar.”
“Who’s Portman?” asked Bruno.
“Oh, you’ll like Portman. He’s the manager.”

 

[James Grace]

Tavoli Social Club Chapter 2

TWO

It was only when they stood that he realised he wasn’t wearing any shoes.
Jeans, sure.
T-shirt, check.
Socks and shoes, no.
He was in exactly the same clothes that he’d been stood outside the bar in only half an hour or so beforehand. He could still smell the nicotine on his clothes, even feel the sticky patch on his elbow where he’d been leaning against the varnished wood bar.
She held his hand as they stood side by side, in a mutually comfortable silence. The situation felt like a sixth grade date when holding hands was as far as you would get, and you were grateful even for that. They seemed to be waiting for the nothingness to open up and reveal a something.
His breathing seemed easy; he’d noticed this due to the silence that engulfed them. Bruno had smoked since he was fourteen, nineteen years now, and it had definitely taken its toll on his lungs. But not here, the in of oxygen and the out of carbon dioxide were pleasingly effortless.
Given they’d been stood in silence for at least fifteen minutes, he decided now would be as good a time as any to test the extent of his new found lung capacity. He held his breath and began to count.
One, two, three. He killed time by wiggling his toes into the fresh air, which he currently hovered in. He tried stepping down from his invisible perch, but wherever he stopped his foot, he seemed to discover some unseen solidity, preventing him from falling into the colourless, invisible, and presumably bottomless, pit.
Eighty-four, eighty-five.
He thought he ought to be a little more sullen, considering he was dead, but the situation felt instinctive, almost comfortable. He knew he was a goner, it had been confirmed to him now on more than one occasion, but he was strangely unphased by the prospect of a lifeless life, or whatever this quagmire turned out to be.
He knew this wasn’t a dream, that this was the real deal, but he was at peace with it all the same. When somebody tells you that you’re dead, you’d be excused for shedding even the lightest of tears, but nothing could be further from his mind.
He turned his head slightly as to observe her from the corner of his eye. She was actually quite beautiful, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on how. She was just one of those girls that had something about her. After twenty seconds or so of secret admiration, Bruno turned his attention back to lung capacity.
He eventually exhaled on one hundred and fifty nine, and only then because something happened that seemed far more interesting than his current challenge.
“Close your eyes, Bruno,” came the voice from behind him. He did as he was asked.
“Now step forward with me,” followed the next command, a strong palm resting on his shoulder.
“You can open your eyes now friend.”
“Holy ss…sshh.s….ss,” struggled Bruno.

 

[James Grace]

Tavoli Social Club Chapter 3

Three

The fields were a luscious deep green, back dropped by rolling hills and sheer mountains. The grass, the envy of any championship golf course, felt soft beneath his feet, too short to poke up between his toes yet spongy enough to leave small impressions on the soles of his feet. The fields were spread like blankets for miles, rolling almost unnaturally, with a perfection that was most definitely, could only be, Godmade.
There was a distinct smell in the air, but every time he tried to match it to his memory, it eluded him, evaporating back into the scentless oxygen. He could hear myriad of sounds in the background, akin to a television not quite muted, but like the smell, he struggled to pinpoint its unseen source.
Above him were stars, acutely obvious in the cloudless night, yet around him was daylight, somehow delivered without the glow of even a solitary streetlamp. He focussed on the bluish grey of the snow tipped mountains in the distance, picking out the odd flickers of light that were dotted sporadically around the base of the Herculean rocks.
“What are they?” he asked with a nod.
“They’re meeting places,” said the grey haired man, who, Bruno noticed, was still resting his hand on his shoulder.
“Meeting places for what?”
“Meeting places for people,” replied the old timer with the offer of a handshake. “I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m Khan.”
“How you doing?” said Bruno.
The man that stood before him was dark skinned, but not dark dark, more milk chocolate, Asia dark. A blue NY baseball cap rested atop of his head while the rest of his body was wrapped in cream pyjamas, the kind favoured by middle to upper income fifty somethings. Expensive and comfortable without being outlandishly extravagant. He was also without shoes.
“Portman thought it might be a nice little touch for me to come and welcome you. You’ll find this place a little different from Manhattan or Brooklyn though Bruno. A lot less traffic for starters, and a whole lot less rent,” smiled Khan warmly.
“So what is this place? Heaven?”
“Almost,” agreed the Scandinavian girl.
“Zion, Valhalla, it has many names too many different people. But this is only the first step,” answered Khan.
“What about my Father and Grandfather…and my cousin, Joe. I thought they’d be here to meet me. Isn’t that the way these things are supposed to work?”
Khan glanced momentarily at the girl before answering. “It is different for us all Bruno, there are many, many factors to consider.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the manner in which one died, or how a person may cope with meeting their loved ones, or if a person must achieve something before they fully migrate. Or even if their loved ones are accessible. But enough of that now, we must move on, we have a schedule to keep.”
“Move on to where? A schedule for what?”
“It’s a long walk Bruno, you’ll have plenty of time for questions,” said Khan, turning to the girl. “My dear, I bid you farewell and my kindest regards to your Mother. I’m sure she’ll be along any minute now.”
“Thank you,” she replied softly. “I’m sure she will.”


● ● ●


They’d been walking for at least an hour, mostly in a silence that seemed preferable to Khan. They’d been winding their way towards the mountain, following no discernable path or obvious trail, but instead meandering off course here and there before again pointing towards rock.
Every hundred metres or so they came across others, heading off in assorted directions with a passing smile or a wave of acknowledgement. Amazingly, Khan knew them all by name. Even more amazingly, so did Bruno.
“I know the names of people who I’ve never met before,” said Bruno, half stating, half asking.
Khan led with a smile, closely followed by a warm chuckle. “Sure you do. You know everybody and everybody knows you. If you imagine almost every good person who has ever lived has passed through here, it would be a pretty daunting place if you only knew the names of those you came across in your former life.”
“So, I’m going to spend the rest of eternity saying hello and waving to people. Great.”
They fell back into silence as they walked, never in a straight line, but like homing pigeons, a left turn here and a right turn there, but always with the unseen end destination in mind. After three hours of silence, they were about halfway there he was informed by Khan. Neither was breathless, no sweat had been broken.
“What are you thinking about, Bruno?”
The break in the silence startled him.
“You know Khan, if you hadn’t have just asked me, I probably could have told you. I guess I was just thinking about my life.”
“You looked as if you were miles away,” said the guide.
“I guess it is miles away, but if I remember rightly, I was thinking about the twenty seventh of October, nineteen eight six.”
“Sounds like a fairly precise memory.”
“The day was just drying out. The air was moist, the atmosphere was electric and the mighty Mets beat the Red Sox eight-five in game seven of the World Series. For the second time in our glorious history, we were the champions of the world. How’s that for a memory, eh, pal?”
“Happy days for you then?” asked Khan.
“Happy days alright, I was like Ritchie, Ralph Malph, Potsie and the Fonz all rolled into one. I was fourteen years old and I’d sneaked into the men’s room for a Marlboro while my Dad and Uncle Joe bought the cokes. A guy patted me on the head and told me to keep my eyes open because I was gonna be witness to something I’d never forget. What a day!”
Khan slowed his pace a little, forcing Bruno to match the tempo.
“So you’re a baseball man then?”
“All my life. I’ve never really paid any interest to football or basketball, just couldn’t get into them. There’s something real cool about the simplicity of baseball. You get a guy who stands there and can make himself a hero to the whole of America. It’s the only game that the team actually promotes the individual. It’s like that saying, the best of both worlds.”
“So you’re well and truly a baseball man!”
“You gotta be passionate about something,” cracked Bruno. “Why not baseball?”
“Why not justice?” asked Khan matter of factly. “Surely justice is worth being passionate about!”
“I’d agree with you there. I’ve been NYPD for the past eight years. I’ve seen the very worst of mankind so what I don’t know about justice, you could write on the back of a matchbook. But, the thing with justice is, it’s difficult to watch once a week with your pals while you’re sipping a beer and munching on a hotdog.”
Khan quickened his tempo once again and fell back into silence. Twilight zone thought Bruno, has to be. There seemed neither rhyme nor reason to this place, no obvious next step or chain of events. They just walked, mostly in silence.
Bruno reckoned on about fifteen kilometres between them and their starting point, but his feet remained out the bath fresh. He’d maintained his fitness throughout his living life, but surely that fact alone would not have held him in the physical stead that he currently enjoyed. Not a single ache annoyed his nervous system and not a single sore antagonised his mind. He estimated they were about three quarters of the way there.
The gargantuan mountain loomed ever closer, like a juggernaut bearing down on them but at a remarkably slow speed. What once were only glimmers of light had morphed into buildings, scattered up the amount as if in a race for the top. Pitched roofs, at which from this distance could equally have been either slate or wood, coned upwards from the mainly circular buildings.
Small winding pathways found their way through eager helpings of rock and meagre helpings of grass, hemmed in by sheer faces of sparkling, grey granite. There looked to be over a hundred small estates in number, varying not only in latitude and longitude, but also in size.
Each main building seemed to have at least three or four others branching off onto different levels. Is this what James Hilton wrote of in the Lost Horizon, is this Shangri-La, mused Bruno.
“Magnificent, isn’t it,” asked Khan as he followed Bruno’s gaze.
“Something special,” nodded Bruno. “So what are they all?”
“They are all parts of the clubs of one kind or another. Each with its own particular ambience.”
“That explains it then,” said Bruno dryly, but to no reply.
Khan picked up the pace once again and resumed the normality of silence. Within about two hours, they’d begun to climb the mountain.
Under normal circumstances, which were evidently now a thing of the past, his calf muscles would have burned during the ascent, but not today, not here.
They’d been climbing for an hour or so.
“Hi there, Ulrich,” said Bruno to a stubby little man as they carefully navigated their crossing paths on a single file, loose stoned trail. The thirty something male stepped by him, swinging his daughter, Sophia, onto his broad shoulders as they passed.
“So what are your thoughts on justice,” asked Khan.
“Wasn’t this conversation about ten miles back?” asked Bruno. “It’s certainly taken you a while to think of a follow up.”
“Do you believe that equality is the key to justice? An eye for an eye, Bruno. Should the punishment fit the crime?”
“Yeah, I guess. There’s no point in sending a jaywalker to the chair the same as a fifty dollar fine isn’t quite fitting for a child killer.”
“But who decides justice. Who owns the definition, who balances the scales?”
“Well considering I’m in his house, my money’s on the big guy.”
“But God is only the conductor, mankind is the band, the people who choose whether it works or not. The parameters of right and wrong have been set, it is up to us to make our decisions within them.”
“Okay with me,” said Bruno, wondering what kind of hole this conversation looked to be digging him.
“Glad to hear it,” said Khan. “We’re here.”

 

[James Grace]

Tavoli Social Club Chapter 4

Four

Framed in chiselled rock, the round wooden door, regal in its blackness, stood around four metres in diameter, a large wrought iron knocker protruding nobly from its left hand gateway.
The Sign above the door read : THE TAVOLI SOCIAL CLUB.
A complex of smaller buildings ran from the main dwelling like the thick legs of a queerly shaped spider, presumably reached through passageways and tunnels. Of the twenty or so annexes, more than half puffed a calm, lazy white smoke from their small stack chimneys. The roofs were crafted from wood, Bruno could now testify, not slate.
Khan pulled the huge iron knocker up to a ninety-degree angle and let it fall towards the door under its own weight. Gravity obviously still had a role to play in heaven realised Bruno as he tried to come to terms with how different this Godly habitat was from the one in which he’d imagined. Where were the clouds, the harps, the winged angels and the guy with the white wizards beard and the long cream robes?
After a wait of no less than ten minutes and no more than fifteen, the right hand side, knockerless door, creaked open, its physical weight evident by the slow pace of its inward swing.
“Welcome, Bruno,” said the answerer of the door.
“Good to see you, Tommy,” replied Bruno, now an old hand at greeting people whom he’d never met nor seen before. Tommy was Scottish. He wore no kilt, displayed no sporran and was completely unaccompanied by bagpipes, but his harsh Glaswegian was instantly recognisable either in this world or the previous. The accent more than made up for the lack of any other stereotypes.
“Khan, welcome once again, it must have been, what, seven months?” greeted the Scotsman.
“More like nine,” corrected Khan.
“Well let us not stand on ceremony, come on in and we’ll have ourselves a wee livener,” said Tommy with a lift of an imaginary glass to his lips.
The inside of the club was not an opponent of any comfortable drinking establishment that he’d frequented in Brooklyn, Manhattan or Queens. Luckily when they’d entered, the jukebox continued to play Sinatra and the conversations never faltered. Nobody batted an eyelid at the new member of the club. Either Bruno was unimportant or these people were used to new arrivals. His ego hoped for the latter while common sense longed for the former.
The main room that rolled out before him was about forty or so metres in diameter with a large bar at the opposing end of the room. Around the curving perimeter wall were around fifty or so snugs and booths, brimming with men and women of all colours and creed, involved in discussion, confabulation, gossip, conference and chess. Bruno noticed a heated game of backgammon taking place between Heru, an Egyptian, and Father Daniel Hardy, an American Priest.
Everybody was barefoot.
“What can I get you,” asked Tommy with a nod towards the bar.
“I’ll take a Corona if you’ve got one,” replied Bruno, who’d given up on reconciling this heaven with his previous image of the after life. The one that had admittedly been sculpted from re-runs of a young Beatty in Heaven Can Wait.
“Just water for me,” said Khan.
Arms laden with refreshments, Tommy navigated his way around the nine-ball table and back to his guests. He continued straight past them and placed the drinks on one of the few vacant tables near the door.
“Good trip?” inquired Tommy as they sat, the smoke from his roll your own rolling across the table in linear spirals.
Bruno shuffled along into the booths corner seat, his jeans sliding effortlessly across the tan leather. The dark, ceramic floor felt refreshingly cool underfoot. It reminded him of his kitchen on a Saturday morning, the coldness of the tiles as he made his way across to the espresso machine, shirtless, in a pair of cotton pyjama pants, the New Yorker in one hand, a cigarette in the other. The smile of a memory crept across his face.
“A pleasant enough walk,” replied Khan.
“How about you?” asked Tommy of Bruno.
“I don’t really understand what’s happening here. I mean, I know I’m dead, but there’s a little more to it than that.”
“It’s always a little disorientating at first, but don’t you worry about it too much, you’ll soon have your bearings.”
“But how do you feel, Bruno?” asked Khan.
“I feel fine, I guess.”
“So you’re ready to get started then?” said Tommy.
“Started doing what?”
“Getting with the program,” joked the Scotsman with an impish glint.
“So what’s the program,” asked Bruno, aware that answers were never going to be readily volunteered in present company.
“The righting of wrongs, my friend, the righting of wrongs.”


● ● ●


The corridor ran from the right hand side of the bar, not in a straight line, but meandering like a stream in its quest for a river. Tommy took the lead across the deep blue carpet, trimmed with six-inch skirting boards. The crisp, dark cream walls were adorned with black and white photographs. Adolph Hitler, Jack Graham, Myer Abramovich, Fred West, John Edmunds, Andy Kehoe, Thomas Hamilton and Timothy McVeigh, amongst others, were all nameplated beneath their profiles.
They reached the end of the corridor; over two hundred paces the better off for it. Another nameplate greeted them, bronze and polished, deep in contrast to the dark wood door. It boasted only one name; Portman.
Tommy knocked twice, but waited for no reply before entering, closely followed by Bruno, closely followed by Khan.
The wallpaper would have been at home in any of Dubai’s finest hotels. A subtle floral print was only nigh visible against its slightly darker background. A wooden border rode the walls at about half a metre below the height of the fan vaulted ceiling. Brass chains formed triangles as they suspended a gamut of paintings and photography, varying sharply in size and colour.
Portman looked squat as he sat behind his desk. His receding hairline paved the way for a thinning scalp while his stubby fingers wrapped themselves around a copy of a Dean Koontz novel. As they entered, he folded over the page and placed the book into one of the draws in his mahogany desk. Bruno noticed that both Tommy and Khan had left the room, pulling the door silently behind them. Stripes of light soaked the room as the sun, or whatever it was, pushed radiance through the gaps of the wooden slat blinds. Smoke danced and swirled in the rays, dragging a ninth avenue pool hall into Bruno’s minds eye.
“Don’t you just love that Koontz guy? I mean, what an imagination,” he chuckled, nodding to the chair at the visitors’ side of the desk. Bruno slumped into the padded leather, nudging aside the footstool.
“Cigar?” asked Portman. “We’ve got Dunhill Cabinettas and Estupendos.”
“I’ll take one of those,” said Bruno, pointing to the left side of the ornate open case.
“A wise choice,” said Portman, a tad begrudgingly. “The Opus X Double Corona. Seven and five eights of an inch, forty-nine ring gauge. Absolute enjoyment, Bruno. It’s the king of all cigars.”
Bruno pulled the cedar wrap away and popped the velvety red cap. Portman passed him a silver clipper and an old box of matches manufactured by the Kelantan Match Factory. Bruno studied the box, paying particular attention to the Alligator logo at its centre.
“Phillumenist,” said Portman by way of explanation.
Raised eyebrows from Bruno were his only available reply.
“It means I’m a collector of rare match boxes. That box there is way before your time.”
On further examination, the shelves that ran the length and breadth of the left hand wall were a testament to the man’s love of tobacco and its associated combustible fodder. Cabinets with thin, slot like draws rose upwards from the floor, peaking at about waist height with barrelled lids. Bruno couldn’t remember the exact name, but he knew they were used to preserve cigars at a certain temperature.
“Looks like you’ve been here for a while,” Bruno observed, noting the lived in-look of Portman’s office.
“Long enough,” was the response. Did anybody in this place have a straight answer, he wondered.
“So what’s the deal,” he queried.
“It’s the deal of all deals. The ultimate gift to mankind. Keep your eyes open and you’re mouth shut and we’ll get through this in no time.”
Bruno picked at the stitching on the bulbous chair arm, stopping in an instant when just the slightest of glances showed Portman’s annoyance.
“Tell me, Bruno. Do you remember anything about your death?”
“Nothing at all. I remember I was in Wolf’s Bar with my partner, Tia, following a mick, you know, an Irish guy. My last memory’s firing up a Marlboro as I walked out the door. I guess I was canned on the pavement outside.”
“Do you know how you died, Bruno?”
“Stabbed, shot, run-over, heart attack, I don’t know, what was it that got me?”
“You were shot, Bruno. You were getting far too close to the murder case that you and your partner were pursuing so diligently. But he’s still down there, Bruno. A stone cold killer. You’re gone, so it’s just a matter of time until Tia is killed, and you can bet your bottom dollar that more will follow. Much, much more.”
“Jesus,” whispered Bruno.
“Unfortunately not, just you and I here, I’m afraid.”
Bruno’s head was spinning with thoughts of his own loss, anger at his murder, panic for his partner and rage at the prospect of further deaths.
“Look, I tried and failed, there’s nothing I can do now. Can’t I just head through the gates and find my cloud?”

 

[James Grace]

Tavoli Social Club Chapter 4 Part 2

The broad shoulders and heavyset face trembled as Portman broke into a husky smoker’s chuckle. His cough shared many traits with a lion’s roar, strong enough and weighty enough to force a backward rock from Bruno. Portman’s stubby arm levered his palm as it banged like a sledgehammer on his rib cage, no doubt loosening mucus with every tremor.
“Nah, we don’t get off that lightly, kid, not at the Tavoli.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
The smile left his face as quickly as it had arrived. “Get some perspective,” he said.


● ● ●


“Perspective on what?”
“Perspective on problems. Issues and resolutions. The molehill and the mountain. You see, you’ve been living your life in three dimensions, while we’ve been watching from the fourth. The big guy granted us humans the luxury of free will, and some of us went and abused it. The perspective is on that level of abuse.”
“Crystal clear,” spat Bruno as he got out of the chair, stubbed out the cigar and made for the door. “I’m tired of these responses. Either tell me what I’m here for or send me wherever you’re sending me. I’ve been walking for hours with Gandhi’s quieter brother and nobody’s telling me jack!”
Bruno once again smiled. “With my perspective, I’d say that’s a fair response.”
“Now sit down!” The smile had disappeared. “When you walked along the corridor, what did you see?” asked Portman.
“Pictures of psychopaths and mass murders. Just what I expect to see at the gates of heaven!”
“Pick one,” instructed Portman.
“What do you mean pick one?”
“How difficult is the question? You want me to try and explain it with hand puppets? Just pick one.”
“Jack Graham.”
Portman sat back in his chair and took a long draw on the cigar.
“You picked a real bad guy there. John Gilbert Graham was bad through and through. Went straight to hell on January 11, 1957. Killed his mother and forty three others when he put a bomb in her suitcase, blew up a passenger flight back in 55’. So let’s play the game. Pick me one better from the wall and one worse.”
Bruno shook his head. “Ain’t my kind of game. A lot of people died because of the monsters on that wall, they’re all pure evil. No better, no worse.”
“So if I gave you the power to wipe only one of them from history, all their deeds undone, you wouldn’t grab that offer with both hands?”
“Of course I would,” said Bruno
“So you would deem one to be worse than the rest!”
“You’re putting words into my mouth, but yeah, I guess Hitler’s the no brainer. He killed more than the rest of them put together.”
“So, what if I reversed it. What if you could delete all but one, which one would you leave. Which one would remain free to kill, rape and maim. Which one, Bruno?”
He had no idea where this was going and the imaginary power of it all, given his surroundings, was making him feel uneasy.
“Listen, I don’t want to be making any decisions here that might have implications. I mean, I’m just a New York cop, I don’t know a lot about the workings of the world and its why’s and why not’s.”
A smile once again crept across Portman’s face.
“Don’t panic Bruno, you’re not in Back to the Future here. It’s just question and answer remember. Now who would you let live?”
“I don’t know, whoever killed the least.”
“What if one guy killed eight old timers, their lives behind them, but the other guy killed ten young children. Are you telling me that you’d let the child killer live, is that your answer?”
Bruno didn’t answer, He reached across the desk for the antique matches and lit his cigar back up. If this guy wanted to a play game, Bruno would offer him solitaire. Every answer he gave was turned into a dead end by Portman. This was a one race and he wasn’t in the running.
After a couple of minute’s silence where Portman never took his eyes from Bruno and Bruno never put his eyes on Portman, the vacuum was broken.
“It’s a tough thing to manage…perspective,” said the Tavoli’s manager through a billow of smoke.
Bruno didn’t acknowledge the remark. It just hung there alongside the cigar’s cloud.
“What if I could offer you a deal?”
Still silence.
“A deal that has two parts. One part will let you save the life of your partner.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll just run get my badge and gun. Or are you going to return me to earth in the body of a cheerleader, cos if that’s the plan, I won’t be getting much done, that’s for sure. I’ll probably just take a lot of showers.”
Portman’s smile stayed in its box.
“Always the funny guy,” he said in a whisper.
“What’s wrong Portman, losing your patience with me? Frustrating stuff I imagine, not getting the answers you want!”
Portman swung forward in his chair, the wheels cutting noisily through the tick pile of the carpet.
“Now listen to me you young turd, I have a deal for you here. You want to play games, then pick yourself out my chair and **** off out of here. You want to hear the deal, grow up and start listening. This isn’t a voucher redeemable against you growing some fucking balls. It’s now or never playboy, take it or leave it.”
“I thought there was no bad language here?”
“It’s my club Bruno, being the manager has its perks. Now you want to hear the deal or not?”
“Yeah, I want to hear the deal!”
“Two choices, the first I’ve already explained. You can go back down, have your revenge, save your partner and a few others that this asshole will most probably kill. Or, you can stay here where I’ve got an important job for you. Choose now, you’ve wasted enough of my time.”
“Wait a minute, what’s the other job?”
“I can’t tell you that until you decide whether you want it or not,” said Portman.
Bruno’s mind raced. This Irish gangbanger who’d taken his life was about to do the same to Tia. He’d worked with her for almost four years. She’d carried him through his divorce. She’d even made him Godfather to Oliver. Oh Christ, Oliver, his mother was going to be killed.
“I need to know more, you can’t do this to me! How can you expect me to sign off on Tia’s death?”
“Which option,” said Portman, as cold and as firm as steel.
“But how do I know which does the most good?
“Perspective.”
“I don’t have any. I don’t know what you’re asking me to do?”
“Then I guess you’ll have to trust mine. Just two words, Bruno, and they better be the next and only ones that come from your mouth. Your choice or my choice.”
The hush between them set in once again. After a minute had passed, Portman leaned across his desk and turned a photo frame so that it was facing Bruno.
The hazel eyes were not looking directly at the camera, but were off towards the mountains. The Tavoli was easily picked out in the distance, with the angle of the photograph capturing as much of the star filled night as the sleeping mountains at its feet. The young boy looked to be in his early teens, his face springing a smile that only youth can project. The boy’s dark hair was long, thick and messy, yet neatly tucked behind his ears, creating a tight, straight line amongst the unkempt disarray.
Bruno looked back at Portman and saw the tears well in the corners of his eyes.
“That’s Robbie, my son.”
“Looks like a great kid,” said Bruno, a knot of expectancy turning in his stomach as a tear rolled down Portman’s cheek.
“He’s dead,” said Portman
“I’m sorry.”
“He was murdered!” said Portman as he began to regain his composure.
“I don’t know what to say?”
“I want you to find his killer! You could say you’d do that.”
It all began to make sense to Bruno. He could only take out one bad guy and Portman was giving him the rock and the hard place. Find my son’s killer, or find your killer and save Tia’s live with it.
“So I get to go back, but I have to choose which.”
“If you choose one, then you get to go back there and right some wrongs. You choose the other, then you’ve already drawn your last breath in your previous life.”
“I don’t get it,” said Bruno.
“Robbie wasn’t murdered there. He was murdered here, in the Tavoli.”

 

[Stewart]

Just caught this as I'm about to finish for the day. I would say that the following can be cut from your opening chapter:

When is dead not dead?
Is it when the blood continues to rush and the lungs still blow, when the cold still bites and the noise keeps on at just a decibel too much? Or is it something else, something far less obvious.
Could it not be that life is part one, the introduction, the incubation, the womb period for what was yet to come?
If Bruno had have been asked these very same questions just three and a quarter minutes beforehand, he may well have had no answer to give. At this precise moment in time however, he could at the very least hazard a guess.

The story begins at “Okay,” he said, wondering why he wasn’t crying. “So I’m dead!” (And I'd remove the exclamation mark. It's not needed there.)

The reason why I say you can cut that section is that it's fluff. The sort of pseudo-fluff that a lot of novice writers begin stuff with. It tries to make the text (and the lead up to the narrative) sound philosophical and ends up just being a cliche - of new writers' work - in itself. Best just to start with the narrative.

 

[SevenWritez]

Fluff sells, though I agree with Stewart to cut the beginning snippet that he quoted--it wasn't interesting.

The rest is fine though, very fun and imaginative, and I enjoyed the wit to keep the story from taking itself too seriously.

 

[James Grace]

With Thanks

Stewart and Seven - Thanks for the responses and advice. It's been taken on board cut from the beginning.

All the best and thanks again.