Books: "Night in the City" By Michael McGarrity

 

Night in the City

By Michael McGarrity

W.W. Norton & Company; paperback, 272 pages; $18.99

Michael McGarrity is the author of the nationally best-selling Kevin Kerney crime novels, which he concluded in Head Wounds, the acclaimed American West trilogy, and his recent novel, The Long Ago.

Night in the City is McGarrity's latest novel, and it is now in paperback. It is set in a scene that should be familiar to many readers, New York City in the 1950s. Men in suits and hats, women in dresses and heels, newspaper boys hawking papers on street corners, Martini lunches and jazz clubs at night.

The city also has a dark underbelly, one of a gritty night filled with wiseguys, detectives who may or may not be good guys, and femme fatales who drive both sides crazy. Along with the same martinis and jazz as the shiny day, this world has crime, corruption, and secrets whispered in all-night diners and dive bars. 

Sam Monroe, a former Korean War veteran turned assistant district attorney, is at the center of it all, and he is now a current prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy socialite.

When Sam returned from war, he cashes in his GI Bill to go to law school while working as a store detective at an upscale department store to make some extra money. One of the people he catches shoplifting is the beautiful, mysterious, and extremely rich Laura Nielson, and they wine up starting a steamy love affair.

Even though Sam knows he is one of many men in Laura's little black book, he falls in love with her. The thing is Laura has always had an expiration date on the relationship. She breaks up with Sam, whose heart is broken, and then disappears from his life for two years before calling him and saying they need to talk. 

Laura doesn't indicate when they're supposed to meet, and by the time Sam arrives at her penthouse, she has been strangled and left naked, with only his dog tags from the military around her neck.

Sam sees the writing on the wall, and he takes off into the night with two goals in mind, to stay one step ahead of the cops and to find out who killed Laura. Sam becomes the prime suspect, as circumstantial evidence mounts against him, and the cops close in on him, including a rogue patrolman who has a grudge against Sam and is looking for serious payback.

As he is on his quest, Sam relies on the unofficial help of several coworkers in the DA's office, and he also meets Debora Jean Ryan, a private detective who has his own reasons for seeking answers about what happened to Laura that he keeps close to the vest.

As they work the case, Sam and DJ grow closer, while also discovering they didn't know all that much about Laura. Many questions about, including if she was involved with a well-known crime family, who she took a secret road trip out west, if her reckless love life led to her death, and what happened the summer before tenth grade when a local boy died in her hometown.

While Sam is trying to solve his ex-lover's murder and clear his name, he also finds himself helping to expose a police corruption ring that involves officers who he thought were friends.

McGarrity writes this this classic crime noir fiction in cinematic fashion. He captures in vivid detail Sam going through the metropolitan area, from the Lower East Side to Millionaies' Row and Spanish Harlem in Manhattan to Queens to Hoboken and the farm Laura grew up on in rural New Jersey. He lives in Yorkville, part of the Upper East Side, while falling in love with a DJ, and breaks into quite a fair number of buildings.

In this excerpt, McGarrity writes of a night Sam is set to meet up with Laura years later: It was night in the city. Midnight in Manhattan had come and gone. Sam Monroe sat at the back table at Stamm's Yorkville Bar and Grill nursing a scotch, watching Alfonso rinse beer glasses at the utility sink behind the bar. The only other customer in the place snoozed precariously on a stool close to the front door. For the umpteenth time, Sam glanced at the entrance.

Alfonso shook his head. "She's not going to show."

Three hours before, his ex-lover, Laura Neilson, had called Sam at home asking to meet him at Stamm's. She had something to talk to him about but wouldn't say what.

Sam agreed despite himself. He'd never loved a woman more. No one looked like her, talked like her, lived like her. She'd broken his heart. "I'll wait  a little longer," he said pessimistically.

Alfonso shrugged and returned to his chore.

The last time Sam had seen Laura was two years ago at Stamm's. The moment he'd walked in to see her sitting at their table snuggled close to a strange man, all his good memories about the place had evaporated. It had been their private haunt and rendezvous, a favorite place to top off an evening on the town or start a night of lovemaking.

She was there to dump him, and she'd do it quickly and make it hurt. Biting back his anger and disappointment, he'd approached, only to be met by Laura's icy stare and a sneer on her companion's face. She rose, blocked him from the man sitting at her side, and said, "Be a gentleman, Sam, and don't make a scene. It's over between us. I told you repeatedly this would happen, but you wouldn't listen."

"I didn't plan to fall in love with you."

For an instant, her expressions softened, and a slight smile crossed her lips. "You really went and screwed it up, didn't you?"

He nodded in agreement as she brushed past him, her new lover in toe. With one mortal cut, she'd surgically slaughtered their love affair. He should have expected it. Even Alfonso, who often boasted that he'd witnessed everything possible to be seen inside a barroom, had been left speechless by her performance.

Alfonso joined him at the table with mugs of black coffee in hand. Dark-skinned, with a high forehead and long nose, he spoke flawless German thanks to his mother, who'd left the Fatherland and married a Cuban expatriate in Paris long before the start of the Second World War. He'd watched Sam's entire romance blossom, flower, and die...

Outside, Sam turned and walked to the East River. He wasn't about to go home. He's just sit in his railroad flat, brood about Laura, and wonder why in the hell she'd called him. What did she want, for chrissake? Why couldn't he get over her?

Late night in the city was his favorite time of the day. Yorkville was quiet. The butcher shops, bakeries, corner markets, dry goods stores, and newsstands were closed, and the apartments in the row houses were dark and silent. The islands on the river were vague shapes barely visible in the light of a pencil-think waning moon. The floating garbage, trash, and sewage on the water's surface were masked from view. An early fall breeze out of the west blew away the foul smells and gritty pollution that could turn the inside of a shirt collar charcoal-gray within an hour.