Sign of the Maker (Boston Crime Thriller Book 4) by Brian Shea (novel books to read TXT) 📗

the end of his bed, Fazzino tried to get his bearings. Was it still night? What day was it? Something felt wrong. It smelled wrong too. He reached down to clear his sheets and felt the dampness. Then he smelled the urine. I pissed myself? That had never happened, and he'd drank and drugged himself silly on numerous occasions. From what he remembered, he didn't have that much to drink.

Fazzino looked around his studio apartment for the evidence of hard partying, but there was none. On those recovery days after a blowout night, the apartment was typically littered with empty bottles and cans. Not an empty container in sight. It looked as though he had just come home and gone to sleep. It didn't add up. He remembered the guy from the bar. He remembered the conversation. The guy's quirkiness was offset by his intelligence. He wasn't good-looking by cover-boy standards. But there was something else, a uniqueness to him, a rawness, that Fazzino found absolutely tantalizing. He remembered his excitement, his desire to sample the goods. The quiet ones made for the most interesting lovers.

Fazzino realized he had done most of the talking. From what he could recall of the night, he had laid bare his soul after a couple of good hard drinks when he was closing up. What was his name? Rodney? Roy? It definitely started with an R, but for the life of him, he couldn't make sense of it in his mind. Rory. That was his name. Fazzino remembered a piece of the conversation and realized that he must've consumed more drinks than he thought, because he had told Rory about his parents. He hadn't told many people about his previous life, especially complete strangers. Maybe it was to fill the silence. Fazzino remembered Rory didn't talk much. He made a couple comments that, even in their brevity, demonstrated his intelligence.

Fazzino gave up trying to decipher the fog of last night. He separated himself from the moist sheet and peeled off his damp clothes. He felt embarrassed. Maybe that was why there had been no signs of an after-party and Rory in his bed now. He'd committed the ultimate party foul by pissing himself. And because of that he was in no hurry to open his door to greet whoever the hell was banging on it. He glanced at his watch. 3:57. Looking at the lime green numbers of his end table alarm clock, he had no idea whether it was day or night.

"Give me a second," Fazzino muttered with a bit more force than his first attempt.

"Boston PD. Open the door!" The command penetrated through the thin door.

The drugs! It was the first thought that entered Fazzino's mind. The fear pulsing through his veins temporarily negated the hangover as he scrambled to his feet. "One minute!" He quickly set about his small apartment making sure the cocaine he kept stashed in the kitchen was hidden from view. He liked to keep it at the bottom of his coffee grinds. He didn't drink coffee at home anyway and had read somewhere it could mask the scent. He didn't know if it was true, and he guessed he was about to find out.

Fazzino was a bartender by trade but a drug dealer by hobby. He only sold if somebody asked. He wasn't out on the streets pushing it. Most of his clients came by way of mouth through his contacts at the bar. He had rules. Fazzino never sold it to children or pregnant women. In his mind, he told himself he was one of the good drug dealers. Money was the reason he'd picked up the side hustle. Boston was an expensive city. His five-hundred-square-foot studio apartment cost him an arm and a leg. Then came his desire to support an outward image to convey success, and that came by way of expensive clothing and accessories, like the two-thousand-dollar Oris Aquis blue-tinted stainless-steel watch.

The watch was what initiated the conversation last night. It was starting to come back to him now. Rory had complimented his watch. He knew things, things Fazzino didn't. Rory described the inner functions of the watch. He explained the importance of nanoseconds and the importance of time itself. Trying to make any sense out of it now, with his headache pounding as loud as the cop at his door, Chaz was dumbfounded.

Two more loud bangs. "Chaz Fazzino, this is Michael Kelly with the Boston Police. We need to talk to you. It's urgent! Please open the door."

Talk to him? Urgent matter? Drug police would just break in by now. He'd seen enough television to know that. "Just got to put my clothes on."

Fazzino staggered into his bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. There were no marks, no injuries. He checked his hands, his body. Nothing. Strange. He assumed if the police were banging at his door in the middle of the night, it had something to do with the unaccounted-for time, but there was nothing to support that theory. Nothing out of place except the faint odor of urine on his skin. He took a wet wipe from a pack atop the toilet and wiped his body quickly, trying to wash away the stink. He threw on a little bit of deodorant, splashed on some cologne, and ran water through his hair, slicking it back. A couple beads dripped from his wet hair and tickled the back of his neck. He returned to his dresser and fished out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before walking to the door.

Fazzino opened it and saw a handsome, rugged detective accompanied by a shorter, attractive female. Had this been a bar scene situation, he would have offered up himself to both. Ménage à trois style. They had a seriousness to them, but no anger. Definitely not raid cops. Fazzino had been in an apartment a few years back that was raided by police. These cops didn't look like them. Their faces