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  Table of Contents

  Guardian Angel

  Blurb

  Copyright Acknowledgement

  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  MLR Press

  Guardian Angel

  The Jimmy McSwain Files

  Adam Carpenter

  www.mlrpress.com

  Blurb

  The dual forces of good and evil take center stage in this, the fourth installment in the Jimmy McSwain Files, one that finds the tortured, sexy detective battling an unforeseen enemy: happiness. Yet murder will soon rear its desperate chill, hurtling Jimmy into the highest society and the lowest of lives.

  Winter is nearly upon Manhattan, the holidays right around the corner. Jimmy is hired to escort the infamous tabloid favorite Serena Carson to a charity benefit, intent on guarding her from an abusive ex. Yet the job takes a brutal turn as Henderson Carlyle, the privileged, spoiled lothario, is found sliced to death outside of Serena’s brownstone. The cops warn Jimmy away from the case, including his former lover, Captain Francis X. Frisano. Jimmy has his hands full anyway, as his visiting cousin Kellan was found beaten by one-time family friend, Mickey Dean, a Hell’s Kitchen thug with a dark past and even darker threat. As the snow falls and answers remain buried, Jimmy finds himself thrown into the midst of two conflicting cases, one of which will expose a dormant clue to the long-unsolved murder of his NYPD cop, Joseph McSwain. Complicating matters is a new man in Jimmy’s life, who promises Jimmy security and safety, neither word easy for him to accept. When fate sends Jimmy’s world into turmoil, he realizes there’s a devil at work in a season usually owned by angels.

  Copyright Acknowledgement

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2016 by Adam Carpenter

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Published by

  MLR Press, LLC

  3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.

  Albion, NY 14411

  Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:

  www.mlrpress.com

  Cover Art by Deana Jamroz

  Editing by Neil Plakcy

  Print format: ISBN# 978-1-94470-30-3

  ebook format also available

  Issued 2016

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.

  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  American Girl: 2016 American Girl.

  Bass Ale: Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC.

  Batman: DC Comics.

  Beauty and the Beast: Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Coke: The Coca-Cola Company.

  Daily News: NYDailyNews.com.

  Dom Perignon: Moet Hennessy USA, Inc.

  Elmo: Sesame Workshop.

  Equinox: Equinox Holdings, Inc.

  Facebook: Facebook.

  Girl Scout: Girl Scouts of the United States of America.

  Glock: GLOCK, Inc.

  Google: Google, Inc.

  Instagram: Instagram.

  iPhone: Apple Inc.

  Jameson: Irish Distillers Limited.

  Jeopardy!: Jeopardy Productions, Inc.

  Lincoln Town Car: Ford Motor Company.

  Macy’s: Macy’s, Inc.

  Olaf: Disney.

  Oscar: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  Reddi-Whip: Conagra Foods RDM, Inc.

  Ralphie Rich: Classic Media, LLC.

  Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation.

  The New York Post: NYP Holdings, Inc.

  TKTS: Theatre Development Fund, Inc.

  Twitter: Twitter, Inc.

  Viand: GrubHub Holdings Inc.

  Yuengling: D. G. Yuengling & Son, Inc.

  Prologue

  Case file #101: THE FOREVER HAUNT

  Clues had been few and far between lately for his first and still cold case, leaving him, on some nights, staring at a file that failed to provide him with any answers, much less any needed solace. Motivation can come from unexpected places, though, stirring a fierce desire to once and for all solve the mystery. On this starlit November night, he’d been downstairs at Paddy’s Pub, the intimate bar owned by his uncle, his mother’s brother. Paddy’s was quiet tonight, closed for the holiday, so the only people inside were family, celebrating the annual feast that was Thanksgiving. It was only after the pumpkin pie—never his favorite—had been brought to the table that he slipped out the side door and made his way upstairs to the second-floor studio apartment that doubled as his office.

  Grabbing a Yuengling from the small fridge he kept inside the apartment, he twisted the cap and took a grateful sip before setting down the bottle on the floor. Fortified, he then went to the closet and slid open the door to reveal the black metal filing cabinet he stored inside. Opening the drawer was always dramatic in his mind, almost like Batman unveiling the special access batpoles to the cave carved deep under Wayne Manor. This was his not-so-secret place, a go-to haunt where he went to fight a strange concoction of sorrow and —hope—where his soul was fueled, where he was reminded of what he’d lost and what one day he would solve. He withdrew a thick file bulging with yellowed newspaper articles, aging photographs, and other notes from a case that only seemed to grow more complicated with each passing year.

  Next March, it would be fifteen years since the shooting, half his life in which he’d lived with his father dead.

  Joseph McSwain had been a career NYPD officer, shot down while off duty during an innocent deli run to grab some morning bagels. He’d taken his only son with him, the son who later held him, watched as his father bled out while not even hearing his own screams, the look in his father’s eyes forever ingrained: Why? Why indeed, he thought even today, because whoever had pulled that trigger and for whatever reason still remained a cruel mystery. In the past year, he’d redoubled his efforts to solve a crime the cops had long given up on, and while he thought he’d inched closer, this past fall had seen one pertinent clue dry up like a raindrop on a humid summer’s day, gone before it had solidified.

  Downstairs, he could hear the joyous celebration continue. This day was Uncle Paddy’s favorite holiday, and as such he preferred to host. He closed the pub, covered the pool table with a plank of wood, then allowed his mother, Hester, to decorate and set the makeshift table. His two grown sons arrived, some years with a girlfriend, most not, because Paddy liked to keep things small, “just family,” as he was wont to say. This year just Kellan and Taren were here, along with Grandma Hester, who came down from upstate Peach Lake, and of course Paddy’s sis
ter, Maggie, was there, along with her brood, daughters Mallory, who had brought her steady beau, Taylor, a pregnant Meaghan, and lastly the man who had now deserted the party, her son, Jimmy.

  Jimmy settled down on the floor, sipping at his beer while flipping open the file. A photo of his father in his dress blues stared back at him, as it always did. His face was lit with a smile, his bristly handlebar mustache highlighting his handsome face. Jimmy saw himself in the man’s features, the shape of his mouth and the slight hook of his nose. Where they differed was in the eyes. Joseph’s were open, inviting. Jimmy had stared in the mirror often enough to know his eyes were darker, shaded with regret. He carried that look with him often, which some found enticing, while others saw only distance.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Dad,” Jimmy said to the open space.

  There was no answer. There never was. Joseph McSwain was as silent as ever.

  Jimmy flipped another page, where he came upon his own notes about a recent twist in the case that had left him cold. A killer had been released from prison, only to kill again. After he was gunned down by the NYPD, an unknown sister had surfaced with new facts then one day retracted them and disappeared into a black hole provided by the authorities. Jimmy was told by the police it had all been fabrication, that the Assan case shared no link to the long-ago shooting death of their brother, Joseph McSwain. Skeptical of the story but with no place to turn, Jimmy had filed his own report and then pushed the Forever Haunt into the recesses of the dark closet, not to mention those regions of his mind that awoke only at night. Only after a visit from Captain Francis X. Frisano last month had a new fear sprung up inside Jimmy, one that suggested he’d been manipulated by results of the Assan case. A fresh clue existed somewhere. It had to. Jimmy would find it. A phrase the stuck out during the last case: Blue Death.

  “I’ll find the truth, Dad.”

  A gentle knock stirred him. He looked up to find his mother standing in the doorframe of his apartment. Maggie was sixty-seven and still beautiful, with knowing eyes and a mop of gray hair. Her knees sometimes grew creaky, which might have come from a lifetime of climbing five flights of stairs to her home or up the grand staircases of the Calloway Theatre. Here it was only two. Still, she rarely visited his office, knowing this was his sanctuary. Another superhero image flashed in his mind, Superman hiding inside the cold walls of the Fortress of Solitude, but Jimmy possessed no superpowers, and even if he did, the knowing presence of Maggie McSwain was his Kryptonite. Whatever resolve of hiding up here dissipated with her arrival.

  “Hey, Ma.”

  “Jimmy, it’s Thanksgiving, a day of rest, of family.”

  “I know. I was doing great, until I wasn’t.”

  “Do you always sit on the floor, or has the weight of the world on your shoulders pushed you down that far?”

  He tried to smile. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “The Martinos just arrived,” she said, “Including Rocky. They brought a pecan pie. I know you prefer that over pumpkin.”

  Rocky Martino was the father of Meaghan’s baby, due this coming February. They were not a couple, since Rocky had only been pretending to date her—one drunken night a notable exception, hiding his true sexuality from very traditional parents, both now considered extended family and thus partaking of the holiday dessert. All of their families went back years, growing up in Hell’s Kitchen. Gentrification had pushed out some of the old-timers, that or death had, but these three clans—the Byrnes, McSwains, Martinos—still considered 10th Avenue their home, their turf, along with a host of other families who never referred to the neighborhood as Clinton and who refused to sell out to the high-rise, low-life developers.

  “I’ll be down soon.”

  “You could have brought a guest, too, Jimmy, so you wouldn’t feel so…”

  “I’m not alone, Ma. I got you.”

  “A thirty-year-old man, relying on his mother.”

  “I could be eighty, and I’d still rely on you.”

  “Hate to think how old that would make me,” she said.

  “You’re timeless, Ma.”

  She came over to him and tousled his brown hair like he was still ten years old, a half-smile upon her face. She didn’t need to say more. Sometimes words minimized earnest gestures. Maggie turned around and went back downstairs, leaving Jimmy to himself, his heart lifted. For just a brief moment, both of his parents had been inside his world, one ghostly, the other an ever-present angel. He closed the thick file but not before staring intently at his father’s image again.

  “One day, Dad, one day you’ll rest.”

  Joseph McSwain was still smiling. At least one of them could.

  The file put away, the beer drained, Jimmy McSwain left his office, dousing the light, and with it, the safety he always found inside. Darkness stared back at him, threatening to claim him. Clues were not going to be found among these silent walls but outside, floating in the blowing wind, white noise amidst the honking of horns, waiting for that perfect moment to drift down to the earth like snowflakes. Jimmy promised he would catch them, on his tongue and in his heart, and in doing so, he would catch a killer.

  Time couldn’t evade him forever.

  CASE FILE #101: THE FOREVER HAUNT

  STATUS: UNSOLVED

  Part One

  The Devil Inside You

  Chapter One

  His left shoulder ached in the cold, but of course he’d been warned by his doctor that such a thing was likely to happen. A gunshot wound never fully healed. “Damn,” Jimmy thought, stretching out his arm and trying to rid himself of the stiffness, “it’s going to be a long winter.” He’d taken a bullet last fall during the Stage Fright case. Not all of his cases were that dangerous. Of course, the future always held the potential for worse.

  Considering the wound and the dropping temperatures, it didn’t help that this was the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, and snow was already falling. Messy wet flakes coated the sidewalks of Manhattan, slippery if you weren’t being careful, and the lady clinging to his arm was doing just that, being careful, even though they hadn’t yet stepped out of the back of the car. She just had an overly familiar nature about her, like a snake trying to make nice with its prey before consuming it. He gazed away from the sight of the snow, his eyes reverting to her, the long dress, the shapely legs revealed by an edgy, high-cut slit, her black pumps, an outfit as inappropriate for the weather as it was necessary for the occasion.

  “Jimmy, you are a dear for helping me out,” spoke Serena Carson in her upper-crust voice.

  “I do what I’m asked,” Jimmy replied. “Especially when the client is paying.”

  “Client. I don’t like that word. It’s so…impersonal.” With that, she tightened her hold on him. He could smell her perfume, a powerful floral scent that wafted through the back of the car. He could also feel the pull at his shoulder. Pain shot through him. He didn’t show it. One thing you didn’t show a client was weakness.

  How strange it was to be in the rarefied company of a legendary New Yorker like Serena Carson, the real estate heiress who became famous at age eight when she walked away from a private plane crash that claimed the lives of her wealthy parents. She was front-page news then, now too, if not the headline grabber she used to be. The Post’s Page Six still loved to report on her exploits. She was an ageless fifty-one, Jimmy was a weary thirty, and the way she leered at him just now—not to mention the heave of her bosom—set off warning bells inside his mind. Not that she wasn’t attractive and not that he wasn’t unaware of her cougar-like reputation (she’d never married, preferring to snatch up boyfriends who only got younger as the years passed), it’s that Jimmy never mixed business with pleasure, not to mention the simple truth that women had never interested him, not in that way, not even obvious ones like Serena, not that he was involved with anyone else at the moment. That issue was complicated.

  Jimmy closed his eyes and tried to shut out all the confusing notes in his mind. Even for h
im, those were a lot of notes to absorb. Life, as usual, seemed to be missing vital pages from its instruction manual. On this night, at least, his world was filled with beautiful images and imagery, the silver-tinged snow set aglow by the golden streaks from the city’s streetlamps. No colored lights had surfaced yet. Lincoln Center’s annual tree lighting was not until next week, same for Rockefeller Center, so the city seemed in holiday limbo, digesting turkey and football scores while awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.

  Tonight, though, it was Serena Carson, among many others of the city’s privileged elite, whose presence was expected. Jimmy was just her guardian, an imposter in a tuxedo.

  Jimmy had ordered a sleek Lincoln Town Car to take them to Lincoln Center, where they were attending a benefit performance of The Nutcracker. Given the number of boyfriends she had been through over the years, Serena had laughed over the irony of the show’s title when she invited him. So the holiday season was beginning in grand style, with VIP guests and Hollywood royalty scheduled to attend the performance and subsequent big-money charity reception for the Help Is Here Foundation. Serena sat on the board, influence built from deep pockets. Gazing through tinted windows, Jimmy could discern eager paparazzi, flashes of light going off as some other celebrity attendee arrived on the red carpet.

  This was the third job he’d done for Serena, having escorted her to a fashion show just last week and two weeks ago to a dinner party where he’d waited outside with the other bodyguards. He was her protector, not her date, then and tonight. Seemed Serena had gained herself a stalker, a man she’d dated for a few months who didn’t seem to get the message that things had gone kaput between them. Not even the order of protection issued by a judge who happened to be a friend had an effect on the guy. If the well-connected Henderson Carlyle discovered what events Serena was attending, he would simply score an invite as well; he was from the same world; they shared similar friends. They had met as board members of Help Is Here—though she claimed Henderson had been voted out a few months back. Far worse, he’d been ordered to stay two hundred feet away from her, but that didn’t stop him from sitting in the back row on the opposite side of the runway or from possibly sitting in the mezzanine section of a theatre while she sat in the orchestra. As Serena had told Jimmy during their initial meeting last month, “I can feel his eyes on me.”