Read The Barbed-Wire Kiss Online

Authors: Wallace Stroby

The Barbed-Wire Kiss

Praise for … THE BARBED-WIRE KISS

“Stroby does wonders with his blue-collar characters.”

—New York Times Book Review

“A scorching first novel that mixes the melancholic heart of tough-guy fiction with a fierce and violent gangster plot.”

—Washington Post

“Every so often a debut novel comes along that is so arresting and powerful you just know the author will go on to a fine career. Such is
The Barbed-Wire Kiss
.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A fast-paced debut … prepare to have your V.Q. (violence- quotient) challenged to the max.”

—Kirkus Reviews


The Barbed-Wire Kiss
is as gritty and tough as its Soprano-land New Jersey setting, and Wallace Stroby is a no-nonsense guide and a fine writer.”

—C. J. Box, author of
Savage Run

“A new member has been added to the Michael Connelly-Robert Crais-Harlan Coben club of crime fiction. This work marks the debut of a novelist of great promise.”

—Gerald Petievich, author of
To Live and Die in L.A.

“Drawing on his career as a journalist living on the Jersey Shore, Stroby has written a novel that is part Sopranos, part Springsteen, but in all a unique and stunning debut.”

—Bartholomew Gill, author of
The Death of an Irish Sinner


The Barbed-Wire Kiss
is one of those books that gut-hooks on the first page and never lets you go.”

—John Gilstrap, author of
Scott Free
and
Nathan’s Run

“Intense and gritty,
The Barbed-Wire Kiss
weaves a melancholy path through the decaying skeletons of the Jersey shore’s dead resort towns, a dark, brooding landscape strobed by lightning strikes of passion and mayhem. If James Lee Burke had grown up in Asbury Park, he might have written
The Barbed-Wire Kiss
.”

—F. Paul Wilson, creator of
Repairman Jack

THE
BARBED-WIRE
                KISS

Wallace Stroby

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

NOTE:
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Song lyrics on page 33 are from “If I Should Fall Behind” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1992 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission.

THE BARBED-WIRE KISS

Copyright © 2003 by Wallace Stroby.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-99547-4

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / February 2003
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / March 2004

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my family

In memory of
Mark McGarrity
1943–2002
Friend, colleague, mentor
I’m with ya

Slán go fóill

 

When the bells justle in the tower
the hollow night amid
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.

—A. E. H
OUSMAN

Great coolness is necessary with the
drowning if you would bring them help
without peril to yourself.

—B
ALTASAR
G
RACIÁN

 

Sometimes, at night, he drove. He had no route, no reason. He never planned it. Alone in the big, empty house, the wind rattling the windows, he would suddenly find himself with car keys in his hand.

He’d take the old Mustang out on the county road, head west to the Turnpike or east to the ocean. Some nights he drove for hours, stopping only at all-night gas stations, not turning back until dawn lightened the sky and brought with it the hope of sleep.

He told this to a therapist once, in those first months after Melissa died.

“On the scale of things we’ve talked about,” the therapist said, “that’s an easy one.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re trying to go back. To fix the things you loved that got away from you.”

“Maybe.”

“And you know something else, Harry?”

“What?”

“You can’t.”

He knew that. He’d always known it.

Still, he drove.

ONE

When Harry walked in the door, Bobby was sitting at the end of the bar, watching a redhead take off her clothes.

Barely dark outside, but in here the night was in full swing. Cigarette smoke hung in the air like cotton, and the music was loud enough that Harry could feel the bass through the soles of his boots. Years since he’d been in here, but the clientele hadn’t changed much. Fishermen mostly, drinking their dinners, hard faces chiseled by sun and wind. He had grown up around men like these.

Bobby’s eyes were on the dancer. Harry came up behind him unseen.

“Hey, slick,” he said. “Put your tongue back in your mouth.”

Bobby froze, a cigarette halfway to his lips. He swiveled slowly, the hard look on his face twisting into a smile. “Son of a bitch. You made it.”

He put out his hand and Harry took it, felt the calloused palm, the strength there. Bobby wore his work clothes: a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, tan work boots. The black snake tattoo that circled his left forearm was faded from years in the sun.

Harry slid onto the stool beside him. Bobby stubbed out his cigarette in a tin ashtray, signaled to the barmaid. She was a hard-eyed blonde in a halter top, with a blue butterfly tattoo above her left breast. He pointed at his empty shot glass, and she took a bottle of tequila from the speed rack, poured, looked at Harry.

“Whatever’s on tap,” he said.

“Just bottles now.”

“Corona.”

She came back with the open beer, the sides slick with condensation, a slice of lime wedged into the top. Bobby slid a wet twenty toward her, and she took it away without a word.

“There used to be a girl tended bar here,” Harry said. “A tall blonde …”

“Lisa.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“Moved on, I guess. Just like everybody.”

He pushed the lime through, clamped his thumb over the mouth of the bottle and upturned it. The slice rose toward the bottom in a thin stream of bubbles.

Bobby lifted his shot glass. “You know what this shit always reminds me of?”

“What’s that?”

“When we snuck that bottle of Cuervo into the dance, junior year? And got busted by Sister Francis? My old man beat my ass over that. Not that he ever needed a reason.”

He righted the beer, let the carbonation hiss out under his thumb. He scanned the faces on the other side of the bar. Some looked back, held his gaze, eyes shining with alcohol.

“You still driving that old Ford?” Bobby said.

“Got it outside.”

“Still pouring money into it?”

“Put in a new clutch plate last week.” He raised his right hand to show the pink spots on his knuckles.

“I do that shit because I have to,” Bobby said. “What’s your excuse? Hire a mechanic, for Christ’s sake.”

“Keeps me busy.”

He held his bottle out. Bobby touched it with his shot glass.

“It’s good to see you,” Bobby said. “We shouldn’t have let it go this long.”

They drank. Harry’s beer was sharp and cold.

The redhead was down to just a thong and bra. She finished her routine, stepped gingerly from the stage.

“Nice view,” Harry said. “But not a great place to talk.”

“Better than the house. I had to get out of there for a while. And here at least, if you didn’t show up, the night wouldn’t be a total loss.”

“Got a point there. How’s Janine?”

“Fine, I guess. But there’s some shit going on, isn’t exactly making life easy. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

A Prince song began to blast from hidden speakers and another dancer took the stage. She had short blonde hair and wore a sheer white teddy over bikini panties, her nipples and pubic area dark patches beneath the material. He watched her move, wondered if she was married, if she had small children whose clothes and food she bought with the money she made here.

“Tell the truth, I can’t remember the last time we actually sat down, had a drink together,” Bobby said. He thumbed open a box of Marlboros, took out a cigarette, slid the box toward Harry. He shook his head.

“Quit.”

“Forgot. How long now?”

“Almost two years. I stopped in the hospital. Just never picked it up again.”

“Good man.”

Bobby lit the cigarette with a plastic lighter.

“Sometimes I think about what you went through,” he said. “First Melissa, then that other thing. I don’t know if I could have handled it.”

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

Harry sipped beer, watched the dancer. She was on all fours now, tiger-crawling across the mirrored floor, her movements jerky in the strobe lights. She reached the edge of the stage and swung down.

Bobby separated a five-dollar bill from his change, folded it lengthwise, held it out. She noticed it from the corner of her eye, moved toward them. Harry saw she was younger than she looked on stage, twenty-five tops, her skin taut and firm, filmed with perspiration.

She smiled at them, leaned over the bar and shrugged the straps of the teddy halfway down her shoulders, pushed her small, pale breasts together. Bobby folded the five again, tucked it into her cleavage.

She kissed him quickly on the mouth, smiled at Harry, and drew away. When she got back on stage, she tugged the teddy into place, dropped the five into an open gym bag, and fell instantly back into her routine.

“Pretty good,” Harry said. “What do you get for a twenty?”

“She gives you a handjob in the back room and then a bouncer beats the shit out of you and throws you out.”

“Not a bad deal.” He swiveled on his stool. “They still have that deck out back?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go. We can talk better there.”

Bobby emptied the shot glass, gathered his cigarettes and change. Harry picked up his beer, and they walked down a short corridor, past bathrooms and pay phones, and out onto a small wooden deck overlooking the inlet.

The night was warm, the smell of the tide thick in the air. Bobby leaned on the railing, flicked away his cigarette. They looked down at the red and green lights of charter boats heading out to sea.

“Bluefish,” Bobby said. “They’re running now. Night’s best time for it. Guys pay fifty dollars a head, go out there and drink beer, catch fish all night long.”

Harry stood beside him, waited. In the distance, he could see a long line of brake lights on the Route 35 drawbridge heading into Belmar. Across the inlet, a car nosed into the weeds near the water’s edge. The headlights went out and, after a few minutes, they heard teenage laughter, the sound of a bottle breaking.

“It was Janine’s idea I talk to you,” Bobby said. “At first I told her, nah, you don’t need to hear this shit. But the more I thought about it …”

“What’s the problem?” He set the bottle on the railing.

Bobby opened the pack of Marlboros, shook one loose.

“Business deal,” he said. “I should know better, right?”

He lit the cigarette, tucked the pack and lighter in his shirt pocket.

“There’s this guy I know from the boatyard. He had a shot at something, but he needed a partner. It was a sweet deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“What do you think?”

Harry said nothing. The boats were moving under the open drawbridge now. The lead vessel saluted the bridge tender with a bleat of its horn.

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