In the shadow of the pas.., p.1
In the Shadow of the Past, page 1
In the Shadow of the Past
Shadow Series Book 1
J. E. Leak
Certifiably Creative LLC
Copyright © 2021 by J.E. Leak
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 978-1-955294-00-3 (eBook Edition)
ISBN: 978-1-955294-01-0 (Paperback Edition)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021911246
Edited by Pam Greer
Published by Certifiably Creative LLC
Ocala, Florida
press@certifiablycreative.com
First Printing July 2021
To my wife.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Author Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by J. E. Leak
Prologue
July 1940: France
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A gun can be your best friend. She never thought of a gun that way before—never thought about one at all, really—but war has a way of making the most abhorrent things possible and the unthinkable an answer to a prayer.
A gun can also be your worst enemy. Today, it represented both. Staring into the wrong end of the barrel brought equal parts relief and dread.
Twenty-four is too young to die by any measure, but life hadn’t been particularly kind to her, so she didn’t mind. The dead friend beside her, however, broke her heart. So much to live for, and a self-inflicted bullet through the head brought it all to an end.
Now it was her turn.
Chest? Mouth? Temple? Under the chin? She should have made that decision already, but fear and anxiety distorted time and muddled her thoughts. Her panicked breathing became drawn out whole notes echoing in her ears like a steam locomotive struggling to gain speed from a dead stop. Her movements were leaden and unnaturally slow. She knew she should hurry, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.
The Browning semi-automatic’s grip in her hand calmed her in a way she never expected. Her fate was her own. They would not make her a victim. She pressed the gun’s cold slide against her perspiring forehead, in thanks for her impending release, and begged it to do its job quickly and painlessly.
She reached out and touched the body next to her: warm, but death already making the muscles under the skin rigid. Someone told her once that suicide was the coward’s way out, but now, moments away from ending her own life, she realized the courage it took, especially if one was not yet ready to die.
She was taking her time. Time she didn’t have. The German soldiers would arrive at any moment, and then it would be too late. Then she would pay.
The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps brought her back to reality with a jolt of adrenaline. The struggling locomotive in her head found purchase on the tracks and spun up to full speed, propelling her into action. She put the Browning High Power’s muzzle to her temple and, without hesitation now, pulled the trigger.
Chapter One
March 1943: New York City
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Jenny Ryan exhaled a misty cloud of frustration into the cold night air and watched it evaporate like her big break. She should be halfway to Midtown by now, on the verge of cracking the biggest story of her nonexistent reporting career. Instead, she was stuck on the side of a Henry Hudson Parkway exit at the southern end of Riverdale with a flat tire, as precious minutes ticked away.
The damp evening covered everything in a moist film of misery, and her defeated huffs joined the distorted whoosh of the overpass traffic.
She was one nut away from removing the deflated tire, but it was stuck. She pulled on the lug wrench as hard as she could, but it slipped off the nut, and she lost her balance and stumbled over her flashlight, causing it to roll to the low curb of the paving stone street and into a puddle.
She threw down the wrench with a clank. “Terrific.” Brushing a lock of dew-laden blonde hair from her cheek, she mentally cursed the war-induced dim-out for the lack of lighting on the street.
She just wanted something to go right for a change. When an off-duty soldier she’d met at the paper offered her a ride, she thought it was a good omen. But all the man's good deed gave her was a pulled shoulder muscle, a low-grade headache, and hands covered in cosmoline from the jack and wrench, thanks to the car’s manufacturer covering everything metal and mobile in the thick preservative goo.
She retrieved her flashlight from the gutter and aimed it at the lug nut standing between her and victory. She tried freeing the wheel one more time and nearly wound up on her backside as she tugged with all her might, only to have her hands slide ineffectually off the end of the wrench.
“You mother,” she said. She regained her balance and then kicked the tire for good measure. A string of wonderfully appropriate curse words gathered in her mouth, but she had a bet with her best friend, Bernie, that she could curtail her unrepentant cussing for a solid week, and she wasn’t about to lose a fin over a stupid tire.
She heard someone approaching and directed the flashlight beam toward the hurried footsteps.
“I told you to stay in the vehicle,” the young red-headed sergeant called out.
Anxiety had brought the maddeningly slow cadence of his usual southern drawl up to big city speed, and Jenny had to look twice to make sure it was the same soldier she had sent off.
They’d had a heated discussion about her staying alone with the car. Jenny insisted she would be fine and promised to stay in the car if he hurried to the nearest telephone to make sure her reserved table at The Grotto, an exclusive Midtown nightclub, wasn’t given away when she failed to make the nine o’clock reservation.
Jenny feigned an uncomfortable pair of shoes as an excuse to get him to go on his own to the telephone, but she planned to have the tire changed before he returned so she would have a hope of getting to the club before it was too late.
The soldier had two speeds: slow and pardon me while I reinvent the wheel. If she waited for him to change the tire, they would be there all night. He was a swell fella, and caution had its charms, but she needed to get to that club on time. Her only chance was changing the tire herself, so she quickly sent him away and got to the task at hand. Her failure ensured she’d have to suffer his good-natured ribbing about the “weaker sex.”
He looked at her filthy hands. “Aw, now, darlin’, look what you gone and done.”
His drawl had returned to its languid cadence, and he moved with all the urgency of a leaf on a river of molasses when he removed a folded handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
She traded the slippery wrench for the handkerchief with a disgruntled smirk and snapped the white cotton square to its full size before wiping her hands with it.
The only thing she hated worse than losing was failing. She’d had more than her share of failures lately. Tonight, that would all change. She would get her interview with the despicable Marcus Forrester and show her uncle that she was more than just a fluff entertainment writer. As her boss, he would have to take her seriously, and she would finally silence the jealous whispers of nepotism at the paper forever.
It seemed ages ago now, but it had only been a few weeks since she’d burst into her uncle’s office babbling excitedly about Forrester’s alleged sins. Her uncle listened patiently before dismissing the proposed piece, saying, “Jenny, for every crank call about a scoop, there are twenty legitimate scoops out there. Go find one.”
She initially thought her anonymous source was a crank call too. “I got a tip for you, girlie,” the gravelly-voiced man said, trying and failing badly to hide a thick Brooklyn accent.
“Uh-huh,” she said, as she dragged a notebook from her desk drawer and picked up a pencil just in case the call had merit.
Her tips were usually parents trying to draw attention to their child’s stage debut (read grade school play) for her About Town column or submissions for her weekly Victory in ’43 column, which showcased the most patriotic rationing tips, stories, or events from the home front.
This caller accused well-known industrialist and philanthropist Marcus Forrester of everything from running an illegal gambling ring to Nazi collaboration.
& nbsp; “Marcus Forrester,” Jenny said skeptically, having never heard a whisper of impropriety about the man.
Her mystery caller went on with a litany of offenses: war profiteering, blatant infidelity, labor manipulation via organized strikes on his own plants, and the list went on.
Jenny doodled on her notepad. “Where’s your proof?”
“Do your job, honey,” the man said, no longer hiding his Brooklyn accent. “Dig. It’s all right there for the taking.”
“Uh-huh,” Jenny said, not above showing him who held the cards. “Bub, if I followed up on every joker who called in with the story of the century, I would—”
“He had your father killed.”
Jenny’s eyes snapped reflexively to her uncle, sitting behind his desk in the glass-enclosed office in front of her. A flash of panic and then a tidal wave of guilt crashed over her. For nearly a year, she had longed to blame someone other than herself for her father’s death, and now a stranger at the end of a phone line offered her instant absolution.
“Just mention your father’s name and watch him sweat.”
The line went dead before she could organize a coherent thought, and she quickly double pressed the receiver button to contact Central Exchange and get the party back on the line. The operator merely chuckled over the background noise of chattering operators rapidly connecting and disconnecting calls from the switchboards. “Oh, honey, you can’t be serious,” she said before disconnecting the line.
That began weeks of frantic digging into everything she could find on Marcus Forrester. She had a contact on the inside at the police station who let slip that Forrester’s lawyer had a full-time job putting out fires on his behalf. Nickel and dime stuff, nothing big enough to create a ruckus over, but hints of everything her anonymous caller had said were rising to the surface. She was slowly gathering evidence: photographs with the bimbo of the week, police logs, damning interviews with striking workers, and soon, she hoped, ties to the enemy would emerge. She would write the exposé of all exposés, and then the man would get what was coming to him. She would finally do something meaningful with her life, and no one would underestimate her again.
She found nothing connecting the industrialist to her father or his death, so she could only assume the man said that to get her to investigate Forrester further, but tonight she would know for sure. She would meet him face to face, lay the man’s sins at his feet, bring up her father’s untimely demise, and let the truth unfold in his beady grey eyes.
Flat tires and misogynistic soldiers were forgotten in the sweet anticipation of absolution.
Chapter Two
They arrived at The Grotto forty minutes late. Forrester was still there, but the table Jenny requested in the exclusive third tier—the table catercorner to Forrester’s usual banquette in the back—was gone. Instead, they gave her a table on the floor that required a minimum party of two, turning her driver into her escort for the evening.
Jenny had never been to The Grotto, but the club’s exclusivity made her dub it The Den of Sins and Secrets. If you wanted to impress and be seen, you went to 21 or the Persian Room at The Plaza; if you wanted to impress and remain anonymous, you went to The Grotto. It was the place for high-powered businessmen, political figures, and mobsters looking for good entertainment, good food, and good times with someone other than their wives. You had to know someone to get in—her uncle was friends with the owner—and once you were in, it was an unspoken rule that on the way out, amnesia would rob you of anything seen or heard there. The place was tailor-made for the likes of Forrester, and it was no wonder he had a table on permanent reserve.
Jenny masked her disdain for the place with a polite smile for the checkroom girl as she and the soldier handed over their coats. The checkroom girl did not mask her disdain for Jenny’s inappropriate evening attire, looking her two-piece gray suit up and down like a disapproving house matron.
Jenny raised her chin and straightened the red, white, and blue V for Victory rhinestone pin on her lapel. She’d given the club’s dress code a passing thought when her uncle informed her that today was the big day, but she decided the sparkly bauble she always kept in her desk drawer for emergency dolling up was all The Grotto’s cesspool of superficial grandeur was going to exact from her. This was her last chance to prove to her uncle that she could be a reporter. Her previous efforts, through no fault of her own, had been disasters. One more failure and she would be sentenced to the columnist’s desk for life, with no chance for parole. Tonight, she was on the verge of exposing a dirty, rotten, murdering traitor. She couldn’t care less about dress codes or the people who worshiped them. There was real work to be done. War work. She had bad guys to catch, and nothing was going to stand in her way.
Jenny took her soldier’s arm in a show of patriotic indignation, and they headed through the black lacquered swinging double doors of the club proper. One of the doors nearly swatted her in the backside when she stopped in her tracks. She inhaled an audible gasp as the room unfolded before her.
The name of the club suited the place. She entered an unexpected hollow of earth tones, accented with warm bronzes and gilded golds. Crystal-laden columns of light hung from the high ceiling, casting soft patterns of twinkling lights throughout the room. Three tiered platforms created a gentle slope toward the large band shell at the front corner of the room, making the space look more like a theater than a nightclub.
The effect was stunning. The twelve-piece orchestra, clad in all white but bathed for the moment in amber gelled stage lights, accompanied a songbird on an upbeat swing tune sung over the din of its oblivious audience.
The hostess led them past the crowded bar on their right, and Jenny offered a lingering stare at the stylized glass tile mosaic above the mirrored backstop of the bottle-lined wall as they passed. It told the story of a nymph beckoning a young man to the water’s edge.
Hylas, no doubt, Jenny was sure, and how apropos. Beyond the irony of the piece, she thought she recognized the work. “Say, is that a Meière?”
The hostess turned to look at the panel in question. “Why, yes, it is. There are several.”
The young woman pointed to various panels around the room, all water themed: mermaids, naiads, and one Jenny swore was Circe poisoning the sea. She made a mental note to complement the owner on his taste in art and his sense of humor.
Jenny frowned when the hostess held out her hand to the worst seats in the house. “Enjoy your evening.”
Two rows of small round tables arranged in a half circle around the edge of the dance floor offered nothing but dancing couples constantly bumping into their table and no clear view of the stage. Jenny looked over her shoulder toward the table she should have had, but the silhouette of a stout figure leaning on the third-tier handrail above the entrance to the club caught her eye and held it.
It was the owner, Dominic Vignelli, lording over his domain. He took a puff from his thick cigar and then disappeared into the office behind him. Jenny shook her head, wondering what kind of man would take pride in such a snake pit and how her uncle could possibly be his friend. She glanced at the far corner banquette on the same tier and found the rat bastard himself, Marcus Forrester, in all his slimy monkey-suited glory, surrounded by an entourage of what she was sure were equally slimy characters.
Jenny stared at the group for as long as she dared, struck by the dichotomy of the man in the center. Marcus Forrester had an irritating charm about him. If you didn’t know he was a low-down snake in the grass, you might envy his elegant clothes, confident manner, and handsome good looks. His square jaw was anchored to a pear-shaped head, giving him a deceptively boyish face for a man in his mid-fifties, and it meant he was rarely without a beautiful woman on his arm.
