A Firing Offense (35 page)
“What can I get you?” she asked, seeming mildly interested to see a new face. She was in her twenties but had crossed the line from youthful optimism to drugged resignation.
“I’ll have a Bud,” I said, breaking my daytime drinking resolution.
She pulled a long-neck from the cooler and popped it with a steel opener that looked heavy as a weapon. I waved off a glass
as she set down the bottle on a moldy coaster touting Cuervo Gold. After she did that she didn’t walk away.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Sherry,” she said.
There was more silence as she stood there, so I pulled a Camel filter from my jacket and lit it. I blew the smoke down, but some of it bounced off the pocked mahogany bar and drifted in her direction. She still didn’t move. I thought of something to say, came up blank, then looked up at the cursive neon tubes above my head.
“So,” I said lamely, “you sell much Schlitz here, Sherry?”
“We don’t sell it at all,” she said.
“I thought, you know, with the sign and all…”
“We put up whatever the liquor distributors give us,” she said, then shrugged and gave me a weak smile. “Fuck it. You know?”
Yeah, I knew. It was my kind of place and I was due. I returned there every day for the next two weeks and drank with clear intent.
Praise for George Pelecanos’s A Firing Offense
George Pelecanos is the author of several highly praised and bestselling novels, including, most recently,
The Way Home
and
The Cut.
He is also an independent-film producer, an essayist, and the recipient of numerous writing awards. He was a producer and Emmy-nominated writer for
The Wire
and currently writes for the acclaimed HBO series
Treme
.
The Cut
The Way Home
The Turnaround
The Night Gardener
Drama City
Hard Revolution
Soul Circus
Hell to Pay
Right As Rain
Shame the Devil
The Sweet Forever
King Suckerman
The Big Blowdown
Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
Shoedog
Nick’s Trip
A Firing Offense
A FIRING OFFENSE
“Pelecanos delivers a blazing, climactic shootout. Nick’s weltschmerz is saved from excess by the cool, controlled prose and the realistic, rather bleak resolution.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“To miss out on Pelecanos would be criminal.”
—Barry Gifford
“A contemporary classic…. Pelecanos is a fresh, new, utterly hardboiled voice.
A Firing Offense
is full of virtuoso scenes of imaginative sex and substance abuse, suspenseful action, and brooding meditation on a newly lost generation.”
—Pat Dowell,
Washington Post Book World
“This debut is promising.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“
A Firing Offense
moves with the force of a runaway train on a downhill track. One of the best-written, best-plotted detective novels to come along in years!”
—Nicholas Gage, author of
Eleni
“Crooked stereo salesmen, drug dealers, and inner-city gunsels do a deadly dance in the retail underbelly of Washington in
A Firing Offense
by George Pelecanos—a nifty, nasty mystery that unfolds to the ear-numbing thump of cheap boom-boxes and the thunder of gunfire. Read this book and you’ll never go near an electronics sale again.”
—Vince Kohler, author of
Rising Dog
“Think of it as
Chinatown
meets
Glengarry Glen Ross
.”
—Randall Bloomquist,
Washington Post
“George Pelecanos has broken with tradition in so many ways, it feels as if he has launched a category of his own…. Here is your first turn-of-the-century crime writer.”
—Charlie Gillett
“Pelecanos puts together a slam-bang climax that contains all the requisite elements—action, tragedy, victory, and random death. It’s a terrific start for a quality series.”
—
Mostly Murder
“Our nation’s capital, underneath the marble siding. Mr. Pelecanos tells his fast-moving tale in an inside-the-beltway voice unlike the one you usually hear coming from inside a limo. Don’t get mixed up in drugs, or retail, and read this if you want to know why.”
—Jack Womack, author of
Random Acts of Senseless Violence
“A punker’s look at our nation’s capital; an insider’s look at the consumer electronics racket that’ll send you running in terror from your local Nutty Nathan’s. Whether priming themselves on booze, pot, and coke in the back room, or pushing product on the sales floor, Pelecanos’s characters are alive. A dead-on, wickedly entertaining portrayal of the retail salesman’s existence.”
—David F. Nighbert, author of
Strikezone
and
Squeezeplay
“Any writer who has the sheer audacity to wrap his first mystery novel around discount TVs and toasters gets my vote. This one’s a really fine read. George Pelecanos is off to a running start with
A Firing Offense
.”
—Neal Barrett Jr., author of
The Hereafter Gang
and
Pink Vodka Blues
Copyright © 1992 by George P. Pelecanos
Reading group guide copyright © 2011 by George P. Pelecanos and Little, Brown and Company
Excerpt from
Nick’s Trip
copyright © 1993 by George P. Pelecanos
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: June 2011
Back Bay Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
The Back Bay Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12687-8
