G-Men
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About this ebook
The acclaimed short story that inspired the award-winning novel, The Enemy Within.
February, 1964: Two men die in a squalid alley in a bad neighborhood. New York Homicide Detective Seamus O'Reilly receives the shock of his life when he looks at the men's identification: J. Edgar Hoover, the famous, tyrannical director of the FBI, and his number one assistant, Clyde Tolson.
O'Reilly teams up with FBI agent Frank Bryce to solve the high-level assassination before the murders unleash even greater consequences.
In our world, Hoover kept his secrets until long after his death. In Seamus O'Reilly's world, Hoover's secrets get him killed.
Two different best of the year collections, including the prestigious Best American Mystery Stories, chose "G-Men" as one of the best stories of 2008. Nominated for the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History.
New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver says of "G-Men," "If you liked E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime or the writing of Caleb Carr (The Alienist), you'll enjoy this. Part police procedural, part political thriller, this clever tale features real life characters interacting with fictional ones."
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake. She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.
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G-Men - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
G-MEN
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
WMG Publishing Inc.CONTENTS
G-Men
Newsletter sign-up
Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Diving Series (Reading Order)
WRITING AS KRIS NELSCOTT
About the Author
G-MEN
There’s something addicting about a secret.
—J. Edgar Hoover
The squalid little alley smelled of piss. Detective Seamus O’Reilly tugged his overcoat closed and wished he’d worn boots. He could feel the chill of his metal flashlight through the worn glove on his right hand.
Two beat cops stood in front of the bodies, and the coroner crouched over them. His assistant was already setting up the gurneys, body bags draped over his arm. The coroner’s van had blocked the alley’s entrance, only a few yards away.
O’Reilly’s partner, Joseph McKinnon, followed him. McKinnon had trained his own flashlight on the fire escapes above, unintentionally alerting any residents to the police presence.
But they probably already knew. Shootings in this part of the city were common. The neighborhood teetered between swank and corrupt. Far enough from Central Park for degenerates and muggers to use the alleys as corridors, and, conversely, close enough for new money to want to live with a peak of the city’s most famous expanse of green.
The coroner, Thomas Brunner, had set up two expensive, battery-operated lights on garbage can lids placed on top of the dirty ice, one at the top of the bodies, the other near the feet. O’Reilly crouched so he wouldn’t create any more shadows.
What’ve we got?
he asked.
Dunno yet.
Brunner was using his gloved hands to part the hair on the back of the nearest corpse’s skull. It could be one of those nights.
O’Reilly had worked with Brunner for eighteen years now, since they both got back from the war, and he hated it when Brunner said it could be one of those nights. That meant the corpses would stack up, which was usually a summer thing, but almost never happened in the middle of winter.
Why?
O’Reilly asked. What else we got?
Some colored limo driver shot two blocks from here.
Brunner was still parting the hair. It took O’Reilly a minute to realize it was matted with blood. And two white guys pulled out of their cars and shot about four blocks from that.
O’Reilly felt a shiver run through him that had nothing to do with the cold. You think the shootings are related?
Dunno,
Brunner said. But I think it’s odd, don’t you? Five dead in the space of an hour, all in a six-block radius.
O’Reilly closed his eyes for a moment. Two white guys pulled out of their cars, one Negro driver of a limo, and now two white guys in an alley. Maybe they were related, maybe they weren’t.
He opened his eyes, then wished he hadn’t. Brunner had his finger inside a bullet hole, a quick way to judge caliber.
Same type of bullet,
Brunner said.
You handled the other shootings?
I was on scene with the driver when some fag called this one in.
O’Reilly looked at Brunner. Eighteen years, and he still wasn’t used to the man’s casual bigotry.
How did you know the guy was queer?
O’Reilly asked. You talk to him?
Didn’t have to.
Brunner nodded toward the building in front of them. Weekly party for degenerates in the penthouse apartment every Thursday night. Thought you knew.
O’Reilly looked up. Now he understood why McKinnon had been shining his flashlight at the upper story windows. McKinnon had worked vice before he got promoted to homicide.
Why would I know?
O’Reilly said.
McKinnon was the one who answered. Because of the standing orders.
I’m not playing twenty questions,
O’Reilly said. I don’t know about a party in this building and I don’t know about standing orders.
The standing orders are,
McKinnon said as if he were an elementary school teacher, not to bust it, no matter what kind of lead you got. You see someone go in, you forget about it. You see someone come out, you avert your eyes. You complain, you get moved to a different shift, maybe a different precinct.
Jesus.
O’Reilly was too far below to see if there was any movement against the glass in the penthouse suite. But whoever lived there—whoever partied there—had learned to shut off the lights before the cops arrived.
"Shot