Back Alleys and Side Streets (Delta Private Investigations Book 4) by Kevin Steverson & William Alan Webb

Author:Kevin Steverson & William Alan Webb [Steverson, Kevin & Webb, William Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

Dawn cracked the sky like an egg, yolks of orange and red seeping into the blue palette of New Orleans’ early light. The city stirred, a giant awakening from its slumber, unfurling its streets like tendrils questing beneath the Southern sun.

Jack Callahan watched the sunrise from his favorite spot on the riverbank, the Mississippi before him heaving a sigh as it carried away the remnants of the night’s turmoil. The ledger’s confluence of secrets and sins was now in the hands of those who could cleanse the city’s ailing veins, or clog them further with their greed.

The stillness of the morning was a sepulchral witness to the fallen Mariner—Giovanni—whose misguided vengeance had sought to balance an unforgivable past with a present mired in blood and regret. Now, as the tendrils of mist curled lazily on the water’s surface, Callahan offered a silent salute to the complexities of justice and retribution.

In his hand, the paltry sum Carollo had paid for services rendered felt as weighty as a blood oath. He pocketed the bills; they’d buy a few drinks, some smokes, and quiet. Always the quiet.

The streets of the Quarter called to him with the siren song of humanity—a rhapsody of lives lived out loud, in shadows, always jazz-infused, always bittersweet. Callahan merged with the awakening city, his steps harmonizing with the heartbeat of New Orleans.

As the private detective disappeared into the maw of the waking hive, he knew all too well that peace, like the silence of a held breath, was only ever a temporary state—especially in his line of work.

Today, the waters might run clear, absolved by the ledger’s revelations, but tomorrow held the promise of more secrets to unmask, more stories struggling to find the light of day. Each case was another thread woven into the fabric of a storied city that survived on whispered tales and the mystery of what lay around the next corner.

Jack Callahan, a composite of the literary gods who had breathed life into his vocation, would continue to tread those gum-stained pavements in his solitary search for truth. A truth that often wore the guise of fiction, much like the city he called home—a fact that did not escape his dark wit nor his keen eye. Provided, of course, somebody paid him to go looking for something that passed for what Men called ‘truth.’

In the end, as each day wrote itself anew, the living tapestry of New Orleans would endure the ebb and flow of its own tides—of crime and quiet, upheaval and understanding.

For men like Callahan, who danced with shadows for a living, the City That Care Forgot was ever a stage where the curtain never fell, the audience never left, and the story never truly ended.

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