The County Fair by Katherine Valentine

Author:Katherine Valentine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385516099
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2006-04-17T22:00:00+00:00

JED NEVER NOTICED THE SILVER TOYOTA SLOWLY PASSING the entranceway to the fairgrounds. He was too busy mulling over other things, like how he had several million dollars’ worth of fine white powder hidden beneath the office trailer. He smirked. That was probably why the air-conditioning was on the blink. He had had to move some of it around to pack it all in.

He leaned back against his pickup truck and took a good drag on his cigarette, feeling rather smug. Seventy-two hours from now, he’d be out of here. No more animal dung, no more stupid old men like Sticks Hopson, and no more drain of always being on the road, setting up and taking down what felt like miles of canvas tents and stupid rides. God, how he hated this gig, but he hadn’t dared back out. The money was good, and Covas’s friends now trusted him. No telling where he could go once this meeting was over. He had been promised a nice chunk of change for setting this whole thing up. He could see himself now, driving a fancy sports car, living in a beach house down in the Caribbean or a penthouse in Las Vegas. Heck, he might even get himself one of those Learjets. He wondered how much those things cost, anyway. After Saturday night, it wouldn’t matter. Whatever it was, he would be able to afford it. Not bad for a kid from the South Bronx.

Jed Alfred Mullen had been born to a hooker. His father had been one of her tricks. Which one had never seemed to matter.

They had lived in a small walk-up apartment with some other “working mothers.” The only thing that Jed had liked about living there was the knowledge that John Gotti had been born three lots over. Jed used to see him sometimes wandering through the neighborhood, a string of local hoods trailing behind him like he was the Pied Piper. He was always dressed to the hilt—two-thousand-dollar double-breasted Brioni suits and four-hundred-dollar hand-painted silk ties. They didn’t call him the “Dapper Don” for nothing.

Other than an occasional Gotti sighting, life in the South Bronx had been hell, especially for a kid like Jed with a hooker for a mother. At sixteen he had been kicked out of school for repeated absences. He liked to hang around the racetracks and watch the ponies. He hadn’t been particularly bereaved at having been expelled. For the last two years he had used it mainly as a means of picking up girls.

A few months later, his mother had kicked him out of their apartment. Some john had been using her for a punching bag when he got home one afternoon. Jed had returned the favor. Given him a black eye and a couple of broken ribs. Was his mother thankful? Hell, no. She’d thrown him out of the apartment for losing her a paying customer.

He’d been happy to go.

Then had come a string of dead-end jobs—delivery boy, dishwasher, gofer for a construction company.

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