Redemption Street

Praise for Reed Farrel Coleman
          &
Redemption Street

“Reed Farrel Coleman makes claim to a unique corner of the private detective genre with
Redemption Street
. With great poignancy and passion he constructs a tale that fittingly underlines how we are all captives of the past.”

—Michael Connelly,
New York Times
best-selling author of
The Overlook

“Moe Prager is a family man who can find the humanity in almost everyone he meets; he is a far from perfect hero, but an utterly appealing one. Let’s hope that his soft heart and lively mind continue to lure him out of his wine shop for many, many more cases.”

—Laura Lippman,
New York Times
best-selling author of
Another Thing to Fall

“What a pleasure to have the second Moe Prager novel finally in paperback. In a field crowded with blowhards and phony tough guys, Reed Farrel Coleman’s hero stands out for his plainspoken honesty, his straight-no-chaser humor and his essential humanity. Without a doubt, he has a right to occupy the barstool Matt Scudder left behind years ago. In fact, in his quiet unassuming way, Moe is one of the most engaging private eyes around.”

—Peter Blauner, Edgar Award-winning author of
Slipping into Darkness
and
Slow Motion Riot

“Coleman is a born writer. His books are among the best the detective genre has to offer at the moment; no, wait. Now that I think about it they’re in the top rank of any kind of fiction currently published. Pick up this book, damn it.”

—Scott Phillips, award-winning author of
The Ice Harvest
and
Cottonwood

“Moe Prager is the thinking person’s P.I. And what he thinks about—love, loyalty, faith, betrayal—are complex and vital issues, and beautifully handled.”

—S. J. Rozan, Edgar Award-winning author of
In This Rain

“Reed Farrel Coleman goes right to the darkest corners of the human heart—to the obsessions, the tragedies, the buried secrets from the past. Through it all he maintains such a pure humanity in Moe Prager—the character is as alive to me as an old friend. I flat out loved the first Prager book, but somehow he’s made this one even better.”

—Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of
Night Work

“One of the most daring writers around…. He freely admits his love of poetry and it resonates in his novels like the best song you’ll ever hear. Plus, he has a thread of compassion that breaks your heart to smithereens … He writes the books we all aspire to.”

—Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of
Cross
and
Ammunition

“Coleman may be one of the mystery genre’s best-kept secrets.”

—Sun-Sentinel

“Coleman writes in a way that seems absolutely right. Interesting, honest and worth reading.”

—The Mystery Review

“The author makes us care about his characters and what happens to them, conveying a real sense of human absurdity and tragedy … a first-rate mystery. Moe is a fine sleuth. Coleman is an excellent writer.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Among the undying conventions of detective fiction is the one that requires every retired cop to have a case that still haunts him. Reed Farrel Coleman blows the dust off that cliché.”

—New York Times Book Review

REDEMPTION
STREET

by
Reed Farrel Coleman

FOREWORD
By Peter Spiegelman

I’ve been reading detective fiction for close to forty years, and more if you count Batman comics. While I’m catholic in my tastes (I draw the line at crime-busting vampires and talking cats), I’ve long been partial to the hardboiled private eye novel. I’ve had many conversations with writers and readers about the pleasures of these novels, and while I’m not sure I subscribe to all the theories I’ve heard about their appeal—the reassurance of seeing order brought from chaos, the vicarious experience of courage, brilliance, and moral surefootedness, the darker thrills of violence or vengeance by proxy, etc.—I do know that the best of the breed delivers what the best fiction of any sort does: a distinctive narrative voice, a palpable sense of place, and a compelling and fully realized protagonist. Which brings me to Reed Farrel Coleman and Moe Prager.

It was plain from my first introduction to ex-cop, wine merchant, and sometimes PI Prager, in
Walking the Perfect Square
, that his creator, Reed Coleman, was steeped in the hardboiled tradition. And it was just as plain that he had his sights set on something more than merely rehashing it all. The Moe Prager novels, of which
Redemption Street
is the second, are affectionate and knowledgeable reappraisals of the genre, and Moe is a very different sort of PI.

That Moe is a singular animal is initially apparent in his voice. The Prager books are written in first-person, and their narrative voice—Moe’s voice—is a surprisingly intimate one. It’s self-deprecating and conversational in tone, pitched for a talk between two friends in a bar, or on a long car ride—and it makes Moe a remarkably accessible character. It reveals him as—in the best hardboiled tradition—smart, smart-alecky, dogged, cynical, philosophical, and brave, but also as anxious, guilt-ridden, and brooding. Moe is a thinking man who over-thinks; a brave man who is keenly aware of his own fears and limitations; an honest man, who suspects that he too has a price; a devoted family man, who remains isolated in fundamental ways; a man who keeps secrets, even as those secrets threaten all he holds dear. Reed’s is a warts-and-all depiction, and we embrace Moe not in spite of his flaws but in part because of them.

One of the things we quickly recognize about Moe is that he must have an affinity for Faulkner, and Faulkner’s oft-quoted observation that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” could well serve as Moe’s epitaph (though his fans hope his need for one is a long way off). The past—obsession with it, regret over it, denial of it—figures greatly in
Redemption Street
and in all the Prager books, as do the increasingly corrosive effects of secrets kept and truths denied. The setting of the novels, New York City in the closing decades of the 20th century, serves to illuminate these themes, as well as the more mournful aspects of Moe’s character—even as Moe, our narrator, illuminates the city. This passage from
Redemption Street
, in which Moe ponders the decline of the Borscht Belt resorts, is a case in point.

Sometimes I think it was my fate to catch things gone to seed. Coney Island, the world’s playground during my parents’ generation, was a wretched ghost town by the time my friends and I were old enough to go there on our own. The Dodgers moved to L.A. the year my dad promised to take me to a World Series game. Brooklyn itself had taken a sour turn during my watch. By 1957, the Dodgers weren’t the only ones fleeing the County of Kings. Why should the Catskills have been any different?

This is classic Moe: philosophical, melancholy, mourning the demise of a New York that he himself has never known—obsessed with the past and certain that ruin is inevitable. Like other fictional detectives, Moe carries a load of grief, but his is based not so much on a tragic past—the unsolved case, the accidental shooting—as on a dread of the future. Despite his warmth and sense of humor, Moe is a deeply pessimistic man. He knows that there’s a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, and that the center will not hold. He knows that, there’s a bill coming due one day—and that knowledge, the sureness of it, alienates him from his present, and robs him of its joys.

It’s a very human burden for a very human hero, and in
Redemption Street Moe
is struggling under its weight. Like the toughest of hardboiled PIs, he soldiers on.

Peter Spiegelman
Ridgefield, CT
October 2007

Peter Spiegelman is the Shamus Award-winning author of three John March private eye novels—
Black Maps, Death’s Little Helpers
, and
Red Cat—
and the editor of the crime fiction anthology
Wall Street Noir
.

For Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Lenny

and in memory of my late friends
Barry Feldman and John Murphy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank David and McKenna for being such dedicated fans of my work. It was their determination to see
Redemption Street
back in print that led to this becoming a reality. I’d like to thank Peter Spiegelman for his contribution to this new edition. Of course none of this would have been possible or worth it without Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan.

Two elderly Jewish women are having lunch at a Catskills hotel. One says to the other, “My God, this food is terrible.” The other woman looks at her plate, shaking her head in agreement. “Yes,” she says, “and the portions are so small.”

—Old Borscht Belt joke

Nobody forgets anything in this world. Because even if the mind forgets, the blood remembers
.

—Domenic Stansberry,
The Last Days of Il Duce

Chapter One
November 23
^rd
, 1980

I wasn’t thinking much about anything, certainly not my past, as I dusted off several overpriced bottles of French Cabernet.

“Hey, boss.” Klaus interrupted my dusting.

“What?”

“Some guy’s up front looking for you,” he said, rolling his eyes in disapproval. “He’s a real loser, kinda seedy, and I suspect he took the shuttle bus up from Bellevue.”

“You’re dressed in a Dead Kennedys tee shirt, ripped jeans, and unmatched sneakers and you’re callin’ this guy seedy!”

“On me, boss, it’s fashion. On him it’s seedy.”

“Whatever,” I surrendered, handing him my duster. “Lead on, Macduff.”

When I spotted the man worrying a rut in the floorboards around the cash register, I had to tip my cap to Klaus. His assessment was right on. “Loser” was the word that came immediately to mind. As a cop, I’d seen a million of them and escorted more than a few to the loony bin. That’s official police jargon. You can look it up.

This guy was a classic: raggedy, all fidgets and tics, smoking the life out of a cigarette. Sometimes they were deathly still, catatonic, but mostly they were like this clown. Their clothes always ill-fitting, too loose or too tight. Their hair always messy—not dirty necessarily, just all over the place.

“How may I help you?” I asked politely. I had had to learn that line. It wasn’t one that came easily to the lips of an ex-cop. “What the fuck’s going on here?” was what I was more comfortable with.

When he pulled the poor defenseless cigarette away from his mouth and faced me, I got a funny feeling in the pit of my belly. Mr. Fidgets seemed vaguely familiar. Not like my long-lost Siamese twin or nothing. More like a face I’d seen on the subway every now and then, but years ago.

Fidgets laughed, showing me a perfect mouth of stained teeth. “You don’t remember me.”

“Should I?”

“I guess I didn’t suppose you would remember,” he said in a sturdy voice that was an odd contrast to his fragile appearance.

“Actually, there is something familiar about you. I’m not sure what it is exactly.”

He wrinkled up his brow. “What’s the line? We went to different high schools together. We both went to Lincoln, but I was a senior when you were a sophomore. You were in my little sister’s grade.” He waved the filter of his spent cigarette at me, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.