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eBook Category: Mystery/Crime/Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: In this, the fifth installment in the Roland Longville series, Roland witnesses a murder while he's waiting to meet a client. The client turns out to be a heavyweight senator with a daughter who is hiding a checkered past and a colossal drug habit, and who is currently on the run. The senator wants her home before election time. Roland discovers the daughter is involved in the adult film industry; mixed up with a porn starlet named Nookie; an alcoholic, paranoid novelist; a crooked private eye; and an old enemy out of Roland's past. He begins to realize that somehow it's all connected to the murder he witnessed. He also finds that some secrets should remain secret.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works, Published: http://www.fictionworks.com, 2008
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2008

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Timothy C. Phillips' Roland Longville Series

1 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [132 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [153 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [104 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [475 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [114 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [150 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [164 KB] , hiebook (KML) [288 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [186 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [96 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [120 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [170 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [165 KB]
Words: 35896
Reading time: 102-143 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Prologue

Two huge guards escorted a prisoner down a long, dimly lit hallway.

"Take it easy out there, Big Daddy," an inmate called out from Cell Block Three. The prisoner who strode along between the guards was known to friends and enemies alike, inside prison walls and out, as Big Daddy.

The departing prisoner nodded, but did not look back. The three men continued along the corridor, which was flat gray and cramped, until they arrived at a heavy metal door. They had to wait a moment while one of the guards radioed the controller, who sat in a big metal control cubicle in the center of the prison, surrounded on all sides by thick bullet-proof glass. This unseen gatekeeper visually checked them out on the appropriate security camera screen, before opening the door remotely. Moments later there was a buzzing sound and the door clunked open. After the men walked through, it slammed shut behind them with the heavy sound that jail doors around the world make--a heavy, hollow, hopeless sound.

After five long years inside, Big Daddy found the wait maddening, because he knew he was getting out of here today, and the wait was eating into his freedom, what was left of his life, and he wanted to get on with it. He had things to do.

He stopped with his little entourage at the property desk, where a uniformed clerk disappeared into a labyrinth of shelves that lay behind his desk. After another wait, the clerk brought out a box containing Big Daddy's belongings, taken from him when he had been signed in five years before, and had him check them and sign for them. Big Daddy went over to a small side room and got dressed while one of the guards watched him. He'd been inside so long it didn't bother him. Privacy was impossible to maintain in a place where you were crowded in with hundreds of others, and your every move scrutinized.

Nothing bothered Big Daddy much anymore. You learned to talk to people while taking a shit in prison. You learned to pretend your bunkmate wasn't beating off to a skin magazine a couple of feet from you. Prison was a place where you grew thick skin, if you wanted to stay sane. Big Daddy's skin had been pretty thick when they first showed him to his cell and closed the door behind him, but now, he discovered, though the skin had grown thicker, the body was markedly thinner.

The clothes he slipped into now fit loosely. They were probably out of style, too, Big Daddy mused. He'd lost a lot of weight in the joint. Between prison food and so much time spent working out from sheer boredom, he was a much leaner, fitter version of his former self. The old sobriquet "Big Daddy" would take on a new, ironic meaning on the street, for sure.

Big Daddy didn't know for sure about the style part just yet. He was out of touch. That was something else that doing time inside does to you. He didn't really much give a damn, either. At one time, he'd cared about his clothes, but in here, that was impossible. Unless, of course, an orange jumpsuit was your idea of style. Once he got out, he'd get himself some new threads.

The weight loss was another thing; if he was a little leaner for his five years inside, that was okay with Big Daddy. Soon, he'd be putting a few pounds back on. Maybe not all of them, though, he thought. He kind of liked the feel of being a little less plump, and a lot more physically fit. But make no mistake; he told himself, Big Daddy's very much back. He had some scores to settle, but those could wait for now. First things first ... getting the hell out of Draper Correctional Facility.

It was all coming together, now. The dream that he had scarcely cared to hold in his mind, up until a few days ago, was coming true--Big Daddy was actually getting out.

He'd been lying on his bunk, flipping through a book from the prison library that he'd read about fifty times already, Lost Horizon by some guy named James Hilton. He had no idea who Hilton was, but there was something about the book Big Daddy liked. He'd never cared about books, but he had a lot of time to kill, and you couldn't get drunk inside, so he'd picked this one out at random and read it. It was good.

The guy in the book, Conway, finds a mystical place called Shangri-La, where everybody lives forever and everything's great. Then he loses it trying to help some other guy get back to civilization, and he spends the rest of his life trying to get back there. At the end of the book, the author makes you think that maybe he did find it again.

Big Daddy wasn't so sure. He thought that maybe there was no such place as Shangri-La, it was just a symbol for something that everybody was looking for. Maybe it was something different for everybody. Maybe for him it was a big house with plenty of broads and good liquor, with several cool cars sitting outside, and millions of dollars hidden away somewhere, tax-free money.

Anyway, there he was, stretched out on his bunk, re-reading Hilton's book, trying to figure out if maybe this Shangri-La represents something else, or maybe if Conway was really just Hilton himself and Shangri-La was some happy time and place that the author had known and lost and knew he could never get back, when he looked up, and there's a couple of corrections officers standing there, and one of them has a piece of paper in his hand.

Big Daddy knew that a screw with a piece of paper in his hand could only mean something really good, or something really bad, and he wasn't expecting either. The judge had sent him down for ten to twenty-five. He had stood accused of homicide, but his prick lawyer had got it down to Manslaughter One. Lot of good it had done him. Still, he hadn't heard from his lawyer since they slammed the door, and as far as he knew that was the end of it. But now there was the screw, with the paper, and they were looking for him, all right.

"Ricardo Lorenzo." The corrections officer said his name aloud. "Get up and look alive." The screw told his radio, "Open unit eleven."

Big Daddy had grunted, and grudgingly closed the book.

"What?" he had asked, his voice half-irritated, half wondering. This was definitely out of the ordinary. Rosco, his long-time cell mate, rolled over and cautiously watched the proceedings. Something out of the ordinary was always worth watching inside. Besides, he knew other inmates would ask him about everything later. Best to note all the details.

The cell door unlocked with a sudden, solid clunk, and yawned open.

"Get ready to be happy." The screw had held up the paper in his hand, so that Big Daddy could see. "Early release orders came down for you today. Don't ask me who's bright idea that was, but you're getting out of here, as of tomorrow morning. You're to come with us now for your parole processing."

Big Daddy had simply stood there, dumbfounded. That's the way the Bureau of Corrections did everything. One day you're free, the next day you're in prison. Then some asshole makes a decision somewhere, and you don't even get a chance to say goodbye to your jail buddies. Before you even know what hit you, you're back out on the street again. They treated you like shit no matter what, like you weren't even a human being, and didn't have a right to know what decisions they were making about your life. But be that as it might, Big Daddy grudgingly noted, if it meant he was free, he was all for that, too.

Big Daddy's stunned expression didn't last long. He'd broken into a slow grin and turned back to Rosco. He dropped the copy of Lost Horizon onto the bunk beside him.

"Here, Rosco, I think you better lay of the skin mags for a while and read this one."

Rosco looked a little stunned himself, but picked the book up, and looked at Big Daddy with an unspoken question on his face.

"That book is the truth, my man. Read it. You'll see."

And with that, Big Daddy had waltzed out of that little cell, that dingy gray little box where he had spent the last five years of his life, leaving Rosco staring intently after him, still holding that book in his hand.