Dark Nights in the City, is about the reality of expectations and the difference between what we are told and what actually exists. It’s also about the questions we all ask ourselves as we attempt to define who we are and weigh that person against the person we really want to be.
Amid the chaos that was Greenwich Village in the ‘60s young Danny Cerutti is trying to live a meaningful life, explore the possibilities of a career as a photographer and meet the woman all the movies tell him he deserves.
Seven deaths; a co-worker, an unknown child and two young women, one a friend, the other a lover; as well as those of three predators provide the story’s framework, each death affecting Danny in a different way, each forcing him to consider different aspects of his life in relation to them, each helping him to progress to a point where the questions, if not the answers, are at least beginning to make sense.
It’s winter 1957 and Danny meets a group of friends under the clock in the Biltmore bar, The gathering results in his escorting Julie Beckerman home to Englewood where he runs into her the next day and then dates he a few night later. The date results in a very passionate episode but he will not see her again for four years.
In that time he ends up traveling the world, tending bar in a bucket of blood on Broadway and starting a career as a photographer. He also meets the strange and attractive Kathy Haddon whom he does not pursue to his almost instant chagrin. This is partly due to the arrival back in his life of Julie, who walks into the bar one night and moves right into his bed.
We find out that her father is the owner of a huge darkroom equipment manufacturing company and she shows a great interest in Danny’s photos. She takes him home and persuades her father to give him some unwanted darkroom equipment and during the ame period he runs into an old friend, now a mob member, who offers him a free loft if he will keep an eye on some of the mobs buildings.
While at the Beckerman mansion, meeting Julie’s family the father shows him a book of his work that consists solely of nudes of his pre-pubescent daughters. Danny isn’t sure how to react to this but praises the man’s obvious talent.
Julie, who has been engaged this whole time goes to Paris to meet her fiancé and comes home with a serious ring. When Danny questions their relationship she leaves in a fit of anger. Danny meets with his cousin Nikki to get some insight with what is happening between him and her best friend. What she tells him is disquieting. He runs into Kathy and his friend Zack in the park and wishes he hadn’t prompted Zack to pursue her.
On a quiet Village morning fire breaks out on MacDougal Street. Danny and his friends Gallo & Quatro enter the burning building, rescue three kids and an old lady but miss one child and she dies.
That night on the way up to Nikki’s for consolation he sits on the train and thinks back to the first instance of death he experienced when a fellow factory worker with five kids, had been killed in an industrial accident. This leads him to the contemplation of an incident he had with a priest the following spring that lead to his rejection of the church and confusion about God. Nikki again consoles him.
A few days later after a party at Zack’s flat Danny returns the next day to find Kathy Haddon, tied naked to a chair. He mistakes it for an attack but quickly realizes that he has interrupted something. The next night Zack explains about Kathy who had been arrested in Conception, Chile and tortured and abused by he captors, which has resulted in unusual sexual proclivities.
A couple of days later Zack gets a call from Kathy. She has seen the man who held her captive in Chile and he has seen her. She is terrified. Zack calls Danny who calls a cousin that works in D.C. and is advised to go to the papers with the story. He meets with Zack & Kathy in Zack’s flat to tell them this. Tommy Day another friend shows up unexpectedly and points out hat a couple of limos are on the street. They see that it is Colonel Servias from Chile who comes to the flat with two men, An argument over Kathy occurs, Servias gets pushy and the three young men kill him and his guards. They bury them in the basement.
After this traumatic event, Zack leave on tour in Europe, Kathy disappears and Danny wonders if they did the right thing.
An old friend, Marva Rubenstein hires Danny to shoot stills of an off-Broadway musical she is producing and he meets nutty Bree Flynn. She turns out to be an exhibitionist and thrill seeker who gets off on doing it in public places and on the edges of roofs.
They are at a party when Dave Quatro, who manages the Bitter End tells Danny that Feds have come by looking for Kathy and Zack. Bree takes him from the party to an orgy, which turns out to be a major turnoff; too many naked people who should only be allowed to undress in the privacy of their own baths.
Nikki calls and tells him that Harold Beckerman, Julie’s generous father has died. They go to the funeral where Julie’s sister tries to get him to go after Julie. He backs off.
Danny goes to the opening of Marva’s play and meets Abby Walsh, who he falls for instantly. He also runs into Kathy and tells her that the FBI is looking for her. A few days later Abby shows up at his loft and agrees to pose for him. He shoots her in the woods in Jersey and they come back to his loft to develop the film.
This book is about a righteous man in a bent world; a man who allows his sense of duty to be twisted by an all encompassing need for revenge which leads to a horrible catastrophe. It is only years later, when the men he served are trying to kill, him that he finally comes to understand; there is no escape, there is only conclusion.
This book is also about two kinds of hubris; the first taints the corridors of power, infecting those who inhabit them with the false conceit that a strategy will work simply because it is they who have conceived it; the second blinds such men to any reality that conflicts with their own desires and ultimately to the concept of chance, the existence of a whole world of happenstance, seething with events they can neither foresee nor control but which ultimately are destined to become the final arbiters of everything they do.
Ten years into this deadly career, victim of a badly planned operation that resulted in the deaths of innocent school children he fled the world of clandestine ops for the tranquility of the rural hills of Northwest Connecticut and a new career as a teacher.
Now, a decade later, someone is trying to kill him.
A series of unrelated events, initiated by the demolition of a jungle drug lab and Mike’s own school related trip to nearby ruins are given credence by the Iraqi incarceration of Mike’s archeologist daughter Sophie and solidified by the accidental killing of one of his former employer’s agents by the errant arrow of a deer hunter. This complicated series of chance events leads to monumental misinterpretation and a widening circle of death.
From a primitive cell in northern Iraq, to a series of burning Quonset huts on the shore of a peaceful lake in the Guatemalan jungles, by way of the corridors of power in Washington, DC and the offices of a black ops contractor in New York City, a fictitious scenario has been constructed of unrelated, accidentally occurring events. It’s fascinating, intriguing and wholly believable but it’s a lie.
It will result in a series of murders that will force Michael Dietrich to abandon his pastoral existence and return to the deadly ways of his past as he and a small circle of former associates battle to save his daughter, his lover and themselves by bringing down the black ops contractor that had employed him and the vice-presidential candidate who has created this fictitious scenario to hide the horrifying details of his own unacceptable past.
Digger Charleston solves problems. All you need is a big bankroll or a mess of trouble and you’ve got his undivided attention. That’s why Emory Taggert, billionaire political king- maker has Digger’s number on his speed dial.
The current problem is tabloid reporter Una Calligan. Una’s beautiful, talented, controversial and dead. An investigation of her death could involve any number of Taggert’s inner circle so he hits the button marked Charleston and Vivian Chan, Digger’s exotic secretary tells her boss it’s time.
Digger’s anticipating a well paid walk in the park until he trips over an epidemic of violent and humiliating death involving Una’s, less than ethical, co-workers.
Things get complicated when a number of new bedfellows surface from among Taggert’s murky circle of associates. First there’s Brent Knowlton, the presidential candidate of the fundamentalist right; then there’s The Message Holders, a mysterious brotherhood bent on launching a new-world religious crusade and just to balance things out there’s Famous Flesh magazine, flagship of a mammoth porn empire that seemingly gets its publicity and therefore a great deal of its income, from the Message Holders vocal opposition.
There’s also an assortment of psychologically damaged sirens, all somehow connected to Taggert and his bed—and to complete this bizarre collection of misfits; a seemingly deranged father and son bent on avenging the memory of a misused groupie.
As the focus of the investigation moves from a clutch of dead paparazzi to a shamelessly abused young woman and finally to Taggert’s burgeoning empire and bizarre lifestyle, Digger finds himself faced with a life threatening decision. Will he honor his self-imposed dictates and protect his client against any and all eventualities or will he respond to a wave of condemning evidence and expose the vicious secrets he has been hired to protect.
It’s a decision that will leave Digger and his associates trapped in a maelstrom of violence, betrayal and death.
When the mob collides with the art world it’s impossible to see who’s the bigger thief or who runs the best scam.
At a time following W.W. II, Don Vincenzo Castiglione moves with his family and entourage from Palermo, Sicily to New York City.
Don Vincenzo quickly establishes himself as the Capo di tuti Capi of the New York underworld.
Shortly thereafter Don Vincenzo’s only daughter, Carmen Maria, a slightly overweight virgin in need of minimal orthodontia, arrives at marriageable age. Despite the Don’s other preferences she marries the extremely handsome if somewhat ineffectual Dominic Annunciato and a short time later their son Anthony is born.
Anthony becomes the apple of the Don’s eye and he grows up to be a charming and clever young man straining to take on his grandfather’s mantle.
In his final year at Harvard, Anthony falls in love with Harlene Slocum, the beautiful, semi-virginal daughter of a Oklahoma oil fortune.
Fifteen years later Harlene harasses Anthony out of the family Victorian in Bensonhurst and into a serious mansion in Englewood Cliffs. In seeking to decorate the mansion she becomes involved with a series of unscrupulous art dealers.
She turns to Anthony for assistance. Despite the fact that he is currently struggling with the vexing problem of safely importing large quantities of a certain illegal powdered substance, he puts aside his business interests to come to her aid.
He becomes intrigued by the obvious con of the art world and seeks to learn about it. His guide is the plain is a hopelessly smitten Aurora Kalbshoxen and assistant director of Notheby’s Auction Rooms. Through her he discovers one Biaggi Biancoulu, a Neapolitan minimalist of low renown and minimal tal;ent.
Biaggi’s otherwise worthless paintings, however, are fortuitously encased in huge, hollow, wooden frames in which Anthony sees the solution to his powdered substance importation problems.
He buys up half of Biaggi’s work, packs the frames with drugs and ships them to Notheby’s to be auctioned.
He seeds the auction with a Runyanesque gathering of his own mobsters, who easily buy up Biaggi’s otherwise unwanted work at minimum prices. What Anthony has not foreseen is that the complete sellout of Biaggi’s work will be noticed and noted by the ever-acquisitive art world. Six weeks later there is a “Biancoulu Two” at Notheby’s.
It is at this show that the unthinkable happens—twice.
One of the paintings is bought by The Baroness Brunhilda von Platz y Kapsos. The frame full of cocaine is now in her hands.
Even worse, art critic Collier Hornbluth, desperately in need of a new discovery anoints Biaggi, rising star of the New York art scene.
Biaggi’s head swells all out of proportion and Anthony sends Tommy “Toots” Canestruna to Italy to resolve the problem. He also decides to create a whole new school of art, based on the frames of the soon to be deceased Biaggi. He launches the Corniche Grosso, (Big Frame) school of art.
Corniche Grosso is a monster hit and seems destined to make everyone heaps of money until the destitute Baroness, sells her Biancoulu back to Anthony and then tries to scam her insurance company by putting in a claim that it was stolen. Unaware of The Baroness’ scam Anthony puts the painting into the next Corniche Grosso show.
Lt. Brian Q. Molloy a NYC Art Cop recognizes the picture from an insurance company’s, stolen art flyer. He raids the gallery, arrests it’s bewildered employees, confiscates the picture and leaves it in his office where the drug sniffing dog of a drinking buddy from DEA uncovers it’s real secret.
The entire scam is beginning to unravel but an ever resourceful Anthony knows how to make the best of a decidedly unwieldy situation. And embarks on a new version of the old scheme by unloading the paintings on hordes of greedy collectors and galley owners.
In the lives of the fortunate, there is a period of time or a series of events that alter their perspective just enough to expose them to the possibilities available in a world, almost without limits. For teenager Danny Cerutti that time was the summer of 1953.
His regular summer job is gone, victim of a fatal factory accident. A frantic search, across the river in Manhattan, leads to a job at the Eighth Street Bookshop, hanging out at The Riviera, The Five Oaks and The Whitehorse and a tour of the local party scene.
His fortunes soar when he inherits “The Indian”, a monster motorcycle, from an army bound cousin and it attracts the delicate and dazzling, “older woman”, Kitty Harman. Their passionate affair ends abruptly with her departure for Hollywood but he has already fallen helplessly in love.
A chance encounter with drinker, lecher, newly published novelist and professional hitchhiker, Zack Medgars provides an opportunity to go after Kitty but they are barely across the state of Pennsylvania when Zack deserts him for the bed of a friend’s wife and he is forced to continue alone.
The story is about the trip, Danny’s search for Kitty, their humiliating reunion and the race to get back to New Jersey before his parents return from overseas.
The book is about journeys, one across a country, the other through a spectrum of experience and how their acquirements affect and shape him. It’s also the stories of the people he meets, helpful or obstructive, friendly or hostile, simple or bizarre, all involved, all part of the story, all there to help, hinder or become otherwise involved in his quest.
It’s about a time and a world that were different but people who were very much the same.