Snake Knot

2018 | English | Novel | Excerpt

(*) Cover art courtesy of the amazing Daniel Córdoba García.

Synopsis

Bill Malone is a retired insurance investigator with a heart condition. He has not long to live, or much to live for. Until he gets a call related to his last and most puzzling case: the sinking of the Babylon.

A shark watching expedition ship, the Babylon catches fire and sinks, killing all but a few traumatized passengers. Their detached stories share a surprising common nexus: a mysterious guy in a cowboy hat that nobody knows or talks to. Unable to prove foul play, much less his existence, he costs the company millions and Bill the job.

So when one of the survivors, an author that gets famous after writing a book about the event, asks Bill to search again for the real causes of the accident, he is pushed to give it another try and see if a cynic, tired old cop can do one last thing that matters before buying it. Unfortunately, the writer also drags in Malone’s new doctor, Miranda Lee, an optimistic, young and tenacious woman who happens to also be a fan of his work.

Details

• Year: 2018
• Language: English
• Word count: 105K

Excerpt

That said, the mystery of the guy in the cowboy hat remained. He wasn’t part of the crew and he wasn’t in he passenger list. We’d thoroughly checked every name, of course, but every survivor had seen him here and there during the two days trip and, believe it or not, no one had talked to him.

He was a ghost, a possible arsonist and also my only suspect. How did he get on board the Babylon? There were only a couple of possibilities I could think of: he hid among the staff before departure or he boarded the ship once in open waters, as the Somali pirates usually do. There’s something terribly honest about piracy so I’ve always loved that last one better.

People don’t realize it but there is rough competition in the insurance field, so the motive was clear to me: The guy in the cowboy hat must’ve been working for one of our rivals, probably SaloCo (Salome Corporation), the big fish in the puddle of insurance. Maybe the whole thing just went out of hand, maybe the carnage was collateral, but it happened nonetheless and someone ought to be accounted for it, even if the task would cost me my last breath.

Galvanized and with a clear goal in mind I took my gun -no games with those folks- and went out to the street looking for answers. It was weird but I was moving like in these stupid videogames kids play, as if when I wanted to go to the door I was first forced to aim to the destination and then, after an imaginary button had been pushed, finally move towards it. Crazy enough, but I somehow got to SaloCo’s headquarters in New York. A bunch of protesters were there waving their signs in front of the cameras, crying out loud their demands to news reporters. I saw a “Repent! The end is near” banner guy on a corner too. He stood there, quietly, staring at me. I read his sign, it was quite simple, kind of ineffective in marketing terms, at least for the uninitiated: Luke 21:11.

The best way to get unnoticed in a building is usually walking around like you know where you’re going. And that’s exactly what I did. I took the elevator and got lost in the den of the beast.

My hope was to find some proof of their involvement, in paper, but there was no shelves or folder to be found in the whole building. I checked office by office: just computers, which I hate. A lot of brilliant people lived and died before the machines existed, and they still gave their knowledge to the world, but millions now are sharing their collective dumbness on the Internet. How could I like the damned things? Also, they were all well protected by passwords and stuff as I learned trying to get in into some Mr. Zakinsky’s computer. The door said Mr. Zakinsky was in charge of the law department.

“This area is off limits.” said a voice from the door while I was trying to guess his password. It was not “password”. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Zakinsky, I presume.”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Computer guy.” I improvised in a desperate attempt to save face.

“I didn’t call you or your department.”, he thought out loud, “And you don’t exactly look like a computer guy to me. I think I’m calling security.”

“No need, I’ll check my schedule. Maybe it wasn’t this office I was called from.”

“Don’t move!”

Security responded quickly, two goons took my gun, grabbed me and escorted me out of the room without saying a word. The elevator, though, skipped the ground floor and went straight to the parking lot.

“There’s no need for you to drive me home, guys, really…”

As a former cop I knew what was coming, you don’t get information on the street without tightening up a little the snitch, so before they got time to do their thing I threw some punches. Unfortunately, they were younger and in better shape than me. They beat the crap out of a sick old man, dragged him out -not in a gently manner I must say- and left him lying in the nearest back alley to lick his wounds and rot.