Closing Time
by By Fusilli, Jim
Category: Fiction , Literary

It's after midnight and a novice private investigator discovers the battered body of a livery cabdriver in downtown Manhattan's meat-packing district. Two days later, he witnesses a bloody explosion at a gala opening at a SoHo art gallery.Unrelated incidents? Not to Terry Orr. A single father to a remarkable twelve-year-old daughter, Terry is still devoted to his beautiful Italian wife, a painter of immense talent, whose life ended abruptly during a brutal event that took the life also of their infant son. Sparked to action by violence and deception, Terry understands he can confront his demons by learning the skills of the PI trade and finding the madman who forever changed his life. And, perhaps, by finally realizing what it means to be the father of a young, loving daughter.But the person who killed cabdriver Aubrey Brown isn't easy to find, particularly for a troubled, headstrong amateur. Chasing the murderer takes Terry out of his TriBeCa neighborhood into the upper reaches of Harlem and back to the meat-packing district, where child prostitutes ply their trade. And discovering who planted the bomb in SoHo provides a challenge of another kind when Terry returns to the art world he once shared with his wife.As he struggles to beat back his demons at an Upper East Side therapist's office, at the Tilt-a-Whirl bar in TriBeCa, and on the Greenwich Village basketball courts, Terry focuses so intensely on his world's injustices that he is oblivious to his most important responsibility: to care for his daughter, who yearns for a father free of torment and grief.