{"product_id":"crooked-isbn-9780440243120","title":"Crooked","description":"Nicholas Palihnic is a natty, tweed-suited hustler who knows every nook and cranny of New York–and a thousand ways to break a girl’s heart. Beatrice Belarus is a Manhattan art dealer with an insatiable appetite for money–and for anyone who gets in her way. And a painting titled Trampoline Nude, 1972 has neither nudity nor a trampoline. But when Nicholas is hired by an insurance company to find the recently stolen painting, a murdered art thief points him to a trove of gold buried beneath Manhattan–and suddenly all roads are leading back to Beatrice. As fortune hunters, lovers, and other strangers gather around him, there’s one thing Nicholas must remember above all else: in this business, it’s better to be crooked than dead....\"Thrilling... Wiprud's engaging, hard-boiled style draws readers into both the art world and the underworld of New York, and his colorful cast keeps things moving with wit to spare.\"—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eBRIAN M. WIPRUD\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eAge:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Wears red tennis shoes\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003ePhysical Description:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Diabolical \u0026amp; Occasionally Fiendish\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eProfession:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Mystery Author, Outdoor Writer \u0026amp; Photographer\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eLatest Accomplishments:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e*Independent Mystery Bookseller's Association Bestseller*2002 Lefty Award for Most Humorous Novel*2003 Barry Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eFavorite Books:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Squid and I, Chuck FlinkTubing Badgers for Fun and Profit, Bubbles McCoy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eFavorite Movies\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e: \"Bowanga! Bowanga!,\" \"Eegah!\"\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eHobbies:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Knife Throwing, Sword Swallowing, Hanging by Fish Hooks\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eFavorite Lines:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \"What a gorgeous day. What effulgent sunshine. It was a day of this sort the McGillicuddy brothers murdered their mother with an axe.\" WC Fields.\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eFavorite Scotch:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Bourbon\u003cp\u003eChapter 1\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas stepped under the awning and into the full bare-bulb glow of  a Chinatown fish stand.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehind him, Asian shoppers flooded the sidewalk, a turbid  human river wielding pink plastic bags laden with pea pods, bok choy, mung beans,  and squid. The evening air was filled with relentless rain, buzzing neon signs, exhaust  grit, and the sour vowels of vendors bickering with their customers. Cars and semis  crept by on Canal Street; traffic was jammed toward the Manhattan Bridge in one direction,  toward the Holland Tunnel in the other.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas zeroed in on the fish shop proprietor,  a blind old man with a wispy beard, skullcap, and pernicious smile who waved his  cane through the air with the determination and panache of a maestro before his choral  group. Even blind, the shopkeeper knew the locale and price of each variety of fish.  He priced and protected the wares with his baton, while his harried assistant was  relegated to making the actual exchanges of money for scaly food. A pair of crones  double-teamed the geezer, singing their demands and gesturing with fists at a tin  bucket full of writhing hornpout. The conductor barked a price at the chorus, only  to be flanked by the staccato of two other women yowling and pointing to the sea  robins and spiny urchins. The piscatorial patriarch swung his baton, thwacked the  bucket to which they pointed, and barked a price. Upstarts in this glee club would  not be tolerated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLate that afternoon, Nicholas had been on the phone with a man  who called himself \"Dr. Bagby,\" a guy with a hot painting and a penchant for a noisy  part of town. The background clamor was familiar–the honking, the cane smacking the  metal buckets, the yammering. Two hours and seven cab rides later, Nicholas's search  had brought him to this Canal Street fish stand. He'd finally pegged the specific  market din not because he spent any appreciable time shopping in Chinatown but because  of Figlio's, a Foley Square lounge around the corner. Courthouse-types watered there,  and Nicholas had often had occasion to buttonhole young ADAs at Figlio's for information.  He'd stood many times in front of the fish stand to hail a cab.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFebruary bowled  a wet ball of wind under the fish stand's awning, and Nicholas turned away from the  tin bucket ensemble, water beading on his glasses and close-cropped hair. He waded  back through the pedestrian current to a phone booth on the corner, where he found  fugacious refuge from the tide of pink bags and two-dollar umbrellas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Bagby  hadn't called from a cell phone. Background noises are always strangely garbled in  digital signals. No, this had been clear–a landline, but on the street.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas  targeted a vendor close to the phone booth. Her shop comprised a huge golfer's umbrella,  a Coleman lantern, and a peach crate, all assembled on the threshold of a defunct  savings-and-loan building. Huddled beneath the umbrella, the Asian dwarf woman buzzed  away with a hobby tool, fashioning netsuke from chunk plastic. The finished products  hung by threads from the spokes of her umbrella. It was as if a tornado had lifted  a yurt from a Mongolian bazaar and dropped it in downtown Manhattan.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas stepped  forward and poked at a carving of a peanut, which twirled in the light of the lantern.  \"How much for this one?\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMagnifying goggles made the dwarf woman's eyes appear the  size of fried eggs. Her tool buzzed to a stop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"That special. Twenty buck.\" The  giant eyes vanished as they reconsidered the masterpiece at hand. The tool buzzed,  puffs of plastic dust pluming from where she crouched.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Here.\" Nicholas held out  a twenty, which undulated to the rhythm of grocery bags whacking him in the shins.  The tool stopped buzzing, and the woman's egg eyes reappeared. She sniffed, looked  at the twenty, wiped her gloved hand on the top of her greasy woolen cap, and snatched  the bill.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Tank you. En-joy.\" Nicholas turned up the collar of his tweed overcoat  as wind battered the dwarf's umbrella overhead. He admired the twenty-dollar peanut  between thumb and forefinger.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"I'd like to buy something else.\" Nicholas held out  another twenty. \"I want to buy what you know about a man who made a call from that  phone booth. That phone booth there. Did you see a man? He coughed. He's sick.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe scratched her head in thought, wiping her nose with the back of her glove.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Man?  Sick man?\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Yes. Sick.\" Nicholas demonstrated, coughing and holding an imaginary  receiver to his head and pointing at the booth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer face sprouted a smile as wide  as she was tall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"I see. Sick man. I see all time. I see come, go, all time. Sick  man. Twenty buck.\" She put out a hand, but Nicholas held the bill out of reach. The  damp winter gusts looked like they might just blow it away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Where does he live?\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e***\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe building was a prewar four story. Spanish American War, that is, and every  year seemed to weigh heavily upon its frame. Nicholas stood in the foyer dripping  water, wiping the rain from his glasses, razzing the damp from his bristly hair,  and re-flipping the small curl that formed at his widow's peak. He'd long since abandoned  umbrellas, preferring to tough it out in an overcoat. He'd spent considerable time  in the tropics, where one got used to being wet, and being caught in the rain was  welcome relief from the heat. As his mentor in those days had been fond of saying,  \"Humans are already waterproof.\" Pretty absurd considering that the mentor in question  drowned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the vestibule, ancient shellac was beaded on the chipped woodwork like  yellow sweat. A low-watt bulb illuminated an amber tulip sconce and little else.  The mailboxes were all unlabeled, flanked by ancient buzzer buttons. Nicholas wanted  to arrive unannounced, so he tried the door's rusty knob. The oak door creaked, but  it wouldn't budge. He put his face up to the murky glass and attempted to peer beyond  the shredded lace curtain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe door opened suddenly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Yahj!!\" gasped a Chinese  gent in a porkpie hat. A carpetbag fell from his grasp as he staggered back in alarm,  hand raised defensively.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"It's OK . . . It's OK . . .\" Nicholas took the opportunity  to step past the door. He picked up the carpetbag and held it out to Porkpie.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePorkpie  recovered quickly and snatched the bag back. His shock was replaced with indignation,  and he wagged a threatening finger, scolding Nicholas in Cantonese. Nicholas shooed  him out into the foyer with reassuring gestures, then turned to the building's interior.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe staircase was a rickety bit of architecture with a distinctly German Expressionist  flair. The whole shebang looked as though it might spiral in on itself like a collapsing  cup. Nicholas ascended quickly, each step voicing a creaky complaint. At each landing  a dim sconce barely lit the way. Scents of sesame oil and soy grew stronger the higher  he went. At the top landing, next to a sconce, stood a door made conspicuous by the  lack of a Confucian icon thumbtacked over the apartment number. Nicholas put an ear  to the door. Just the gentle slurping of steam heat came from within. He turned the  knob and the latch clicked open.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSquinting into the apartment's gloom, Nicholas  had a view along a crooked hallway that terminated in an island of light at the kitchen.  A man was slumped at a table with a towel over his head. Wisps of steam snaked from  under the towel. He was dressed in a worn terry bathrobe and grimy slippers. Dr.  Bagby sleeping? Next to him, leaning against the stove, was a large, square, flat  wooden crate–one that might hold, say, a painting. Somewhere a radiator valve hissed  like a cobra ready to strike.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas slid quietly in and pushed the door closed.  It was roasting hot in the apartment, and he loosened his overcoat. It didn't help  that he was wearing a tweed suit. He pulled the neatly folded handkerchief from his  top pocket and mopped the back of his neck while he did a quick survey of his surroundings.  The place was stacked with old newspapers and magazines like some kind of recycling  center. Bagby was evidently one of those freaks who couldn't throw away reading material  of any kind. Furniture must be in there somewhere, along with legions of roaches.  Chinatown was rife with roaches. Nicholas expected the place to smell musty, of decay.  But instead it smelled of menthol.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis eyes latched back onto Bagby. He took a few  steps in that direction and the floor squeaked a loud warning–but the man at the  kitchen table didn't stir. Nicholas approached more swiftly and discerned that the  man was more than asleep. Circling behind Dr. Bagby, he found a hypodermic needle  jabbed into the base of Bagby's skull, just above a large bruise. Clubbed and stuck.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas circled to the side and lifted the towel. The corpse fit the dwarf's description  of the man from the pay phone: a heavyset man, dark curly hair, eyebrows pierced  by small silver rings. He might once have been swarthy, but his complexion now was  waxy. Eyes open, dilated, dead. His cheek was smooshed against a croup kettle, and  droplets of condensed steam clung to his beard stubble.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRaising one of Bagby's pant  legs, Nicholas noted that the ankle over the white sock was just turning purplish–blood  pooling in his legs. With the back of his hand, Nicholas felt a warm, hairy leg.  Bagby had been kaput for a half hour or less.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe table was strewn with nasal sprays,  cold formulas, used tissues, and lozenges, some of which had been knocked to the  checkered tile floor. \"Doctor Bagby's Croup Elixir\" read one bottle; the source of  the man's alias was one of the cold formulas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas backed away from the table,  self-consciously rubbing his hands on his coat. Time to start watching where he left  his fingerprints. With his handkerchief, Nicholas tilted the crate toward him for  a look-see. He lifted out the familiar gilt frame and saw the ragged ends of the  blue canvass where the Moolman had been cut away. Sloppy, but quick. The 24\"´36\"  painting \u003ci\u003eTrampoline Nude\u003c\/i\u003e, 1972, had been lifted from a private collection in Westchester  six weeks earlier by a man posing as an exterminator. Nicholas let the frame drop  back into the crate with a thud.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Super,\" he snorted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHad Chinatown been first  on his dance card, Nicholas would probably have had the canvass in hand, and Bagby  would still be suffering from his head cold. Someone else had got to him first. Sorry  son of a bitch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA door slammed at street level. Heavy footsteps on the stair. The  squelch of a police radio echoing from a few floors below.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas didn't have  to think about his next move. He operated on instinct and turned to the kitchen window.  Flipping the catch on the security gate with a forearm, he opened the grimy window  with his palms and crawled out onto the fire escape. Flower pots and a mop tripped  him in the dark. He grabbed the railing to keep from cartwheeling down the metal  steps and into a long hospital stay, then sidled deftly down each flight toward the  building's backyard. He kept his weight mostly on the railing–the steps on these  rusty old fire escapes sometimes snapped unexpectedly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe jumped from the fire escape  to the ground below just as a cop appeared in Bagby's kitchen window, yammering into  a radio. The backyard wasn't some grassy nirvana of sprinklers, lawn gnomes, and  azaleas. It resembled a small prison yard: a patch of buckled concrete surrounded  by a wall topped with razor wire. Nicholas skirted the wall, out of view, his footsteps  crunching lightly on the faint glitter of broken beer bottles and cigarette butts.  He stole around the corner, into a blind alley that stabbed between two buildings.  At the far end was a basement walk-down. It was locked, but a few shoves of his shoulder  and the moldering jamb gave way like stale bread. A wave of sewage reek flushed from  the dark.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas paused, confronted by the unexplored cavern. Street light spilled  into the rank basement through a coal grate at the far end of the long, black space.  A grim beacon. He sensed he wasn't alone, and the scuttling claws of rats on concrete  confirmed it. By the sound of them, he gauged that they were welterweights compared  to the wharf-bruisers down near the Brooklyn Bridge where he lived. And certainly  they were neither as fleet of paw as the Upper West Side rail yard design, nor as  insouciant as the Tompkins Square model. Even as the bear was friend to Grizzly Adams,  the rat was a pal of Nicholas Palihnic. He took a shine to their independent nature,  their tenacity, their gritty lifestyle. But he knew enough to respect the domain  of the cellar rat. Generally slow, midsize, and shy, they also had a tendency to  be defensive, if not openly hostile, on their home turf. Nicholas recalled the story  of a man trapped in a Chicago basement who'd been reduced to a paraplegic before  he was rescued. Nibbled around the edges like a saltine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Nicholas's years in  gritty third-world slums had taught him not to fear places that were merely dark,  squalid, or rat infested. Worldly battle scars that broke some men had armored Nicholas  for a new lease on life. Disillusionment and subsequent hard lessons about human  nature warped idealists into cynics, and Nicholas into a practical solipsist. Whatever  New York could dish out, Nicholas had decided to bottle and turn into a buck. So  a stroll through Ratville or shortcuts through subway tunnels were little more to  him than a Park Avenue jaunt. It was hard on his tweed suits, but he had a lot of  them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe beelined for the coal grate at the far end of the blackness. He managed  to avoid stepping on any rats, though one brushed his leg, perhaps a coy test of  his resolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs he drew near, he could see cracks of light from sidewalk cellar  doors to the right of the coal chute, and the steps leading up to them. His ears  rang with the clicking of palm-sized roaches scattering as he climbed the steps.  A padlock sealed the cellar doors.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas spied the shadow of another stairway  hunkering mid-basement, as well as the dark forms of rats trundling from his path  as he headed for it. He heard a roach flying toward his head and batted it away.  Having once tangled with giant bird-eating Colombian spiders, roaches were nothing  to him now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDull amber light spread from under a door at the top of the stairs.  Reasoning that this door probably opened to the building's lobby, under the Fritz  Lang staircase, Nicholas listened intently. All he could hear was creaking, several  floors above.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA quick study of the door revealed that it was secured with an eyehook  latch on the other side. A credit card easily flipped it. Nicholas slid the door  open and scanned the empty hallway. He grinned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eComposing himself, he exited the  cellar with a whistle on his lips, a song in his heart, and a roach on his lapel.  He jettisoned the latter, maintained the former.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEmerging onto the stoop from the  vestibule, Nicholas was confronted by a cop leaning on her patrol car. Clearly one  had gone upstairs, while his partner kept an eye out downstairs. At least it had  stopped raining.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDitching any sign of alarm, Nicholas whistled tunelessly and smiled.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Evening, Officer.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe watched him plod down the steps and turn toward the flow  of pink plastic shopping bags on Canal Street.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Sir . . .\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe kept whistling and  walking as if he didn't hear. Just an ordinary gent out for a stroll.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Sir. Hey,  you. Mister, stop.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehind him a snap snapped and leather flapped–the unmistakable  sound of her holster at the ready. Damn. It was the cue that he had to turn. When  the gun leaves the holster, a cop stops listening and starts cuffing. No talking  your way out then.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNicholas glanced back, did a double take, and then turned around,  flashing his most charming smile–his patented \"Who, me?\" move.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Yes, Officer?\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe approached, her hips' sway made huge and ducklike by the citation binder, flashlight,  handcuffs, and radio stuffed in her trousers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Where you comin' from?\" She sniffed,  chewing hard on her gum, looking him up and down. The dark eyes under the brim of  her hat settled on his face. His smile wasn't returned. But she put a hand to check  her hair just the same.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Me?\" He let slip a sly grin, as though she were approaching  him in a bar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Yeah.\" She considered him sidelong, eyes guarded. \"You.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes  Nicholas overestimated his charms. She'd seen his moves before, and whether from  some discotheque lothario or street hustler, she knew his sly grin was a con.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt  was the beginning of a long night that would turn into a longer day.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305099972837,"sku":"NP9780440243120","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440243120.jpg?v=1767724283","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/crooked-isbn-9780440243120","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}