The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,124

won, beating the Golden State Warriors 105–83.

Still sore from his injury, Byrne had to exert a little extra effort to keep up with the boy. He would be damned if he would show it, though.

‘Think you might play ball one day?’ Byrne asked.

‘Nah,’ Gabriel said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be tall enough. My brother Terrell? He had a bomb diggity hook pass, man. You should have seen him.’

‘I would have liked that,’ Byrne said. ‘But keep in mind that being tall isn’t the whole game.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘Far from it. Look at A.I.,’ Byrne said, referencing Allen Iverson, the former Sixers point guard. ‘He’s only six feet or so.’

‘Even shorter than you,’ Gabriel said.

Byrne laughed. ‘Even shorter than me.’

They drove to North Philly in near silence, still feeling each other out in many ways. They never spoke of St. Gedeon’s. The cut on Gabriel’s forehead was treated at the scene that night, but did not require stitches. He would, however, have a small, crescent-shaped scar for the rest of his life.

Byrne pulled over in front of the foster home, put the car in park. Out of habit, he scanned the two side mirrors and rearview. No gangbangers on the corner. Maybe the word had gotten out.

‘I know it’s not your birthday for a few weeks, but in case I don’t see you, I wanted you to have this.’ Byrne reached into the back seat, brought forward the wrapped package. He handed it to Gabriel.

The boy beamed. ‘What is this?’

‘See, that’s kinda the point of the wrapping paper. You’re not supposed to know until you open it.’

Gabriel smiled, tore into the paper. Byrne watched the boy’s face as he turned the book over and saw the title:

FORGOTTEN PHILADELPHIA:

LOST ARCHITECTURE OF THE QUAKER CITY

Gabriel started thumbing through it. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘This is really cool.’

Byrne was a bit worried about giving an eleven year old boy a book on architecture. He seemed to genuinely like it.

Gabriel stopped on a page with a photograph of the original Chestnut Street Theater. He turned the book so Byrne could see the picture.

‘Maybe I’ll do something like this some day,’ Gabriel said.

‘Maybe.’

‘I mean, you never know, right?’

‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘You never know.’

With Gabriel safely inside, Byrne thought about their time together, and what the future might hold. He wondered when Gabriel would learn of the scholarship fund that had been started for him, a trust that, coincidentally, was opened for the exact same amount recently taken from a North Philly drug dealer named Carter Wilson.

Allegedly taken, Byrne amended.

After sustaining his near fatal wounds, Byrne had been unconscious for eighteen hours, his mind misted with dark dreams, dreams that told him the visions – the premonitions and intuitions that had haunted him for more than two decades – were not quite done with him. Beneath it all he heard the echo of those five words, spoken by a madwoman.

You are the last saint.

Byrne eased into traffic, then turned onto Sixth Street, the glow of Center City before him like an armor of light, thinking:

No, Ruby Longstreet, I am not a saint, not by a long shot. Saints are blameless and pure. Saints are people like Father Thomas Leone.

I am just a man.

I am a guardian.

Acknowledgements

With deepest gratitude to:

Meg Ruley, Peggy Gordijn, Jane Berkey, and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency;

Dominic Montanari, Kathleen Franco MD, Sergeant Joanne Beres, Detective Eddie Rocks, Rick Jackson, Brian Zoldessy, Ramon Alvarez, Robert Kaminski, and Lou Baldwin;

Mike Driscoll, Pat Ghegan, Dominic Aspite, and the rest of the Philly crew;

My new family at Little, Brown;

The city and people of Philadelphia. While the places of worship mentioned in this book are based in fact, their names, locations, and dark secrets revealed within, are fiction.

Read on for an EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT from

Richard Montanari’s terrifying new thriller

The Stolen Ones

Out July 2013

1

In the city beneath the city, through these hollow black halls where dead souls murmur and the seasons do not change, he moves, silent as dust.

By day he walks the city above — teacher, salesman, con man, cop. He is the man in the shabby overcoat on the bus, the man in the bright scarlet vest who parks your car, the man who holds the door for you, touching a finger to the brim of his cap if you are a woman, offering a tactful dip of the chin if you are a man.

There is something in his manner that whispers of another time, something formal and reserved. It is not politeness or courtesy, nor could it be described