Hit and Run, page 1
Hit and Run
A Short Thriller, Volume 18
Vincent Zandri
Published by Vincent Zandri, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HIT AND RUN
First edition. March 16, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Vincent Zandri.
ISBN: 979-8231499625
Written by Vincent Zandri.
Also by Vincent Zandri
A Chase Baker Thriller
Chase Baker Box Set
The Chase Baker Trilogy:Volume II
Chase Baker and the Dutch Diamonds
Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny
The Chase Baker Trilogy: The First Three Chase Baker Thriller Novels
Chase Baker and the Quest for the Holy Grail
Chase Baker and the Pyramid of Madness
Chase Baker and the Hunt for Nazi Gold
Chase Baker und die Jagd nach Nazi-Gold
Chase Baker and the Purple Robe of Christ
A Chase Baker Thriller No. 12
Chase Baker and the Lost Ark of God
A Chase Baker Thriller Series
Young Chase Baker and the Cross of the Last Crusade
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 1
The Shroud Key
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2
Chase Baker and the Golden Condor
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 3
Chase Baker and the God Boy
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 4
Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 6
Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 9
Chase Baker and the Seventh Seal
A Dick Moonlight PI Series
Moonlight Gets Schooled
Moonlight Breaks Bad
Divorce by Moonlight
Moonlight Gets Railroaded
Code Blue Moonlight
A Dick Moonlight PI Series Short
Moonlight Gets Served
Moonlight Goes Viral
Moonlight Mafia
Moonlight Detour
A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller
Moonlight Kills
Moonlight Falls: New and Lengthened Editor’s Cut Edition
The Dick Moonlight PI Box Set II
A Dick Moonlight Thriller Book 9
Dog Day Moonlight
A Gripping Ava "Spike" Harrison Thriller
The Concrete Pearl
A Gripping Tanya Teal Corporate War Chronicles Thriller
Primary Termination
A Jack "Keeper" Marconi PI Thriller Series
The Sins of the Sons: A Gripping Hard-Boiled Mystery Thriller with a Surprise Ending
The Innocent
Godchild
American Prison Break
The Jack Marconi P.I. Box Set
White Wedding
(A Jack Marconi PI Series)
The Guilty
The Slender Man
(A Keeper Marconi PI Thriller Book 5
Dressed to Kill
American Crime Story: A Thriller Series
American Crime Story: Book I
American Crime Story: Book II
American Crime Story: Book III
American Crime Story: Book IV
A Meta Man Time Travel Thriller
The Passion of Casey Smith
Meta Man
Meta Man: Mars 900 C
Cashless Bail
After Life
A Sam Savage Sky Marshal Thriller
Dead Heading
The Sam Savage Sky Marshal Boxed Set
Tunnel Rats
The Empire Runaway
A Short Thriller
Ghosts
Pembroke PInes
The Killer
Hit and Run
The Devil Won't Have You
The Girl in the Window
Go Get Me A Gun
The Left Hook
Autonomous
Delusional
Desperate Measures
Domestic Dispute
Living Doll
The Woman with Two Faces
The Man Who Prayed for the End of the World
Hitchhiker
Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
Memory Bank
Left Alone
A Short Thriller Collection
Desperate Measures: A Short Thriller Collection
A Short True Crime Thriller
I Am God
A Steve Jobz PI Thriller
The Flower Man
The Extortionist
The Plumber
I, The Judge
The Steve Jobz PI Box Set
The Blackmailer
A Steve Jobz Thriller
The Embalmer
(A Thriller)
The Scream Catcher
A Touch of Evil
Detonator
A Thriller
The Caretaker
Tarantulas at Thirty Thousand Feet
American Crime Story: The Complete Saga
Deranged Fan
The Girl Who Wasn't There
Her Darkest Secret
Paradox Lake
Max Gator: A Thriller
The Squatters
Assignment Rendition
The Ex-Con
A Tony and Stan Thriller
Bingo Night
Border Crossings
A Vincent Zandri Hard-Boiled Short Read
Pathological
A Young Chase Baker Thriller
Young Chase Baker and the Well of the Souls
Dick Moonlight PI
Full Moonlight
PI Jack Marconi
Arbor Hill
PULP Thrillers
Pulp 2: Three Gripping Thrillers Collected in One Box Set
The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy
The Remains
The Ashes
The Bones
(Vincent Zandri on Writing Book)
Pieces of Mind: Fictional Truths & Non-Fictional Lies about Writing and the Writing Life
Writer's Life Mindset Lecture Series
The Writer’s Life Mindset Lecture Series Number 1: The Series that Helps You become a Real Pro Writer!
Writer's Life Volume 1
The Writer's Life
Standalone
Pulp!: Two Thriller Novels and a Novella
Head
Pathological: Collected Short Reads of Sex, Lies, and Murder!
Go Get Me a Gun
Watch for more at Vincent Zandri’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Vincent Zandri
Hit and Run (A Short Thriller, #18)
Hit and Run | A Short Thriller | Vincent Zandri
THE END
Sign up for Vincent Zandri's Mailing List
Also By Vincent Zandri
Begin your Moonlight journey today with a FREE copy of MOONLIGHT FALLS, the first novel in the Thriller and Shamus Award winning series.
Or visit WWW.VINZANDRI.COM to nab all of Vin’s thrillers and mystery series.
PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI
“SENSATIONAL . . . MASTERFUL . . . brilliant.”
—New York Post
“(A) CHILLING TALE OF obsessive love from Thriller Award–winner Zandri (Moonlight Weeps) . . . Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . . OH, WHAT A STORY it is . . . Riveting . . . A terrific old school thriller.”
—Booklist “Starred Review”
“ZANDRI DOES A FANTASTIC job with this story. Not only does he scare the reader, but the horror
Show he presents also scares the man who is the definition of the word “tough.”
—Suspense Magazine
“I VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book . . . It's a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists . . . Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”
—Life in Review
“(THE INNOCENT) IS A thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.”
—The Times-Union (Albany)
"THE ACTION NEVER WANES."
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"GRITTY, FAST-PACED, lyrical and haunting."
—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years
"TOUGH, STYLISH, HEARTBREAKING."
—Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Savages and Cartel.
“A TIGHTLY CRAFTED, smart, disturbing, elegantly crafted complex thriller . . . I dare you to start it and not keep reading.”
—MJ Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Halo Effect and Closure
“A CLASSIC SLICE OF raw pulp noir...”
—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
“ZANDRI (IS) A VETERAN wordsmith who executes quality and quantity at superlative levels.”
—Book Reporter
Hit and Run
A Short Thriller
Vincent Zandri
“Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.”
― Jim Thompson
1
Albany, New York
The Dead of Winter
I needed a drink in the worst way. Maybe I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t scrounge a couple of bucks together for a beer and a shot. Or hell, maybe I could somehow get some dumb asshole to buy me a beer and a shot and save me the trouble. Maybe I was considered new in town and, in fact, grew up here. But now that I’d undergone a couple of cosmetic surgeries after being sent down to a Fed penitentiary in the gator-filled swamps of South Florida, everyone and anyone who used to know me figured I was either locked up for good, or dead, or maybe both. They wouldn’t be wrong.
Truth is, I didn’t even have a valid driver's license, so when I pulled into the parking lot of Lanie’s Bar on that snowy January night, the duct-tape-MacGyvered beater I was driving didn’t stop when I applied the brakes, but instead slid right into a white BMW’s passenger door side panel. If only I had some of those nickels to rub together, maybe I could have afforded some new tires to replace the bald ones that had just stabbed me in the back.
What to do? As I said, I wasn’t exactly in the position to pay someone for an expensive repair. I also didn’t have any auto insurance, much less a real driver’s license. With my heart pumping in my throat, and my temples pounding in my brain, I quickly glanced over both shoulders to see if anyone witnessed the collision. It definitely made some noise which meant even if no one saw it, chances are somebody in the bar heard it. Question was, would they come running outside to see what the hell just happened?
Throwing the transmission in reverse, I intended to gently toe-tap the gas and slowly back away from the now-crushed Beemer. Instead, my bald tires spun out in the snow and ice. Punching the brakes, I inhaled a breath, and tried to calm myself. Glancing in the rearview, I caught sight of my bloodshot eyes and scruffy five-day growth. The collar on my dark wool overcoat was standing at attention, and the ball knot on my tie was pulled down an inch or two. My forehead was beaded with sweat, despite the wintery cold.
Then, my eyes were blinded by a pair of LED headlamps that were also reflected in the mirror. As I averted my eyes, I heard the wood door to the gin mill open abruptly and a couple of men come stomping out. Drunk...men.
“Hey,” one of them shouted. “What the fuck did you do to my car?”
He was a tall man. Taller than me. Big too. He was wearing a black leather coat, jeans, and boots. He had a black skull cap on his head and his round face was tight as a tick. His buddy was shorter but also big, like he lifted weights for a living. Hell, maybe he did. The two of them were coming at me while the vehicle behind me slowly moved on but stopped just feet away. It was a black Dodge Ram pickup. The driver was a young man who, judging from the expression on his face, was entirely confused over what was going down in the bar’s parking lot.
“Lord, get me out of here,” I said.
It was a hell of a request for a nonbeliever. But what the hell. I could always hope against hope that the good Lord would toss me a bone. God knows my once wonderful life had gone to shit in a blink of an eye, not that it wasn’t my fault. But in any case, those meatheads were getting close, and it was time for me to exit the scene, Gene, and do it fast.
The snow was coming down heavier now. As the first, bigger man approached, his feet slipped right out from under him, and he went down hard on his back. That was my good luck (or maybe it was the good Lord interceding on my behalf after all). It gave me time to slowly back away from the car I plowed into. Gave me time to shift the transmission into drive. Gave me time to dodge the bullets that buzzed past my driver’s side window while I took off into the snowy night.
Hit and run.
2
A little backstory. My backstory anyway. Warts and all.
I was down on my luck...
Okay, stop. You might think of that line as a cliché especially when it comes to noir or hardboiled fiction. But the hell of it is, I’m not lying. I was down on my luck. To be more specific, fifty-plus K in debt to a loan shark who promised to get me out of my thirty K credit card debt for which I was paying an exorbitant twenty-five percent interest rate. Exorbitant doesn’t even do that killer rate justice. More like highway fucking robbery, if you’ll excuse my French.
But take it from a guy who inherited his parent's garment factory right out of college, and who was rich as fuck from jump street. Credit card debt can be an evil, blood-sucking beast if you let it get out of hand, which is why we always encouraged our customers to use one whenever they shopped in our store, which was located on the bottom floor of our century-old brick factory located in the city’s east end. In a word, we were able to fleece more money.
To show for all that pretty green, I had the trophy blonde wife, the two spoiled kids, the big house in the North Albany burbs, the country clubs (that’s right, plural), the cars, the Skidoos, the boats, the condo in Jupiter, Florida, the college age, big-titted, bald-pussied, brunette piece-of-ass on the side who’d take care of my needs during my lunch hour, and everything a six-foot, two-hundred pound, Gold’s Gym sculpted, tan-skinned, dark-haired, blue-eyed, prep school, and Georgetown University-educated man could ever hope for in life. And the life, she was grand.
Until I lost it all, that is. It didn’t take much, just a federal indictment for passing off cheap Chinese goods as made in the good ole U.S. of A. and before you know it, I not only lose my business, but I’m busted by the F.B.I. in a dark-thirty morning raid and slapped with thirteen counts of I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck, and facing fifty years in a federal slammer, plus a one-point-five-million dollar fine.
To make a long, sad story short, I lose the big house in the burbs, the country clubs, the trophy wife, the two precious kids, all the adult toys...shit, even the college-age piece of ass won’t touch me anymore. There ought to be a law. Oh, yeah, if there is, I’m sure I broke it.
So, I get busted and sent to a federal prison down in the swamps of Florida where I sweat my ass off doing hard labor during the day and sleeping in ninety-five-degree heat and ninety percent humidity during the night. It seems like my life is over until one day, something miraculous happens.
This disease called COVID-19 infects the world. Just like that, me and some hardcore jerks are furloughed. We’re given a fifty buck per day stipend by the senile President and a bus ticket to wherever we want to go until this thing passes over. Oh, but we must wear a mask at all times, or no dice. But here’s what Senile President doesn’t know: not a single one of us ever plans on coming back to this place. Once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, you’re never gonna get that shit back in. Okay, another cliché, but fuck you very much for noticing.
So why am I laying all this on you? I decided the best bet was to head back to Upstate New York, where I could find some of the cash I buried in the backyard of my once-upon-a-time castle. I was taking a bit of a chance because, like I already intuited, I was down to paying what was left of my federal cash debt to society with credit cards and eventually a fifty K loan from a shark who used to shop in my store. A big-bellied, middle-aged Russian dude by the name of Koshenko, and who had houses on Lake George, Lake Placid, and a condo in downtown Saratoga, plus a fishing cabin off Saratoga Lake. I guess Fat Russian Gangster liked his lakes.
For an extra ten grand, he fits me up with a new name, a new identity (Matty Gilligan), new cosmetic surgery, and new everything (except for the car he loans me which is a third-hand beater held together by habit and duct tape). He also manages to convince the government that I somehow died of COVID-19 on the bus trip between South Florida and Upstate New York. But the deal is, I’m to keep my nose cleaner than a nun’s bungholio and live inside the shadows. That is, at least long enough until I locate my money, pay him off, and split to Europe which also has plenty of shadows to hide in. Or so I’m told...
