Clean Sweep – Michael J Clark
A reformed smuggler finds himself embroiled in a mind-bending criminal conspiracy in this page-turning debut
Pastor Tommy Bosco runs a Winnipeg skid row mission that caters to ex-criminals and ex-addicts trying to make a better life. Sometimes that better life means leaving the city — and the good and bad guys — completely behind. A former smuggler, Bosco can make anyone disappear, faking deaths and extracting people across the Canada-U.S. border. But then his ex shows up, fresh from the murder of a biker-gang boss. She’s got plenty of baggage, including the biker’s cryptic ledger that everyone in Winnipeg’s underworld wants to get their hands on. Bosco finds himself a fugitive at the center of a conspiracy that has him staying far away from the cops, the hired hitmen, and even his dear old dad. Navigating through a harsh Prairie winter, Bosco must help his ex escape without having to make an escape himself.
Ahead of the publication of Clean Sweep this week I am delighted to be able to share this extract from the novel:
Noonan’s Buick was way past warranty. The woodgrain panelling concealed most of the rust. The Buick had been hiding Noonan for the last six nights, thanks to a toasty in-car warmer, a $300 sleeping bag, and plenty of empty plug-in parking spots at local retirement homes, where half the cars were Buicks. His compact frame of five feet six inches was easy to curl beneath the station wagon’s retractable cargo cover. The Buick had been in storage, under a dead friend’s name, for the express purpose of bugging out. He had left his ivory Escalade in front of his duplex on Rothesay Street. The house and the Cadillac had surely been searched by now by representatives of the Heaven’s Rejects Motorcycle Club, a name that was usually shortened to the HRs in casual conversation, or newspaper headlines. Noonan had freelanced for most of the biker gangs in Winnipeg over the last thirty years, watching their power ebb and flow from one group to the next. Whether it was the Los Bravos, the Spartans, or the current HRs, they all had one thing in common: crossing them meant death. The HRs had a slogan in the local underworld: First, we kill you. Then we go to work on you.
The latest assignment for Noonan had gone more sideways than an Electra Glide on black ice. It had all started ten days earlier, when he took a basic gig from the HRs to guard a stash house on Mountain Avenue near the Safeway, with four kilos of cocaine, two kilos of hashish, and six Ziploc freezer bags full of ecstasy. Noonan had been dozing on and off, a rumbling space heater next to the duct-taped Barcalounger he occupied, in front of a vintage black-and-white portable TV. Either appliance could have been responsible for the fire, the one that Noonan woke up to in full force. He knew it would have been wiser to succumb to the smoke, instead of escaping with just his life. The stash went up in flames, with not even enough evidence left in the debris to present a press conference for the Winnipeg Police Service. The HRs weren’t happy. Even if he had received third-degree burns all over his face, Noonan knew he would still get some breaks, as in fingers, maybe a tibia or two. Without a scratch on him, it didn’t take long for the HRs to ask the question; did the stash actually burn?
Noonan’s phone started vibrating in his coat pocket. He reached in to check the message, already knowing the request. “Please come home, Paulie. I miss you.” It wasn’t a lover, and it certainly wasn’t his ex-wife. Home was the Heaven’s Rejects clubhouse, located in a former bakery on St. John’s Avenue. I miss you — translation: or we’ll find you, and make it really, really painful. Not that anyone would ever find him. Winnipeg was full of missing bikers; you just had to know where to dig.
Noonan pulled down his visor for a peek at his current state. One of the vanity-mirror bulbs was burnt out, though there was just enough illumination to reveal a most frightened man of forty-seven years. His stubble was bordering on unkempt beard. His cheeks were sunken, a combination of only 145 pounds on his frame and the slim thought of eating in his current predicament. In the back seat there was a case of oversized green apple Gatorade bottles that could double as road-going urinals. The entire car stank of nervous sweat.
Noonan was waiting for the bus, a magic bus, especially if it could be the ticket out of Winnipeg, out of Manitoba, out of The Life. He continued to scan his side and rear-view mirrors for its arrival. The tap on the passenger side glass prompted him to hit the horn long enough to annoy. Noonan waited for a fat second until he turned his head to see Tommy Bosco looking through the glass. He breathed for what seemed like the first time in days as he hit the power lock.
Excerpted from Clean Sweep by Michael Clark. © 2018 by Michael Clark. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com
Clean Sweep is published on 13 March 2018 and you can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clean-Sweep-Michael-J-Clark-ebook/dp/B077K7X97J/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1520846657&sr=1-1