White Sister: A Shane Scully Novel (Shane Scully Novels Book 6)

"A strong piece of fiction that leads readers…through the harrowing underbelly of L.A. " -- Daily News "A very satisfying thriller written by a born entertainer." -- New York Post "A terrific read." -- New York Sun "Cannell dishes out the action in forklift-sized servings." -- Publishers Weekly "One of the hallmarks of Cannell's writing is his ability to have characters who speak as real people would…" -- Sunday Journal (Albuquerque, NM) From Publishers Weekly With his frenetic fifth Shane Scully novel, bestseller Cannell ( Cold Hit ) dishes out the action in forklift-sized servings. Casting aside the rules like never before, LAPD detective Scully conducts his own seek-and-destroy mission after his wife, fellow cop Alexa, is found shot in the head. As Alexa clings to life, Scully's efforts to track down her attacker lead him into the violent, vengeful world of rap music, lorded over by two of its most feared executives, Lou Maluga and his wife, Stacy, known in the trade as "the white sister." Without pause to sleep or eat, Scully fights and claws his way along, burning friends, violating laws, using his charm as well as his fists before coming face to face with his enemy in Las Vegas. Cannell's hard-boiled, if at times over-rehearsed prose is well suited to his subject matter, though some readers may have trouble with his hero's tendency to suddenly shift character from tough guy to touchy-feely 21st-century man. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From AudioFile Stephen Cannell and Scott Brick deliver the quintessential audiobook-lover's delight: engrossing plot, tenacious pacing, fascinating milieu, and textured characters who deliver believable "gangsta" slang. A delusional homeless man, a female white hip-hop singer who will stop at nothing to forge an empire of fame, and members of the Crips and Bloods gangs work together to create an exciting story that builds to an unforgettable climax. As if that weren't enough for the listener to worry about, while traveling at breakneck speed, the reader is never allowed to forget Alexa, who is lying in a drug-induced coma and not expected to survive. K.A.T. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. ONE IS his beloved. Leaving L.A.'s Parker Center, Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, agree to meet at home…but Alexa never arrives. Then Shane's called to a crime scene on Mulholland Drive, where the victim, an apparent gang member, has been executed--and left in Alexa's car. Her gun is the likely murder weapon. THE OTHER Is his Nemesis. As Shane desperately tries to find Alexa, his leads point to a feud between two gangsta-rap record companies, both heavily manned by Crips and Bloods. At the center of this war is a ruthless, beautiful Lady Macbeth-like white woman raised in Compton. Married to a multi-millionaire rap mogul, she is known as the White Sister. It's his worst nightmare come true… Shane is no stranger to big trouble, but he's never before been smeared as a "racist cop" or thrown in jail while there's a hit out on him. Much worse is the unknown fate of Alexa, and the fact that in the mysterious White Sister--who holds the clue to a sinister conspiracy--he may have met his match. "A strong piece of fiction that leads readers…through the harrowing underbelly of L.A. " -- Daily News "A terrific read." -- New York Sun --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One It was early evening on Thursday the first week of July and Alexa and I were walking through San Julian Park in Skid Row, on our way back from the LAPD Central Division Jail. Homeless men in tattered coats swung blood-shot eyes in our direction, tracking us like government radar. We were returning from a training day in jail transport procedures.xa0The retraining had been mandated after a Mara Salvatrucha gang-banger named Hector Morales got bludgeoned to death while shuffling on a drag line through the underground tunnel that connects the jail to the Fifth Street courthouse. A rival Hispanic gang-banger had done the work by somehow slipping out of his waist restraints and hitting Hector in the head with a cut-down chair leg from the jail cafeteria. He'd been hiding the weapon inside the leg of his orange jumpsuit.xa0The Professional Standards Bureau, our new, media-friendly name for the Internal Affairs Division, investigated. All supervisors and detectives above grade two were ordered to undergo a refresher day on incarceration and transfer tactics. Alexa and I were dressed in grubbies--jeans and old sweatshirts--but before we were twenty feet into the park, everybody there had made us for cops anyway.xa0"Tony says this surgery is no sweat, but you can tell he's scared," Alexa was saying as we stepped carefully around some dog shit, a pile of trash, and a sleeping homeless couple. She was talking about the upcoming heart surgery our Chief of Police was scheduled to have tomorrow morning.xa0"Bypass surgery is getting to be pretty common," I offered. "It's natural to be scared, but he'll be okay."xa0Hollow words, considering Tony Filosiani was getting a complete coronary makeover. The surgeons were cutting his chest open, taking both mammary arteries, and grafting them around the four blocked arteries in his heart. Any way you looked at it, he was in for a tough ten days and wasn't scheduled back on the job for a couple of months.xa0"Is it me, or does this park smell worse than ever?" Alexa said, changing the subject. "Like a big outdoor latrine."xa0"July heat," I answered. "It always smells worse in the summer."xa0We walked past a line of portable toilets, which were called Alices by the people on the Row, because Alice Callahan of the Las Familias del Pueblo Community Center had badgered the city council until they finally funded their installation. In a vengeful act of municipal retaliation, the toilets were rarely cleaned out but nonetheless served both physical and commercial needs. A lot of drug and prostitution deals were consummated within the smelly three-foot confines of those portable johns.xa0"I'm gonna check my messages, see if I have a meeting that was supposed to be set up tonight," Alexa said. "Then if there's time, I'd like to run over to the hospital and see Tony on the way home." She stepped over a well-known park character named Horizontal Joe. He was huddled under a blanket stenciled with a W--a sure sign it was stolen from the Weingart Center on South San Pedro Street.xa0"Watch where you're goin'," Joe growled, without bothering to look up.xa0Parker Center loomed before us like a drifting glass iceberg; a huge box of a building with absolutely no architectural significance. One of the strange anomalies of Los Angeles was that the Central Division Jail and the Police Administration Building were contiguous to the city's fifty-square-block section of blight known as Skid Row. Some Parker Center cops felt it was easier to take the seven-block walk if you were headed toward the lock-up, rather than move your car out of the Glass House garage and look for nonexistent parking by the jail. As a result, the cops and homeless spent countless hours in mutual distrust as we shared the urine-soaked walkways and broken drinking fountains in San Julian Park.xa0Alexa and I stepped off the curb where an ageless man wearing tennis shoes with no laces and a greasy brown poncho was ranching quarters out of a parking meter, a practice known as spanging. He didn't even bother to stop. Most of these people had discovered by now that no cop worth his wage would waste two hours booking a guy at the jail over a twenty-five-cent misdemeanor.xa0"I hope Tony gets back on the job before two months," I groused. "I can't stand the thought of Great White Mike being in charge of the department." I had a recent and unrewarding history with Deputy Chief Michael Ramsey, who I viewed as little more than an ambitious power junkie in a braided hat.xa0"Mike's okay. Just a little jacked up," Alexa said, smiling slightly.xa0My wife is the head of the Detective Services Group. I'm a Detective III assigned to Homicide Special, so technically she's my boss. She's about to make captain and is three layers above me on the department flow chart. All of which means I get to put out the garbage on the job, as well as at home. Just kidding.xa0We finally left the squalor of Fifth Street, known as the Nickel, and headed toward the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Glass House. Brown burlap slowly gave way to starched blue as we entered the marble lobby. We got on the elevator, and since it was empty, I gave my beautiful wife a kiss. She has long black hair, high cheekbones, and is one of the most striking women I have ever come across. She could easily have made her living doing fashion shoots. I, on the other hand, look like I got emptied out of a vacuum cleaner. I'm five-eleven and a half, lean, and gristly. Topping this unholy collection of scars and medical mistakes is a hammered flat nose and short black hair that never quite lies down. All of this makes me resemble a club fighter who's stayed in the ring too long. It's a miracle Alexa ever agreed to marry me. But then, if Julia Roberts could once marry Lyle Lovett, I guess anything is possible.xa0The door opened on four and two young patrolmen got on, so we cut the funny stuff and I said good-bye.xa0"See you at home in about an hour and a half," Alexa said as I got off on that random floor and pushed the Down button for the parking garage.xa0Five minutes later I was in my freshly leased, silver Acura MDX, enjoying the new car smell as I headed out of the administration-building parking garage on my way home. A bleak landscape of urban blight and human misery passed by outside, but I was oblivious with the windows up and the AC on. I was in my sweet-smelling automotive capsule, immune to the reek and cries of the Row, thinking about Tony Filosiani.xa0In the last decade or so, the LAPD had experienced a run of disasters, from the Rodney King case to the Rampart scandal. Recently, we had been cleaning up the mess, and that was mostly because of Tony. Our chief arrived from Brooklyn four years ago and was known by the troops as the Day-Glo Dago because of his colorful, somewhat out-there personality and management style. I was worried about him and would have liked to go over to USC Medical Center where he was being prepped for surgery to let him know he was in my thoughts. But I'm just a Detective III, and somewhere deep in the reptilian part of my brain that processes police protocol, it felt like an ass-kiss, so I didn't go. It was different for Alexa. She was a division commander.xa0I was in a silent argument with myself over this dilemma when I took my eyes off the road to reach in my glove box and turn on my police scanner, which is mandated off-duty protocol.xa0As I switched to Tac One, I heard a loud crash and a thump. I jerked my eyes up just in time to see a Safeway shopping cart full of junk skitter across the street in front of me, spilling empty Evian bottles and useless debris everywhere. I stood on the brake pedal as I heard screaming.xa0I'd hit someone.xa0I piled out of the Acura and started to look for the pedestrian. Nothing in front. Nothing in back. Where the hell was he?xa0"Under here, you stupid muthafucka!" a man shrieked.xa0I kneeled down and looked. Wedged under my oil pan was one of the scrawniest, scruffiest men I have ever seen. Dusty black skin, dreadlocks, and a greasy, brown coat that looked like it had been used as the drop cloth under a lube rack.xa0"Look what you've done, you asshole!" the man screamed, holding his wrist. "Can't you watch where you're going?"xa0"You okay?" I stammered.xa0I reached under the car and tried to grab him by the shoulder to drag him out, but when I touched him, he started screaming louder.xa0"Whatta you want me to do?" I asked helplessly, wondering how to get him out from under there.xa0"Just get away from me, ya dumb muthafucka."xa0Then he slowly started to worm his way out from beneath my car. It was hard to guess his age under the tangled beard and layer of grime, but if I had to, I'd say around thirty-five. He had a cut on his head and scrapes all over the side of his face. His right wrist looked broken. How I had not killed him was a miracle.xa0Once he got out, he spent several moments moaning and cradling his wrist before he stumbled over, sat on the curb and glared malevolently. It took him about ten more seconds to figure me out. "Cop," he finally growled.xa0Copyright © 2006 by Stephen J. Cannell --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Stephen J. Cannell (1941-2010) was the author of the bestselling Shane Scully books, including The Prostitute’s Ball , The Pallbearers , and Three Shirt Deal . He was also an Emmy Award winning television writer and producer, and in his thirty-five-year career, he created or co-created more than forty TV series. Among his hits were The Rockford Files , Silk Stalkings , The A-Team , 21 Jump Street , Hunter , Renegade , Wiseguy , and The Commish . He received numerous awards, including the Saturn Award - Life Career Award (2004), The Marlow Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Writers of America (2005), and the WGA Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement (2006). Having overcome severe dyslexia, Cannell was an avid spokesperson on the condition and an advocate for children and adults with learning disabilities.xa0 Hexa0was a third-generation Californian and resided in the Pasadena area with his wife, Marcia, and their children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more