Getting to the end of the first Jack Singer mystery. Finalized the cover. There's going to be some chapter headers as well. It looks like a great package.

A first excerpt: Copyrighted 2016 by Isaac Inness/Produx House, corp.

Jack Singer was darkness traveling on foot through that blighted neighborhood. His black hair was scruffy. Black sunglasses on his narrow face mirrored the world as he stared resolutely ahead of him. His over large, black trench coat swirled around his body as he walked with long strides down the sidewalk towards the morning train. His black combat boots made a firm sound with every step, keeping in time to the pounding rhythm of the song coming through his earbuds.

The crush of pedestrians making their morning commute parted in Jack’s path to let him through as if they were polar opposites repelling each other. He was a fluttering raven among people bundled against the cold; a crowd that had been made featureless gray by a lowering white sky.

Run-down apartment buildings and marginal businesses lined the street in a hodgepodge of styles from different eras. They seemed to slump towards the street full of cars that were bumper to bumper and expelling exhaust in white clouds. The good elements of society rubbed elbows with the worst in a miasma of humanity; shopping, taking their kids to school, going to work, or standing on street corners ready to rob the weak or start a fight. 

Two young men came careening out of the crowd as they did their best to pound each other into oblivion. They were dressed poorly for the weather, as if trying to show their machismo. Tattoos covered their bodies in intricate designs, symbols, and inflammatory words. Some were engraved crudely, as if done with a sharp instrument during a drunken night of grief or rage. Piercings and holes peppered them in places that were designed to cause conversations about the decline of youth, morality, and common sense.

The crowd wisely gave them space.

Without breaking stride, his mind lost in the beat of the music and his eyes intently examining the ether, Jack challenged their claim to a piece of urban territory that had been theirs by right of might. They almost collided with Jack and then seem to veer off at the last possible moment as if repelled by the barrier of Jack’s indifference. They broke off their fight and wore mirror expressions of wariness as he passed and continued down the sidewalk. In the next moment, they collided together as they began their fight again, two elemental titans of muscle and negative emotions hell bent on mutual destruction.

Light rain began dripping from the sky as if God was personally taking it into his own hands to make everyone’s morning commute a little more miserable. Some people pulled up their hoods. A few better prepared souls raised and opened umbrellas. Jack had neither, nor did a blind, crippled beggar.

Sitting in his wheelchair by the wall of a boarded up business, the beggar’s dark sunglasses were looking hard at nothing. His thick, gray brows were drawn down in a frown. His dark skin was wrinkled and leathery. His clothing was made up of thrift store specials. The sign he wore was cardboard, its message, scrawled in black marker, a plea or a condemnation; Need help. It was placed in front of a plastic cup, the generic kind that usually came with a fast food drink, or from a gas station drink fountain that gave reduced refills if you returned with the cup. Rain drops covered the old man like diamonds. 

The beggar wasn’t part of Jack’s reality, the paper machine was. Pausing in front of it, Jack searched through his deep pockets for change. While his pockets were repositories for every kind of object, some needed and others not, he discovered that change was absent from the inventory. Swearing under his breath, Jack turned unerringly towards the beggar. Striding across the sidewalk, he leaned and purposefully gazed into the beggar’s cup. Reaching into it, as if afraid of contamination, he sifted through the coins and bills intently.

The beggar’s indignation was clear. “Hey! What are you doing? You’re stealing from the blind, you fucker!” He jerked the cup away from Jack, but not quickly enough. Jack had taken just enough to pay for his newspaper. 

Ignoring the beggar’s curses, Jack returned to the paper machine. He put in his coins, retrieved his paper, and tucked it under his arm. Furious, the beggar started to rise from his chair, but then restrained himself and settled into his seat again. His quick, covert glances at the crowd, revealed his intent to defraud the public. After re positioning his cup and his sign, he glared after Jack’s retreating back and spat aside. His spit mixed with the rain on the sidewalk.