Excerpt from Curb CheK - Reload By: Zach Fortier

CurbCheK - Reload

By: Zach Fortier

It's to be released sometime in April 2012!  And we have an excerpt courtesy of Mr. Fortier himself!  Click here to find out more! So here you go!:

I was working central city again, day shift, and finally had an in-progress call.  It was just a domestic, but still, at least it was in progress.  The caller said that he was walking past a house in central city and could hear a woman and man fighting in the upstairs apartment.  He said that he actually saw the man punch the woman in the face while he stood on the sidewalk outside the building.  The caller then hung up, not wanting to be involved any further.  I arrived at the house, and all was quiet.  My back up was a few minutes out, and I went in.  The house was one of the older and larger homes that had been bought by one of the city’s many slumlords.  It had been renovated and was comprised now of several small apartments being let out at prices that drew the poor, elderly, and underachievers.  I entered the front door and listened.  Nothing; not a sound.  Then a door opened upstairs, and an elderly woman looked out at me.  She pointed at the apartment across the hall from her, nodded, then closed the door.  I advised my back up that the fight was in the apartment upstairs on the right, then quietly walked up the darkened stairs.
  I waited outside the apartment, and I could hear people talking inside; several voices, no anger, just conversation between several voices.  I knocked on the door, and a voice said, “Come in.”  I opened the door and found I was in the living room of the apartment.  There were three couples sitting on the two couches in the living room, three men and three women.  One guy had his arm around a woman who was bleeding heavily from her nose.  The blood was really flowing down her face and shirt as she sat there, her head down, and his arm was gently brushing her hair back out of her face.  The tension in the room was thick as I watched the others for their reaction.  No one acted like anything was wrong with the situation; they just kept on talking as if this were normal.  I asked the woman what had happened, and she didn’t reply.  I asked the man stroking her hair what had happened, and he said, “She fell down.”  I asked her to get up and speak to me in the other room.  She did this and told me that he was her husband and that he had regularly beat her.  She was afraid because he had threatened to kill her this afternoon when she told him she was leaving.  She said that he told her he would never let her leave.  Never.
I asked her if there were any weapons in the house, and she said that there were none but that all the people in the room were his family members, his cousins and their wives.  She was afraid of what would happen if I tried to arrest him.  I told her to let me worry about that and to stay in the back room while I talked to him.  I went back into the living room, and the guy was gone.  The other couples were still there, talking as if nothing had happened.  I heard a noise in the bathroom and forced the door open; the guy was trying to force his fat ass out of a 1x1 window in the bathroom.  No way that was gonna happen - he was way too big.  I stopped and watched while he tried and tried.  I noticed he had a tattoo on the back of his neck that said “Cold Hearted Snake.”  I finally said, “Hey, man, you aren’t gonna ever get out that window.  Just give up.”  He stopped and climbed out of the window and stepped out of the bathtub.  Then he tried to push past me; bad idea.  The fight was on right there in the hallway.  I had him in a chokehold pretty quick and told him to stop or I’d choke him out.  He stopped fighting but started yelling in Spanish to his cousins to come in and kill me.  Things were getting interesting.  He wasn’t gonna go without a fight.  One of his cousins appeared in the hallway, and they had a conversation in Spanish.  The Cold Hearted Snake was telling his cousin that they could kill me and dump me in the alleyway behind the house.  No one would know or tell on them.  I was alone, and they could take me out.  I clamped down on the chokehold and told him to shut the fuck up.  I spoke directly to the cousin and told him I knew who he was and asked how his uncle Maldo was doing.  I told him that he’d better think it over before he decided to enter into this fight.  He disappeared back into the living room.  I figured that was a bad thing and that I had only a few seconds to get ready.  I had the Snake almost unconscious by then, and I dropped him to the floor, gagging and coughing.  I cuffed him fast, then drew my gun and faced the direction the cousin had left.  He immediately reappeared, this time with a large knife in his hand.  I was calmer by now; this kind of combat was becoming the norm for me.  I talked to the cousin, calling him by his name.  “Remo, you need to think this over, ese.  You know me, and you know I know you; no way you walk out of here alive if you take one more fucking step.”  As I aimed at his head, he made eye contact with me and paused.

***Want to win a copy of Curb CheK?  The first book by Zach Fortier?  He is being kind enough to offer a signed print copy to one lucky follower of my blog! PLUS this giveaway will be open INTERNATIONALLY! So no matter what country you are in be sure to come back between March 17th through March 22nd to enter this awesome giveaway!***