“An authentically gritty debut crime novel... Mr. O'Mara's first-person mystery is rich in hard-boiled New Yorkese.” ―The New York Times
“Intriguing debut… Strong characters enhance the sturdy plot… O'Mara's Sacrifice Fly deserves an A-plus.” ―Oline H. Cogdill in Sun-Sentinel
“Tim O'Mara makes an impressive debut with Sacrifice Fly... The pleasure of the book resides more in the layered evocation of a vivid neighborhood and a community of well-realized individuals, conveyed in rich dialogue… Most interesting of all may be the multidimensional Donne… Not a saint, this guy, but someone clearly to root for.” ―Houston Chronicle
“In New York City schoolteacher O'Mara's debut novel, he writes what he knows.” ―New York Post (required reading)
“The well-drawn characters are what really bring this compelling debut to life, along with the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, setting. Donne is a damaged protagonist, and it is not just the physical injuries he sustained as a cop that hinder him, but also the more significant psychological injuries he harbors. Donne is the type of character who keeps readers coming back for more, much in the manner of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch or James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux. Here's hoping we see much more of him in the future.” ―Booklist
“Readers will enjoy meeting a complex, conflicted, and capable hero able to navigate the varied strata of Brooklyn despite the occasional bruising to body and soul.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Resoundinging debut.” ―Library Journal
“[Raymond Donne is] appealingly fallible and sensitive in this promising series kickoff.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Tim O'Mara's Sacrifice Fly is superb---one of those rare first novels that delivers on every level. Raymond Donne is an unforgettable character, and O’Mara will make you feel the steam coming off the Brooklyn streets where Donne works, lives, and tries to stay alive long enough to do the right thing. I can’t wait to read O'Mara’s next book---this newcomer is one to watch.” ―Jan Burke, bestselling author of Disturbance
“Tim O'Mara's Sacrifice Fly is the best first crime novel I've read in years. Knowing about the ways of city life and compassionate about its flawed characters, the writing has a swing as natural and strong as Roberto Clemente's. It's a real gem.” ―Houston Chronicle
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
I WAS ABOUT TO GET RUN OVER.
I thought about moving left, maybe right, but my knees were having no part of it. So I tightened the grip on my umbrella, braced myself, and waited for the impact.
When he was less than ten feet away, he slammed on his brakes and skidded to a stop. With his back to me, he moved his head up and down, admiring the four-foot-long black comma left on the pavement. I took off my sunglasses as he spun his bike around and checked me out.
“Hey,” he said, leaning over the handlebars. “Ain’t you that teacher from school?”
“Yep,” I said, slipping my sunglasses into my front shirt pocket. I rubbed my lower lip and flipped through my mental yearbook. It took about ten seconds. “Ain’t you that kid from Miss Levine’s class?”
He didn’t answer, choosing instead to look over his shoulder at his friends, who were too busy putting the piece of plywood back on top of the cinder blocks to notice him shooting the shit with that teacher from school. He turned back to me, wiped his hand across his forehead, and blew the sweat off his brown fingertips. Four o’clock on the second-to-last Tuesday in May, and the temperature was over ninety.
“Whachoo doin’ here?” he finally said. “Afta school and all?”
“Homework patrol,” I said. “You do yours yet?”
“Ahh, that’s wack.” His grin faded. “Ain’t no homework patrol. Is there?”
“Not yet,” I said and shifted my umbrella to my left hand. “I’m here to see someone.”
“He in trouble?”
“I hope not,” I said.
I wasn’t sure the little daredevil heard me as he raced back to his buddies singing out, “Somebody’s in trouble,” happy in the knowledge it wasn’t him. This time.
I looked up at the towering building in front of me. Twenty-plus stories of aging air conditioners, Dominican and Puerto Rican flags hanging from balconies that were used to store old furniture, to park bikes, and to hang wet clothes out to dry. Frankie Rivas lived up there with his grandmother. Frankie was one of my eighth graders, and I was doing a home visit on this tropical Tuesday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because I hadn’t seen the kid in almost two weeks and I got tired of listening to a busy signal every time I called.
The two glass doors that made up the front entrance to the building were propped open, allowing the outside air—and anyone who wanted—to come in. Above me, in faded gold script, was a sign informing me that this was, indeed, Building One of Roberto Clemente Plaza. “Plaza” sounded far better than “the projects,” which always made me think the people living here were part of an experiment. Or “housing complex,” something someone did not live in so much as suffer from. No, “plaza” would do just fine; this one was named after the late, great Pittsburgh Pirate who died a few months after getting his three thousandth hit.
I stepped into what passed for a lobby and went over to the intercom to the left of the bulletin board. I punched in Frankie’s apartment number and waited for a response. After thirty seconds, I tried again. Nothing. The elevator dinged, and as I turned, the door opened and a Hassidic family stepped out. The father was dressed in black from hat to shoes, and was followed by his wife and six kids: four girls in matching plaid skirts and two boys dressed like their father. You’ve got to have some kind of faith to dress in black in this kind of heat.
The door to the elevator stayed open, and I moved toward it. I stopped when a voice behind me said, “Somebody in trouble?” An older black man in a maintenance uniform and pushing a mop bucket was coming through the front door.
“I’m here to see Frankie Rivas,” I said. “Or Matilda Santos? They’re in 1705.”
He motioned with his head and said, “You buzz up?”
“I tried. No answer.”
He went over to the buttons and pressed the apartment number as the elevator door shut. “She expecting ya?”
“No. I tried calling but the phone’s been busy. For two days.”
He gave me a look, not unlike the one I got from the kid on the bike outside, readjusted his belt, and said, “You a cop?”
“I’m Frankie’s teacher.”
He took a moment to get a better look at me. “You look familiar.”
“I work over at the middle school.”
“Which one?”
I told him.
“All my kids’re grown and gone,” he said. He walked over to the desk on the other side of the elevator, reached over the top, and pulled out a clipboard. “Don’t know no one over at the school no more.” He handed me the clipboard. “Go ahead and sign in. Make it official.”
I took the pen that was hanging by a string from the clipboard and noticed as I put down the date of my visit that no one had signed in for two days. Official. I handed the clipboard back. He checked out my name and whispered it out loud.
“Raymond Dawn,” he said, mispronouncing my last name. “Raymond Dawn.”
“Donne,” I said. “Like finished.”
He said it a third time, this time correctly, checking out my face. I looked over his shoulder at the yellow-and-brown tiled mosaic of Roberto Clemente embedded into the wall. The legendary ballplayer’s flawless swing, frozen in tile forever.
“You know Frankie?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Everybody knows Lefty. Don’t know why the grandmother ain’t picking up. Saw her go on up with Elsa and some bags of groceries not more than an hour ago.”
“Seen him lately?”
He thought about that. “Not in over a week, I guess. Maybe more’n that.” He looked back at the clipboard and mouthed my name one more time. “Whyn’t you go on up, Mr. Donne. I’ll try her again. Maybe by the time you get up to the seventeenth, she’ll be answering.”
“Thanks.”
I turned and pushed the Up button to the elevator when I heard his fingers snap behind me. “I remember you now,” he said.
I took a deep breath and wished for a cold bottle of water.
“You used to work around here.” He touched his finger to the clipboard, tapped it a few times until it came to him. “You was a cop, right?”
“A long time ago. Yeah.”
“And now you a teacher?”
“Yes.”
“What’sa matter, mister? You don’t wanna be popular?”
I shrugged and gave him a polite smile. How slow was this damn elevator? As if on cue, it appeared and I walked in.
“I’ll see ya on the way out, Mr. Donne,” he said, as if I’d be interested in carrying on the conversation. I raised my umbrella to him as the doors closed.
The elevator smelled of ammonia and artificial lemon. In less than a minute, the doors opened up onto the seventeenth floor, and I followed the arrows to number 1705. Two dark-skinned girls in shorts and T-shirts but no shoes were blocking the hallway, lying on their stomachs, moving crayons across a large sheet of poster paper. I cleared my throat. They stopped and looked up at me. The one to my right slid over a centimeter, and I took the opportunity to squeeze by. I got to 1705 and pushed the black rectangle just below the peephole. It made a hollow thud, and I waited a full thirty seconds before trying again. The girls looked over at me. I gave them my best teacher smile. They went back to their artwork.
“¿Quien es?” a voice from the other side of the door asked.
I leaned in, my ear about an inch from the peephole, and said, “Mrs. Santos?”
“Sí. ¿Quien es?”
“It’s Mr. Donne, ma’am. Frankie’s teacher?”
A few seconds later, she said, “Frankie no here.”
I raised my voice a notch. “Mrs. Santos, this is Raymond Donne. Frankie’s teacher. I need to speak with you or your grandson.” One of the girls gave me a mean look as the other placed a finger to her lips, shushing me.
“Ay Dios.” The sound of a lock turning was followed closely by the door being opened just enough for me to see the chain on the other side. A pair of bright blue eyes appeared, just over the chain. “Frankie’s teacher?” she said. “Senor Donne?”
“Yes.” My voice was lower now. “I need to speak with you. Would you mind if I—”
“Frankie,” she said. “He is in trouble?”
“You can say that, yeah.” The hint of cooler air and the smell of meat cooking wafted into the hallway. I remembered how thirsty I was. “He hasn’t been coming to school.”
“Frankie no here,” she repeated. “He stay at his father’s.”
“Mrs. Santos, it’s been seven days, and if he—”
“¿Siete días?”
“Yes, ma’am. Seven school days.” I unfolded the printout of Frankie’s attendance and held it up for her to see. “Since Friday of last week.” She didn’t quite get that, and I wasn’t sure how to say it in Spanish. I tried anyway. “¿El Viernes de … semana pasado?”
Part of it got through because she said, “Ay Dios,” again and then, “That is when he start to stay with the father.”
“¿Donde…? Where does the father live?”
“El Sud,” she answered. The Southside.
“Do you have a phone number for him?”
“No. No have a phone. He have the, ¿...
