NOTHING FROM NOTHING - A Jake Burbank Mystery

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NOTHING FROM NOTHING

A Jake Burbank Mystery

CHAPTER ONE

Brill Wingfield went home.

It was in the middle of the country, just south of middle of the state.

A delta backwater that once was the jewel in the crown of cotton country. Back in the day. A century ago.

Now it was on a long slow decline.

Abandoned homes. Empty lots. Crime.

Brill knew how it happened.

He got off a bus at a station four blocks from Main Street and stared at a vacant lot next to a crumbling mansion.

Pink paint faded to a color that wasn't in the rainbow spectrum. Covered with grime from car exhaust at a four bay car wash across the street.

Vines covered the front of the two story structure. Nature may have been the only thing holding the balcony up.

The Bluff, as they called it growing up, was a victim of laws in other states.

Back when it was a crown jewel, the population was high. There were factories to work with, and industry keeping unemployment low.

There were good schools and safe neighborhoods where kids biked from sunrise to sunset, and played and roamed.

Brill knew it wasn't as idyllic as he liked to remember. Parts of his childhood were on the wrong side of the tracks, as folks liked to call it.

Parts of his memories involved drug dealers and rednecks playing at being bad men. Beatings at the hands of an angry young step father. Beatings at the hand of angry young black men he went to school with.

He quartered a block just to clear his head.

He didn't need to get his bearings.

A lot of people in town had kids and those kids left for greener pastures in the sixties and seventies, part of the California culture heading west, chasing sunsets.

They ran to California for better opportunities, and took the bus to Chicago.

A lot had people there.

Brill had people there, though he didn't go see them. Hell, he didn't know them other than the fact of existence. A mention by his mother, almost in passing.

They ran West and North and fell into bad habits with the big city slickers who, as the story went, took advantage of their country cousins.

There were crimes and gangs and California and Illinois enacted three strike laws.

Suddenly, a lot of young criminals were faced with a lifetime of incarceration for dumb acts.

Smart moms made quick decisions.

If they couldn't move, they could get their criminal children the hell out of dodge and sent them back to the Bluff.

Brill passed three empty houses in a row, all boarded up, weeds polluting the yard as high as his waist.

There were gang tags on the walls, none he could read.

The influx of two time losers found fertile ground to grow the criminal trade in the small town.

Where they were once low men in the rings of gangland structure, now they were top dogs.

Big fish, small pond.

They brought violence with them.

Brill knew it had always been there, maybe. Just under the surface, and erupted more with fists than anything.

At least when he was growing up.

The gang members brought guns and automatics and the spread began, like a cancer.

People moved to keep their kids safe, absconding for the suburbs or the capital.

The gangs took over block by block, fighting it out to deal drugs to who was left.

Brill hit Main Street and glanced up at the gold domed courthouse.

The three blocks to the white stone structure were empty of cars, abandoned buildings squatting in silence.

There was activity in the other direction.

Small scale construction on a couple of buildings, turning them into something special.

Someone was fighting against the urban decay, he saw.

He was surprised that he found it pleased him, and that made him chuckle to himself.

Welcome home, he thought and turned his feet south. There were a few more places to see, and maybe it was a great way to stay hidden for a couple of days.

JAKE BURBANK -MYSTERY THRILLER SERIES

A PINT OF PROBLEMS

A FIFTH OF TROUBLE

A SHOT OF REVENGE

A DOUBLE SHOT OF REVENGE

DEATH BY A .45

Soul with a Capital S

What a Way to Die

It’s Not the Heat

Nothing from Nothing

THE JACK HOUSE SERIES

LOST WAGES

HOUSE RULES

ALL IN

SHADOWBOXER SERIES

ASSET – a Brill Winger Thriller

OPERATIVE – a Brill Winger Thriller

SIDEWAYS – a Brill Winger Thriller

CHOKEPOINT – a Brill Winger Thriller

DECREED - a Brill Winger Thriller

IN THE DARK – a Brill Winger Thriller

TRUE NATURE

NOMINEE

ELECT

DEEP STATE

DISAVOWED

CREDIBLE THREAT

Tin Trooper – a Brill Winger story
Nazi Nukes - a Brill Winger story

Webb of Lies – An action thriller