Verwandte Artikel zu Cruz

Cruz - Hardcover

Ferraro, Nicolás

 
9781641293969: Cruz
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1641293969 ISBN 13: 9781641293969
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Set in northern Argentina, the gorgeous and gruesome story of two brothers following in their criminal father’s footsteps in a bloody battle to save their family from drug lords, perfect for fans of Don Winslow and Narcos.

Tomás Cruz swore he would never be like his father, an abusive cocaine junkie whose gangland exploits are notorious throughout the underbelly of northern Argentina. When Samuel Cruz is sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he leaves a laundry list of unfinished cartel business. Seba, Tomás’s revered older brother, has no choice but to abandon his straight life and take over his father’s underworld debt.

Now fifteen years has passed, Seba has been arrested, and the ruthless cartel boss is holding his wife and daughter as collateral—just in time for the holidays. Tomás is forced to choose between protecting his family and his soul as he assumes the to-do list where Seba left off, plunging into the shocking depravity of the cartel to track a drug deal gone wrong. On a bloody quest for underworld justice that will take him from a nightmarish bar staffed by teenage sex slaves to the murky depths of the Paran River, Tomás discovers himself capable of violence he never thought possible. He must ask himself if he really is his father’s son . . . and he may not like the answer.

Argentinian noir wunderkind Nicolás Ferraro’s first novel to be translated into English, Cruz was a finalist for the prestigious Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Crime Novel.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicolás Ferraro was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1986. While studying to become a graphic designer at the University of Buenos Aires, Ferraro earned a living by playing poker; now he works as the coordinator at the Center for Crime Fiction at Argentina’s National Library. He discovered noir literature thanks to the video game Max Payne, and crime fiction immediately became as central to his existence as hamburgers and the NBA. Ferraro’s debut novel, Dogo, was published in Argentina in 2016, and was a finalist for the Extremo Negro Award. Cruz, his first novel to be translated into English, has been published in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Award. His writing is frequently anthologized and he is currently at work on his fourth novel.

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1.
 
The last name is a hereditary disease.
     Dad’s brown eyes and black hair weren’t his only gifts to us.
     He passed down his demons, too.
     It took me a long time to realize that the most important things you inherit can’t be packed away in a box.
     Or in a coffin.
     I had a friend whose father blew his own brains out with a sawed-off. The blood splashed halfway across the wall. It went from red to burgundy, and finally black. My friend didn’t know what to do about it. It took him a month to decide to clean the wall. He washed off what he could. The buckshot had buried bits of brain and bone in the pocked cement. My friend scrubbed and scrubbed. He scraped. The brick made it hard for him to know where his dad began and ended. He finally knocked the wall down and put up a new one. Even so, he still goes with his bucket and rag every week to clean it. And he scrubs and scrubs until it’s his fingers that bleed on the bricks.
     I didn’t know what to do with the stuff my old man left me, either. I didn’t know how to get rid of it.
     Most of it was packed up in boxes for almost fifteen years, piled up in a room in the house that used to be his. A house I’ve been living in since last summer. Since the first day I moved in, I go to bed every night telling myself that I have to throw his shit out. The answer’s always the same: one of these days.
     I take out a box filled with my family’s rotting remains and set it down next to the other five that are waiting on the sidewalk. A grey dog comes over and sniffs at it. He barks, wanting something from me. Not all skeletons are made of bones. That’s what I’d tell him if he could understand. He lifts his leg, pisses on the boxes, and trots off wagging his tail.
     The last rays of sunlight glow on the dust that floats in the living room and sticks to my sweaty skin. I pull my shirt up from my waist and wipe my face. I let out a long breath, looking at all the work still ahead of me.
     In my old man’s room, a lamp with more fly shit than wattage shines on boxes stacked together like Tetris blocks. The smell hits me in the face as I enter. I shove a box away from the wall with my leg. A few bugs scatter before burrowing deeper into the pile. I stack two boxes and carry them out together. My fingers sink into the cardboard, soggy from the humidity. I manage to set them down with the rest before they come apart completely in my hands.
     I should have just burned everything.
     On the table is a glass of ice water that turned into warm broth half an hour ago. I pour it on a fern, though it’s more in need of a miracle than a watering. I get myself another glass of water and stick my head under the tap before going back to the living room.
     It’s like there’s a mirror between the open doors of the two bedrooms. In mine, boxes that have been collecting dust since I arrived from Buenos Aires, that I’ll unpack one of these days. I always think I won’t be here much longer, that someone’s going to take away the For Sale sign in front of the house.
     I drain the glass and get back to work. I take another four boxes out, but the room looks as full as ever. A few doors down, Christmas lights come on and illuminate the front of the house like a shopping mall. In the distance, two more houses blink on and splash color on a girl in a dress and a backpack passing by on her bike. The reflectors in the road shine with the headlights of the Regatta pulling into the garage in front of the house to the left. A guy with a mustache gets out and waves to his neighbor on the other side, who’s out watering his garden. He’s got all kinds of plants. Red ones. Yellow ones. Purple ones. I should ask him if he has any ideas for my fern. Or just haul it out and leave it with all the other garbage, the cherry on top. They chat for a minute and say goodbye with a smile. The one with the mustache walks by me and waves. He doesn’t even say anything about the weather. No “It’s a hot one today” or “We sure could do with some rain.” I don’t even know what his name is.
     I’m still surprised by how much is left in the bedroom. Next to the door, there’s one solitary box. The last one of the day, I tell myself. This one’s heavier than the others. A rotten smell comes out of the hole in the middle and puffs in my face with each step. The box crumbles like a sand castle. I leave it with the others. Three steps later, my foot lands in dog shit. I rub my eyebrows. I fill my lungs. I empty them. The phone rings. Once. Twice. Fuck whoever it is. Three times. It might be my brother. I take off my sneakers and leave them at the door. By the time I make it to the phone, the answering machine has come on: Viviana, my sister-in-law. I pick up.
     “Do you know where your brother is?” is her third question.
     “I don’t know any more than you do.”
     “Yesterday he called and said he might swing by your place before he came home. He wanted to see you.”
     “No idea. I haven’t talked to Seba in a couple days.”
     Silence.
     “Your niece is asking if we’re going to see you before Christmas Eve.”
     “Tell him to come, Mom.” I can hear Violeta’s high-pitched voice in the background.
     “Come over and we’ll order some food.”
     Why? We’re just going to stare at each other, playing a chess game of silences to cover up the questions we’re afraid to ask ourselves. Violeta keeps talking.
     “Hang on, Lelé,” my sister-in-law says. “Okay . . . I’m going to give the phone to this little nag . . .”
     “I don’t have time. I’m in the middle of something I want to finish.”
     “What are you doing?”
     “Taking out the trash.”
     Viviana snorts. “Did you open up the back bedroom?” she says. “You’re supposed to rest during Christmas vacation, hon. And Seba freed you up from the bar for a couple of days so you could go to Buenos Aires, not sit home and play archaeologist.”
     More silence. I switch the phone to the other ear. The answering machine has six new messages, even though I was here when they were recorded. They all say pretty much the same thing.
     “She called me the other day,” Viviana says. “She’s worried. She says she calls you and you don’t pick up. I told her to come for the holidays because if we leave it up to you . . .”
     “Let me take care of my own business.”
     A bug crawls up my arm and I flick it off. Out the window I see two kids looking at the boxes. One is dragging a cart and eyes my sneakers.
     “Tomás . . .” says Viviana.
     “What?”
     “Stop dicking around and call Alina.”
  ...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1641293969
ISBN 13 
9781641293969
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
312
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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