Bill Huntley - Fiction
crime fiction with a pulse
No Choice
by Bill Huntley
Johnny Rizz the big shot had important friends. On Friday night he learns that choosing the wrong friends can be a deadly mistake.
It’s business as usual for the Manzetti family—a heist, a con, extortion,murder—until little brother Paul decides he wants out. He and Ricky Lasco figure that Johnny Rizzullo’s new Wharfside restaurant is the perfect location for their new strip joint. All Pauly needs to do is kill his controlling brother Artie. Easy, until big-time NY gangster Roy The Nose gives Pauly one week to come up with five million in cash he says Artie owes him. Pauly just might meet the deadline if he can get Artie’s bimbo Sylvia to tell him where the loot is stashed.
Work In Progress
Upcoming crime fiction novels
The Side Show Hustle
In 1778, innkeeper Sally Greene shelters a smith’s apprentice during a brutal blizzard, and the night they share leaves her with a mysterious copper coin. Two and a half centuries later, down‑and‑out jazz singer Terri McGill carries that same coin as her “lucky penny,” pulling her into a con on a collision with a delusional celebrity historian and the gangsters hunting him. As the past resurfaces, Terri is dragged toward a violent reckoning she may not escape.
Ghost Girl
Fifteen‑year‑old Rachel Evers goes on the run after witnessing her mother’s murder by Sheriff George Howes, becoming the loose thread in a conspiracy tied to a multimillion‑dollar land deal and a political campaign. Hunted through the woods of Greene Mountain, she finds refuge with Stephanie McGill, another victim of Howes, as the county closes in around them. On a dark lakeshore path, Rachel risks everything for revenge—and ends the night charged with two murders she didn’t commit.
The Continental
Inside the blue‑tile walls of The Continental Diner, whores, queers, street crazies, cops, drunks, junkies, and thieves gather on neutral ground under the spell of humming fluorescents and the hiss of the Hobart. The slap of spatula on grill turns sausage and eggs into diner jazz with a pinch of blues, obbligato to stories of glory days and lost dreams. Black coffee flows twenty‑four hours a day, fueling a place where everyone comes to surrender to something bigger than themselves.
Excerpt from The Side Show Hustle
Keep moving, trying to remember where she was going. Focusing on the road, looking for something familiar. Seeing Tommy looking down at her at The Press Room. Eight bills a week forty minutes from home, telling her he’d love to make it a regular thing, right into the summer, as long as she wanted. How good was that? Telling her, But flexible, he’d understand if she needed to do other gigs. Tommy in his dark suits and white shirts, that dark wavy hair. Reminding her of Stallone playing a gangster. Wanting to get something going, she could see that.
Sitting with her between sets wanting to talk. Quiet, reserved, always polite. Shit, picturing it, trying to see herself with a guy like that. That serious. Not that it had been a bad thing. She had felt comfortable with him when she stopped fighting it. Comfortable enough to tell him things: about her grandfather logging with a team of horses when she was a little girl, how she would ride one of the big Percherons on the way out pulling the wagonload of gear into the woods.
How she loved watching the big pines fall—the great crack and then the anticipation, how the tree would just seem to hang there forever before it hit the ground in a rush of air you felt a quarter mile away, the dead silence after like nothing else in all the world. Told him about times with her grandmother, described the mountains where she grew up. Showing him that part of her, the confident little girl in control of her future.
Not wanting to reveal the grown girl who clung to her childhood sweetheart because it was safe, or the confused woman who ran off with the junkie musician in an act of defiance; fixing one mistake with another. Not wanting to show the woman who felt inadequate no matter how far she took it, who compulsively poured all she had into it and yet came away so desperately empty. Tommy, too nice on the surface to be real, was just another burning house to rush into. Maybe that was the attraction.
Remembering him sitting out there tonight with that big Italian-looking guy in his expensive suit who looked like a guy out of The Godfather. It was probably true. Murderers were running around his restaurant. Now, there was something to think about—getting involved with a gangster. Thinking about it some more, starting to have some fun with it, she pictured a gig in Vegas, seeing herself sitting at a table with a bunch of guys in dark suits named Tony and Guido drinking champagne between sets. Now you’re fucking talking. Giggling now, telling herself, Shit, get involved with these guys it could happen that way.
Closing her eyes in a dreamy way, feeling the downer take hold, her eyelids now too heavy to hold open, her arms too heavy to grip the wheel any longer, she lolled back against the seat and let it happen. So peaceful with her thoughts no longer racing, completely comfortable except for the chill.
Rubbing her bare arms, she felt the goose bumps and began to shiver. In the distance she heard the heater fan still humming, thinking dimly, it should be warm. She forced her eyes open and stared at the heater settings on high, then stared hard at the dashboard. Focused with all her might on the speedometer. Shit, she wasn’t moving anymore. Good thing.
She pressed the accelerator. Dead. Only the whir of the heater fan and the dash lights. She turned the key, but the motor wouldn’t catch. She stared at the dash display again until her eyelids drooped shut, then forced them open and tried the key some more, listening to the motor crank while staring out the dark windows, wondering where in the world she was, aware of the cold outside rapidly seeping into the Jetta.
But she couldn’t fight the heaviness. It pressed her back into the seat, and she closed her eyes, thinking that she needed to get out of there, find help. The last thought she had before the oxy overcame her consciousness.
Author Bio
An industrial arts education major at Rhode Island College, Bill Huntley dodged a lifetime of supervising hormone‑fueled adolescents by starting his own woodworking and design business. When Fine Woodworking magazine invited him to submit an article on his dragonfly design—later reprinted in two of the magazine’s hardcover compilations—he took it as a sign that he could write. Crossing from DIY articles to crime fiction felt like a natural transition—after all, both have the potential for lots of blood. In addition to “Dragonfly,” Bill has published the poem “The Perfect Crime” in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and was a finalist in the 2002 Fall Short Story Award for New Writers at Glimmer Train, where he was recognized for his story “The Worst Thing.”