conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Vermillion, Pike, York with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Black Water Transit'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Black Water Transit
  It's the first day of summer, New York State—a hot clear sun and the trees all greening out under a sky as blue as Bombay gin—this hard case named Pike—Earl V. Pike—he's doing ninety in a big navy-blue Benz 600, northbound in the cruise lane of the Taconic, listening to a tape of African drums, has it cranked up so loud the windows are vibrating—it doesn't bother him because his hearing is totally shot—too many years of small-arms fire popping off right next to his skull. The trees and the towns are just black-and-green blurs racing past his window, the incoming lane markers are hot yellow bars that make him think of tracer rounds. Pike is looking at his rearview mirror again, he's been checking it every few seconds, thinking very hard about a black GMC truck, windows tinted dark, hanging there in the cruise lane, rock steady, floating there like a big fat deerfly in the mirror, seven cars back. He speeds up, the Jimmy speeds up. He slows, the Jimmy slows. Earl Pike does not like this.
  He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, shifts his position. Under the blue dress shirt, plates of heavy chest muscle flex as he moves. He's got five circular scars big as silver dollars stitched across his belly in an arc from right to left. He can feel them tug like fishhooks in the muscle. His blunt face is seamed and cracked, his white hair short, a military cut, and his hands on the leather-wrapped wheel are corded and thick, the forearms ropy, veined, bared to his rolled-up sleeves. He has the build of a guy who works against the weight of things, but he's older now and the wear and tear is showing.
  As he reaches the Gallatin exit brake lights flash on up ahead, hundreds of ruby lights against the forest green. The cars and vans back up fast and now he's down to a crawl in a mile-long caravan of cars and trucks. He pulls to the right far enough to get a view up the parkway. All he can see is an endless chain of traffic. Some feckless mutt in a fender-bender, he figures, and then he sees the exit sign for Highway 82. Maybe he can flank this tangle, go north on the back roads, get onto the Taconic somewhere farther on. A man named Jack Vermillion was going to be at the Frontenac Hotel just outside of Albany in the early afternoon. Pike had a four-hour safety zone, but he was a meticulous man, and it has been his experience that the devil who lives in the details never sleeps.
  Pike cuts the wheel of the Benz hard and bounces over the curb, accelerates up the ramp. As he reaches the top of the exit and comes to a stop, he sees the same black Jimmy pulling up quickly behind him, a brand-new SLT. It's up too close for him to get the plates. The windshield is filled with a reflection of leafy branches from the trees all around them. All he can see through the tint are two vague shapes. He has no particular reason to be worried, but it's an operational habit with him. He tended to notice things like that. The Jimmy has no signal on. Pike waits at the stop sign for a flatbed trailer to pass through and then signals a left turn onto 82 in the direction of Blue Stores. He watches the Jimmy's lights and sees the turn signals come on. He's also making a left.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Jack felt a sudden burning sense of shame. It was true. He had sold out a man against whom he had no grievance, sent him into a federal trap, and he had done it for what? He knew it was lunacy, but it was impossible not to say something.
  He wrote the number down on a pad by the phone, sat and held it in his hands for a minute, trying to get his breathing under control. Then he stood up and began to dress. Seven minutes later a black Caprice pulled into his driveway. Jack was outside on the front stairs, waiting for it. The two men inside it stepped out as he came down the walkway. Both of them were brick-shaped and buzz-cut and looked like combat accountants in dress blue suits and white shirts. One of them showed Jack an ATF ID folder and said his name was Conroy. The other man watched Jack carefully, said nothing, and held open the back door. Jack got in and the man slammed it hard enough to rattle the empty coffee cup in a holder between the front seats. Jack saw a blue police light in the footwell and a police radio under the dashboard. Conroy got in behind the wheel, and the other man came around and sat in the back next to Jack. As they pulled away, Conroy pressed a button and the door locks snapped down.
  They were airborne in a black Bell Ranger thirty-four minutes later. The chopper had no markings of any kind. Conroy sat in the front with the pilot. They seemed to know each other. The man who wasn't Conroy and who had the Glock in a shoulder holster never left Jack's side all the way down to Red Hook.
  They followed the Taconic southward at a thousand feet. Jack saw pinpoint lights and the blue squares of farmyards bathed in arc lamps and now and then a single car cruising on the black ribbon of the parkway. The dulled thunder of the rotors made thinking impossible. He wondered who was in that car a thousand feet below, what his life was like, where he was going. Was it maybe Flannery Coleman down there, foot to the floor, heating up his cell phone, snapping and snarling at some hapless mutt on the far end of the line?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Was it maybe Flannery Coleman down there, foot to the floor, heating up his cell phone, snapping and snarling at some hapless mutt on the far end of the line? It was true. He had sold out a man against whom he had no grievance, sent him into a federal trap, and he had done it for what? He knew it was lunacy, but it was impossible not to say something.
  He wrote the number down on a pad by the phone, sat and held it in his hands for a minute, trying to get his breathing under control. Then he stood up and began to dress. Seven minutes later a black Caprice pulled into his driveway. Jack was outside on the front stairs, waiting for it. The two men inside it stepped out as he came down the walkway. Both of them were brick-shaped and buzz-cut and looked like combat accountants in dress blue suits and white shirts. One of them showed Jack an ATF ID folder and said his name was Conroy. The other man watched Jack carefully, said nothing, and held open the back door. Jack got in and the man slammed it hard enough to rattle the empty coffee cup in a holder between the front seats. Jack saw a blue police light in the footwell and a police radio under the dashboard. Conroy got in behind the wheel, and the other man came around and sat in the back next to Jack. As they pulled away, Conroy pressed a button and the door locks snapped down.
  They were airborne in a black Bell Ranger thirty-four minutes later. The chopper had no markings of any kind. Conroy sat in the front with the pilot. They seemed to know each other. The man who wasn't Conroy and who had the Glock in a shoulder holster never left Jack's side all the way down to Red Hook.
  They followed the Taconic southward at a thousand feet. Jack saw pinpoint lights and the blue squares of farmyards bathed in arc lamps and now and then a single car cruising on the black ribbon of the parkway. The dulled thunder of the rotors made thinking impossible. He wondered who was in that car a thousand feet below, what his life was like, where he was going.Jack felt a sudden burning sense of shame.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Could a man fall like that, if he were to step out into the black woolen night? Would he fall the way the snow falls, into a perfect silence? How sweet it would be to have the courage to know.
  My descriptions of the territorial and judicial conflicts encountered every day by the men and women of the NYPD are as accurate as my research and personal observations could make them. The operational details are based on my own experiences with working detectives on the streets of the five boroughs. The real-life consequences of the asset seizure laws, including their corrosive effect on the principles and conduct of certain city, state, and federal attorneys, are a matter of public record for those of you who care to look.
  Although this novel is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to the living or dead is purely coincidental, Earl V. Pike is a composite of several men I have met in the course of my long and uneven life, many of whom are now safely tucked away in shallow graves in assorted third-world hellholes, and for whom no one mourns but I.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Could a man fall like that, if he were to step out into the black woolen night? Would he fall the way the snow falls, into a perfect silence? How sweet it would be to have the courage to know.
  My descriptions of the territorial and judicial conflicts encountered every day by the men and women of the NYPD are as accurate as my research and personal observations could make them. The operational details are based on my own experiences with working detectives on the streets of the five boroughs. The real-life consequences of the asset seizure laws, including their corrosive effect on the principles and conduct of certain city, state, and federal attorneys, are a matter of public record for those of you who care to look.
  Although this novel is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to the living or dead is purely coincidental, Earl V.