The Wolfman

Nicholas Pekearo

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE WOLFMAN

Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of Nicholas Pekearo

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

EDITOR’S NOTE

I had the great fortune of meeting Nicholas Pekearo two years before he died, and right off the bat, I knew I liked him. In the span of just a few minutes, we managed to find common ground. We both loved the horror films of the mid to late 1970s and the early 1980s. We both grew up reading comics. Hell, we even liked the same novelists. I was told he was a cop, but when I asked him about it, he sort of chuckled and went on to explain his role as a volunteer police officer with the Auxiliary NYPD. At first I really didn’t get it. I asked him silly, childish questions, like “Do you carry a gun?” and “Have you ever been fired at?” He laughed them off, explaining that as an Auxiliary police officer he did much the same stuff a paid cop would do, that he didn’t carry a gun and wasn’t assigned a bulletproof vest but had saved up for one on his own. It finally sunk in when he admitted that the police volunteer work served as a great inspiration for his writing. More important, he felt that he was doing something right with his service, that it filled some sort of void. He was giving back to the community that nurtured him.

As an editor, I get a lot of folks who ask me if I would look at their work, and it’s hard to say no. But most of the time, they’re just blowing hot air and never hand anything over. So when I asked Nick for a look at some of his writing, I figured the odds of his showing me anything were slim. I was wrong.

He first hit me with a novel he called The Savior (which I found out after his death was his second; his first he called Redbird). It was a first-person serial killer story, and the narrative unfolded through audiotape confessions of the killer’s crimes. It was dark as hell, often funny, and altogether brutal. It was rough, as Nick was still learning how to tell a story in novel form, but the voice was amazing. He had the ability to create these sick and wounded characters but somehow give them souls, ones that you felt might be worth saving, regardless of their crimes.

We met again and I proceeded to break down my reactions to The Savior. He fielded my criticism like a pro and quickly started telling me about the new novel he was working on, which would eventually become The Wolfman. He imagined The Wolfman as the start of a series that would take the main character, Marlowe Higgins, an essentially kindhearted man burdened with the werewolf curse, on the road as he coped with his affliction and tried desperately to find a way to reverse it. And no matter how much he fought it, every full moon he would have to kill. I thought of it as the Incredible Hulk with a raucous metal attitude. Like Bruce Banner, he would travel from town to town, trying to run from himself but constantly finding trouble—sadistic serial killers, neo-Nazi vampires, demented wizards, and insane alchemists. Those were just some of the encounters Nick envisioned for Marlowe. It simply sucks he never got to take Marlowe that far.

On the night of March 14, 2007, Nick was shot and killed while on duty as an Auxiliary officer in the neighborhood he grew up in, New York City’s Greenwich Village. A madman entered a restaurant, armed to the teeth with over ninety rounds of ammunition. He killed the restaurant’s bartender, then took to the streets of Greenwich Village. Nick and his partner, Eugene Marshalik, attempted to stop him after he crossed their path. They pursued the armed killer, though they themselves were unarmed. The killer unloaded. Nick was shot six times: One bullet was stopped by the vest he wore; the others weren’t. Eugene was shot once in the head and died in the street. In a matter of moments, the madman was gunned down and killed by the NYPD. Nick died later that night in the hospital where he was born.

Just four days before he was killed, I had dinner with Nick and he gave me his latest round of revisions on The Wolfman. Apart from our author/editor relationship, Nick and I were becoming great friends. In the months it had taken me to read and respond to his first draft of The Wolfman, Nick had gone ahead and written another novel, The Invisible Boy, about a tortured teenager who shoots up his high school, which he had handed me in January. That’s how prolific he was. He never stopped writing. That was his dream. His mother told me that when he was a child and was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, among “a pizza pie man” and “a stunt man,” “writer” always found its way onto the list. As an adult, he set his sights there and never looked back.

It goes without saying that Nick was a hero that night on the streets of New York. But his heroism, for me, goes beyond that sacrifice. Every time we met, he reminded me of why I got involved in book publishing: to tell great stories and meet great people. Nick was well on his way to a terrific career as a writer, and the best was yet to come. It is with great pride that I present to you Nicholas Pekearo’s The Wolfman. You did it, Nick. Here it is…. Rock on.

PROLOGUE

Let me paint a picture for you: The full moon was bulbous and yellow like the blind and rotted eye of a witch that peered down from the murky sky with bad intentions, and a million little stars shone down on the sleepy Southern town of Evelyn. The breeze was gentle and cool, carrying on it the scent of flowers and wet earth from the recent rain spell. The only thing missing was the children singing hymns, and I’m sure it would have been enough to make someone happy to be alive.

Bill Parker was driving down Old Sherman Road, a four-lane blacktop that went right around the edge of the whole town in a near-perfect circle. Driving in the dead of night was one of his many compulsive habits, but this one was rather bad. He did it often, about four nights a week, and I say it was a bad habit for a very specific reason.

Unfortunately, I won’t tell you what that reason is just yet.

Everyone in town knew he drove when he couldn’t sleep. His neighbors on Bunker Street knew it because his beat-up Oldsmobile starting up in the middle of the night would, with the exception of the crickets, be the only noise on the block.

The cops knew his routine too. They’d pulled him over for speeding at two, three in the morning more times than they could count, which may or may not have meant anything, considering the kind of town it was, but still. The number was considerable. They let him get away with it after a while too. They knew he’d never stop, but aside from that, Bill Parker wasn’t the kind of guy that most cops wanted to ticket. He was, after all, an important member of the community, being the coach of the baseball team over at Bailey High and all. I think a lot of the cops felt that if they gave him a ticket it would jinx the team. They lost just about as often as there was a virgin birth.

Hell, even I knew about Bill Parker and his odd driving habit. I only knew him as an