Milan Jacovich Mysteries

The atmosphere in the bar seemed to actually be humming, or rather vibrating like a well-played violin string, with a purity of tone and pitch worthy of a concert hall. Whether it was in anticipation of great food or the promise of something yet unspoken, I didn’t know. You won’t find a better-dressed, better-connected, or better-looking crowd in all of Cleveland …

The dark space under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge is, I think, a singularly lousy place to die. The bridge, with its four landmark pylons in the shape of giants, “Titans of Transportation,” holding in their huge hands various modes of travel like buses and trucks and streetcars, stretches across the Cuyahoga River and connects the two avenues for which it is named, and is one of the primary arteries between the east and west sides of Cleveland. …

It was snowing hard the first time I saw the old Indian. A gentle, Currier and Ives Christmas card kind of snowfall, with big fat flakes whose facets catch the light as they drift downward, pirouetting madly in the eddying currents of the warmer air closer to the earth.

I make my living as a private investigator and security specialist, a job that fulfills and enriches me as well as pays the bills. Still, I’m not presumptuous enough to say exactly why I was put here on earth, because I don’t know. And when I meet somebody who does …

Everybody is addicted to something. Tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, sex, gambling, food? Except for the nose candy, I’m addicted to all of them, to a greater or lesser degree. I’ve smoked Winstons for more than twenty years, although periodically I try to cut down. I enjoy a beer, I’m inordinately fond of women, I like to bet on football games, and one quick glance tells you I haven’t missed many meals …

It was a black-and-white-movie morning when I opened my office, looked out the window down the Cuyahoga River, and saw the angry thunderheads hunkered over Lake Erie. It was one of those mornings we get in Cleveland at the end of April. We’ve been looking at gray skies and fastening our coats and jackets up to the top button for almost eight months, and the longing for a spot of sunshine and warmth to burn through the pewter-colored overcast becomes as urgent and palpable as the throbbing of an infected hangnail.