This is designed as a prequel story to “Under the Cold Stones” by myself, published by The Book Folks 2017.
The story follows Daydee, a prostitute, and her small group of friends through autumn into the New Year in the Irish Channel, the French Quarter and the Calliope Projects in New Orleans in the time of the Reagan War On Drugs when the cocaine drug lords were getting life sentences when arrested.
We meet Daydee as she is beginning to realize she is getting too old to make a living as a hooker. With her, John Seegum, (the father of her child who appears at the end of “Under the Cold Stones”) is an alcoholic printer who has been fired and has little hope of working again. And James, a young handsome bookstore clerk, who had worked as a printer’s devil for Seegum when he first arrived in the city. James has become involved with Cindy, a young black, apparently single, mother of a baby girl. A gas leak in her apartment has her going to James for help. He enlists Seegum and Daydee to help and Seegum discovers five kilos of cocaine in the trunk of Cindy’s car which she didn’t realize she had.
We learn quickly that Cindy is really the fugitive wife of a big time drug dealer who is already in jail along with a large number of his organization. The two couples with the baby in tow decide to throw in together to sell the cocaine because they all could use the money.
Their progress quickly turns into a dangerous romp. Seegum finds a street gang with no money that wants to buy the cocaine or steal it. Daydee turns up a couple of very scary Mafia types from Chicago willing to buy it. Cindy is recognized by a couple of street dealers that used to work for her husband and are chasing her as well, because they are aware of the cocaine left in her trunk.
The bookstore owner, James’ boss, and his boyfriend become involved with the two couples and we discover Seegum’s tragic loss of his wife and baby in a French Quarter fire years before. Both James and Cindy’s Moms show up.
The leader of the street gang Seegum had found has turned out to be very angry and violent and to get rid of him, he sets him up to sell him one kilo and then arranges with an old friend from the Police Department to get him arrested and sent to jail.
Then the group of friends begin to unravel. Cindy is pregnant with her husband’s second child and she goes off to stay with her cousin, mostly to have the baby before she is arrested. James, heartbroken, decides to hitchhike to California, to rewrite a book he has finished. Daydee receives word that her mother has died and she goes to Illinois to take over her inherited estate. Seegum has fallen off the wagon and is left behind with Cindy’s car which he drives onto an off ramp from the interstate highway and tries to commit suicide, but can’t manage it and gets arrested.
Seegum finds the street gang leader, which he set up, in the same prison with him.