A Welcome Murder

by Robin Yocum Narrated by Adam Verner

Overview

After his unspectacular professional baseball career ends with a knee injury in Toledo, Ohio, Johnny Earl gets busted for selling cocaine. After serving seven years in prison, all he wants to do is return to his hometown of Steubenville, retrieve the drug money he stashed before he went to jail, and start a new life where no one has ever heard of Johnny Earl.



However, before he can leave town with his money, Johnny is picked up for questioning in the murder of Rayce Daubner, the FBI informant who had set him up on drug charges in the first place. Then his former prison cellmate shows up-a white supremacist who wants the drug money to help fund an Aryan nation in the wilds of Idaho.



Five memorable characters, each with a separate agenda, come together in this layered tale of murder, deceit, and political intrigue.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/13/2017
Memorable oddball characters, whose ambitions collide with results ranging from comic to fatal, populate Yocum’s exceptionally clever novel set in Steubenville, Ohio, a once-thriving town near the West Virginia border. Johnny Earl, an ex-con who was once destined for a great pro baseball career, returns home from Pittsburgh hoping to retrieve his hidden nest egg. Sheriff Francis Roberson has dreamed since childhood of becoming president of the United States, and he has a plan. Roberson’s wife, Allison, has one driving goal—to get out of Steubenville. Dena Marie Conchek Androski Xenakis, former homecoming queen, she of multiple marriages and affairs, is still in love with Johnny. Dena’s insecure husband, Smoochie Xenakis, has put up with insults and abuse all his life. The murder of unsavory Rayce Daubner, who’s intimately connected with all the others, initiates the chaos, which one seemingly minor character quietly manages. Yocum (A Brilliant Death) has produced a rollick- ing tale sure to appeal to Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard fans. Agent: Colleen Mohyde, Doe Coover Agency. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"The narrative fascinates as much for its artfulness as for the revelations that come through the multiple points of view: the splendid pacing, the deceptively simple prose, and the high-energy boiling just beneath it all prove addictive." ---Booklist Starred Review

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"The narrative fascinates as much for its artfulness as for the revelations that come through the multiple points of view: the splendid pacing, the deceptively simple prose, and the high-energy boiling just beneath it all prove addictive." —Booklist Starred Review

AUGUST 2017 - AudioFile

The listener is a fly on the wall as five inhabitants of a run-down Ohio town recount their parts in this intriguing story of politics and murder. The unfolding plot involves the murder of a truly unpleasant character and its subsequent investigation. Adam Verner’s narration is well paced and perfectly matched to the story. He allows the subtleties of key characters to shine. The shifting of point of view is strange at the start, and it’s easy to miss a switch, which can lead to momentary confusion. However, this weakness doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of an engaging story, and the listener eventually adjusts. K.J.P. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-01-23
In a 180-degree turn from the sorrowful A Brilliant Death (2016), Yocum releases a farcical basket of deplorables in Steubenville, Ohio, and lets them crawl all over each other in search of criminal advantage.Nobody mourns the passing of Rayce Daubner, shot to death in an isolated park. Not Johnny Earl, the hometown baseball hero he hooked on cocaine and then turned in to the FBI. Not Dena Marie Conchek Androski Xenakis, the homecoming queen who became Rayce's lover years after Johnny left her behind in his abortive bid for Major League glory. Not Matthew Vincent "Smoochie" Xenakis, Dena Marie's current husband, a timid social worker who came away with serious damage the one time he confronted Daubner about his adulterous affair. Not Jefferson County Sheriff Francis Delano Roberson, Johnny's high school friend who's still carrying a torch for Dena Marie even though he's married to Allison Roberson, chief dispatcher for the sheriff's office. Not even Alfred Vincenzio, the FBI agent to whom Daubner reported, who's been out to get Fran Roberson ever since Fran stole Allison away from him at the FBI Academy. But when Vincenzio threatens to shame Fran by snatching the case away from him, it's clear that somebody's got to pay, and that's when two of the suspects reveal hidden depths: Johnny Earl, because he'd rather languish in prison than get released to the tender mercies of his neo-Nazi cellmate, Alaric Himmler, who wants to use the $472,000 in drug money Johnny's stashed to finance the Aryan Republic of New Germania, and Smoochie Xenakis, who's determined to make hay out of the idea that he might have had the gumption to kill someone, and might even do it again. As if the raucous plot isn't complicated enough, Yocum filters it all through a system of dueling first-person narrators whose perspectives are amusingly at odds with each other to produce a memorably merry tale of murder most richly deserved.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170574469
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Welcome Murder

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By Robin Yocum

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2017 Robin Yocum
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63388-263-8

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CHAPTER 1

JOHNNY EARL

It was never my life's ambition to be a cocaine dealer. My goal in life, from the time I was old enough to hold a baseball bat, was to play in the major leagues, make a boatload of money, and be inducted into the Hall of Fame. When I was in high school I would practice my induction speech by standing in front of the bathroom mirror holding a hairbrush for a microphone. I became a cocaine dealer by accident. Unfortunately, I was every bit as adept at dealing cocaine as I was at hitting a baseball, and I was the greatest baseball player to ever come out of Steubenville, Ohio. That's a fact. The biggest difference between the two is this: To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been sent to a federal penitentiary for booting a ground ball.

I've really screwed up my life. That's also a fact. I had it all. I mean, so far as Steubenville was concerned, I was the king. I was the best-looking kid in our school. I'm not bragging — just telling you the way it was. I'm bald now, which I hate even more than the idiotic tattoos I allowed a white supremacist to ink into my biceps with a sewing needle while I was in prison. But in high school, I had thick, dark hair that I parted in the middle and feathered back over my ears. My eyes are pale blue, I have a little cleft in my chin, and I had the most perfect set of teeth you ever saw. They're still nice, except now I have a partial plate that fills the gap where that black son of a bitch, Andre Edwards, a psychopath who should have been in permanent lockdown, smacked me with a piece of pipe and knocked an incisor and an eyetooth down my throat.

There were probably some girls in my class who would say that Jimmy Hinton was better-looking than me. His family owned the big dairy and cattle farm out on County Road 724 near New Noblesville, and they had, as my dad liked to say, more money than God. Jimmy always dressed up for school — never wore blue jeans or sneakers like the rest of us — and he drove a very cherry, midnight blue '55 Ford with blue lights under the wheel wells. He wore nicer clothes than me, and he had a much sweeter ride, but no way was he better-looking. He was a pretty boy — curly blond hair, a baby face, and sleepy eyes. Hell, I always figured he wasn't interested in girls. After all, he played the clarinet in the marching band, for Christ's sake.

I also dated the most beautiful girl in the school — Dena Marie Conchek. That's another fact. If you want proof, look at my senior yearbook. She was the head cheerleader, she was the homecoming queen, and she had the most incredible ass in Jefferson County. I was tapping that action every Friday and Saturday night and getting head on Sunday afternoons when her parents were visiting her grandmother at the nursing home. Since we weren't married, Dena Marie thought it was sinful to have intercourse on Sundays but apparently didn't think God had a problem with oral sex. It was typical Dena Marie. She was as crazy as she was beautiful, but putting up with her lunacy was a minor sacrifice in exchange for such great sex, especially when you're eighteen years old and sporting a perpetual boner.

If I had spent any time at all studying, I would have been valedictorian, too. Maybe. Lanny Chester was pretty damn smart, but I would have given him a run for his money. I was smart. Well, book smart, anyway. Most people would tell you that I never had a lick of common sense, and, given my recent track record as a guest of the Federal Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, it's hard to put up a strong argument to the contrary. But I was pretty close to straight A's, and I never cracked a book. I finished in the top ten in the class — eighth, I think.

Grades were never a big concern, because I was the best athlete in the storied history of Steubenville High School. Again, I'm not bragging — I'm just telling you the facts. You can find people who will tell you that little limp-dick Jimmy Hinton was better-looking than me, and that Lanny Chester was smarter, but no one will argue that I wasn't the best athlete to ever wear the crimson and black of the Steubenville Big Red. I was first-team all-Ohio six times. Six times! Three times in baseball, twice in football, and once in basketball. Now, I'll be the first to admit that being all-state in basketball was probably a gift — name recognition from my baseball and football accomplishments. But that doesn't matter. It still counts. First-team, all-Ohio, six times. You can check it out if you like. Photos of the all-staters hang in the front hall of the school. I'm the only one up there more than twice. At least, I think I'm still up there. After the drug conviction, they might have decided that I was too big of a disgrace and taken them all down.

I was five foot ten, a hundred and ninety-five pounds, and built like a statue of one of those Greek gods. My belly was rippled so tight you could hardly pinch the skin. And I was born to play baseball; I swear I was. I had twenty-three home runs my senior year. No one in the history of the school had ever hit twenty-three in a career, and I hit them in one season. I was a dead fastball hitter. You could sneak sunrise past a rooster easier than you could sneak a fastball past me.

I have always been very competitive. My friend Fran Roberson was at a high school debate competition and a kid from Mount Pleasant High School asked him what I was like. Fran said, "If you met him on the street, you'd think he was a nice guy. But he hates to lose, and he's an absolute prick between the lines." To this day, I consider that the highest compliment I've ever been paid. It was true. I would do anything to gain the advantage, including getting under the skin of an opponent. I was pretty good at it, too.

My senior year, Jefferson Union had a pitcher named Harry Bantel — a lanky kid who wore horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like Buddy Holly. Before the game, he yelled into our dugout that he was going to challenge me. I yelled back, "Give it your best shot, Buddy." Everyone laughed, and that pissed him off. He tried to blow the first pitch by me, and I hit it over the bus barn behind the centerfield bleachers. I touched home plate and asked, "Hey, Buddy, when are you going to start challenging me?" Next time I'm up, he gives me a dick-high fastball and I hit it into the tennis courts beyond the left-field fence. I said, "Do your ovaries hurt today, Bantel? You don't have your good stuff." Now, he's furious and I start singing "Peggy Sue" while I'm circling the bases. Next time up, he tries to put one in my ear. I dodge it, give him a wink, then hit the next pitch through a shop-class window. Take that, Buddy. Three swings, three home runs. I laughed all the way around the bases.

The Baltimore Orioles drafted me in the second round. I was pissed because I thought I was a sure first-rounder. Still, any thoughts I had of going to college ended when the Orioles flashed a fifty-thousand-dollar signing bonus in front of me. It was more than my dad made in two years at the steel mill. I went right over to Ohio Valley Chevrolet and bought a new Camaro and drove straight to Jimmy Hinton's house. I raced the engine until he came outside. "Whatta ya think of this?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It's okay."

"Okay?!" I couldn't believe it. "Better than that piece-of-shit Ford you're driving. They're going to pay me a lot of money to hit a baseball, Jimmy boy, which is lots better than shovelin' shit and tuggin' on cow tits for the rest of your life." I laid rubber a hundred feet down County Road 724. Jimmy Hinton was as nice a kid as you would ever meet, and he had never done a thing to me, but I was so scalded that some girls thought he was better-looking that I had to show off.

Admittedly, there were times when I was a first-class horse's ass.

Most everyone in Steubenville was real excited when I got drafted, with one notable exception — Dena Marie Conchek. The day I signed with the Orioles, she wouldn't stop crying. Ultimately, though, I asked the question to which I already knew the answer. "Dena Marie, what's wrong?"

"If you leave, we'll never get married," she blubbered.

"Dena Marie, I never said we were going to get married." That was a fact.

"You don't want to marry me?"

"I want to play in the major leagues." The wailing began anew.

A week before I left for my minor-league assignment, I said, "Dena Marie, we need to break up." She was still bawling when I left her house, and I didn't talk to her again for more than eight years.

Here's another thing, and it's a stone fact. When I got to the Orioles' rookie league team, I learned very quickly that there are a lot of guys outside of Steubenville who can play the game. I was a fastball hitter and that was great in high school, where you get a steady diet of fastballs. That wasn't the case in the pros. They had the most unbelievable breaking balls I had ever seen. I flailed away at curveballs and missed so mightily that it was embarrassing. And here's another thing: Once word gets around the league that you can't hit a breaking ball, and you can trust me on this, that's all you see.

I was basically a career minor-leaguer. I hit some mammoth home runs, but my average was about two-twenty, and I struck out seven times for every home run I hit. For those of you unfamiliar with the statistics of baseball, that is not good. The Orioles were patient, but I only made it to double-A ball, and after six years I was traded to Pittsburgh. In the middle of my second season in the Pirates organization, the left fielder at their triple-A affiliate got hurt and I got moved up. All of a sudden, for reasons that I cannot explain, I started hitting the ball like Babe Ruth. It looked like a cantaloupe coming in there, and I was spraying line drives all over the park. That was the year I got the call to the majors. It was an end-of-the-year call-up, a cup of coffee, but it still counts. I, Johnny Earl, was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates and a major leaguer.

My claim to fame was hitting an off-the-wall triple off of Nolan Ryan. That's right, the Nolan Ryan, and I rocked his ass for a three-bagger. A big crowd from Steubenville had come up in a couple of charter buses to see me play, and they were all on their feet, cheering. I was standing on third, grinning, all proud of myself. That's when Nolan Ryan looked over and said, "Enjoy it, rook. It won't happen again." And it didn't. The next three times up, he struck me out on three pitches.

I thought I had finally gotten the hang of professional pitching. The Pirates thought it was a fluke and traded me in the off-season to the Detroit Tigers. My agent said they wanted to unload me because they thought my sudden ability to hit a curveball had been an anomaly. Unfortunately, they were right. By the time I got to spring training, I was again floundering, flailing away at curves like a blind man at a buzzing fly.

My career ended on a damp evening in July of 1979 in Toledo. I sent a loopy fly ball down the right-field line and blew my knee rounding first. I crumpled into a heap ten feet from the base. The pain was excruciating; I felt like I'd been shot and my leg was on fire. The right fielder threw the ball to the first baseman, who leaned down and said, "Sorry to do this to you, pal," putting the tag on me as I rolled around the infield. That was the last time I ever stepped onto a ball field. I had reconstructive surgery and went back home to rehabilitate and consider my future.

In a little more than eight years, I went from signing bonus to sayonara. At age twenty-six, the only thing on my résumé was 158 minor-league home runs and a major-league triple off of Nolan Ryan. I was depressed and humiliated by my failure. When I was in high school, you couldn't have told me that I wasn't going to play in the major leagues. If you had, I would have laughed in your face. I was Johnny Earl, goddammit. You get a distorted view of the world growing up in a place like Steubenville. I had had such great success in my little pond that I thought I couldn't fail.

But I had.

Most Jefferson Countians had a similarly hard time understanding my failure. They didn't realize the level of talent out there and assumed that because I had been a stud for the Steubenville Big Red that I was a lock for the big leagues. Hell, even I thought that. Not long after the knee surgery, Bubbie Szismondo, who worked with my dad at Weirton Steel, walked by the house and saw me sitting on the porch with my leg in a brace. "How's the knee?" he asked.

"Not good," I said.

"Gonna try again next year?"

"Nope. I'm done."

He shook his head, disgusted, and sent a spray of tobacco juice into my mother's zinnias. "I knew you should have taken one of them football scholarships," he said, already walking away.

Everything in my life had been a competition. It wasn't that I loved winning, but I loathed losing. The victories in my life were never as sweet as the defeats were bitter. Why else at this point in my life would I still be upset that some people thought Jimmy Hinton was better-looking than me back in high school? It's great to have a competitive fire as an athlete, but it can lead to problems if you don't control it off the field. I am the poster child for that last statement.

For the first time in my life, I didn't have some kind of athletic season to get ready for. I moped, worked on model cars, and generally felt sorry for myself. This was a major blow to my ego. (Once upon a time, my mammoth ego was my most dominating characteristic. That's not so much the case anymore. Seven years in the penitentiary and going bald in the process will knock the swagger right out of you.) I was pushing twenty-seven, my baseball career was over, I was driving a rusting Camaro with 180,000 miles on it, I had thirteen hundred bucks in my checking account and no education beyond high school, and my only job prospects were the steel mills or the coal mines. Tell me that isn't depressing.

And, just to prove that God has a sense of humor, three days after I got home from my knee surgery, Dena Marie Conchek rapped twice on the front door and then just came in. I was sitting at the dining-room table putting together a model of a '64 Thunderbird. "Hey there, Dena Marie," I said, my first words to her since I left her crying in her living room.

She stopped in mid-stride, her eyes widened, and she said, "Oh my God, you're going bald!"

"Thanks so much for noticing. It's nice to see you, too."

She sat down at the table next to me and said, "Johnny ..." She waited until I looked up from my model. "I knew that you'd come back to me."

"I know this will come as a big surprise to you, Dena Marie, but I didn't come back to Steubenville looking for you. My knee exploded, the Detroit Tigers fired me, and I needed a place to live." She pretended not to hear me, but I knew Dena Marie, and I'll bet the minute she heard I was coming back home she had started planning our wedding. "Besides, aren't you still married to Jack Androski?" I knew she wasn't. My mom was the most spectacular gossip in Steubenville, and I had received regular updates on the town's sins and sinners. Jack had divorced Dena Marie a few years earlier, after he caught her with Alan Vetcher.

"I'm divorced. It was a bad marriage from the start," she said in a whiny tone. "I couldn't help it. I was so upset when you left that I married the first man who asked me."

"Well, I knew it would somehow end up being my fault."

"Johnny, is it my fault that I never stopped loving you?"

It was my turn to pretend like I hadn't heard her, and I went back to working on the Thunderbird. Dena Marie sat at the table for an hour, telling me everything I didn't want to know about everything I didn't want to hear about. I was exhausted just from listening. I was ready to ask her to go when she said she was late for her job at the grocery store and left.

She stopped by the next day.

And the next.

On her fourth visit, we had sex.

I hadn't been with a woman in months, and my willpower was at low tide. Granted, my moral compass spends a lot of time at low tide, but I got a good whiff of her perfume, and when she touched the inside of my thigh while inspecting my surgery scars it became readily apparent that although my knee was out of commission, other body parts were fully operational. A stiff dick has no conscience. I hobbled up the steps on my crutches and we had clumsy sex in the twin bed in my bedroom, which was still adorned with trophies and plaques from my high school days. Once again, I was back to ignoring Dena Marie's lunacy in exchange for sex.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Welcome Murder by Robin Yocum. Copyright © 2017 Robin Yocum. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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