Untamable - a novel
First draft started March 2006
Final draft completed December 2010
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overview:
Eddie Tarvelli, a middle-aged Chicago tough guy whose entire life has been spent involved in one scam after another, finds himself targeted by a Chinese crime family when he impulsively steals a large amount of money and leaves the city suddenly. With no plan, he finds himself in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the violence and crime that has always swirled around him again finds him in its midst. Only a chance and highly uncharacteristic involvement with Sarah Kiley, a woman of incongruous gentility, offers Eddie a glimpse into another way of life, a way to which he finds himself subtly drawn, even as he continues his shady dealings. When tracked by the Chicago mobster to Tennessee, however, Eddie finds his new love also embroiled in the deadly game, and realizes he has no choice but to return to the Windy City and face his tormentor. With his only hope for survival riding on the knife-edge of disaster, Eddie and two friends battle the odds, the police, and the Chinese mob in a game with the highest stakes possible, hoping against hope that he can survive and have a chance to be reunited with his new love and build a life of which he can finally be proud.
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synopsis:
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Untamable begins on the gritty and muscular streets of Chicago amid mobsters, drugs, and automatic weapons, as Eddie Tarvelli yields angrily to an impulse to steal many thousands of dollars from a Chinese crime family. Barely escaping from their clutches, he grabs the first bus out of town and wends his way south to Tennessee. There Eddie hopes to find refuge in the small southern city of Knoxville.
He perceives the southerners as uniformly peaceful and slow witted but quickly discovers otherwise, and only a chance encounter with a woman of gentility dissuades him from continuing his headlong rush toward disaster. To his surprise he finds mutual attraction in such disparate personalities and they begin the first fragile steps of building a relationship.
Yet even from five hundred miles away, the Chinese Mob soon locates him, putting Eddie and his new love in great danger. Only great courage and good fortune allow Eddie and Sarah to escape a tense showdown in the forests of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Eddie realizes he cannot outrun the powerful reach of the crime family and returns to Chicago alone to make restitution. With the help of an old and a new friend he treads a treacherous path toward redemption, but one final showdown remains. How Eddie overcomes overwhelming odds in hopes of preserving that fragile chance for love makes for a compelling tale with an ending both hopeful and bittersweet.
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an excerpt:
Vince drove to the lakefront and parked in a spot overlooking the water. The day was grey and chill, a bitter breeze swirling off the water. In spite of that, the two men got out and walked toward the deserted pier, yanking up the collars of their coats to ward off the cold.
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"So let's say we pull this off and get all our bread together within a couple days, Eddie. Whaddya gonna do then?"
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"Here's what I'm thinking. I split up some dough. Give Weeks a little piece, give you a big piece. You know this girl I been tellin you about, the one I been living with in Knoxville?"
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"What, you gonna cut her in, too?" Vince said, his mouth grinning but his eyes serious.
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"Sorta. Her brother's kid needs an operation. I wanna give her some money to give to her brother, help them out some."
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"Whoa, who's this I'm talkin to? Eddie Tarvelli, gonna give away some serious cake? What's gotten into you, mio fratello? Didn't you always say that when you work for something you keep it? I think what we're doing qualifies as work. How you gonna justify just handing it off to somebody else?"
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Eddie didn't say anything. He stared off over the water, watching the whitecaps spit and break as they reached shore. The raucous cries of seagulls split the air, audible from a distance even over the pounding of the wind and the waves breaking.
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"I don't know, Vince, I been doing a lot of thinking. I'm wondering if it's time to make some changes. Here I am, forty two years old, and I ain't getting no younger. Been livin alone for quite a few years. Doing all right but nothing special. Nothing really lights my fire no more."
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"Yeah, I know whatcha mean."
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"Then I get down to Knoxville, broke and on the run. This chick takes me in, treats me right, stands up for me, and helps me out. She's even the one who busted the cap on George Chan when he caught up to us."
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"Izzat right?"
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"I been wondering if maybe all this bad luck, this violence, this same old same old rough life, maybe I could change things by, I don't know, maybe giving a little instead of taking all the time. The way this girl, Sarah, the way she gives without any thought of getting paid back. Maybe I could take whatever bread is left, start over, maybe down south, maybe around here, I dunno, maybe somewhere altogether new."
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"Sounds like a big step. You really think it could work? You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks."
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"I hear you, but what do I got to lose? And I might have a lot to gain. The way bad shit follows me around, maybe I could get some good stuff happening, catch a few breaks if I prime the pump or something. Does that make any sense?"
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"I don't know, Eddie, not to me, really. But, hell, it's your life. If you wanna try something new, especially with this chick you think so much of, brother, maybe you ought to. Like you said, whaddya got to lose? It ain't like you got things so sweet and high and mighty and all. You and me, we're just a couple of punks who got old before we grew up. We been thinkin we're hot shit for like twenty five years, but really, what have we accomplished? Not a lot, I'm thinkin, not a hell of a lot."
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Both men stared silently out at the dull grey lake, watching a pair of gulls swoop repeatedly over the roiling water, one finally dipping its beak in and pulling out a small fish.
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"It's like that, man," said Vince. "When you play the game for the stakes we sometimes play for, then it's simple. Either you're the one does the eating or you're the one gets chomped. Now your gulls and your herring out there, they got no choice in the matter. But you and me, we do. And maybe you're a step closer than me in realizing that. Maybe this chick Sarah could help you take that next step. At least you can give it a try."
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Eddie thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. Finally he said, "You're saying that without somebody like Sarah, there's no way to step up?"
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"I'm saying that with the help of somebody special like that, you got more of a fighting chance, that's all."
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"You ain't gonna give up on any of this just cause you don't have a serious chick right now, are you, Vincent?"
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"Hell, who says I don't got a chick? I happen to be dating a couple of very nice ladies. But I don't have the, whaddya call it, sense of commitment that I'm hearing between the lines of what you're saying."
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"Maybe," Eddie replied.
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"No maybe about it. You oughta go for it, brutha. We just don't get that many chances, especially when you start to get older."
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"What's this old shit? You might be old, but not me," Eddie protested, laughing.
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"You are very definitely older than me, Tarvelli. What is it, three weeks?"
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"No, just barely two. And don't rub it in."
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The two men laughed together. Vince looked at his watch and said it was time to walk back to the car. They left the pier and the waves behind, the gulls still fishing raucously in the cold easterly wind.
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