BLURB:
Christian
Romano lives his life as a con-artist, burglar, drug dealer, and a ladies' man,
using his good looks to con wealthy women out of jewels and money. When he is
arrested and jailed in one of the most violent jails in the U.S. (Cook County
in Chicago), a steamy affair begins with a nympho female jail guard. When he
loses control of the romance, Christian must end the affair by reporting her to
Internal Affairs. It turns out that she is already under suspicion for
supplying drugs to various gang members inside the jail. He has to decide if he
is ""rogue"" enough to help set her up for arrest.
Meanwhile, the FBI wants to recruit Christian to gather information against a
sadist ex-cop, Scott Mason, who has been arrested for murder. The risk?
Christian must wear a wire and testify. The reward? Witness protection for
Christian and his girlfriend and a modification of his prison sentence. Will
Christian risk his life for a chance at freedom? Will the female sheriff
""get even"" with him? Or will his life end at the hands of
the jail's drug lords or a lunatic former cop?
Excerpt:
Chapter 20
U.S.S. Just Kill Me Now
Once we were through that charade, Smith began to explain
how it all worked.
“This is a Swiss-made Nagra recorder. It’s a little heavy,
but it gets the clearest recording of any machine we have ever used. Once you
turn the machine on, you must let it run until the two hours expire, then take
the tape out and exchange it with another. We will come by every couple day to
bring new tapes and pick up the ones you have recorded. Do you understand
everything so far?”
I could feel my mouth go dry as I stared into the case and
wondered, What the f*** have I gotten myself into?
Then, the sound of Smith’s voice snapped me back to
attention, “Here, get a feel for it.”
I took the silver-cased recorder from him and thought to
myself, It’s too heavy and clunky to ever be concealed. The recorder was the
size as a Sony Walkman cassette player, but three times heavier. Two wires,
four feet each, ran from the machine with white plastic heads attached to each
end. I had a bad feeling about the size and shape of this thing. It would be a
real concern later.
Then Rogers said, “Because the heads on this machine are so
sensitive, we will tape the recorder to your upper thigh and run the wires
around your leg until the heads sit directly under the waistband of your
underwear.”
Out of frustration, I said, “Great, if I have to piss and
someone saddles up next to me and happens to look over at my manhood, they’re
gonna get an eyeful of recorder wiring. Chances are I will be beaten to death
after that miscue.”
My mind kept going back to the obvious lack of insight these
square, fed boys had toward the real life within a jail.
“I’m about to go back to a jail with zero airflow and
100-degree heat. We walk around in our boxers all day.”
It was crystal clear that neither of these agents gave a
rat’s ass about my safety.
Smith said, “We’ll just have to tape it higher up your
thigh.”
“No, how about we strap it up your ass and let you go up
there face-to-face with your boy.”
That was all they wanted to hear of my sarcasm and all hell
broke loose as we tried to figure out how this was ever gonna work. The real
logistical nightmare hit when I finally dropped my jail uniform pants and
pulled up my boxers to see how it would fit on my inner thigh. After several
years of martial arts and weightlifting, my thighs were far too big to fit the
recorder under my boxers. Two agents played with the leg of my underwear, as
they slid the fabric up and down with no success in figuring out how to get the
damn machine up under my nut sack. Finally, I had had enough.
I asked, “Does anyone here have a knife with them?” They all
stared at me in stunned silence.
Rogers finally spoke up. “I have a pocketknife,” he said as
he handed it to me.
I jerked my boxers off and stood there with my dick dangling
in the wind for all to admire. I measured the boxers to see where this heavy
sack of metal was going to be placed. I began cutting a crude square hole in
the upper right leg of my underwear. I was pretty certain the recorder would
fit snugly in the hole. I slid my boxers back on and held the recorder where I
had just cut the hole. The fit was very good, but now there was a different
problem.
The recorder showed, so I had to come up with another way to
cover the hole. I decided that if I was gonna pull this off, I would have to
wear a second pair of boxers over the first pair. The outer ones had to hang
lower on my torso and loosely enough to cover the recorder where it stuck out
of my underwear. The hope was that the inner pair would hold the recorder in
place well enough so it wouldn’t slip around. If this worked, I might be able
to get away with it.
In my mind, I was thinking, what a cluster f*** this operation
is. This would soon prove to be the way the F.B.I. does everything. So long as
they are getting what they want, all else be damned. But at the moment, I had
to wear this heavy chunk of metal under my nuts and hope that it stayed put and
didn’t fall from my boxers like the anchor of the U.S.S. Just Kill Me Now.
Rogers wrapped the recorder with the ACE bandage he had
brought and stepped back long enough for me to give it a light tug. I tugged on
it ever so gently and knew immediately that it was too heavy.
“This thing is not gonna stay on my leg while I spend
several hours walking up and down the tier. Are you trying to get me killed?” I
asked. “Did either of you think to bring duct tape?”
Barry Smith had the audacity to respond by saying, “I didn’t
want to bring any because I did not want to take the chance of it being
considered contraband here at the jail.”
“You thought to bring my suicide machine, but you thought
duct tape would set off alarms?” I shot back.
By now, Williamson had heard enough and walked back to his
office. He reappeared a few moments later with some heavy, clear packing tape.
We used that over the ACE bandage that the feds had brought to hold the
recorder up. I gave the new configuration another slightly harder tug and everything
seemed better. We then moved on to the next logistical nightmare, the swapping
out of the tapes. It was actually Walsh that brought it up.
“How can the tapes be retrieved from Christian without
stirring up attention?”
I had seen a movie once where a thick book was carved out
and contraband was kept in the hollowed-out hole inside.
“Hey, I have one of those super thick books by Michener. I
think it is about ancient Israel. I could take a razor blade out when it is
time to shave and cut a hole in the center pages of the book to make a cavity
large enough for the tapes. What do you guys think?” I asked.
Everyone was nodding their heads in agreement.
“I can put the book in my bars on the rear side toward the
catwalk where no one will notice anything different. I have about four or five
books back there now. What I can do is reverse this book so that the title
faces out. When Sergeant Walsh walks around the tier, that will be his cue to
grab that particular book, take the tape out and replace it with a new one.” I
suggested.
They all agreed with the plan, so with the tape swap
seemingly figured out, I was feeling a little better. I stood up to see how the
recorder looked under my pants; and to my surprise, I could not see it through
the clothing. I felt ready to go back to the jail and put the second pair of
shorts over the first.
Barry Smith handed me a piece of paper and said, “This is a
private phone number to our office that we call the ‘Hello’ line.
“When it rings through, it will be at a central desk where
all the agents can pick it up. They will only answer by saying ‘Hello.’ When
the jail recording announces that it is a collect call, everyone knows to
accept the charges. You will then be speaking to one of the agents in our
office. If it is after hours, the answering machine will come on, so speak to
it as if you were leaving a message for me or Agent Rogers.”
It both surprised and impressed me that he was willing to
give me a direct line in case of an emergency. For the first time, I felt a
little less like a disposable piece of trash to these people. I took a pen from
Buchan and rewrote the number in code so that if it were ever found, no one
could access the actual number. When I was done, I stuffed the paper in my sock
for safekeeping.
I looked at the two F.B.I. agents and asked, “Am I supposed
to steer the conversation toward any certain topics?”
Smith spoke for them. “Since the conversation seems to come
out of Mason’s mouth so frequently, just let him go, and see what happens.”
Barry Smith then handed me a second tape to have as a backup
for the one that was already in the machine. After stuffing it into my other
sock, I walked out with the heavy recorder strapped under my balls.
When I arrived back to my tier, Scott was talking on the phone.
I walked past him and headed to my cell to get out of the jail clothes. I
stripped down to my boxers to beat the crazy heat that hung over the unit like
napalm. I stuck my head out of my cell to make sure the hallway was clear and
slipped the second pair of boxers over the first. After pulling the outer pair
down a few inches, they seemed to cover the protruding recorder just enough. I
looked down and couldn’t tell where the recorder was. Just to be on the safe
side, I put on an oversized shirt and let it billow out as I walked; this
looked natural for the surroundings. It wasn’t five minutes and Scott was at
the bars of my cell.
“You go to the hospital?” he asked.
“Yeah, I had to wait for the MRI machine to empty before I
could go in. The radiologist was taking a smoke break between every MRI.”
I walked out of my cell and turned left, away from the guard
post and began the ritual of walking from one end of the long hallway to the
other.
When I walked away from my cell, I could feel Scott place
his hand on my back. I tried not to freeze out of panic, but he had never
touched me like that before. I had to wonder, Is he cleverly checking for a
recording device? I tried to push the paranoia out of my mind, but it was tough
with the stakes this high.
Author Interview
Q/What are four things you can’t live without?
My perfect vintage Jaguar which has very low miles– It is a
jewel!
My Brain – I must be able to think up all these silly, weird
character descriptions.
My arms and hands– To defend myself
My feet – In case I ever need to take off running from anyone
(like a jealous husband).
Q/What is your favorite TV Show?
Law and Order (even the reruns).
Q/If you could be any character, from any literary work,
who would you choose to be? Why?
Stone Barrington from the Stuart Woods Novels.
Why?
He is a former NYPD detective who was forced out of police
work because he disagreed with superiors in the department. He also graduated from college with a law
degree and helps with cases from various law firms. These are two things I
would want for myself.
Stone is a very charismatic character, good looking and smart
(just like me!) Ha!
Q/what have you got coming soon that we should look out
for?
I am working on a new book about a rather young man who has
been railroaded by a small-town judge and jury and sent to prison for murder.
He had a clean record and had moved in with his grandparents,
who were later killed by a ‘home invasion while he was at work.
He then met a girl who moved in with him but later he threw
her out. When she returned to his
property with two men (one of whom was drunk and high on drugs) he picked up a
board to defend himself, hit one of the men on the side of his head, The man died and my character was sent to
prison for murder.
In fact, I have been helping him for over two years and he
has a proper attorney who has filed a ‘habe’ for a new trial. Everything is now coming to a head and his
attorney feels he will have him out very soon.
Q/What books or authors have most influenced your writing?
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
J. D. Salinger
Mario Puzo – The Godfather
Margaret Mitchell – Gone With The Wind
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Glenn Painter
is single and lives in Central Florida.
He became interested in writing at an early age but did not make it his
career until 2014 when he published his first book, Beyond the Sentence.
Glenn has
written this story from the notes by the man who actually lived it. However, extensive research was also require
in order to make the story factual.
Glenn has also
founded a company, ‘Prisoner Civil Right Services.’ He is an advocate for incarcerated
individuals who have had their rights violated.
He is in constant contact with these individuals, their families and the
council. Most of his stories are
inspired by ‘factual events’ that have happened to these individuals. This makes his stories both fiction and non-fiction.
Glenn says that
writing is very challenging, and you must love the trials and tribulations that
come with it. He believes that patience,
perseverance and determination are required essentials to see a book through to
being published. The journey is just as
important as the destination.
Website:
http://www.gapainter.com
Amazon Author
Page:
https://www.amazon.com/Glenn-Painter/e/B00NETNKU6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9875593.Glenn_Painter
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/author2663
Buy links:
https://www.amazon.com/Wired-F-B-I-Deal-Signed-Devil-ebook/dp/B07WS6DQBT
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wired-by-the-fbi-glenn-painter/1132504339
The book will
by $0.99 during the tour
One randomly chosen winner via
rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.
Hello Readers!
Welcome to my 15-week book tour which starts on April 14th
and concludes on July 30th.
This tour was planned before the onset of this terrible
covid-19 virus which has invaded our world.
I want to extend my deepest sympathy to everyone, especially those who
have lost loved ones.
A
donation from me will be going out immediately to the charity I have listed
below and I will also be donating 25% of any royalties from the book which is featured on this
tour, to the covid-19 Response Fund. This fund
gives support to preparedness, containment, response, and recovery activities.
The 25% of royalties will be donated when I receive the final notification of the number of books sold. I am also encouraging all authors to make some
sort of donation to help with the recovery efforts. WE ARE ALL IN THIS FIGHT TOGETHER!
We all are wondering what the long-term impact this
covid-19 virus will be to our communities and our livelihoods, Every American,
as well as the companies that have worked very hard for every author have been
affected, but I have faith that we will recover from this terrible pandemic if
we all stick together and we all do our part – no matter how small.
I will also be donating, (over and above what
Goddess/Fish is offering):
$100 Amazon Gift
certificate to one randomly drawn commentator
$100 Amazon gift
certificate to one randomly drawn host.
These drawings will be done
via Rafflecopter that will be created by Goddess/Fish Promotions at the end of
the tour. To all of my fellow-authors –
please don’t forget our marketing representatives, book agents, reviewers, commentators,
hosts, etc..who are probably working from home and trying to help
us.
once the tour is
over. The Gift Certificates will be
mailed immediately after the tour is completed and the 25% will be posted once
I receive Royalties resulting in the sale of all electronic and print versions
of WIRED By The FBI.
I wish that I could do more, however, with everyone's support, WE
WILL BEAT THIS TERRIBLE SETBACK.
Thank you, god bless all of you and
the United States of America.
Glenn
Painter
The day he dies, Eleanor Hardwicke discovers her
father – the only person who has ever loved her – is not her father. Instead,
her biological father is a wealthy Portland businessman who wants nothing to do
with her and to continue his life as if she doesn’t exist. That isn’t going to
work for Eleanor.
