You never know, when it happens, what's going to change your life, what's going to bounce you out of the rut you've been in, send you flying off in some new direction.

Manny's latest score left him with more money than he's ever dreamed of, but with money comes danger -- from his partner, Rosey, who might get greedy, and from the Russian mobsters they stole it from. Worse, if he's busted again, he'll go back to prison for life, leaving his motherless five-year-old son, Nicky, still trapped in the foster care system.

With the kind of guts born of panic and desperation, Manny grabs his son and heads for the wilds of Maine. When he discovers that the bad guys are on his trail, his impulse is, as usual, to run. But the people he's met in Maine -- including the local police chief -- have become his unlikely friends and an unlikely surrogate family to his boy. Now they're all in danger, and it's because of him. Does Manny have what it takes to change his street-tough ways and become a real father to Nicky? And does he dare to settle into a new life, putting at stake the safety of everyone he has come to love?

Norman Green presents a gripping portrait of a man trying to break out of the stranglehold of a life of crime and create a future for himself and his son.

Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel.

Way Past Legal

By Green, Norman

HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN: 0060564547

Chapter One

Time, a guy once told me, ain't nothing but one goddam thing after another. I met the guy in Ossining, New York, last time I was up there. I was a guest of the state, and so was he. He was like me, I suppose, a little too smart for his is own good. Not smart enough to figure a way out of the life, not stupid enough to enjoy it. I heard he got shanked after I got out. I never found out why. I suppose it doesn't really matter. These things happen. Right?

The reason I remembered the guy, I was trying to figure out what got this whole thing started. You never know, when it happens, what's going to change your life, what's going to bounce you out of the rut you been in, send you flying off in some new direction. It might have been that guy and his theory of time, it might have been that I was worried about Nicky growing up to be like his old man, it might have been that I didn't want to have to kill Rosey, because we'd sorta been friends for too long, but I really think it was Leonid.

I don't know who he was, the paper didn't say. They named a meteor shower after him, though, I read about it in the Post. I know,another bad habit. The Post said it was the last time any of us would see it, because it wasn't coming around again until 2099, by which time I will be dead, and so will you, along with everybody you ever knew. I don't know why it bothered me. I mean, shooting stars, who gives a shit. Right? But I couldn't get it out of my head, this idea that tonight, this thing is coming by, doesn't matter if it's a big deal or not, you, my friend, and I are both gonna be worm food before it happens again. Little Nicky might make it, if he lives to be a hundred and five, but growing up in foster homes in Bushwick, you gotta figure his chances are not good.

Rosario is this guy that I work with from time to time. I was just a burglar before I met Rosey, not a great one, but pretty good. I did all right. Rosey was more of an armed-robbery guy. First thing we did together, it was a card game down in Canarsie, it was just him and me. They ran the game on Friday nights, we watched the game four Fridays running, make sure nobody too heavy was there, then on the fifth Friday, we hit them. We wore ski masks so none of them would know who we were, and it went down easy even though it was just the two of us mostly because Rosey's a scary guy whether he's got a mask on or not. He's slightly taller than I am, maybe six foot two or three, and he's a a few pounds heavier, he probably goes around two-thirty-five or two-forty. He got his physique for nothing -- as far as I know, Rosey has never had to lift a weight or run a mile. Everything I have to work hard for, he gets for free. The thing that sticks in your mind, though, is not his build. I guess you would have to call it his aura. They say God gives you the face you're born with, but you earn the one you die with. Rosey had eyes that looked like they had seen a lot of pain, though how much of it he bought and how much he sold is anybody's guess. It's not just in his eyes, either, it's in the way he holds himself, it's on his face, it's in his bones. You meet the guy, you know instinctively you gotta watch him. People shake hands with Rosario carefully, and I've known him long enough to know that he's worse than he looks. Rosey's one of those people who believes that you were put here on this planet to be miserable, to suffer, and to die. It's almost as though he knows he's predestined for trouble so he's never surprised to see it coming, and he never runs away from it. Rosey looks like he's right on the edge, all the time. You just know, he thinks he needs to pop you, he's gonna do it. He won't have to think about it much, not until it's over with.

So anyhow, when you hit guys that know how to hit back, you have to be careful. You have to be absolutely certain you can't be recognized, you have to plan thoroughly so nothing goes wrong, and you can't be stupid afterward, either, buying jewelry for your favorite hooker. Most guys in the game find those rules too restrictive, believe it or not.

The last job I did with Rosey, there was this brokerage house run by a couple of Russians. They had a stock scam running, it was your basic Ponzi scheme, and they were getting ready to pull the plug. The trickiest part of a scam like that is cashing out, okay, because everybody is worried about getting screwed or going to jail. Most of the money we couldn't touch because it's already in some bank in the Cayman islands or someplace, but there are certain elements involved that don't trust banks of any kind, they got to be paid off in cash. Now the brokerage house is in Manhattan, but the Russians are running it out of an apartment house in Vinegar Hill, which is this neighborhood down on the Brooklyn waterfront, used to be mostly factories but half of them got people living in them now. The place is too big for me and Rosey to take down by ourselves, so Rosey picks up three other guys, one guy to drive and two to handle the exits while Rosey and I go in. I'm only twenty eight, right, already I'm getting gray hairs from this shit ...

Continues...
Excerpted from Way Past Legalby Green, Norman Excerpted by permission.
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