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Dear Reader,
Truth is stranger than fiction...be sure to read today's guest column written by Charles Belfoure, author of the newly released novel,The Paris Architect...
The untimely death of James Gandolfini, star of the hit TV series, The Sopranos, brought back a memory from twenty years ago. I was a young architect taking any kind of work to establish a practice when someone referred me to a man who had "a dear friend" who was "a man of great influence." He needed an addition to his ranch house. His son and young family would move into the house, and he'd find an apartment to live in.
I met my new client, who always dressed in a nylon windbreaker and jeans and wore a perpetual scowl on his face. But he smiled when he saw my rendering of the addition, and construction began.
Right away I knew something was odd. When I pointed out to the contractor, an elderly Italian man, that the steel beam they got was 18 inches deep and only had to be 12 inches, he smiled and said it was okay, "someone gave us the beam for free."
My client lived in the house while the addition was being built. He was there every single minute of the workday, always cleaning up after the workers. He had a volcanic temper, constantly screaming at the old contractor and the construction crews. One day, the daughter of the contractor happened to be at the site and was angry at the way her father was being treated. "Anyone else couldn't get away with doing that," she said to me. When I asked her who my client was, she looked at me as though as I was jerk and explained that he was a Mafia boss of a rather large segment of America. I was stunned.
The rest of the project was a mixture of fear and fascination for me. The old contractor once said to me that my client was the nicest and sweetest guy in the world before he became the boss--exactly what a character on the TV show said about the volcanic Tony Soprano.
But my client was always very nice to me. The project progressed smoothly, and I realized that the implied threat of violence can really improve productivity. A few weeks after the job was completed, I was walking by a newspaper vending machine and saw my client's face on the front page. He had been murdered and thrown into the river. It was revealed later that his own crew did it because they couldn't stand him anymore. But I always liked him.
--Charles Belfoure
Email Charles at, [email protected] to be entered in his drawing for a copy of The Paris Architect. He has two copies to give away.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
AUTHORBUZZ: THE JOSHUA STONE (Thriller) by James Barney
Ready for a techo-thriller that will make you think...about the universe? In 1959, in a remote region of West Virginia, a secret government experiment went terribly awry. In desperation, President Eisenhower ordered the lab sealed shut and all its records destroyed. Now, fifty-four years later, something from the lab has emerged.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on THE JOSHUA STONE to read more and to email author James Barney, you'll get a reply.
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