Gold for the Dead

Lambda Literary Award-winning author, Ann Aptaker’s Cantor Gold faces the questions of who are her real friends, and how far would she go to avenge their deaths.

Early November, 1958

New York City

Art thief and smuggler Cantor Gold’s latest underworld caper begins when she arrives at big-time bookie Nick Fortunato’s apartment to celebrate his birthday, a ritual the two friends have enjoyed for years. But Nick is missing, and there’s blood on the living room carpet. It’s not Nick’s blood, though. Nick’s death still awaits him. Despite crime lord Sig Loreale’s best plans to protect Nick, with whom Sig has financial dealings, a killer finds Nick hidden away in a cheap hotel owned by Loreale.

Among the players in this tale of friendship, betrayal, and the competition for power between the young and the aging, is the beautiful and possibly deadly Abbey O’Brien. She was Nick’s right hand in his bookie operation, and now that he’s dead, she stands to either gain big or lose even bigger.

The operatives and bettors in Nick’s bookmaking business have a stake in Nick’s death, too...and motives to either solve his murder or get him out of the way: there’s Freddie Holmes, who sizes you up before you’re allowed entry into the betting parlor; Mike Leandro, leader of the crew that takes phoned-in bets; Chickie D’Andrea, who posts the odds from every track and sporting event; Harry ＂Horsehide＂ Lanz, a major gambler and trackside aficionado; Sylvia Georgiadis, an aging grand dame of the gambling world; and others.

Assisting Cantor, as always, are her young Guy Friday Judson Zane; cabbie, sometime getaway driver and sometime friend with benefits Rosie Bliss; and Cantor’s criminal mentor Esther ＂Mom＂ Sheinbaum.

And always circling are the cops.

Native New Yorker Ann Aptaker’s Cantor Gold Crime series has been the recipient of Lambda Literary and Golden Crown Literary Society Awards. Her short stories have appeared in several editions of the crime anthology Fedora, Switchblade Magazine’s ＂Stiletto Heeled＂ issue, and the Mickey Finn crime anthology. Culminating a career as a curator for museums and galleries and a professor of Art History, Ann is currently an art writer for various New York clients.