Outreach Cats

Apocalypse, New Jersey is what Rolling Stone Magazine calls the compact city of Camden, NJ, the skin and bones town where Outreach Cats, Stevie and Padre Z discover there's scant sanctuary, and no good place to hide when they unwittingly uncover five young women, dead in a ditch, trafficking of teens at the Agency they love, and law enforcement strapped in a no-win struggle with a junkie-fiend economy, and an Apex Predator Zombie-Zone habituates call Whispering Jute.

Laurie-Girl inked the hooded stranger's cell number on Stevie's palm the night her friend Charisse slipped into the killer's dark car.

Now Stevie has a midnight rendezvous with the Butcher Alley fiend called Whispering Jute. Stevie's only clue is the cell number LG inked on his skin, and a broken piece of silver jewelry left at the scene.

Padre Z retired to Florida.

Then Angel and Gigi called.

Gigi's sister Besa got snatched.

Gigi's boyfriend, Angel, grabbed more than a million from his grandfather's drug stash to buy Besa back.

Angel's grandfather, Abuelo, El Bandido Mas Famoso, and Astrid, the black-eyed Queen of Retribution, want that money or Angel's fingers on a plate.

Peeti, Angel's father, is desperate to save Angel and Gigi.

Black Eagles, Enver and Hoxha, the sex-traffickers working with Abuelo, have made a blood oath to get to Angel and Gigi first, and slit their throats.

Camden Detective Sergeant Ava Catalan, LaGata, is chronic on those kids, Camden Romeo and Juliet, and on Abuelo's money, too.

Meaner than cat piss Hector Hogar, the North Camden Hombre Malo, Abuelo's personal devil, is pursing Angel, Gigi, and Padre Z, like a Roman war-dog on the hunt.

Angel and Gigi don't have a snowman's prayer in hell.

The old Outreach Cat, Z, is in over his head. He should never have answered that Agency phone. He should have turned it in when he retired. He should never have let Camden lure him back.

His wife, Lisette, left him. She swears her ghetto-hero husband is a ghoul who crossed the line with Gigi, she thinks he's a pervert-Mister Hyde, a do-good hypocrite, a liar, and a fraud.

Lennon, Z's boss at the Agency, and Z's old Outreach partner, Jimmy, think Padre Zorro is nothing more than a pawn whose time has come.

Outreach is the geography of porous borders and slippery boundaries and each twisted turn finds Stevie and Padre Z sinking deeper into the fetid underbelly where every city shrouds its walking dead.

Stevie and Padre Z find themselves Out There on their own, marooned by family and embarrassments to the Agency, Outreach Cats spiraling out of control in an irresistible trajectory with no bottom in sight.