Book excerpt: The second in a series of noir romance “Blues” novellas, Brick City Blues centers on a chance meeting between two strangers on an airport layover in Newark, New Jersey—the Brick City. She’s shuttling between her teaching job at Cornell and a research project in DC; he’s on his way to deliver a briefcase full of cash from the Cuban mob in Miami to a local capo for the Italian Mafia in Utica, New York. But opposites attract. Unaware of what he might be mixed up in, she finds herself slowly drawn to the tall, well-dressed stranger with the black briefcase. And he is undeniably attracted to the bookish Ivy League professor. They quickly discover that they have more in common than not. Or so it seems. Welcome to the Brick City, where anything can happen.