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Noah’s Nightly Newsletter – 5/21/26
Hey everyone,
Noah here with your Thursday night Newsletter!
We start tonight with this horrible and extremely unexpected lead story:
So sad!
Next up, my incredible interview (incredible because of him, not me) with Jovan Pulitzer!
It’s always such a blast to chat with this guy and we covered so much in this one:
MUST SEE: My Brand New Interview With Jovan Hutton Pulitzer — 2020 Justice Incoming?
This one had my dying laughing:
President Trump On Don Jr.: “He’s a person I’ve known for a long time…”
That’s a new personal best, even for Trump!
Hilarious!
Next up, I really took the gloves off for this one, but it’s been weighing on me a lot recently and I finally had to write this:
“Sticks and Stones My Break My Bones But….Words Will REALLY Hurt Me”?
Love to know if you agree with me!
Next up, this is helping a lot of people:
Insane Cards Charging 0% Interest Into 2027 (With Welcome Bonuses Up To $200)
Make sure you don’t miss it!
This is a real gem, even for Omar:
‘I Don’t Buy It’: Lawmaker Calls Rep. Omar’s Latest Fraud Excuse ‘Revisionist History’
This is huge:
BREAKING: Trump DOJ Makes Largest Autism Fraud Arrest In History In Minnesota!
ADVERTISEMENT
And the dust has settled and the results are in….and it was a clean sweep:
Meanwhile, Thomas Massie is still a loser. Again. More. Extra loser.
Sorry, I mean “Pinecone”.
And we end with this:
GOP Proposal Would Kick Several Pro-Trump REPUBLICAN Lawmakers Out of Congress
Before I go, two big ones you might have missed…
First:
And then this:
And before we totally wrap this up, I know a lot of you are here for CHAPTER THREE of my new book.
I know because you’ve been emailing me all day asking for it, and I’m here to deliver!
Please enjoy, down in the PS section.
Your friend,
NOAH
p.s.
Ok my friends, Chapter Three of my new book is launching right now!
If you somehow missed it, here’s the short scoop….
I’m writing a new book in the tone and tenor and pacing of my favorite fiction author of all time, John Sandford. It’s a total homage to my favorite author and I hope I do him proud.
I launched Chapter One in the PS Section of Tuesday night’s email, which you can find here if you missed it.
Then Chapter Two was in the PS Section of last night’s Wednesday night email, which you can find here if you missed it.
And now Chapter Three!
Chapter One setup our killer.
Chapter Two setup our hero.
And now Chapter Three absolutely flies!
Please enjoy:
# Chapter Three
The diner on Western had a name but nobody used it. The sign out front said Nick’s, or maybe Rick’s — the first letter had burned out years ago and no one had replaced it. Logan was in the third booth from the back, facing the door, a loaded omelet going cold in front of him and a cup of coffee that the waitress had refilled twice without being asked. She’d been pouring his coffee for 6 years. By now he was just booth three, black coffee, no cream.
Curt was at the counter, two stools from the end, working on a plate of eggs and toast with the slow determination of a man who hadn’t slept in 36 hours. A trucker sat three stools down, watching a Dodgers replay on the mounted TV with the sound off. The closed captioning was running two pitches behind the picture. The griddle behind the pass-through window hissed and popped, and the whole place smelled like bacon grease and floor cleaner — not quite clean, not quite dirty, the permanent smell of a kitchen that had been running since before most of its customers were born.
Logan was scrolling through the security footage Barstow had sent him. Three angles, 10 days old. The walk-in was there — 30s, average height, browsing the left-wall cases with the unhurried attention of a man who already knew what was in them. Nice jacket. Hands in his pockets half the time, which meant he was conscious of touching things. Logan zoomed in on a frame where the guy’s face was almost in profile. Almost. The resolution fell apart past a certain point, the way resolution always did when you needed it most.
He set the phone down and ate a forkful of omelet. The hashbrowns were perfect — crispy on the outside, soft underneath, the kind you only got from a griddle that had been seasoning itself for decades. A four-star restaurant couldn’t do this. They’d try, and they’d charge you $40, and it wouldn’t be the same.
The door opened at 10:15. Eddie Lam came in like a man walking into a dentist’s office — resigned, unhappy, getting it over with. He slid into the booth across from Logan without saying hello. Short, narrow through the shoulders, wearing a jacket that was trying hard to be nothing — the kind of thing you’d forget five seconds after you saw it. But the sneakers were immaculate. White-on-white, fresh out of the box or maintained with the kind of care that said something about a man. Everything else about Eddie was forgettable. The shoes were not.
“I ordered you coffee,” Logan said.
“I don’t want coffee.”
“Drink it anyway. You look like you need it.”
Eddie wrapped his hands around the mug but didn’t drink. His eyes moved to the counter, found Curt, moved back. “He with you?”
“He’s always with me.”
“So this is official.”
“This is coffee.” Logan leaned back. “How’ve you been, Eddie?”
“Fine.” The word meant nothing and they both knew it.
“Staying clean?”
Something flickered across Eddie’s face. Fast. A micro-flinch. “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Staying clean.”
Logan let that sit. He picked up his coffee, took a sip, set it down. The waitress passed behind Eddie and topped off Logan’s mug without breaking stride. The Dodgers replay had moved to the seventh inning. The trucker was asleep.
“I need to ask you about some merchandise,” Logan said. “High-end. Watches, jewelry, designer handbags. The kind of stuff that’s been disappearing from the Westside in large quantities over the last 2 weeks.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know you don’t.” Logan’s voice was easy, warm even. “That’s not why you’re here. I’m not looking at you. I’m looking past you. But you hear things. People in your world talk.”
“My world.” Eddie said it flat.
“Someone’s moving merchandise south. Good stuff — not street-level, not costume. Real pieces. I’m hearing Inglewood. You hearing anything like that?”
Eddie’s thumbs pressed against the sides of the coffee mug. He was quiet for a beat too long, and the quality of the silence told Logan everything he needed to know. Eddie had heard something. The question was how hard Logan was going to have to push to get it out of him.
“I don’t know anything about any Inglewood—”
“Eddie.” Logan’s voice didn’t change. Same warmth, same ease. But the eyes were different. “The Breitling.”
Eddie’s hands went still on the mug.
“Last month. Came through Tommy Pak, who got it from a friend of a friend, who got it from somewhere you didn’t ask about because you didn’t want to know. You moved it for $1,500. Quick and clean. Nobody got hurt, nobody noticed, and you told yourself it was a one-time thing.” Logan paused. “I noticed.”
The diner was quiet. The griddle hissed. The closed captioning scrolled across the Dodgers game two pitches late.
Eddie looked at his coffee. He looked at his sneakers — the perfect white sneakers, spotless on a greasy diner floor. A man trying to keep something clean.
“That was one watch,” Eddie said.
“That’s all it takes.”
“I’ve been straight for 2 years. One watch.”
“I know.” Logan’s voice was almost gentle, which made it worse. “And I’d like to keep it that way. I’d like that watch to stay between us. But I need something from you, and the math is pretty simple.”
Eddie stared at him. There was no anger in it — just the tired recognition of a man who’d been in this exact position before, in different booths, with different cops, his whole life.
“There’s a watch repair place,” Eddie said. “Inglewood. Crenshaw, just north of the 105. Between a botanica and one of those tax-prep offices that’s only open three months a year.” He spoke quietly, eyes on the table. “Guy named Manny runs it. The shop looks closed most of the time — grate down, lights off. But stuff moves through there. I don’t know who’s bringing it in. I don’t know names. I just know that in the last month, word’s been going around that somebody found a pipeline for moving high-end goods south. Watches, jewelry. Westside stuff.”
“How good is the word?”
“Good enough that people who usually talk stopped talking. That’s how I know it’s real.”
Logan filed it. His expression didn’t change. “What’s Manny’s last name?”
“I don’t know his last name. I don’t know Manny. I know the shop because everybody in that world knows the shop. It’s been there for years. It used to be small-time — estate sale stuff, minor repairs, nothing worth noticing. But lately it’s been different. Volume’s up. The kind of volume that doesn’t match a watch repair place in Inglewood.”
“Have you been inside?”
“No.” Fast. Definitive. Eddie wanted that on the record.
“But you know someone who has.”
Eddie’s jaw worked. He looked toward the counter again — Curt was paying his check, not looking their way, giving them the room. Eddie turned back to Logan.
“I know a guy who dropped something off there 3 weeks ago. A bracelet. Not from any robbery — this was separate, his own thing. He said there was merchandise in the back he’d never seen in a place like that. Display cases worth of stuff. And a black SUV parked out back that he’d seen before on the Westside.”
Logan leaned forward slightly. “He get a plate?”
“No plate. No front plate, anyway. Dark windows.”
“Your guy have a name he’d be willing to share?”
“My guy has a name he’d like to keep breathing with.”
Logan nodded. He took a last sip of coffee, set the mug down, and put a twenty on the table. The omelet was half-eaten. The hashbrowns were gone.
“Eddie.”
Eddie looked up.
“I appreciate this. The Breitling stays between us.”
Eddie stood up. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say anything. He just turned and walked toward the back door, the one that led to the parking lot. Logan watched him go — the forgettable jacket, the forgettable face, the perfect white sneakers crossing the cracked linoleum like they were walking on glass.
—
The parking lot behind the strip mall was the kind of dark that meant half the lights had been out long enough that no one expected them to come back on. A nail salon, a laundromat, a taqueria with its steel shutters down, and a vacant unit with brown paper over the windows. Two dumpsters. A cat somewhere. The particular quiet of a strip mall at 11 o’clock at night.
Logan followed Eddie out. Curt was already outside, leaning against the Tesla in the far corner of the lot, arms crossed. He’d seen them come out. He stayed where he was.
“One more thing,” Logan said.
Eddie stopped. His shoulders tightened. “I gave you what I got.”
“The SUV. Your guy said he’d seen it before on the Westside. Where on the Westside?”
“I told you everything—”
“Where, Eddie.”
Logan didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He stepped closer — not threateningly, but the way a man steps closer when he wants you to understand that the conversation isn’t over until he says it is, filling the space between Eddie and his car. The parking lot felt smaller.
Eddie’s eyes went to the Tesla, to Curt, back to Logan. The math again. Always the math.
“Melrose,” Eddie said. “My guy saw the same SUV on Melrose, maybe 2 weeks before the bracelet drop-off. Parked on a side street. He noticed it because of the no-plate thing.”
“Melrose where? Which block?”
“I don’t know which block. He just said Melrose. The shopping part.”
Logan held his eyes for another second. Then he stepped back. Gave Eddie the space.
“Go home,” Logan said.
Eddie went. He got into a silver Civic with a dented rear quarter panel. Through the window, Logan could see his hands shaking on the steering wheel. Eddie pulled out of the lot without turning on his headlights. Old habit. The kind of thing you do when you’ve spent your life leaving places you don’t want to be remembered at.
Logan watched the taillights disappear onto Western Avenue. Behind him, Curt hadn’t moved from the Tesla.
“The guy was trying to stay clean,” Curt said.
“Everybody’s trying to stay clean.”
Curt didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.
—
They drove south on Western, then picked up the 105 pushing west toward Inglewood. Late-night traffic was thin — a few trucks, a few rideshare drivers, the occasional car moving fast enough to suggest someone was late for something or running from something. The city scrolled past the windows in neon and sodium light.
“Manny’s watch repair,” Curt said. “Crenshaw south of the 105.”
“Between a botanica and a tax office.”
“And the SUV with no front plate matches the getaway vehicle from all three hits.”
“Same description. Dark, no plate, tinted windows. Could be coincidence.”
“You don’t believe in coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Logan agreed.
Curt’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, and something changed in his face — not dramatic, just a shade darker.
“Cedars,” he said. “Alyssa Medina. She’s out of surgery. Swelling’s down. They’re cautiously optimistic.” He paused. “Cautiously.”
Logan nodded. He didn’t say anything for a while. The freeway stretched out in front of them, mostly empty, the Tesla’s headlights cutting clean lines through the dark.
“Three robberies, one scout, and now a fence in Inglewood,” Logan said. “The crew’s been running merchandise through this watch repair shop. They scout the locations on the Westside, hit them, move the goods south through Manny. Hit the fence, identify the pipeline, roll it up to the crew.”
“Standard playbook.”
“Standard playbook for smart guys. And these guys are smart. But the fence is always the weak point. Manny knows who’s bringing him the merchandise. He might not know the whole crew, but he knows the delivery man. And the delivery man knows everything.”
They exited the 105 at Crenshaw and turned south. The neighborhood shifted — smaller buildings, older signage, the kind of commercial stretch that had been the same for 30 years and would be the same for 30 more. A liquor store with bars on the windows. A church with a lit cross. An auto body shop with three cars in the lot that would probably still be there next year.
The watch repair shop was on the east side of Crenshaw, mid-block. Logan spotted it without slowing down. Security grate pulled across the front. Dark storefront. A botanica on the left with saints in the window. A tax-prep office on the right — H&R Block knockoff, seasonal, closed for the year. The shop looked like it had been closed for a decade.
But there was a blue television light in the back room, flickering through the gap where the security grate didn’t quite meet the door frame. Someone was home.
And behind the building, visible as Logan passed the side alley: a black SUV. No front plate.
Logan didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. Just looked.
“That’s our place,” Curt said.
“Yeah.”
They kept driving. Logan turned west at the next block, looped back toward the freeway. Tomorrow they’d come back in daylight. Run the plates on the SUV — assuming it had rear plates. Check business licenses for the shop. See who Manny was and what he was connected to. Build it before they kicked it.
Tonight was enough. The thread was real.
—
Logan dropped Curt at his apartment in Koreatown — a two-bedroom walk-up that looked exactly like what a detective’s salary could afford, which was exactly the point. Curt got out, leaned back in before he closed the door.
“Get some sleep,” Curt said.
“I will.”
“You won’t.”
Logan almost smiled. Curt closed the door and walked inside without looking back.
The drive to the condo was 12 minutes at this hour. Downtown at midnight was a different city — the towers lit up, the streets mostly empty, a few clusters of people outside the bars on Spring Street. Logan pulled into the garage, parked in his spot, and sat in the dark for a moment after the car shut off.
He pulled out his phone. The WLTLH app had 4 notifications — traffic stats, a comment thread, a story trending. He opened it. The trending piece was something his senior writer had filed that afternoon — a deep dive on city council campaign financing that was gaining traction. Good work. Clean sourcing. The kind of thing that would get picked up by the Times or the Daily News by tomorrow afternoon.
Logan typed a quick note to the writer through the encrypted channel — two lines, editorial feedback, a suggestion for a follow-up angle. Then he closed the app and got out of the car.
The condo was cold again. He fixed it, tossed his jacket over a chair, and stood at the window looking at the downtown skyline. The city glittered. Somewhere south of the 105, a watch repair shop was running a side business with merchandise from three Westside robberies, and tomorrow Logan was going to start taking it apart.
He could feel the case in his chest now. The pull. The thing that made Laguna feel like a waiting room and the condo feel like home.
He turned away from the window and went to bed. He wouldn’t sleep much. He never did when a case was pulling.
There you go!
I hope you loved it.
And as an added bonus, I have a little surprise for you….I’m giving you two bonus Chapters right now too.
Chapters 1-5 can all be found in one spot, right here:
Introducing: The Confessor — Read The First 5 Chapters Of My New Book!
Enjoy!
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