A FIST BANGED ON my driver’s-side window, and my eyes flew open. I lunged for my Glock 42. Nearly shot my foot off.
Two white eyeballs glared at me through the darkness.
Horace Ordell.
“You okay, P.T.?” he hollered.
The first thing you gotta know about Horace is that his ass is the size of a small nation. So to get him moving takes an act of war.
I looked at the clock in my Ford F-150: 2:47 a.m.
“You were screaming in your sleep,” Horace said. The big man’s body was parked a foot outside my door. “Could hear you way the hell yonder.”
My eyes drifted to the bouncer’s stool where Horace resided most nights. A neon sign above it read The Landing Patch, and two curved strips of light displayed what very unsubtly looked like a woman’s legs, opening and closing. And opening and closing again.
I took in the smell of tobacco plants after the rain. The scent of old Georgia dirt.
“Everything all right inside the club?” I asked, opening my truck door.
Horace bobbed his bald head, his skin dark as night. He’d played O-line for Alabama until he blew out his knee.
Behind him, the strip club was housed in an old log mill, set along protected county land beside the Tullumy River. What were once windows for ventilation had been covered with rusted metal signs to block out the light. Drink Coca-Cola, one read. Eat Utz Chips, another.
I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror before getting out. Wavy brown hair. Bloodshot blue eyes.
I also saw into the back of the cab, where Purvis lay. Sweet Purvis, my seven-year-old bulldog. The look he gave me lately was always the same: You’re spiraling since she’s gone, P.T. Grab ahold of something.
But I’m not the type to reach out and grab. Hugs, for instance. I was never a big hugger. Even before my wife’s accident.
I stepped out of the truck, and Horace kept yammering.
“I don’t mean you were screaming a little, P.T.,” he said. “It was more like History Channel, Army flashback type shit.”
“You can go back to your post, Horace,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Of course I wasn’t fine. I was five counties from fine.
Horace stared at the ground, his mind hatching something. “Or I could call someone?”
The look on his face was odd. A nervous smirk maybe. “Like who?” I said.
“I dunno.” He shrugged. “Another cop? I know you had a couple drinks. Maybe he comes out here and has you walk the line. Throws some cuffs on you?” He hesitated. “Or you could tip me? A lotta folks tip me.”
I almost smiled. A shit-heel like Horace threatening a detective who’d experienced what I’d been through. If brains were leather, this guy didn’t have enough to saddle a june bug.
I reached into my truck, and Horace took a cautious step back. Then he saw the highball glass in my hand. I’d brought it out earlier from the Landing Patch, and it was still full.
I handed him the glass and got back in the truck. The night sky was a shade of violet, with purplish-gray cumulus clouds that looked like overstuffed pillows.
“Here’s a tip,” I said to Horace, “don’t go mistaking grief for weakness.”
I fired up the engine, and a paper crinkled in my flannel shirt pocket under my seat belt. Unfolding it, I stared at a single word as Horace walked away.
Crimson.
The penmanship was as neat as could be expected, considering it had been written in eyeliner and penned in the dark.
I flipped the paper over. The other side had an address on it: 426 E. 31st. ‘B.’
“Damn it,” I said, remembering the stripper and her story from the previous night. She was a redhead with bruises that ran the length of both legs. I had promised her I’d come by and flash my badge. Scare the shit out of her abusive boyfriend.
My eyeballs were floating, and I needed to find a bathroom. I pulled onto I-32.
My name is P. T. Marsh, and Mason Falls, Georgia, is my town. It’s not a huge place, but it’s grown a decent size in the last decade. Lately we top out around 130,000 souls. A lot of that growth has come from two airlines setting up shop here as a place where they refurbish commercial airplanes. The bulk of those planes get repainted and sold to overseas airlines you’ve never heard of. But some of them end up right back in the friendly skies above. It’s kind of like plastic surgery in the better neighborhoods of Buckhead. Slap on a fresh coat of paint and some new carpet, and no one notices how worn-out the bodies are underneath.
I made it through the cute areas of town. The parts where, during the day, tourists window-shop for Civil War–era vases. Where college kids eat chicken-fried steak and get drunk on buckets of Terrapin Rye.
The numbered streets came then, and along with them, the parts of town where folks lived who worked on those airplanes. The scrubbers, recarpeters, and painters.
I passed 15th Street, 20th, 25th. It had rained while I was asleep at the Landing Patch, and small lakes formed in poorly paved side streets.
I parked my truck behind an abandoned Big Lots off 30th and got out, cutting through the dark neighborhood on foot.
After a few minutes, I found the address on the paper, a worn-down bungalow home. The letter B and an arrow had been spray-painted on the driveway, pointing at a detached back unit.
Crimson’s place.
Small white Christmas lights were on in one window, the only sign of the coming holiday. I walked closer. The bedroom had an entrance that led in from the driveway. Through the screen door, I could see Crimson, faceup on the bed.
The redhead lay there in cutoff jeans and a V-neck with no bra. Her cheeks showed fresh bruises, and her T-shirt bore the face of a Georgia bulldog in pink. I had told her that I’d come by official, with a squad car, a day earlier.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep, P.T.
It was Purvis’s voice that I heard. Of course, he’s a brown and white bulldog with a bad underbite, and I’d left him back in the truck by the Big Lots. So maybe it was my voice and his face. The subconscious works in strange ways. Or is that God?
I made my way inside, hurrying to see if Crimson was alive. I leaned over and checked her pulse. She’d been knocked to hell and back, but her breathing was fine.
I shook her awake, and it took a moment for her to recognize me.
“Your boyfriend here?” I asked.
In the dim light, she pointed to the living room. “He’s sleeping.”
“You got a friend you can stay with for a couple hours? Let me talk some sense into him?”
Crimson nodded, grabbing her sweatshirt and purse.
I moved to the living room, and my eyes adjusted to the dark. Crimson’s boyfriend was passed out in a sitting pose on the couch in a dirty tank top and jeans.
A brick of weed sat on a wooden table by the couch, and one of the boyfriend’s hands was wrapped in gauze. A strip of dried blood was smeared across the fabric.
So here’s the thing.
You spend the first thirty-six years of your life learning a value system. What’s right. What’s wrong. And when to say “To hell with it” and toss the rules aside.
But you accumulate things too. A house. A mortgage. A wife and kid. And somewhere along the way, those responsibilities matter more than right and wrong. Because there’s consequences. Doing absolute right can create problems for you and your family. For your career.
For me, that was the road I’d been on. A beautiful wife. Young son. And I’d been as happy as a pig in shit going down that path.
But someone came along and took my responsibilities away. Took away my family. And all they left me with was absolute justice.
I ran my flashlight over the boyfriend’s chest. He looked to be in his early thirties. A muscle-bound five foot nine. Shaved head and a blond goatee. A tattoo on his biceps read 88. The eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Two H’s, for Heil Hitler.
So you’re a neo-Nazi who beats up strippers.
The man’s mouth was open, and a bead of drool hung down from the corner of it. A half-empty bottle of Jack was curled under his right arm.
I sat down on an armchair a foot from him. Grabbed a dish towel nearby and wrapped the soft cloth around my fist.
“Hey, dipshit,” I said.
His eyes fluttered open, and he sat up. A look to the bedroom. Maybe he had a gun there. Or maybe he was wondering if I’d seen the condition he’d left Crimson in.
“Who the hell are you?” he mumbled, disoriented. He smelled like pomade and tobacco.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The cops are here.”