Temperatures that evening dipped into the forties and our heat clicked on at eleven. The radiators gurgled and hummed, the only sound in our quiet house.
I laid under my covers reading a Frederick Forsyth book and wondered how he knew all that stuff.
Manny reclined on a fancy Therm-a-Rest air mattress on the floor at the foot of my bed, reading a Hemingway novel and occasionally correcting the guy’s Spanish.
Just a couple librocubicularists in our element. A dramatic and intentional correction from our previous lifestyle.
Manny and I had worked together in Los Angeles. I was homicide, he was vice, and we became friends after crossing paths on a couple cases. We worked eighty-hour weeks and spent our minimal free time drinking and fighting. I’d been unusually good at the job but the work had been hard, and I self-destructed after only a decade. I came home to Roanoke, Virginia in search of sanity. Leaving behind the corpses and the hate. A year later Manny appeared on my porch unannounced, a haunted man. He moved into the spare bedroom but chose to sleep on my floor. Every night.
Something horrific had happened. I didn’t ask what. He didn’t offer. We were both grateful for the friendship. Building a new life with new routines wasn’t likely. But I could do it because of Kix. And he could do it, maybe, with enough August support.
He was, without a doubt, the most dangerous man I knew. Plus the most patriotic. Shockingly well equipped to be a federal marshal.
And so we dipped our toes into dangerous waters during the day and, pacified, watched baseball and read novels at night. It worked for us. So far.
I was learning about the hell that was Vietnam and the brave men who went into the tunnels beneath it when Manny sat up from his air mattress. Cocked his head.
Very quiet. “Amigo.”
“Sí?” I inquired.
“Someone is outside. They just tried the door.”
“Which door?”
“Rattle sounded like the rear doorknob.”
I set my book down. “You made enemies recently?”
“Por supuesto.” Of course. “But they are smart enough not to come here.”
He stood, his big .357 revolver withdrawn from under his pillow and ready in his fist.
I reached into my nightstand and withdrew the Kimber 1911. Better safe than shot. We moved into the hallway; he turned right, and I went left. Took opposing staircases down.
No reason to wake Dad. He hated shooting people anyway.
Who’d try to enter our house this late? Random interloper? Doubtful. Not in this neighborhood. One of Manny’s recent captures, out on bail? Maybe, but most of them understood that Marshal Martinez was not a man to anger.
The main level was dark. Doors still closed and locked. So were the windows. I never noticed how many windows this house had until now that I felt exposed by them. Tactical nightmare. A car drove down Windsor, the headlights and reflections limning the furniture and rushing around the far walls.
No intruder had penetrated our house. I was certain. But maybe he was still trying.
The neighbor’s black Labrador began barking. Mr. Welch lived alone in the house behind ours and he let his dog, Fargo, out late each evening. Fargo was not often noisy but at the moment he was yowling.
Whoever the intruder was, he would be on the run now. Or she.
I moved to the front door. Unlocked it and went out. Cleared the porch and moved toward the driveway, sliding sideways and backing up, facing the house and facing the unseen Fargo beyond. And facing whatever caused Fargo to lose his mind
The bright night felt crisp and cold. No clouds. A couple degrees fewer and I would see my breath.
I continued backing up, enlarging my field of view. No one getting past me. I knew without witnessing it that Manny had gone through the back door, cleared the rear deck, and was chasing down the disturbance.
I kept moving sideways to the street. A mere shadow. Kimber pointed at the earth. From my point of view at the corner of our lot, I had a long look down all four streets of the intersection.
Cars passed on Grandin over the hill.
Deeper inside the neighborhood, maybe two blocks in, a car door slammed. An engine droned and faded.
Manny whistled and I moved down the line of crape myrtles, looking under and around the cars, slipping along the west side of our house, until finding his silhouette at the neighbor’s fence. Mr. Welch had taken Fargo indoors.
“Señor Welch says his dog started barking and someone ran that way. He didn’t get a good look.” Manny pointed away from the position I’d taken. “Footprints in the grass.”
“Maybe a local neighborhood kid?”
“Not a kid, not a woman. A man, and not a small one. But I never saw the hombre. Heard a car drive off in the distance. Long gone now.”
“What kind of engine?”
“Quiet kind.”
“You let him get away,” I said.
“Not on purpose.”
“Means you’re getting old.”
“Old? I was sleepy. But I’ll kick your ass right now.”
“Doesn’t seem helpful.” We returned to the house. I locked the front door.
“I kick enough asses, amigo, I get a bonus from Uncle Sam.”
“Any guess who it was?”
“Nada. Someone kinda sneaky.”
I went around the house’s interior. Checked every door and every window, even in the dusty basement. I laid back down in bed.
On a whim, I opened Ronnie’s location. Manny said the footprints didn’t look like a woman’s, but…
Ronnie’s dot blinked onto my screen. She was at Blue 5, probably tending bar, her bizarre after-hours hobby.
Of course it hadn’t been her outside. She had too much dignity and class to be a prowler. Girls like Ronnie didn’t stalk. They got stalked.
I wondered when Ronnie’s shift ended. Wondered if she worried about stalkers late at night outside the restaurant as she hurried to her car. She’d probably feel safer if I was there. I’d recently done pushups, after all. Maybe I should offer. I’d be a fool not to. Maybe we’d go back to her apartment for a while.
Manny shifted on his air mattress. Book down, probably asleep.
Five minutes later I still stared at her dot on my map. Debated driving to the restaurant. To Ronnie.
What I had in Roanoke was good. Stable. A safe and healthy environment for my son. I had a family. And a Manny. A job I enjoyed that payed the bills. Enough stimuli to sate the urges. Though sometimes at night I missed the noise and the fights and the girls and the drugs.
And other nights I missed them a lot.
Ronnie Summers would scratch a lot of itches. Sate a lot of urges.
But those were urges I willfully decided not to satisfy. Itches I volitionally didn’t scratch because of the chaos down that path. Chaos that knew me well. Those were scars waiting to rip open. By a woman engaged to another man.
“Good grief,” I told the ceiling.
Mackenzie August. Still trying to grow up.
I set the phone down. Closed my eyes. Forced them to stay closed. Not tonight, Ronnie. Not tonight, chaos.
Our prowler was already forgotten. Because although I didn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t get Ronnie out of my mind.
I’ll be darned.
Her plan was working.