Cow town? Fuck. You could call it that till the crows came home, still didn’t make it true. Maybe once, long before that pissant reporter had even been born. Shit, nowadays, Denver was further from cow town than anyone on the squad was from ever solving this case . . .
“A congressman, a senator, and a lobbyist walk into a bar.” Rich tipped his beer in the direction of the bar’s latest arrivals. “Anyplace else that would be the start of a joke. Here it’s business as usual . . .”
John smashed the Styrofoam cup. No metal spike under there. Did it again. No spike. Two more cups remained. He smashed one of them . . .
The last time we moved was because she said an ex of hers had shown up and zigzagged a razor through her wrists. The time before that she said a pair of meth heads broke in during the day and left her barely living after wrapping a shower curtain around her neck . . .
Joel was fishing in Duck Hollow, on an old mill pier. A nice spot, secluded, including a three-street neighborhood accessible only by a fifty-foot bridge. Duck Hollow was surrounded by brownfield developments, but none of them ever touched the neighborhood. Joel knew folks there, knew that they enjoyed their isolation . . .
What sweet in goat mouth does sour in he bambam . . . her mother’s words seem an echo but come from inside, making the chorus of a song (something she cyah remember doing since reaching double-digits) with verses of mondayjanuarysixthtwentyfourteen and eighteenthbirthdayfirstdayofmylife—sometimes she hearing first-day, sometimes last, but mostly first; annoying, even so . . .
“No, man, this heat ah try kill people!”
Goldine paused in her walk up the bumpy path to Pastor Williams’s house. She removed the straw hat keeping company with her soaking wet head kerchief; fanned with it, for all the good that did. She looked up the road to where the house stood alone, alabaster white against the green hills rolling away from it. The crotons, bougainvillea, pussy tail, and other foliage in the expansive yard looked limp . . .
When I got to the top of the stairs, he pushed his hulking shoulders from the wall and pointed backward at the sign on my door. I made up the half step I’d lost at the sight.
“You him?” he said . . .