Misty had work that night, the late shift. I guess someone needed to stay with the pups at the animal shelter once the office closed. She’d be occupied from five to midnight, which left me ample time to get some rest and then head over to the Pied Piper and try to make some headway.

The Pied Piper is Sorghum Bend’s most popular watering hole. Not for the normies, mind you – the upstanding citizens do their drinking at the Sweetshack or Mitch’s. All three bars are very nearly identical, except for the clientele. The Piper is exclusively patronized by low-lives, criminals, parolees, prostitutes, card sharks, bookies, pimps, gangbangers, crime lords, cronies, wannabe cronies, dealers, wannabe dealers, druggies, muscles for hire, muscles for free, muscles that used to be, drunks of every size and shape and sex and religious affiliation, and the occasional skinhead.

And recently-released felon getaway drivers with no car.

That last one is me, if you couldn’t guess.

Misty said something about asking her friend if I could borrow a car, but until that sorted itself out I was relying on my feet and Misty to get me around. The more I tried to make my peace with this, the less peace I could find. Truth was, every hour between me and prison was an hour that I was reminded of everything I’d missed the past four years. And driving was, far and away, the thing I missed most.

Except for pussy, but that’s a given.

Having Misty drop me off before her shift wasn’t so much embarrassing as it was attention-attracting. At least she’d thought to provide me with some new clothes, so I didn’t totally reek of prison. But the shirt was too tight, so my muscles looked intimidatingly large (not a bad thing) and the pants were a tad long. I looked like a toothpaste tube that was being rolled up from the bottom.

But I didn’t want to wait until I had a brand-new wardrobe to get to work on Misty’s behalf.

Neither of us knew how much time she had before her tormentors got tired of waiting.

Even though it was nearing that golden hour of five pm, the drunk’s version of salah, the Piper wasn’t too busy. For a single flash of a second, walking through the door, I remembered how I’d felt the first time I’d walked into the chow hall at Guvcheck. Fresh meat.

But this time, there were a whole lot more familiar faces.

“As I live and fuckin’ breathe. The good Reverend is loose.”

Luis stood behind the bar, wiping down a glass. In that sense, the world might as well have been frozen the whole time I was in jail; I’m sure the last time I saw Luis, he was in the same spot, doing the same thing.

There was no use standing in the door, pretending like I wasn’t there. I crossed to the bar, hand out, smile plastered on, ready to get re-acquainted with the regulars – and with a shot of whiskey followed by an ice-cold beer while I was at it.

Slickboy, Tanner, Shark – just as Misty had said, they were lined up at the bar, just the same as always. Shark’s boys, a nameless and ever-shifting crew of “men” who still had to worry about acne, stood around the pool table, watching me with blank expressions. I knew they were Shark’s boys because they were young, well-dressed, and each clocked in somewhere above 200 pounds. Shark was very particular about the kind of kid he recruited for his little gang.

Adding to the picture Misty painted in my head were Suzy Jag, Leathers, Tommy the Handler, and Big Mickey. Suzy Jag ran an escort service, and she was one of the few pimps in this world who didn’t abuse the shit out of her girls. Suzy’s broads were the crème de la crème, and lived well on their earnings. She’d been known to kick a man halfway through Tennessee just for insulting a girl, and I know for a fact that she’d once cut a john’s ear off when he let a pro leave his hotel room with a black eye.

Leathers was older than sin, and the last surviving member of the now-defunct Red Raptors Motorcycle Club. I’d never heard him speak, but he always had booze in his hand and was generally accepted as a staple of Sorghum Bend’s criminal underworld. I suppose his past afforded him a lot of respect, and he was so old anyway that you respected him just for being able to sit up straight on his barstool.

Tommy the Handler earned his name by, well, “handling things”. He was a cleaner. And he was one of the most sought-after men in town, by a wide margin. He could “handle” anything from a corpse to a crack den. I’d seen him in action more than once, when he was brought in to “handle” a car too hot to move (or too bloody, or too full of dead people…) He and Millions were tight, back when Millions was still running game.

And Big Mickey. My smile was genuine once I made it down the bar to Big Mickey. We called him Big Mickey to differentiate him from Mickey Tucker. Mickey Tucker was a handful and a half of bad fucking news. He had plenty of associates, and a horde of men working under him, but he was insufferable as a person and generally unpleasant to deal with. Plus, Mickey Tucker was loyal to no one but himself. He was a greedy, sneaky, bloodthirsty motherfucker with nothing but bad blood to spread around.

Big Mickey was the diametric opposite. Sure, he was a criminal through and through, but you’d never meet a nicer con. He specialized in arson – insurance fraud, mostly. His old man had been legit, an electrical technician. Big Mickey took the trade from legit to lucrative by working on the black market. If I had a best friend, it would be Big Mickey.

“Mick,” I said. “God damn it’s good to see you!”

Mickey wasn’t going to let me off with anything less than a hug. A manly hug, mind you, but a hug all the same.

“Shit,” Mickey said. “And I was just about to leave.”

“Well, don’t,” I said. “Buy me a drink, dammit. Don’t you know I just got out of jail?”

“Man, I’ll buy you a drink, but I can’t stick around to watch you drink it. Got a job.”

“Still a flamebug?”

“Yeah buddy,” Mickey grinned.

“Can’t put it off? I wanna catch up, man.”

He shook his head.

“I’ll explain more later, but time is of the essence with this one. But how about tomorrow? Where you staying? You need a couch? Hey, Luis, can we get a shot and a beer for my little jailbird buddy? Ah, shit…”

Mickey looked at his watch, sneering. He slipped a twenty on the bar and got to his feet, grabbing me by the shoulders. Used to be, Mickey was bigger than me. Now, we mostly equaled out.

“I really gotta run,” he said. “So, you need a place to stay?”

“Nah, man,” I said, warmed by his friendship. “I’m staying with…”

“Tell me about it tomorrow,” Mickey said. “God damn it’s good to see you, boy! You get any new ink in prison? I didn’t think they fed you too good, but you look like you’ve been eating alright. Alright, alright, shit, I gotta go. I gotta go!”

Mickey, as always, was thinking too fast for his tongue, and was asking me questions even as he backed away towards the door.

“Tomorrow!” he finally shouted, halfway into the darkening night, pointing a finger at me before waving goodbye to the bar. As soon as he was gone, Luis rapped on the bar, pointing out the drink Mickey’d paid for. I slid into the stool, still warm; it all felt surreal and perfectly natural at the same time. I held the shot of whiskey for probably a little too long before I raised it in the air, offering a toast to freedom, friendship, and my future fornication.

Whiskey never tasted so good.