Jerad W. Alexander is a writer with works in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Nation, and elsewhere. His first book, Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever War was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. He lives in New York City.
There’s the Fat Man. Watch him work.
Detective Corlett—she sat behind the wheel under the shade of a big tree. At the back of a cul-de-sac, Fat Man sat on a stool in his garage turning wrenches on a primer-gray Chevelle. California state and Waffen SS flags hung in odd competition in the back.
Fat Man liked to beat his wife and her twelve-year-old son.
Fat Man pulled nine months at Tehachapi on a gun charge, paroled last November.
Fat Man palled around with gangland dilettantes. They threw long garage parties and pissed off the neighborhood watch.
The neighborhood knew. They stayed out of his way, but an old CI dimed him out. Corlett kept tabs. Every few days, off the books, she sat in an unmarked a few hundred feet away under the same tree. Watching.
She clocked Fat Man as a blowhard. All noise and no substance. She’d started thinking the whole thing was overblown, thinking maybe the CI had beef and was looking to trip Fat Man on a parole violation. But when she saw the wife come out of the house one day to check the mail with her eye tuned with a purple shiner, Corlett knew these were only the lies she told herself. Now she was just waiting to catch it live.
High-octane thrash metal focused her. She could see a boy sitting on the concrete beside him. Look how he’s sitting all cowed up, waiting like a nervous dog with a pile of greasy tools in his lap.
Fat Man handed the kid a wrench. The kid took it and handed back the wrong one. Fat Man saw it and popped the boy right in the teeth with the back of his hand. A short brutal flick. Corlett wasn’t surprised to see the kid take it so coolly. He’d probably practiced that cowed look in a mirror.
She tucked her pistol and badge into the glove box and climbed out. She tucked a collapsible steel baton down her back pocket as she walked down the center of the narrow street past yards of brown grass.
Fat Man and the boy turned as she stepped on the cracked driveway.
“You just hit that kid?” she said.
Fat Man lumbered to his feet. He was big with dull blue eyes. His black jeans smelled like grease and stale beer. “What’s it to you?”
Corlett jerked the baton and snapped it opened and brought it down on Fat Man’s shin before he knew what’s what. She pulled his right arm straight by the wrist and hip-tossed him hard onto his back. His skull cracked the concrete. She pressed her foot onto his neck and locked her wrist with her free hand. Fat Man sucked wind.
Corlett took the end of the baton and pressed it down against his lips, forcing it to the back of his throat. She backed off a touch when he gagged.
“Look at me,” she said.
Fat Man looked up. Tears boiled.
“You hit that kid again? You hit your wife again? I’m gonna’ give Victor Rowland a call. You know Victor, right?”
Victor Rowland was Fat Man’s parole officer. Victor Rowland used to be a deputy and took a bullet for the county. Corlett and Rowland were semi-tight.
Fat Man tried to nod. Pain snuffed the chance of rage.
“I’ll have Rowland bounce you back to Tehachapi. We’ll see how long you last when I pass it around you’re a rata. You know what I’m saying, homes?”
She pressed the baton against his tonsils. Fat Man gurgled. Fat Man cried and tried to nod again.
Things passed unsaid—I folded you up like a lawn chair, motherfucker. What else could I do to you? She felt teeth click metal.
Corlett pulled the baton and walked away from the house without word. Fat Man retched Miller High Life.
Out the windshield, she saw Fat Man stand and stagger inside. The boy stood right where he’d always been, his face the same flat mask of passivity. But behind it was awe.
~ fin ~
Jerad W. Alexander is a writer with works in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Nation, and elsewhere. His first book, Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever War was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. He lives in New York City.
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