I wrestled Dolores into action and got her limping down the road. She made the usual guttural murmurs and disconcerting clunks, but I had learned to tune them out. The resulting silence surrounded me, making it hard to breathe.

I risked the knobs on the radio. The engine didn’t stall, and I didn’t get any shocks, but it took a few hard bangs on the dash to get any sound to come out.

When the speakers started hissing I spun through the FM band, getting nothing but garbled static until I landed on an almost listenable jazz station. It wasn’t my favorite genre—not sure if I had one anymore—but I needed something to distract myself from all the questions floating around in my head.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. I had a minute of peace, then my concentration faltered and my focus dissolved into a hypnotic trance. The fuzzy spaces between sultry saxophone licks was a conducive medium for fretting.

I went to the wake expecting to shake off the case, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Nothing had changed except Virginia telling me to give up. It didn’t feel right. My mind still begged for answers.

Who would want him? He was just some kid. Maybe he’d be a star someday, but for now the only credits he had were a local canned tuna commercial and his recent debut on the back of milk cartons. To be accurate, he didn’t even have the commercial anymore. The company scrapped the campaign after the slop got recalled for containing too much formaldehyde.

Maybe someone out there had deluded themselves into thinking Virginia still had money tucked away from her brush with fame in her early twenties, but it didn’t track. Whoever had set up the snatch had done research, made plans. They would have seen Virginia’s crumbling two-bedroom house or caught her riding the bus between her job at a greasy spoon, the scratch-and-dent grocery store she shopped at, or the thrift shop where she bought her kids’ school uniforms. They would have known she was broke.

Ethan’s father had verged on mainstream success with his music early in his career, but like Virginia, he was dead broke. For all I knew, the low ba dum dum dum sizzling through Dolores’s speakers had come from his fingers a decade ago. Now he was banging around in a gutted van, playing whatever bar or lounge would let him and his band set up.

I drove without direction, questions and theories doing divebombs in my head. The turn for my apartment flew past on the left, then a few blocks later I passed the street my office was on. I didn’t know where I was headed until Dolores’s side panel scraped against a fire hydrant and my hand moved like an automatic carriage return to crank the parking brake.

My body knew I needed a drink fast. I had polished off the bottle of scotch in my desk before I left. I could’ve stopped by any corner store in Moire Park and picked up another, but I already felt trapped in a hopeless spiral. The thought of drinking in solitude, with nothing but my own twisted thoughts ringing through my ears, made me shiver.

I needed noise, activity. Even if it was just the white noise of televisions tuned to sports news, the voiceless grumble of the crowd, and clatter of glasses as everyone drank in sullen silence. There was only one place for an old alley cat like me at a time like this.

The Cut was a bar on the fringe. It existed near the indistinct latitude that divided the city, lounging in the crease, neither above The Fold nor below it. The city changed around it every year, but it had settled where it was, an institution.

The building was a square block, with a square sign proclaiming “The Cutline Tavern” in bold black letters. The greenish paint on the exterior was cracked and chipped in places, and the shoddy application had left beaded splotches around the mullions of the bay windows at the front. Smog and dust made the light through the panes seem gray, but I saw a teeming mass of bodies inside.

The decrepit exterior repelled common passersby, but they weren’t who the bar was trying to cater to. A host of regulars had called The Cut home since the doors first opened before the city was founded. It would keep a steady stream of them until the inevitable heat death of the universe.

It was what I liked about the place. I became a regular when I started in the police force by following the old-timers there, trying to make an impression. I had intended to leave the bar behind when I ditched the badge, but I kept coming back. It was the last vestige of that life I couldn’t let go.

I got plenty of side-eyed glances and heard a few mumbles calling me a traitor, but nobody tried to start anything. It was a good place to sit and soak up news about what was going on in the police force, maybe try to wheedle information for a case out of a drunken officer. Most importantly, nobody was surprised to see me there. It was one place I didn’t need to worry about getting skewered by any snot-nosed teens pointing and squealing, “Hey! Aren’t you…”

When I opened the door and let the noise pull me in, I saw a sea of heads lowered over glasses, bobbing in what hazy light made it through the baffle of cigarette smoke. I recognized a pod of old bulls from the police department in the corner. One bumped another’s shoulder as I walked to the bar. I didn’t look at them directly, but I felt the others’ eyes turn toward me.

The bartender, Ted, was a burly badger. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to show off his bulging forearms and remind any rabble that slipped in why the owner had never hired a dedicated bouncer. He’d been working at the bar as long as I’d been going, but he hadn’t aged a day. His gruff, no nonsense demeanor and imposing physical presence were as timeless as the bar itself.

He noticed me walking up and had a glass of whiskey in front of an empty stool before I reached the bar.

“Howl,” he said, polishing the counter with a rag. “Been a while.”

“Yep.” I pulled a few bills from the envelope Virginia had given me and slid them across the counter. It was enough to cover the cost of a glass and then some—a generous tip to make sure they kept coming.

I offered no explanation for why I hadn’t been around, and Ted didn’t ask. He just swept up my cash and served his other customers. Over the years, every person I called a friend had dropped out of my life, but my relationship with Ted was evergreen.

I made short work of the first glass. The drink tasted fine, but something didn’t sit right. It might have been the high concentration of congeners in the well whiskey, or it could have been the cold bodega sandwich I had for lunch, but it felt like something deeper.

Ted slid another glass in front of me. When I dipped back into Virginia’s envelope to pay for it, the feeling of wrongness piqued. I’d worked my ass off the last three days, but my investigation had amounted to nothing. It didn’t feel like I’d earned the money.

I finished the new drink quick, thinking it might help. I slowed down when Ted poured me a third and watched the television hung over the bar with unfocused eyes. When I realized the vague splotches on screen were the shape of newscasters, I got tense. I got more tense when I saw the Sanders News Channel logo in the corner. There was a good chance Ethan’s face or a picture of his mother, ripped out of a two-decade-old magazine spread, would appear on the screen.

I relaxed when the commercials started. A big-name detergent brand had gone all out to invoke a lush field in the shadow of the Alps, where crisp, clean white sheets grew wild on clotheslines stretching for miles in all directions. A young hart ran through them, brushing the laundry with outstretched hands as she danced in the pure bliss of the fantastical scene.

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The ad finished with the woman folded up in the sheets and tucked away, waiting until they were unfurled during the next ad break. Next came a chaotic, enthralling series of fast cuts, jolting between the exterior of a muscle car flying through empty streets and the immaculate interior. A gloved hand tightened on the steering wheel. Tires threw up a splatter of rain as they spun over the glittering wet blacktop. The same hand dropped to the shifter and threw the car into a higher gear with an aggressive punch. Harsh angles of the car’s mean design served as a counterpoint to the smooth banks it made as a camera caught it from above, winding back and forth downhill on a street cut through a coniferous forest.

Every shot shook with the untamed power of the beast. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice told me it was time to dump Dolores. Stark white text laid over a shot of the car’s shrinking taillights assured me financing options were available. I was losing money by not running out to my local Chevy dealer that second.

The next collection of electrons to blast out of the cathode-ray tube formed the garish image of an American flag waving in a high wind. The only thing it made me want to do was get up and rip the TV from its bracket. I knew what was coming next.

Regis Fellini appeared, his image superimposed onto the flag to not so subtly imply an association. When people thought of Regis, they should think of America. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stared straight into the lens. The room got quieter as the men behind me saw their hometown hero on the TV.

The sound was off, but my mind filled in the narration. A severe woman’s voice, telling the impressionable patriots out there how much danger this country was in, how much it had strayed from the path our founding fathers envisioned, how only Regis could set it right. She wouldn’t present any solutions or explain why Regis was the only man they could trust to enact change, but it didn’t matter. Regis had fierce charisma and powerful men behind him. He was a shoo-in for congress.

I thought my torment was over until the next in the endless deluge of advertisements came on. This one wasn’t a gruesome display of commercialism or the tragedy of political theater. It showed a storm ripping through a small town and knocking down a power line. A young boy rode his bike up to the wire to watch it writhe and spark like a snake vomiting electricity. He moved toward it, but a friendly owl dropped out of the sky and stopped him.

They had shot the ad at the same time they shot some of mine and I had met the actor playing the owl. He had treated the PAs like shit, swore like a sailor, and had a cigarette in his beak every second the camera wasn’t on him. I didn’t think he’d cross the street to stop a stuck cat, much less go out of his way to remind some dumb kid to “stay inside and tell an adult.”

The bird was an asshole, but it wasn’t his sight—or the reminder of my past—that turned my stomach. It was that dumb kid.

His overacting reminded me of Ethan, of what he could have been.

The camera cut to a shot of the kid staring through a window, safe in his house while a team of linemen cleaned up the mess. The ad was seconds away from finishing, but I couldn’t take the sight of his face anymore. I waved Ted over.

“There a problem?” he asked, brandishing his forearms as he dried his hands on a bar towel.

I pointed at the TV. “Mind putting the game on?”

He shrugged and fiddled with the knobs until green grass and a line of bulky men made even bigger by shoulder pads and helmets filled the screen. I didn’t relax until the bodies crashed. The mindless violence acted as a catalyst, helping the alcohol erase my troubles.

I lost myself in my drink for a few plays. When the whiskey ran low, I looked down the bar to get Ted’s attention. His back was turned, but my body was too tired and my mind was too addled to look anywhere else, so I stared at him.

The liquor had made me light. I floated on short waves of drunkenness, bobbing like a bored seal.

A face punched through the wall of hunched bodies around me, also searching for Ted. I was drunk enough that the emotions the man stirred came before my mind picked up on who he was. I felt a murky, deep-seated loathing and thought I was looking into the cracked and tarnished mirror behind the bar.

I recognized him when a snide smile lifted the other man’s droopy lips. My loathing ramped, climbing up from my chest and searing the back of my throat like heartburn.

“Ay, Spangler!” Detective Henry called over his shoulder without taking his eyes off me. “See this piece of shit taking up a perfectly good seat at the bar? Here’s a good example of why you should behave. Keep your nose clean and don’t fuck over your friends.”

The young officer dipped into view around Henry’s head. His purple skin went gray when he saw me. With his soft face and nervous eyes, he looked too young to be in a bar. Even Ted might have thought twice about serving him if he weren’t in uniform.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. My words were sharp, but not because of the insult. I didn’t have a strong enough sense of moral superiority to feel indignant.

Henry, like most officers on the force, was as crooked as a duck’s corkscrew penis, but I lost that battle years ago. I hit the point where I couldn’t stand the corruption anymore and ousted a bushel of bad apples for skimming from the evidence locker and accepting substantial bribes. I put in the legwork, collected proof, bided my time. Then, when I finally dropped the hammer, and—

There was hardly a ripple. The worst offenders got a few weeks of paid leave, those lower in the operation got desk duty, and I got a permanent ban from the Old Boys Club along with a lifetime of sidelong glances.

Maybe they’d have had it harder if not for Police Commissioner Fosse’s appointment by the people’s hero, Mayor Regis Fellini. As for me, I had been on the outs since I started the whole nationwide public service announcement racket. I had dreamt of leaving and starting my own agency for years and already had one foot out the door. The animosity I faced following that incident helped push me the rest of the way.

I had given up on that fight, but Henry’s presence still bothered me. The Cut was meant to be safe, seeing as his proclivities generally led him to more lascivious clubs.

“I’m just showing the rookie around,” Henry said. “Thought I’d show him where the old bulls hung out.”

I tried to ignore him and put my focus back on Ted’s back. He went through the rote motions of preparing a brace of Manhattans for a pair of patrons at the end of the bar.

“Couldn’t help but notice you leaving the old wheelman’s wake looking awfully pissed off. Guess you’re not making much headway with the kidnapping, eh? Maybe you should stick to finding lost earrings.”

I wasn’t sober enough to stop myself from nipping at the bait. “I’m not done yet.”

“Ha. The police have canvased the whole damn city already. If we haven’t dug up that brat yet, what makes you think you’re going to?”

The glass creaked in my hand as my fingers clenched around it. I was one quick jerk away from a fist full of shards. “That brat has a name.”

“Eh,” Henry said. “What’s one more tacked onto the list?”

I got up in a hurry, on my feet before I knew what I was doing. The crowd between us squeezed out of the way, making a clear channel so we could stare at each other. Officer Spangler shrunk behind Henry, but the detective had no problem squaring up.

I didn’t make fists. I stood there, swaying while my vision filled with red—a baseball cap, blood on my hands.

“Gentlemen!” Ted said. He barely looked up, but his voice cut through the chatter and put more attention on us. He sounded exhausted. If Henry and I went feral on each other, he was the one who would have to clean it up.

I moved first. Henry flinched, his hands coming up near his belt, but I only hobbled. His head and shoulders moved to track me as I walked by him.

I felt like a failure backing down from a fight—like I was failing Growl somehow by not putting Henry on his ass—but it wasn’t a fight I could win. I might have gotten a few good hits in, but this place was crawling with cops who would take Henry’s side no matter what. Even if I survived the initial retribution, they would have locked me up. Assaulting an officer was no joke, especially when the perpetrator already had a target on his back.

Coming to The Cut had been a mistake. I was out of place. I wasn’t ready to leave my drinking for the night. I needed a breather, so I sought the solitude of the bathroom. It was the only place I was fully in control—at least until old age turned my prostate into a basketball and my colon into a loose sock.

I sat in a stall and let my mind go back to Ethan. I had my money, and his mother had told me to drop the case. Hell, I wanted to drop the case and go back to the stultifying slump toward oblivion I had been on before that woman came knocking on my door. Why couldn’t I let it go?

I had been all confused and turned around before I went into the bar, and had hoped the alcohol would help. I still didn’t know what to do, but the encounter with Detective Henry had lit a fire in my belly, smoldering inside along with the whiskey.

I sighed with the last stream of piss, working up the strength to leave my domain for the wilds of the barroom. As I buckled my pants, I locked eyes with some graffiti scratched into the back of the stall’s door.

Quoth the writing on the throne room wall: “Here I sit, broken-hearted…”