Mr. Mercedes: A Novel Read Online Free

it, and had even sold some of his work at the Venice Art Festival. Until his stroke, that was. After the stroke he’d spent eight or nine months in bed, paralyzed all down his right side. No more painting for Tim Quigley. Then off he went. Booya.
    The fight bell is ringing, and sure enough, both women are going after the scrawny guy in the crazy tie, painted fingernails flashing, big hair flying. Hodges reaches for the gun again, but he has no more than touched it when he hears the clack of the front door slot and the flump of the mail hitting the hall floor.
    Nothing of importance comes through the mail slot in these days of email and Facebook, but he gets up anyway. He’ll look through it and leave his father’s M&P .38 for another day.
    2
    When Hodges returns to his chair with his small bundle of mail, the fight-show host is saying goodbye and promising his TV Land audience that tomorrow there will be midgets. Whether of the physical or mental variety he does not specify.
    Beside the La-Z-Boy there are two small plastic waste containers, one for returnable bottles and cans, the other for trash. Into the trash goes a circular from Walmart promising ROLLBACK PRICES; an offer for burial insurance addressed to OUR FAVORITE NEIGHBOR; an announcement that all DVDs are going to be fifty percent off for one week only at Discount Electronix; a postcard-sized plea for “your important vote” from a fellow running for a vacancy on the city council. There’s a photograph of the candidate, and to Hodges he looks like Dr. Oberlin, the dentist who terrified him as a child. There’s also a circular from Albertsons supermarket. This Hodges puts aside (covering up his father’s gun for the time being) because it’s loaded with coupons.
    The last thing appears to be an actual letter—a fairly thick one, by the feel—in a business-sized envelope. It is addressed to Det. K. William Hodges (Ret.) at 63 Harper Road . There is no return address. In the upper lefthand corner, where one usually goes, is his second smile-face of the day’s mail delivery. Only this one’s not the winking Walmart Rollback Smiley but rather the email emoticon of Smiley wearing dark glasses and showing his teeth.
    This stirs a memory, and not a good one.
    No, he thinks. No.
    But he rips the letter open so fast and hard the envelope tears and four typed pages spill out—not real typing, not typewriter typing, but a computer font that looks like it.
    Dear Detective Hodges , the heading reads.
    He reaches out without looking, knocks the Albertsons circular to the floor, finger-walks across the revolver without even noticing it, and seizes the TV remote. He hits the kill-switch, shutting up the take-no-prisoners lady judge in mid-scold, and turns his attention to the letter.
    3
    Dear Detective Hodges,
    I hope you do not mind me using your title, even though you have been retired for 6 months. I feel that if incompetent judges, venal politicians, and stupid military commanders can keep their titles after retirement, the same should be true for one of the most decorated police officers in the city’s history.
    So Detective Hodges it shall be!
    Sir (another title you deserve, for you are a true Knight of the Badge and Gun), I write for many reasons, but must begin by congratulating you on your years of service, 27 as a detective and 40 in all. I saw some of the Retirement Ceremony on TV (Public Access Channel 2, a resource overlooked by many), and happen to know there was a party at the Raintree Inn out by the airport the following night.
    I bet that was the real Retirement Ceremony!
    I have certainly never attended such a “bash,” but I watch a lot of TV cop shows, and while I am sure many of them present a very fictional picture of “the policeman’s lot,” several have shown such retirement parties ( NYPD Blue, Homicide, The Wire, etc., etc.), and I like to think they are ACCURATE portrayals of how the Knights of the Badge and Gun say “so-long” to