“Damn,” Chico muttered, ringside at a championship wrestling bout. “Didn’t even give her time to stand up.”

John looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet. The hose was still on. He could get into trouble for that. He went back to the spigot, turned it off, forgetting for a minute that it was righty-tighty and turning it lefty-loosey. He coiled the hose back in place. When he looked back up, Ray-Ray’s foot was in the air, sailing down toward the hooker’s face.

“Hey!” John said, then, “Hey!” again when Ray-Ray’s foot made contact.

John must have run over to them. He must have said something else along the way, something loud that called even more attention to the situation. By the time his brain caught up with his actions, John’s fist hurt like a hornet had stung him and Ray-Ray was splayed out on the ground.

“What the fuck,” Art yelled. He barely topped five feet on a good day, but he stopped about two inches from John’s chest, screeching up at him, “You fucking monkey!”

They both looked down. One of Ray-Ray’s teeth was on the sidewalk swimming in a puddle of blood. The guy looked dead, but no one was dropping to check his pulse.

The cop stood in the doorway. Slowly, John let his eyes trace up the man’s thick black shoes, following the sharp crease in his pants, skipping past his gunbelt where a large hand was resting on the butt of his gun and forced himself to look the guy in the face. The screw was staring straight back at John as he turned his radio down, the calls from the dispatcher turning to a whisper. “What’s going on here?”

It took everything John had in him not to just assume the position right then and there. “I hit him.”

“Well, no shit, asshole!” Art barked. “You are so fucking fired.” He prodded Ray-Ray with his foot. “Jesus Christ, Shelley. What’d you hit him with, a fucking hammer?”

John’s head dropped, and he looked at the ground. Oh, Jesus. He couldn’t go back to prison now. Not after all of this. Not after everything he’d been through.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right it won’t,” Art snapped. “Christ.” He looked at the cop. “This is the thanks I get for giving these guys a second chance.”

“I apologize,” John offered again.

“Hey!” the hooker yelled. “Somebody wanna give me a hand?”

All of the men looked down, shocked, like they had forgotten her existence. The whore had a hard face, the kind that told her life story in the millions of lines wrinkling her skin. Blood poured from her nose and mouth where Ray-Ray’s foot had done its damage. She was propped up on her elbows, a filthy white feather boa wrapped around her scrawny neck, a purple plastic-looking miniskirt and a black tank top that showed the bottom of her sagging breasts barely covering her wasted body.

Nobody wanted to touch her.

“Hey, Knight in Shining Armor All,” she said, shaking her hand toward John. “Come on, stallion. Help me the fuck up.”

John hesitated, but then he reached down and pulled her up. She smelled of cigarettes and bourbon, and had a hard time standing on the spike heels of her shoes. Her hand dug into his shoulder as she steadied herself. He tried not to shudder in revulsion, thinking about where that hand had been. In the sunlight, her skin was sallow, and he guessed her liver was desperate enough to shit itself out of her navel if it was ever given the opportunity. She could have been thirty, she could have been eighty.

The cop took charge. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

“He wouldn’t pay me,” she said, tilting her chin, indicating the prone Ray-Ray. Her voice was like loose rock rolling in a cup of phlegm. What words she didn’t slur were probably not worth hearing.

“You gave him one on credit?” the cop asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity. The man had a point. John wouldn’t sell Ray-Ray a petrified turd on credit.

“We was in there,” she said, meaning the Port-a-John behind the building. “He tried to sweet-talk me, the lousy fucker. Said he was gettin’ paid tomorrow.”

The cop’s eyebrow shot up. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“He followed me out here, trying to make a deal,” she continued, clutching John’s arm again as she swayed. “Like it’s double coupon day at the fucking Kmart. Stupid cocksucker.” She lifted a patent-leather heel and kicked Ray-Ray in the arm.

“Hey, hey, now,” Ray-Ray said, groaning as he rolled over onto his back. John figured the asshole had been playing possum and wanted to beat him again for causing all of this.

The cop prodded Ray-Ray with his shoe. “You try to get a freebie, you stupid mope?”

Ray-Ray put his hand over his eyes, shielding the sun so he could look up at the cop without being blinded. “No, no, man. That ain’t the thing. Ain’t the thing at all.”

“Get up, you fucking idiot,” the cop ordered. “You.” He pointed at the whore. “Where’s your drag?”

She was busy wiping the concrete off her elbows. “Up by the liquor store.”

There was a crash of static from the cop’s radio, then, “Unit fifty-one, fifty-one?”

The cop clicked the mic, said, “Check,” then pointed to John, talking over the information the dispatcher gave but obviously still listening. “You. Prince Charming. Make sure she gets back home safe. You,” he pointed to Ray-Ray. “Don’t make me tell you one more fucking time to get the fuck up or I will run your ass in so quick your P.O. won’t even have time to call you a cab back to the pen.” Ray-Ray jumped up and the cop clicked on the radio and said, “Roger, I’m there in ten minutes.” As an afterthought, he asked Art, “You okay with all this?”

Art frowned, his forehead sloping into a V. “Yeah, whatever,” he finally agreed. “Shelley, take the day off. Come back with your head in the right place tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” John said, so relieved he could have cried. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

The respect brought him some back. “You want me to get rid of this stuttering freak?” Art asked John as he jabbed his thumb at Ray-Ray.

John thought about it for a good second, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for this asshole. “We’re fine,” he said. “Right, Ray?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ray-Ray said. “We cool. We cool.”

“Shut up,” Art said. “I don’t want to see you back here until Wednesday morning, you got that?”

Ray-Ray nodded. Twice.

Art gave the prostitute a scathing look, then told John, “Get her out of here before we start losing customers.”

John didn’t think he had a choice. The whore had grabbed on to him again, her bony fingers pressing into his arm just above the elbow. He started walking alongside her because something told him if he didn’t, she’d end up face-first in the street.

Traffic whizzed by as they walked up Piedmont Avenue. John saw about a zillion SUVs and sports cars going up and down this road every day. With Buckhead at one end and Ansley Park at the other, the only crappy cars John saw on the road belonged to the maids, landscapers, pool boys and all the other hapless souls who made their living doing the shitwork rich folks didn’t have to do.