[Georgia 03] Fallen

answer, but she asked him, “Are they keeping their noses clean?”
    “Chuck’s got a belly habit for back-to-backs.” Meaning he was shooting heroin, then smoking crack chasers. “Brother’s gonna end up back in the joint if he don’t die on the street first.”
    “Has he pissed anybody off?”
    “Not that I’ve heard. Chuck’s a cotton shooter, Mandy. He’d fuck his own mama for the swill in a spoon.”
    “And Demarcus?”
    “I guess he’s as clean as you can be with a felony rap hanging over your head.”
    “I hear he’s working on getting his electrician’s license.”
    “Good for him.” Boyd seemed genuinely pleased. “Have you talked to Hump and Hop?” He meant Ben Humphrey and Adam Hopkins, his fellow detectives who were currently serving time at Valdosta State Prison.
    Amanda gauged her words. “Should I talk to them?”
    “It’d be worth a try, but I doubt they’re still keyed in. They got four years left. Keeping their noses clean, and I don’t guess they’d be too forthcoming with you considering your hand in their current incarceration.” He shrugged. “Me, I got nothing to lose.”
    “I heard you got your date.”
    “September first.” The room went quiet, as if whatever air was left had been sucked out. Boyd cleared his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck. “Gives you perspective on things.”
    Amanda leaned forward. “Like what?”
    “Like not seeing my kids grow up. Never having the chance to hold my grandbabies.” His throat worked again. “I loved being on the street, chasing down the bad guys. I had this dream the other night. We were in the raid van. Evelyn had that stupid song playing—you remember the one?”
    “ ‘Would I Lie to You?’ ”
    “Annie Lennox. Stone cold. I could still hear it playing when I woke up. Pounding in my head, even though I ain’t heard music in—what?—four years?” He shook his head sadly. “It’s like a drug, ain’t it? You bust down that door, you clear out all the trash, and then you wake up the next day and do it again.” He opened his hands as much as he could with the shackles. “They paid us for that shit? Come on. We shoulda been paying them.”
    She nodded, but Will was thinking about the fact that they had managed to pay themselves in myriad other ways.
    Boyd said, “I was supposed to be a good man. But, this place …” He glanced around the room. “It darkens your soul.”
    “If you’d stayed clean, you’d be out by now.”
    He stared blankly at the wall behind her. “They got it on tape—me going after those guys.” There was no humor in the smile that came to his lips, just darkness and loss. “I had it in my head that it went down different, but they played it at my trial. Tape don’t lie, right?”
    “Right.”
    He cleared his throat twice before he could speak. “There was this guy beating that guard with his fists, wrapping a towel around the brother’s neck. Eyes glowing like something out of a freak show. Screaming like a goddamn animal. It got me to thinking about my time on the streets. All those bad guys I took down, all those men I thought were monsters, and then I look at that guy on the tape, that monster taking down that guard, and I realize that it’s me.” His voice was almost a whisper. “That was me beating that man. That was me killing two guys—over what? And that’s when it hit me: I’ve turned into everything I fought against all those years.” He sniffed. There were tears in his eyes. “You become what you hate.”
    “Sometimes.”
    Will couldn’t tell if Boyd was feeling sorry for the men he’d killed or sorry for himself. Probably, it was a combination of both. Everyone knew they were going to die eventually, but Boyd Spivey had the actual date and time. He knew the method. He knew when he would eat his last meal, take his last crap, say his last prayer. And then they would come for him and he would have to stand up and walk on his own two feet toward the last place he would ever lay down his head.
    Boyd had to clear his throat again before he could speak. “I hear Yellow’s been encroaching down the highway. You should talk to Ling-Ling over in Chambodia.” Will didn’t recognize the name, but he knew that Chambodia was the term used to describe the stretch of Buford Highway inside the Chamblee city limits. It was a mecca for Asian and Latino immigrants. “You can’t go straight to Yellow. Not without an invitation. Tell Ling-Ling