Chapter 1

Mitchell Tanner steered his twelve-year-old Altima into the funeral home parking lot, found a spot beneath a dying magnolia tree, and lit a joint. His frayed shirt sleeves pulled back to reveal barbed wire tattoos curled around each wrist. He left the lugging engine on and ran the AC against a Tampa October that pressed down solid as a slab.

Florida. Fuck.

In his rearview mirror, groups of people quick-stepped over steaming asphalt. The rain had made his final miles down from Indiana a maddening octopus of slow traffic, back-tracking, three fender-benders, and one street closed because of a sinkhole. Tampa’s northern outskirts had mutated into a clean, shiny exitworld suburbia of Wal-Marts and Starbucks and McDonald’s. But the city’s inner core along Florida Avenue was the same. Peeling paint in vivid shades of turquoise, mustard, and tangerine flaked off shotgun bungalows. Black burglar bars guarded every window; a half dozen kids screamed in yards; old men on front porches smoked home-grown.

On the street corners lurked the young men: black, Hispanic, mixed, not a blond in sight. Bandanas on their heads, gold grills on their teeth, and cell phones in their hands. Tanner let his gaze drift over them, their chests puffed in their muscle tees. They glared at him as he drove through his old neighborhood, and Tanner wondered if he knew any of them from before.

Probably not. Five years in Raiford and three years in Indiana had wiped away Tanner’s Tampa. These guys were in elementary school when he was last arrested.

Tanner crushed out the joint. He grabbed a pack of Big Red gum from the eight in the center console and stepped into wet air. Sweat popped on his neck and chest. He spent a few seconds struggling with the three-sizes-too-small sports jacket his sister had lent him. “Tim won’t care. He left it here so it’s mine now.” The navy polyester was darker than his best-kept khakis; it was no suit but it would have to do.

He tugged down his shirt sleeves, trying to cover the prison-blue tattoos. Tanner wasn’t sure about his shirt collar; should he leave it open or button it all the way up even though he had no tie? He glanced at the people filing into the funeral home. All the other men wore ties.

The shirt collar was too tight around his neck; his hours on the weight bench had sculpted his body. He unbuttoned the collar and walked inside.

* * * *

He hadn’t kept in touch with his mother’s side of the family since his conviction. The Italians had been warm and welcoming after her death when Tanner was twelve, but he let his parents’ families drop away while he did his time at Raiford.

He recognized a cousin in a few seconds. James Norscio stood at the guest book with red-rimmed eyes. His hair was gray at the temples and his jowly chin hung over his shirt collar like a Brahma bull’s dewlap. His eyes widened when he saw Tanner. “Mitch? Is that you?”

An unbidden smile stretched Tanner’s mouth. “Yeah, it’s me. How you doing, Jimbo?”

Jim waved a hand. “I’ve been better. It’s sure good to see you.”

“Sorry about Uncle Tony. We’re all sorry, I mean. Kathy, too.”

“Kathy? That your wife?”

“No, Kathy Geehan. Half-sister. You remember her. Blonde, skinny. We threw her in the pool at Connie’s graduation.”

“Oh, yeah! Your dad’s other kids. A real blonde, didn’t we tease her about that?”

The memory flared in Tanner’s brain: sneaking up on the girls in the changing room, the screams of dismay as they scrambled for towels. Kathy’s light pubic hair wispy on her mound. Jimbo had hooted and flushed, his face showing excitement and arousal; Tanner was cold.

“Not so blonde now,” Tanner said. He felt the line behind him. He bent and signed the guestbook, forming each letter with care, his tongue pressed between his teeth. “And not so skinny.”

* * * *

He veered left at seeing Aunt Sophie’s shellacked red hair and sat in the back of the room, tugging at his shirt collar. Uncle Tony had been cremated so there was no coffin—just as well. Tanner thought viewings a grisly ritual. A half-dozen pictures were propped at the front of the room with some of Tony’s sports memorabilia. Tanner remembered that baseball glove. Tony had spent hours with the cousins, teaching them to play, catching their errant pitches and showing them correct form. The All-State Champions trophy from Tony’s 1957 high school baseball team gleamed on a table.

What would be left of him? Keys to a crappy car and a parole sheet? Was flunking out of high school the biggest thing he ever did? Christ.

Tanner lowered his head, face warm.