Fadeaway Joe: A Novel

by Hugh Lessig

Genres: Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of S. A. Cosby and Allen Eskens, Joe Pendergast must go all in one last time as he grapples with the ghosts of his past–and present–in this gritty, high-stakes thriller.

Sixty-four-year-old Joe has known violence his entire life. For forty years, he’s worked as an enforcer for loan shark and close friend Maxie Smith, breaking more than a few bones along the way. When Maxie abruptly fires him, Joe isn’t sure where to lay the blame—on Maxie, the man he once considered his brother, or on the early-onset Alzheimer’s that made Maxie lose faith in him in the first place.

To keep his head above water, he begins to operate a food truck that’s barely getting by. Desperate to regain some purpose in his life, Joe makes a life-altering decision: he’s going to take down Maxie Smith by any means necessary, once and for all. However, his plan of revenge is sidelined when he meets twenty-two-year-old Paula Jessup, a wise-cracking amateur detective with a few scheming cards up her sleeve, who’s on the run from a trafficking ring she’s been investigating. The two form an unlikely bond: Paula needs some protection and Joe needs a purpose.

With the stakes running high and the clock ticking down—will this gamble pay off?

 

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Release date: August 22, 2023

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Print pages: 277

Sample

CHAPTER
1

JOE PENDERGAST SPENT last night with a case of the walkabouts. He prefers that term over wandering, which is a doctor word. Wandering implies aimlessness, and Joe is anything but that. He knows today is March 21, and he knows what year it is. He knows the sun has just risen, and he’s sitting in the dewy grass of his backyard with muddy shoes, his ass getting wetter by the second. He knows the walkabout included moments of lost time, but at some point he spoke to someone while standing in his front yard. He knows that it was a short conversation and the person walked away. Alive.

He pushes away the jumbled images with a vigorous shake of his head. Whatever happened, it can’t stand in the way of tonight.

Standing up, Joe adjusts his Tidewater Shuckers ball cap and brushes off his work pants. Maybe his neighbor Donna saw him walking around and can fill in the blanks. He moved here only last month, but she’s already volunteered to invade his bathroom and label everything so he doesn’t shave with toothpaste or gargle with sandalwood cologne. But Joe doesn’t need that yet. He can keep the contents of the bathroom straight in his head, and the same goes for his living room and kitchen. The doctor said he was high functioning, a medical term he can accept.

That said, he must have fallen asleep here in the backyard. The doctor doesn’t need to know that.

Smart as a whip, that doctor, and pretty as a high school prom queen. Fired questions like a game show host. Name the season. Name the current president. Name your hometown. When she asked about family members, Joe said, “My parents are long gone, and I’m an only child. I’ve known a man named Maxie for forty years. He’s the closest thing I have to a brother.”

When she smiled, Joe shot back: “He fired me because my brain is turning to oatmeal and I can’t manage his restaurant. His words. So there’s that too.”

Joe walks along the side of his house, toward the front yard. Donna’s place is all buttoned up, and her little sports car is gone. The birds are quiet, the air stilled. It reminds Joe of those shocked moments after the commission of violence, when a man’s teeth are on the ground and people wait to see if he’ll pick them up.

It makes Joe think of tonight, and he smiles for the first time today. Maybe the last.

In his tiny front yard, a food truck sits in the driveway, freshly painted and emblazoned with the banner saying “Joe’s Takeaway.” It takes him a moment to remember why it’s there. The food truck belongs to him. It is his new job, the not-so-dreamy one.

His rented beach house faces Seneca Lane, a short, dead-end road that stops at Donna’s property. Tall seagrass grows on the opposite side of the road, shielding a small inlet with a boat slip. When Joe moved in, he inherited a twelve-foot johnboat from a sailor shipping out of Naval Station Norfolk. Joe remembers that the sailor transferred to Puget Sound with his nice wife and daughter. The guy couldn’t take the boat and asked Joe if he wanted it. The movers were in the midst of hauling in Joe’s furniture, and Donna was already peeking out from behind her curtains, curious about the new neighbor, and Joe was a little foggy from all the activity, so he said sure, why not? The sailor did woodworking on the side and made Joe a little ownership plaque, affixing it near the bow: “Joe Pendergast, Skipper.”

Joe figures a nice boat ride might clear his head and help him remember last night. He cuts through seagrass along a narrow path. He takes one look at the boat and freezes.

It is pooled with blood. A hank of gray hair floats in the pinkish water.

He couldn’t have killed Maxie last night, even if he was wandering.

Right?

 

CHAPTER
2

THE GRAY HAIR might have come from Maxie’s head, but it’s hard to say. Maxie disguised his male pattern baldness with an elaborate combover plastered in place by various gels and sprays. It curved around like the seams of a baseball. He is sixty-four years old (or maybe he was, looking at this mess), and Joe is two years younger, with a silver and black mane that Maxie grabbed by the fistful whenever he wanted a highball or needed Joe to knock on someone’s door.

Joe closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. He tells himself to think it through. The scalp and the blood do not necessarily translate into a murder. Two men could have fought here last night. Joe knows nothing of this neighborhood, and no one except for Donna, even though he grew up a few miles down the road in Buckroe Beach. Virginia was a lot different in the sixties.

He decides to clean the boat. That plaque bearing his name is screwed in tight, and a boat filled with blood and hair and labeled with your name is not something that should stand, even if it won’t matter after tomorrow. He gets a bucket from the garage and sloshes water into the boat. He bails it out and tips it sideways. He puts the hair aside.

Fifteen minutes stretches into half an hour of routine work. He’s cleaned up enough blood in his day that this doesn’t bother him. Even though it’s only March, the sun is warm on his neck, and the air smells of water and seagrass. He’s just finishing as Donna’s sports car putters down Seneca Lane. The car lurches to a stop twenty feet away. The top is down, and Donna’s little dog is harnessed in the passenger seat.

“Hey, Joe. Heading out for a boat ride? You should put a coat on. It gets chilly on the water.”

Donna P. L. Fallon is the forty-five-year-old love child of trailer park hippies who walked around naked half the time. She had matriculated from high school cheerleader to performing at gentleman’s clubs near Hampton Roads military bases, and from there to getting her real estate license. Her middle initials stand for Peace and Love. Again, hippies. Her bright smile sometimes gets lost in a jangling wreckage of floppy hats, oversized bracelets, and hoop earrings. Donna’s superpower is oversharing, according to Donna.

“Mr. Pendergast, you could at least say good morning.”

“Ah, good morning, Donna. Dressed to the nines, I see.”

“I came down from Richmond. You know, another real estate conference.” She rolls her eyes, as if Joe understands. “Butterbean and I could have driven back last night, but we got a room. Didn’t we?”

The dog is a teacup something or other. It stares daggers at Joe, as if he knows all about the bloody violence in the boat. Joe holds the dog’s gaze until Donna breaks the spell. “What’s that you got there?”

She’s spotted the hair in the grass.

“Probably came from an animal,” he says, tossing it into the bucket. “Hard to tell what it was.”

“Good God in heaven, go wash your hands! No, wait.” She reaches back into a saddlebag-sized purse and tosses him a small bottle of hand sanitizer. “Use that. It kills germs, and you’ll smell like chocolate cherry marshmallow for the rest of the day. Keep the bottle.” She sighs contentedly as he rubs the smelly stuff up to his wrists. Then comes The Question. “So how are you doing with the … you know.”

When Joe moved in, Donna had introduced herself and handed him a pineapple upside-down cake. Joe joked that it represented his brain. He told her straight off about his dementia diagnosis, half hoping to scare her away. But her hippie dad had died of Parkinson’s, so she jabbered on about pill trays and the importance of keeping a routine.

“I’m doing good,” he says now. “My pill tray is made up three weeks out, and I’ve labeled my bathroom stuff with sticky notes. The doctor says I can still be high functioning for quite some time. I’ve spent most of my life on the medium- to low-functioning end, so that’s an improvement, right? I’ve had a few foggy spells, nothing serious. I know who I am and who you are, plus Butterbean here. I know it’s the first day of

 spring, and I’m in Buckroe Beach.”

“Buckroe Beach is down the road, Joe.”

“Right. I’m closer to Phoebus. Still the city of Hampton. In Virginia. In the United States. Satisfied for now?”

“It can be tough. That’s all I’m saying. You’re in a new home, a new environment. That’s a challenge for anyone.”

“Nights are more dicey,” he says. “I may have been walking around last night. If anyone says anything, let me know.”

She unclips the dog’s harness. It saunters over to the cleaning bucket and lets loose a yellow stream near Joe’s leg. “Butterbean likes you,” Donna says. “If I had a girl dog, I was going to name her S-I-N-D-E-E. That was my dancer name. I may have told you that.”

“You have not, but that’s a new detail I’ll add to the list. I’ve known you briefly, Donna, and yet it seems like forever.” He glances at the boat, now reasonably clean. “I should get ready for tonight.”

She snaps her fingers. “That’s right. The debut of Joe’s Takeaway, soon to be the best food truck in Hampton Roads. The Moonbeam Brewery is a nice venue for a Thursday. I’d like to show up tonight, but I signed up for a webinar. I want to hear all about it tomorrow morning.”

“That will be fine.”

She doesn’t realize there won’t be a tomorrow morning for Joe. He may not remember how last night ended, but he knows how it began. He called Maxie and left a message: Come to the Moonbeam Brewery Thursday night to help christen the new food truck. Maxie responded with a message of his own, saying he’d be pleased to come, and he was happy Joe was no longer upset about how things had ended. It’s the sort of bullshitting that goes on between violent men who don’t want to tip their hands.

“It’s just hotdogs and such,” Joe says. “It should be fairly uneventful.” 

 

CHAPTER
3

AFTER DONNA GOES inside, Joe swishes through the seagrass to look for a body that’s missing some of its hair. He finds a business card that looks brand new, for the George Pickett Grill. The Pickett is out near the Air Force base. He pockets the card and finds little else: a few discarded fast-food wrappers and beer cans. The Pickett sticks in his head for some reason, unrelated to blood or boats or the onset of dementia.

“Joe, do you have a minute?” Donna again. She’s coming across the road, staring at her phone.

“Yes, Donna. What’s up?”

“Was there an incident last night of any sort?”

Joe squints hard, pretending to dredge up memories lost in the brain sludge. “Like I said, I may have been walking around, but I don’t know for sure. Why do you ask?”

“My security camera focuses on the front door, but it gives me a partial view of the road. I replayed the tape from last night—it’s a habit after I’ve been away—and came across this little scene.”

She tilts the phone so Joe can see the black-and-white video. Donna’s front porch takes up three-quarters of the screen, and a short stretch of Seneca Lane fills the background. Joe fears he’ll see himself strutting naked down the middle of the street with a lawn mower blade, having just cut a guy to pieces. But like a bad accident, he can’t look away. In the background, a hooded figure stumbles into the frame from the direction of his house. He can’t tell if this slender person is a man or woman. The figure walks to the center of the screen and stops dead. Both arms come up in a gesture of mock surrender. The head bobs up and down.

“It looks like a conversation is going on,” Donna said. “Whoever it is, they seem agitated. Are you sure no one came by your house last night? This is time-stamped at 10:32 PM.” She looks over his shoulder to the tall seagrass. “Did you notice anything when you cleaned up over there?”

The hooded figure takes several steps toward Joe’s house and stands on the edge of the frame, hands on hips, as if surveying the property.

“They’re looking at your yard, Joe, not the road. You should check to see if someone was skulking around last night. This is supposed to be a safe neighborhood.” Donna looks behind her, as if expecting a hooded thug to drag her away. “Maybe you should get a dog. Butterbean isn’t much, but he makes noise.”

“I’ll consider that,” Joe says. “Say, have you ever gone to the George Pickett Grill?”

She makes a sour face. “Ugh, no. That whole corridor on King William Street is seedy. Mom and Dad used to protest there. Back in the sixties, they had a sit-in at the lunch counter. At least, I think it was George Pickett. I can’t remember.”

“I believe you’re right,” Joe says. “I was ten years old in 1965, Donna. Different times back then. The sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter downtown was a big deal. The Hampton University students pushed that, I believe. But there was also some excitement at the Pickett.”

“Why are you asking?”

He holds up the business card. “Found this in the grass. Just made me think of it.”

After she leaves, Joe takes the bucket into the garage and pulls a black garbage bag from a big roll. He puts the chunk of scalp in the bag and tucks it at the bottom of the chest freezer that stores his hotdogs, brats, and Italian sausages for Joe’s Takeaway. He tries to remember the encounter from last night, but it’s a jumble of images, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered across a card table. That hooded figure in the video moved like a young person, not someone with gray hair.

Christ, losing your mind shouldn’t be so stressful.

He goes inside and climbs the stairs to his living room. Donna has described Joe’s new place as a classic beach house. The living room, kitchen, and master bedroom are on the second floor, with French doors that lead to a deck. The ground floor accommodates another bedroom, a second

bathroom, and Joe’s office. Joe walks to the fridge and touches the photo of Kathy that sticks on the door. It shows her working behind the bar, leaning forward with a tired smile. Then he flops on the couch and jiggles his laptop to check email. He’s got something from Jennifer, his new online counselor.

Dear Mr. Pendergast:

Did you get the whiteboard and easel I sent? It’s handy for writing down major items or a to-do list. With that new food truck, you’ll be making lots of lists. LOL.

As I’ve written before, I am not a professional counselor, simply a volunteer who wants to do good. I’ve had some experience with dementia survivors close to me. I guess that’s how we got paired up.

According to the Facebook page for Joe’s Takeaway, it looks like you’ll be at the Moonbeam Brewery tonight. Please let me know how it goes.

Your friend,

Jennifer

The whiteboard and easel came yesterday. It stands in the corner of the main room, where you might put an extra chair if you weren’t totally alone in the world. On the left of the whiteboard, Joe has listed all the food he’ll need for tonight. On the right is another list of important reminders.

Maxie is visiting the Moonbeam.

Take care of him before he takes care of you.

Lead police on a chase with the food truck.

Go out in a blaze.

 

CHAPTER
4

THE MOONBEAM BREWERY is two miles from Joe’s house, and he spends part of the afternoon looking at its website. The bar is the dreamchild of a retired NASA-Langley engineer, who erected a warehouse-type building near the water and installed a rocket-shaped bar. He hung old photos of the seven Mercury astronauts who trained at NASA-Langley in the late fifties and early sixties, before everything moved to Houston and Florida.

Joe magnifies one photo that shows astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn participating in Hampton’s “Mercury Day” in 1962. Back then, Joe was a gawky little kid with bristle-brush hair, who wore plaid shirts, white socks, and black shoes. He stocked shelves and sliced lunch meat at his parents’ corner grocery store and dreamed of sneaking onto a moon rocket to escape the seventh level of hell that was Pendergast Cut-Rate. He wasn’t freed from bondage until 1976, when his parents died within months of each other. By then, Joe’s childhood had burned up in the atmosphere. He looks at that photo and thinks of the old days. He remembers being behind the counter the first time Maxie came in. Joe was sixteen and Maxie was only two years older, but he engaged Joe’s dad in a man-to-man conversation about a loan. Joe is still thinking of those days when his phone alarm goes off.

It’s five o’clock. Time to crank up the food truck and face his old boss.

He drives to the Moonbeam and parks the truck away from the other cars. The bar opens up like a garage, with tables outside and people milling about. The lone bartender is a black woman who wears a track shirt and runner’s tights. Flowered tattoos form a sleeve up her left arm, and her cornflower hair is coiled into braids that look strong enough to tie down cargo in a hurricane. Her smile is all business.

“I’m here with Joe’s Takeaway,” he says.

She gives him a blank stare.

“The food truck that was affiliated with Captain Maxie’s in Norfolk? I took it over and renamed it. The truck had a standing gig here Thursday, and the contract should have transferred over.”

His chest tightens in momentary panic until her eyes light up in recognition. “Right, right, I got an email from a Kathy someone. Let’s go outside and I’ll show you where to set up.” She talks as she walks, showing Joe her back and raising her voice so he can hear. “It must be awesome to get a working food truck with current licenses and gigs transferred over. I guess Captain Maxie’s is getting out of the food truck business.”

Joe lengthens his stride, to keep up, and scans the outdoor tables. The place looks about half full. He wonders if they’ll go for a simple menu of hotdogs and such—not that it will matter after tonight. “They’re definitely getting out of the food truck business,” he says. “The owner of Captain Maxie’s has bigger things on his mind. See, he has this project you might have read about …”

The bartender points to an open corner of the lot. “That’s your spot. What else do you need from me?”

“Nothing,” he whispers. “I’ll either be dead or in jail by this time tomorrow.”

The bartender smiles and cocks her head. “Sorry, what was that? Something about a project?”

“Oh, never mind. I’m just talking to myself.”

In his head, he goes over the sequence for setting up the food truck. Two Crock-Pots with mac and cheese should run on the highest setting for the first thirty minutes. Then he should turn on the propane and light the grill. Italian sausages and brats go on first because they take longer than hotdogs. Right before opening, he’ll set out the condiment table and the ice chest with sodas and water to let everyone know he’s ready for business. But even as this sequence replays in his head, ...