Left to Die [antikvár]

Chapter 1 What Mandy Sutorius liked about the Chula Vista Tap was that there were so many people getting shit-faced so fast, making so much boozy racket, and in generál generating a kind of beer-addled, in-your-face chaos, that she could drink there for hours and nobody would remember she'd been there and nobody would know when she'd left. On a calm night, there might be no more fights than take place on your average boxing card, a mere handful of drug transactions, and only one or two women who got hammered enough to flash their tits as they jiggled and pranced on the stained, sticky bartop. On a bad night, it was bedlam and bikers and blow jobs in the bushes under the palsied flicker of dull neon light. You could drop dead at your table and slide to the floor and nobody'd notice till they cleared the place out around two in the morning. Mandy Sutorius was at the~ Chula Vista Tap on a very bad night. Around seven she'd trudged in, surly and sulién, fresh from another telephone screaming match with her exhusband, Kevin, over the kids, the court, and child support. She told herself she needed only one or two beers to mellow her mood, take the edge off the stress that rode the knobs of her spiné like a constant wild itch, but here she was almost four hours later, still feeling like shit, but with the edge taken off the surliness and replaced by the first scrapings of fear, as she realized what time it was and what the consequences of her selfmedication could be.