Summary:

It’s 1947, and the neon haze of Los Angeles has finally bled you both dry. After one too many close calls with Mickey Cohen’s crew and the ghosts of Mob City, Joe Teague—ex-Marine, ex-LAPD, ex-everything—packs a single duffel and your hand into a battered ’46 Ford Super Deluxe. You’re headed 3,000 miles east to Middlesex County, New Jersey, where the pines smell like home and the Raritan River runs slower than the L.A. River ever did. Joe trades his blood-stained trench for a sheriff’s star, but the war (and the mob) follow in the rearview. In the quiet precinct of a postwar mill town, Joe learns that some stains don’t wash out with distance—and that protecting the woman he loves might cost him the last clean piece of his soul.

Warnings:

• Period-typical violence (gunplay, fistfights, implied mob hits)

• PTSD/flashbacks (WWII & LAPD trauma)

• Smoking, drinking, swearing

• Mild peril to reader (kidnapping threat, not enacted)

• One brief non-graphic bedroom scene (fade-to-black)

Rating: Mature (R equivalent)

The Ford’s engine coughed like a three-pack-a-day smoker as Joe eased it onto Route 66 just past dawn. Los Angeles was already shrinking in the mirror, a smear of pink smog and bad memories. You sat shotgun, knees tucked under a wool blanket, your fingers laced through his over the gearshift.

“Three thousand miles,” you said. “Think the ghosts’ll get tired and turn back at the Arizona line?”

Joe’s mouth twitched—half smile, half grimace. “Ghosts got better mileage than this heap.”

He hadn’t slept. You could tell by the way the wheel creaked under his grip, knuckles white as the Pacific surf he’d left behind. Two weeks ago he’d put three slugs in a Cohen torpedo outside the Frolic Room. The man had lived long enough to name Joe to the grand jury. That was the night you’d packed the duffel and said, “Middlesex County still needs a sheriff. My cousin on the council owes me.”

Joe hadn’t argued. He never argued when you used the word home.

You crossed the Mojave under a sun that felt like punishment. At a Texaco in Needles he bought you a Coke and himself a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes. While the attendant filled the tank, Joe leaned against the f Ender, squinting east.

“Ever think we’re just trading one war for another?” he asked.

“Only if you bring it with you.”

He looked at you then, really looked, the way he used to look at crime-scene photos—searching for the lie that would unravel everything. Finding none, he flicked the cigarette away and kissed you hard enough to taste desert dust and tomorrow.

Kansas was corn and thunder. Missouri smelled of wet earth and distant rain. Somewhere outside St. Louis the radio crackled with news of Cohen’s latest indictment. Joe switched it off.

“Old noise,” he muttered.

You reached Pittsburgh on a Tuesday, the Ford wheezing like it had climbed the Alleghenies on spite. In a roadside diner you watched him count the last of the cash—three hundred and twelve dollars, mostly singles earned bouncing drunks at the Trocadero.

“Enough to buy a uniform and a decent cup of coffee,” he said.

New Jersey greeted you with pine air sharp enough to cut glass. Middlesex County unfolded in patches of cranberry bogs and brick-row boroughs, the Raritan sliding past like a lazy promise. The sheriff’s office was a squat cinder-block box next to the courthouse in New Brunswick. The outgoing sheriff—sixty-eight, liver spots, handshake like wet rope—pinned the star on Joe’s chest himself.

“Town’s quiet,” he wheezed. “Mostly kids joyriding, couple moonshiners in the pines. Nothing a Marine can’t handle.”

Joe’s eyes flicked to you in the back of the room. Quiet, his look said, is a lie we tell ourselves.

The first month was almost believable. He broke up a dice game behind the Polish hall, arrested a union brawler for smashing the jukebox at the Blue Mirror Tavern. At night he came home to the little clapboard on Remsen Avenue, boots thudding on the porch, and you met him with coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe. Some nights he let you peel the .38 from his waistband and set it on the dresser like surrendering a part of himself. Some nights he didn’t.

October brought frost and a letter postmarked L.A. No return address. Inside: a single playing card, the queen of spades, lipstick print on the corner. Joe burned it in the sink without a word.

November, the Pine Barrens caught fire—some hunter’s cigarette, the papers said. Joe spent three days in the smoke, ferrying families out of the evac zone. When he came back his eyes were red-rimmed, voice raw.

“Smelled like Guadalcanal,” he rasped. “Only the trees were screaming.”

You held him until the shaking stopped.

December 14th, 1947. You were stringing popcorn on the porch when the black Hudson rolled slow past the house. New York plates. The driver wore a camel-hair coat and a smile sharp as a switchblade. Joe stepped off the porch still holding the garland needle.

“Evening, Sheriff,” the man called. “Mickey sends regards. Says Jersey’s nice this time of year.”

Joe’s hand didn’t go for the gun. Not yet. “Tell Mickey the mail’s slow out here. He’ll get my reply when I’m good and ready.”

The Hudson idled. You felt the cold bite deeper than the wind.

That night Joe cleaned the .38 with the same methodical care he once used on a BAR in the Solomons. You watched from the doorway.

“They won’t come in the front,” he said without looking up. “They’ll wait till I’m on shift, grab you, make me trade.”

“Then don’t leave me alone.”

He met your eyes. “Wasn’t planning to.”

Christmas Eve, the precinct was empty save for the dispatcher snoring over the switchboard. Joe had you in the back office, feet up on his desk, sharing a flask of bonded bourbon. Snow tapped the windows like impatient fingers.

Headlights swept the lot. Two cars this time. Four men in long coats, one carrying a Thompson like it was a lunchbox.

Joe killed the lights. “Lock the door behind me.”

You grabbed his sleeve. “Joe—”

“Remember the plan.” His voice was calm, the same tone he’d used calling in artillery on Sugar Loaf Hill. “Basement window, Mrs. Kowalski’s root cellar, then the river path to the troopers’ barracks. Go.”

You went.

Gunfire cracked the night like splitting ice. You counted heartbeats between shots, crawling through coal dust and cobwebs. When you reached the river the sky over town glowed orange—someone’s car torched for distraction. Sirens wailed closer.

You found Joe at dawn in the courthouse square, coat torn, blood freezing on his cheek. The star on his chest was bent but still shining. Two bodies lay under tarps; the other two had vanished into the pines.

He looked at you across the snow and managed half a smile. “Told you quiet was a lie.”

You kissed the blood from his lip. “Then let’s make some noise of our own.”

Spring came early to Middlesex County. The bogs turned crimson with berries, and the grand jury in L.A. quietly closed the Cohen file—witnesses vanished, evidence misplaced. Word was a certain ex-cop turned sheriff had friends in low places who still owed him.

Joe kept the badge. Kept you. Some nights he still woke reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. But the porch light stayed on, and the Ford—dented, faithful—sat in the drive with Jersey plates and a full tank.

Distance doesn’t erase stains. It just gives them room to fade.

And in the pine-scented dark, with your head on his chest and the Raritan murmuring outside the window, Joe Teague finally slept without dreaming of the war.

Almost.