Excerpt
The Rusty Mug Pub was widely known as a favored hangout for the city of Atlanta’s Law Enforcement Professionals. Simply put, The Mug, as it was affectionately called, was a cop bar.

From the outside, the Rusty Mug Pub looked like a relic from a bygone era where everything had a rustic, old home feel. The wrought iron grating running along the outer edges of the concrete tiled sidewalk was older than most of the bar’s patrons. The walls were made up of deftly placed red bricks made from red Georgia clay. The bricks had probably been manufactured not far away from the very spot many, many years earlier. Who knows, perhaps maybe even before Sherman’s famous fire sale all those many decades past. The place looked like it should have been on a historic tour line instead of serving as a local dive.

It was the kind or place Norman Rockwell would have painted in his day.

And thanks to the clientele, it was a place where everyone truly knew your name and one place no one would ever dare think of robbing.

The Mug was a beautiful place on the outside and the patrons loved it, but the inside told the true tale. On an average night thick smoke would fill the air and the smell of alcohol and cheap cologne would mingle with the smoke from at least a dozen cigars, forming a fragrance unique to the Rusty Mug. The Mug was one of the last public places in the area where public smoking was not banned. Okay, technically, it was banned there as well, but who was going to call the cops when they were the ones doing the smoking? Don’t ask, don’t tell was the rule when it came to smoking at the Rusty Mug Pub.

And then there were the stories. Oh the tales of bygone glory days.

People would talk for hours on end. Stories about stalwart heroes, vile villains, and beautiful damsels in distress were the norm, even though many of them -if not al-) were blatant fabrications. At the least the stories were cleverly exaggerated, weaving intricate plots along with colorful characters that rivaled anything penned by many a professional writer.

Many were the nights that the Rusty Mug Pub would bring about good fiction.

That came later in the evening, after the sun had set behind the city’s many skyscrapers. But during the day, the pre-lunch crowd consisted of only a small handful of patrons. Which wasn’t so unusual for the 11:45 a.m. on a Thursday.

Most sat at the bar, but a few of the regulars sat in the booths. Some played cards while others read. Many of the regulars were retired Atlanta PD who came in just to give themselves something to break up their day. The occasional off duty officer out for a mid day belt or some retirees coming in to relive the good old days in the quieter, familiar setting of midday. A couple of the old detectives got together a few times a week and worked on cold cases just to give themselves something to do. Or just to get out of the house for awhile.

There were other reasons to be bellied up to a bar before noon on a slightly chilly Thursday in October. If one thought hard enough, he could probably even come up with believable excuses.

Inside the Rusty Mug Pub, police lieutenant John Bartlett was sitting at the bar, nursing a beer that had stopped being cold about twenty minutes ago. Piled next to him on the wood grain bar was a small stack of file folders, each crammed beyond capacity with neglected paperwork that he should have been working on instead of sitting behind a bar during the day. His mail was also lying there in a heap. It had been nearly a week since he had stopped by the Post Office to pick it up and there was no telling what was in there. Mostly bills, he assumed. Probably past due by now. Not that such things really mattered to him anymore. Since his wife left him he could care less if the house fell apart or caught fire. Part of him wanted to sell it, but the sentimental part refused to part with it on the off chance that one day she decided to come back.

Now that he had retrieved the envelopes, he just couldn’t muster up the energy or desire to open any of them. Most likely bad news anyway, he suspected. Not that I’m a pessimist or anything. He took another sip of his warm beer and grimaced.