Chapter One

As it turned out, getting beat up by an old lady was not the most interesting thing that happened to Brock that day. But it did make the top three.

He might have seen her fist coming if he hadn't been distracted by the truck full of nuns. But the truck full of nuns drove by at the exact moment that the grandmother of Shirley P. Davis decided that Brock was going to get it right in the chin. He had been arguing with the old woman, explaining to her that, No, it didn't matter that her granddaughter wasn't home, because the summons could be sub-served to a resident of the same household, and they had gone back and forth with it a few times. He normally would have noticed that she was getting her dander up, and would have taken a prudent step backwards.

But the nuns drove by at that very second. He had no chance.

It took a lot to distract Brock, but the nuns did the trick. They were in a pickup truck, for one thing. Two were in the cab and seven or eight more were in the bed. Ten nuns. One of the sisters in the bed appeared to be smoking a cigar, and it was the cigar that doomed him, because it made him keep looking a second long enough for the old woman to really put her elbow back. By the time he was done looking it was all over but the falling down.

He sort of slumped sideways into her screen door, which he had been holding open, and as his butt hit the concrete of her porch he pushed it all the way back the wrong way. It had no spring or chain and it thwacked her aluminum siding and just stayed there, and he sat where he fell, too.

I told you she don't live here. And her storm door slammed shut. The screen door stayed where it was.

Now that he was alone he had the opportunity to consider the nuns. It seemed likely that they were not actually nuns, but he did not want to discount the possibility of nuns that drove in pickup trucks and smoked cigars. Still, they were dressed in full black-and-white nun outfits, and he thought that most nuns did not wear those any more. Perhaps a traveling show of lesbian humor, which he had known to involve nuns on the rare occasions he had encountered it.

But enough. He stood. The truck full of nuns would remain a mystery, like most of the best stories he accumulated in his profession.

He looked down at the Shirley P. Davis packet, which he'd crumpled slightly as he fell. He sighed, pulled the pen from his front pocket, and wrote BAD ADDRESS under the name typed in bold. There was nothing else to do here. He stood up and trudged toward his Nissan, flipping open his cell phone on the way.

It's me, he said.

What happened.

What makes you think something happened.

That's when you call.

Okay.

It's true. You only call when you're out and something happens.

I just got beat up by someone's granny is what happened. This time.

Did you get the paper served?

Shut the door on me.

You can just drop it on the porch, can't you.

Sure.

So why don't you.

He looked back at the house. I got something to think about with this one.

Think. There was little doubt that she was rolling her eyes. But he was already straining his neck to look back behind the house. Just past the carport, which was empty, there was another little porch with a welcome mat on it, and there was a doorbell. He'd missed it on the way in.

I'm gonna be home soon, he said.

Uh-huh.

He looked up and down the street. He didn't see anyone. None of the houses here had front porches, except the one. And there had been an addition at the back, he could see that clearly now. An enormous addition, taking up the whole of the back yard, and looking shoddy as hell. With a recently-added back stoop, leading up to a back door, but not just any back door: a back door with a welcome mat and a doorbell. He rang it. The door opened immediately, but slowly, and there she was.

Shirley Davis, he said.

She took the paper without saying anything.

As he walked back to his car, the front door of the house opened again, and the woman who was not the grandmother of Shirley P. Davis called out to him. I told you she don't live here, she said. Brock did not respond. He got in his car and drove away.

The problem, Brock reflected, was that he made a lousy first impression, and success in his job depended almost exclusively on good impressions. Process servers were successful when strangers trusted them, and for some reason no stranger trusted Brock with anything more consequential than hedge clippers.

Kelly, his girlfriend, was always told him that it was just a question of smiling more. But that was easy for her to say; she was a pediatric nurse and everybody respected her profession. It wasn't like she was routinely knocking on peoples' doors and trying to convince them to receive medical care they didn't want or need. When people saw her, it was an occasion for relief.

Brock wanted to be someone that people were happy to see. But he was very far away from that at the moment.

As he drove away, he did not notice the black sedan parked up the street. There were two men inside of it. If Brock had noticed them, he might have entertained the thought that they were plainclothes policemen. He would have been close.