This was not what dreams were made of. A single street of liquor stores, second hand shops,

and boarded up shells. The old men sitting on wooden boxes plain checkers, the three-legged

dog that went from strange at the stranger, hoping for a scrap of food, and the police

station, there, most times, but like a motel for drunks and lost souls, my station. I joined

a police with a mind to becoming a detective in the big city, LA on New York, I'd solve

homicides and bus cartels and hang out with beautiful women. That was 30 years ago. Now

this was my beat. I was a lone cop in a one-horse town. The land was not fit for farming and there

was no manufacturing or chemical plants, not a whole lot of anything for folks who wanted

to earn her living. But there was hope on the horizon. My client had a patrol car, stretched

and winced as my back cracked. I spent too long sitting on my backside, and when I wasn't

behind the wheel or on my desk, it was popping up the bar had martis. On Tuesdays and Thursdays

and martis, the peanuts were free and any broken teeth you found in the bowl you could keep.

On Fridays, there was a square dance where it was always ended in a brawl. So Fridays

I stayed home and watched TV. Once my back had stopped complaining, had been forced into

action, I looked out into the distance. It was pretty much empty, as empty as it had

always been. But if things worked out, that was going to change. A big box organisation

that specialised in such things had won a government contract to build a supermax

correctional facility, a sprawling high-tech home for the worst kind of floor breakers,

and the organisation wanted to site it out there in the desert within an easy truck ride

of my town. There had been money flooding in and people, a lot of contractors during the

construction itself, and then the guards and support staff. They'd need places to live

and eat and let off steam. Good times they were coming to my small town. There was just

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