Mr. Cutter brought the photos to his office. He had decisions to make and time was growing short. He had three choices left, though only one more was necessary for the project's completion. His eyes scanned them from behind the security of his locked door. The men in the photos were from the same mold: broad shouldered and slender of waist and hips, differing mainly in hair and eye color and degree of musculature.
Something wasn't right.
It had to be exact. This selection was the most important, the final incarnation: Boy, Man, Warrior. Boy and Man had been perfect, but Warrior needed raw fury and unbridled power. And size. Mama could melt steel with a glance and needed a man equivalent to the task. He picked up the photos and studied again. His choice for Warrior seemed to have shrunken in the past few days.
Or maybe he was growing beyond his own dreams.
A new vision of warrior formed in his head and he set the photos on his desk, picture side down. He already knew the man, had seen him, heard him speak. You could tell he was a fighter, an avenger. Was he a fit adversary for Mama? The one to take her, kill her, save her?
Yes. He was a warrior and had the strength.
Mr. Cutter relaxed into his desk chair. The universe had answered again. First Mama, then the boat, now the Warrior. It was beautiful.
All he had to do was claim the warrior as his own, whisk, whisk, whisk.
Footsteps outside and the voices of his coworkers. The drones were returning. They'd soon be scratching at his door.
I need, I need…
Mr. Cutter gathered the now unnecessary photos and notes in an edge-aligned stack and pulled an envelope from his jacket. He carefully placed the photos in the envelope before folding it over, aligning the blank end with the return-address end, the one printed Bayside Consulting.
'I don't want to be here.'
'Nobody does their first time. After you.'
I pushed open the side door of a small former church on the south side of downtown, now a meeting place for Alcoholics Anonymous. Ava reluctantly entered a spacious room with tables and chairs, a pool table, an ancient pinball machine, and two pop machines. A bulletin board advertised meeting times and alcohol-free dances. Beside it was a rack of literature. Steps near the back led upstairs. There was a small snack counter. Behind it an older guy with Einstein hair attended a restaurant-sized coffee urn. Four guys played cards at a back table. Two women were shooting pool and trading barbs with the guys at the table. Words passed between the pool players and card game and they all started laughing. A man in a business suit sat alone near the back, sipping tea and reading The Wall Street Journal. He whistled and fiddled with his tie. Ava studied the faces from the corner of her eye.
'Where are all the… people with problems?'
'They've got us surrounded.'
'Have they been drinking? They're laughing.'
'They're laughing because they haven't been drinking.'
Ava started shaking and sprinted to the rest room with her hand over her mouth. The guy behind the window smiled. 'New,' he said.
'First-timer,' I affirmed.
'She's in the right place. You in the fellowship?'
'No. But a believer, nonetheless.'
He gave me a thumbs-up and returned to his coffee ministrations. Ava returned two minutes later, face red and eyes wet. She still shook, withdrawal jitters kicked in by fear of this place, at first telling her only what she was instead of what she could become.
'I can't take this, let's get out of here, Carson. Let's come back tomorrow.'
Footsteps thundered down the stairs beside us, big feet with a Bear above them, a bear in jeans and a blue sweatshirt, a cap from Bass Pro Shops covering an ursine shock of brown hair. A two-hundred-eighty-pound embrace lifted me from the floor like a sack of feathers. Bear's delight was electric, transferable; jumper cables for my attitude.
He said, 'Damn, just look at you: lean and mean and that same stupid-ass grin.'
'It's not the same stupid-ass grin, Bear, it's an upgrade.'
Bear yelled to the coffee guy. 'Hey, Johnny, this is my old partner, Carson.'
Einstein shuffled back to the counter. 'You're the one stole the wheelbarrow and rolled him in here?'
Bear turned to Ava. Her hand disappeared in his massive paw. 'Hello, Ava. Carson's told me all about you.'
Ava turned to me as if I'd betrayed her again. Bear laid his arm lightly around her shoulders. 'A bit rocky?' he asked, turning her toward the steps. 'You should have seen my first day Carson dumping me on the floor like a load of bricks, me howling mad, shaking like a dog shitting peach pits…'
Bear turned to me and winked. Then he guided Ava upstairs, one step at a time. She stayed for an hour and then I took her home. We'd both fulfilled our parts of the bargain.
'You'll be all right?' I asked.
She looked toward her house and back at me. 'Listen, Carson. I want to say '
I shushed her with a finger over her lips. 'Just stay safe.'
We had an awkward moment nodding and mumbling until she turned away.
When her door shut I heard a high whine in my head as I tried to remember how to drive, what lever performed what function. My hands lost the notion of grasp and I forgot what I was doing and where I was going. After a deep breath I finally coordinated the machinery and began pulling away into air as coarse as burlap.
'Carson, wait!'
I jammed on the brakes, turned, and saw Aya running stiffly toward me.
'I'm afraid of what could happen. Could I would it be too much to ask …'
Her hand clutched tight to my arm. She looked ragged; spun and wrung and flung a hundred directions. But I saw something else too: a sense of resolve, loose but gathering, like pieces long apart but finally, with the seamless and inexorable pull of gravity, coming together, needing to be whole.
'Let's go pack your bags,' I said.
Just like that the air turned to velvet.
CHAPTER 19
'From this Friedman you figure Nelson was humping and pumping in Biloxi,' Harry said, pulling off his lime- green tie and jamming it in the side pocket of his jacket. The tip hung out, looking like the head of a flattened frog.
'All expenses paid, from the sound of it.'
A group of day-shift patrol officers charged into Flanagan's, hooting and hollering, out of uniform, free for another day. Harry and I nodded to familiar faces and turned back to the table. I'd settled Ava at my place and returned to meet Harry for brainstorming and a bowl of gumbo.
Harry was in a contrarian mood from a day filled with too many walks down dead-end streets. He pitched his spoon into his empty bowl.
'Probably has nothing to do with anything.'
'There's the shadow man Shelton saw with Nelson. The one that wasn't like the others. Plus Nelson's blabbing about having found his bottomless honey jar, easy street.'
'So? Messer said that was his theme song, always on the edge of a major score.'
'Nelson was the first. Someone's grabbed stuff from his apartment.
There's got to be lines right to Nelson.'
Harry flicked an invisible string in the air like plucking a harp.
Silence.
'Yeah, I know,' I said, slumping in the booth.
