stupid sacrificial altar, but a sacrificial altar all the same.”
“Where’s the chick?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Harry said, exasperated. “She’s gone. Stiffed me, too. And good luck trying to get the kid’s parents to pay me for the investigation and rescue. There’s a better chance of electing a Libertarian president.”
“The perils of the independent entrepreneur,” I said. “You hungry?”
“You buying?”
“I’m buying.”
He stood up. “I’m hungry.” He put on his coat and walked with me toward the door, shaking his head. “I tell you, Thomas. Sometimes I feel completely unappreciated.”
I found myself smiling.
“Wow,” I said. “What’s it like?”
THE WARRIOR
—novelette from Mean Streets
Takes place between Small Favor and Turn Coat and before “Last Call”
Once upon a time, when moving into a new neighborhood, I spent a few days meeting the new neighbors. Nothing big, just visits to say hello, introduce myself to the other family with children my son’s age, another family with a high-school-aged daughter who often babysat for the other families on the street, the usual sort of thing. I had a bunch of innocuous interactions with them that didn’t look like anything special—at the time.
Fast-forward five years. Over the next few years, I came to learn that some of the most inane, unimportant little things I had done or said in that time had impacted several of my neighbors in enormous ways. Not necessarily good or bad, but significantly, and generally in a positive fashion, or so it seemed to me.
If I’d chosen different words to speak, or timed my actions only slightly differently, it might well have altered their lives—and if I hadn’t been paying close attention, I might not have realized it had happened at all. It was my first real-life lesson in the law of unintended consequences—and the basis of my belief that big, important things are built from small and commonplace things, and that even our little acts of petty, everyday good or evil have a cumulative effect on our world. A lot of religions make a distinction between light and darkness, and paint portraits of dramatic battles between their champions.
But maybe the “fight on the ground” is a lot more common than we ever really think. It happens every day, and a lot of the time we might not even be aware that it’s going on—until five years later, I guess. Our smallest actions and choices matter. They tell us about who we are.
That was the idea I tried to carry into “The Warrior.”
That, and the idea that what seems like a good thing or a bad thing might not be either, seen from another point of view. Many readers were upset with Michael’s fate at the end of Small Favor—how horrible that a character who was basically so decent got handed such a horrible fate, being shot and crippled for life by the champions of Hell itself. What a tragedy that he couldn’t continue the fight.
Judge for yourself how tragic it was for him.
• • •
I sat down next to Michael and said, “I think you’re in danger.” Michael Carpenter was a large, brawny man, though he was leaner now than in all the time I’d known him. Months in bed and more months in therapy had left him a shadow of himself, and he had never added all the muscle back on. Even so, he looked larger and more fit than most, his salt-and-pepper hair and short beard going heavier on the salt these days.
He smiled at me. That hadn’t changed. If anything, the smile had gotten deeper and more steady.
“Danger?” he said. “Heavens.”
I leaned back on the old wooden bleachers at the park and scowled at him. “I’m serious.”
Michael paused to shout a word of encouragement at the second baseman (or was that baseperson?) on his daughter Alicia’s softball team. He settled back onto the bleachers. They were covered in old, peeling green paint, and it clashed with his powder blue and white shirt, which matched the uniform T-shirts of the girls below. It said COACH in big blue letters.
“I brought your sword. It’s in the car.”
“Harry,” he said, unruffled, “I’m retired. You know that.”
“Sure,” I said, reaching into my coat. “I know that. But the bad guys apparently don’t.” I drew out an envelope and passed it to him.
Michael opened it and studied its contents. Then he replaced them, put the envelope back on the bench beside me, and rose. He started down onto the field, leaning heavily on the wooden cane that went everywhere with him now. Nerve damage had