Bad Men

She forced the temptation away. No, a bank trip was the only option. She folded her glasses and put them back in their case, then began to gather the papers together.

She was almost done when the knock came on the door.

It had been decided that Leonie would knock. Anyone looking out would see an attractive black woman, smiling brightly. She could pose no threat.

Leonie heard footsteps coming toward the door, and a curtain moved aside in the semidarkness. She smiled in an embarrassed way, and raised the map that she held in her hands. Hey, I’m lost, and it’s a cold night. Help me out here. Tell me where I went wrong, huh? She didn’t even glance to her left, where Dexter stood holding a gun by his thigh, Braun behind him, or to her right, where the boy-man Willard waited, unblinking, his left hand shielding the blade of the knife in case a porch light caught it and drew attention to them. Moloch had remained apart, for the time being, with Shepherd, Powell, and Tell.

Seconds passed, followed by the sound of a chain being undone, and a lock being turned.

The door opened.

Joe Dupree stood on Maria

“Joe? Is there some problem?”

But Dupree merely shook his head. “I was just passing. I brought this for Da

From behind his back he produced a small wooden gull and handed it to her. She took it carefully in her hands and held it up to the light. It seemed almost crudely carved in places, but it was clear that it was not from lack of craft or care. Rather, the primitivism of the carving was designed to capture something of the bird, a reflection of its nature. He had taken great pains, with the head in particular, depicting the beak as slightly open. She could even see a tiny carved tongue in its mouth. The paint was newly dry.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and she marveled at how the big man’s hands had created something so small and wondrous, for she had difficulty imagining him even holding the knife in his fist. It must have taken him hours to do it, she thought. He killed the bird, then spent hours re-creating it in wood.

“Would you like to come in?”

“I don’t want to disturb you.”

“I’ve finished what I was doing. I was about to open a bottle of wine,” she lied.

He hesitated, and she pressed home her advantage.

“You’re not on duty, right?”

He didn’t need much persuasion, just a little. She recalled again all those months that he had spent circling her, like a small male spider working toward a female, unsure of the safety of approaching, in fear of his life. In this case the physical proportions were reversed, but she still had the power. She had wondered why it was taking him so long to approach her, for she had seen the way he’d looked at her when she’d begun working in the market, the bashfulness with which he spoke in response to her polite remarks. She had the answer almost as soon as she asked herself the question. She knew it was because of how he looked, his consciousness of his own difference, and so it was she who had broken the ice between them, taking the opportunities, when they arose, to talk with him, walking with him along Island Avenue when their paths crossed, attracting nudges and smiles from the locals. She wasn’t sure, even then, that she was interested in the man himself. Instead, it was his timidity that drew her, the fragility of his self-esteem strangely enticing in such a huge figure.

She stepped aside to let him enter and caught the scent of him as he brushed by her: he smelled of wood and sap and saltwater. She breathed it in as discreetly as she could and felt something tug inside her. He was not a conventionally handsome man. His teeth were gapped in places, seemingly too small to create a single wall of enamel in his great mouth. His face was long, but widened at the cheeks and chin. She could see wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and knew at once that they were the consequence of some pain, perhaps physical, perhaps psychological, and that this man was frequently in distress. She was a little surprised when she began to find him attractive and guessed that it was, at least in part, a combination of his power and size along with the capacity for gentleness and subtlety that had enabled him to carve the bird out of a piece of driftwood; to deal sensitively with Jack the painter and his problems; in fact, to interact with most of the islanders in such a way that they both liked and respected him, even when he was forced to come down on them for some minor infraction. Maria

Now, as she watched the big policeman gingerly sit down at the kitchen table, the chair too low for him so that his own legs remained at an acute angle, she was conscious of the muscularity of his shoulders, the shape of his chest beneath his shirt, the width of his arms. His hands, twice as large as hers, hovered in the air before him. He cupped them and placed them on the table, then unclasped them and moved them to his thighs. Finally, he folded his arms, jolting the table as he did so and causing a china bowl to tremble gently. He seemed even larger in the confines of the little kitchen, making it appear cluttered even though it was not. She had not seen the inside of his house but was certain that it contained the minimum of furniture, with the barest sprinkling of personal possessions. Anything fragile or valuable would be stored safely away. She felt a great tenderness for the big man, and almost reached out to touch him before she stopped herself and turned instead to the business of the wine. There was a bottle of Two Roads Chardo

Maria