This was originally part of a Five Times thing on the theme of “What if Starsky and Hutch had never gotten to know each other?” While each piece can be completely read on its own, they do fit together.

The order of this Five Times, called “Between Strangers” is:

1. “Shipping Out”

2. “Better Late”

3. “Bedford Falls All Over Again”

4. “Than Never”

5. “The Journey Itself Is Home”

“Bedford Falls All Over Again”

By Pepper Ckua

Huggy hated the taste of Old Grand-Dad. That was one reason why he’d been working on finishing the bottle for the past hour.

Drinking, pacing, drinking. Huggy could feel the tar of the flat roof scuff against the bottoms of his shoes. Too bad it wasn’t the middle of the summer; the smell of hot creosote was always enough to give him a headache. He’d have to count on bourbon alone to do it now.

He reached the edge and looked down over the lights of Bay City. Huggy had never been out of the city, but he knew smog pulled a blanket over the stars, dimming them considerably. Huggy imagined that stars looked something like the blinking lights below him. Hell, if he tried hard enough, he could imagine that the lights from the Convention Center were the North Star.

Huggy shifted his glance to the alley below. Three o’clock in the morning was no guarantee it would be empty, but on this night it was.

He took another swallow of bourbon, swayed a little and stepped back. He almost had to laugh at the irony. He was going to head over that very same ledge in a very short time anyway. What was with this last moment of self-preservation?

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they, the white against the black?” an unfamiliar voice asked. “I know you’ve never seen stars at their brightest, and while I haven’t seen them either in this town, I remember how they used to be a long, long time ago.”

Huggy supposed if he had been an old drunk in a Steve Hanson picture, he’d have shook his head and peered suspiciously into the bottle in his hand and then tossed it.

Instead, he took another long swallow.

“Don’t do it,” the voice said.

Without turning around, Huggy replied, “I don’t know who you are, but you’d better get the hell away from me.”

“I can’t do that, Huggy.”

“Did somebody send you? Was it Starsky and Hutch?” Huggy didn’t know how they’d have known about his plans tonight; last they’d heard he was going to take a little trip to see some family. Huggy had always been a very good liar.

“Huggy, I know about what you got in the mail this afternoon.”

“No one knows about that letter. I ripped it up as soon as I read it. And I was alone behind the bar.”

“I know about your troubles, about the Pits, about the bounced checks, about the loans and about the IRS.”

“So? The Bear’s had trouble before. I’ve lost more bars than I can count. I always land on my feet.” Huggy drank the last quarter inch of alcohol. “Though landin’ on my feet isn’t going to do much for me four stories up.”

He tossed the empty bottle over the edge and heard it break way too soon. “Shit, I hoped it was a longer fall.”

“Huggy, don’t do it.” The voice behind him was sad.

“You know, this is more noise than I need right now, can you dig it? It would be nice for a guy to have his last moment of desperation be a little quieter than this.”

“Huggy, I know about Diane.” The voice was soft. And sad.

Huggy felt something long and alien move in his body, like a finger touching his spine from the inside. “Yeah, that’s the shits, ain’t it?”

He turned around unsteadily and saw a man standing a few feet away. The light over the rooftop door was just bright enough for Huggy to recognize him. It was one of Starsky and Hutch’s contacts.

“You’re Lijah. Hutch’s got a soft spot for you. He says he thinks you’re some sort of prophet, but he smiles when he says it.”

“I’m not a prophet. I’m a…”

“Listen, old man. I don’t know what your story is, but I want you to leave.” Huggy was feeling the burn in his brain and knew the time was now. If he waited too much longer, he might pass out before he got the job done. The last thing he wanted to do was wake up in the morning.

“Don’t,” Lijah said.

“It figures, “ Huggy said. “I come up here to kill myself, and I get some conversationalist interfering. I can’t even off myself properly.”

“Interfere? Huggy, maybe what you’re about to do is the interference?”

“Sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo stuff to me.” Huggy felt the bourbon boil in his belly. He hoped he wasn’t going to be sick.

“I can’t leave, Huggy.”

“Yes, you can. You can do just that.” Huggy turned and took a step closer to the edge of the roof.

“There’s no way Diane would have wanted you to do this.”

Huggy felt a flare of rage. “You! You just shut up! Don’t bring her into this!”

“You did the best you could.”

“My best wasn’t good enough. The woman is dead!”

“You did the best you could.”

“You keep sayin’ that. But what I really did was get her killed.”

“Her boyfriend is who killed her, not you. She came to you for help. You went with her to pack her things and…”

“And I told her I’d keep her safe. I gave her the room upstairs. I said there was no way Anthony would touch her at my bar.” Huggy reached up and touched the bruise on the side of his face. It was in the shape of the hard corner of the grill. Huggy only knew that it didn’t hurt nearly enough. “Dead. Killed in my kitchen. Killed where she worked. It wasn’t even a crime of opportunity, man, he brought his own knife.”

“Huggy, there wasn’t anything you could have done.”

Huggy didn’t bother answering.

Lijah said softly, “All that on top of the money problems. It’s enough to send anyone into despair. Huggy, why don’t you call someone?”

“Why do you care, old man?”

“Because I’ve been sent to you, brother.”

Huggy heard the wail of a distant siren. He was relieved to hear it move away from him.

Someone else needed the attention tonight.

Huggy had an image of another unfortunate soul, someone choking on a turkey wishbone. Perhaps the ambulance was going to a house where someone had snapped, and was in the process of killing everyone in his living room, family togetherness be damned? Or maybe the siren was for the woman who was swallowing forty sleeping pills down in a wash of eggnog?

It was the bourbon, Huggy supposed, that was giving him the ability to see right into these peoples’ homes.

Lijah said, “Perhaps there is a need for intervention in all three of those houses. It’s possible Charles is there.” Lijah’s voice was calm. “An angel’s work is never done.”

Huggy turned around. He narrowed his eyes. “Just who are you anyway?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m an angel, of course.”

“A what? Is this some kind of a jive?”

“No.”

“Let me guess. You’ve got orders to show me around town like some modern-day Bob Marley, and then if all goes well, you’ll keep me from stepping off into the great beyond, and you’ll get your wings.”

“Yes, brother.” Lijah smiled. “But you’re wrong about the wings. Don’t need them. And it’s not Bob Marley, it’s Jacob Marley. I think that might be the bourbon talking.”

“Actually, I’m not nearly drunk enough. And no wings, huh? Still, five’ll get you ten I’m just a means to an end.” Huggy shook his head. “It figures. Figures. I’m just a tool for some sort of promotion, one more step up the ladder. I should be used to that by now.”

“You don’t need to twist it up that way, brother. We are all connected to each other. That’s how people are.”

“That sounds like something an angel would say.” Huggy stepped up on the ledge. “All I know is while I don’t really want to die, I don’t want to live anymore either. The rest is just too damn hard.” He was glad he didn’t hear Lijah move any closer behind him.

“Huggy, there are many worlds out there and many ways of seeing things. You need to decide what you are holding.”

Huggy wondered if it mattered if he told Lijah what was now first in his heart.

“What I really wish,” Huggy said, taking a chance, “is that I’d never been born.”

Huggy felt the wings of a thousand small birds in his stomach. And then he felt nothing at all.

XXXXXXXX

Something also didn’t feel right in Huggy’s head. There was a muzzy buzz just behind his eyes. It made Huggy wonder if he was coming down with something.

Working a bar like he did gave him the opportunity to catch just about everything that was going around. It didn’t help any, that people tended to get maudlin over the holidays, crying into their beers, then wiping their hands on their own snot-covered faces, as well as the faces of others before handing their glasses back for a refill. Huggy was no neat freak, but he’d long ago learned the power of hot water and soap.

Huggy realized he was staring down at his shoes. He wondered why it seemed to be broad daylight, when just moments ago he’d been looking for stars.

Glancing up, he saw that he was standing in front of his apartment building.

The two wreaths by the front door were gone. It also looked like the stoop could use a good sweeping. In fact, the stoop itself looked like it needed to be replaced all together. There were cracks in it that hadn’t been there the day before. The whole thing looked like it was pulling away from the side of the building.

While the nine-flat was familiar enough, there were just enough oddities about the place to make Huggy peer up the street and then down it, to make sure he was in the right place.

Huggy crossed the road. He grabbed at the step’s handrail and found it shaky; its iron footings were rusty and crumbling. Huggy pulled open the door and went into the foyer. The floor there was littered with old newspapers, unwanted mail, an old shoe and two used condoms.

Huggy rubbed the back of his neck. His landlord was a man who considered cleanliness next to godliness; Mr. Hooperman was known to vacuum the halls and foyer sometimes three times a day. Huggy had learned to put a pillow over his head when Hooperman went at it in the too-early hours of the morning.

Huggy kicked his way through the trash and made his way to the third floor.

He took out his keys and tried to unlock the door. The key didn’t fit. Huggy stepped back, looked at the door and jutted his jaw.

Thirty-three. That was his apartment all right. Though the second number was missing a nail and hanging upside down, it was clear two threes were there.

Huggy tried his key again. It didn’t even go in the lock part way.

“What the hell? This is my place.” Huggy thought to himself. “It has been for close to three years.”

“You don’t live here, Huggy.”

The voice came from the other end of the hallway. Lijah was there, leaning against a rusty radiator.

“What do you mean I don’t live here? What have I been payin’ my rent check for? And why did I talk to the super about a drippy kitchen sink last week? On a place in which I don’t reside? I mean, this is the Bear’s lair!”

Lijah shrugged, and Huggy tried the key again.

He heard a frightened voice from the other side of the door.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but if you’re trying to bust in here, you won’t get nothin’ you could get any money for.”

“Hey, I…” Huggy started.

“Go away, or I’m callin’ the cops.”

Huggy looked over at Lijah. “This some kind of a joke? This somethin’ one of my cousins put you up to? You needed the money that bad?”

Lijah just looked pensive.

Huggy shook his head and headed back down the stairs. “Don’t bother following me, man, ‘cause I don’t want you around.”

XXXXXXXX

Ten blocks later had Huggy standing in front of an even seedier apartment building. A knock on the door at the Emerson Arms didn’t get Huggy’s cousin, Marcus. It didn’t even get Marcus’ wife or one of his quick-moving children.

Instead, an impossibly red-haired woman answered the door.

“Jimson sent you?” she asked, tiredly. Before Huggy had a chance to answer, she said, “Listen, you pay me ten bucks more than he said, and I’ll take you bare.”

Huggy could hear the wail of a baby in an upstairs apartment. The fleeting look on the woman’s face told him the baby was hers.

“Hey, I don’t got all day. You gonna come in and get topped off, or not?”

“Actually, I’m looking for a man…”

“Baby, we can play it that way, too.”

“No, a real man… Marcus Brown, he lives here.”

“Not here he doesn’t. And not for the last three months. I know because that’s how long Jimson’s been renting this dump for me.” The baby cried again, and the woman folded her arms tightly over her chest.

“So, you don’t know him?”

“This Marcus guy? Sure, I know him.”

“I thought you said you didn’t.”

“No, I said he didn’t live here.”

Huggy sighed and dug a twenty out of his pocket. The woman’s eyes lit up.

“Marcus was the name of the dude that lived here before. He and I did some…business together just after he was kicked out.” She put her hand to the back of her neck and rubbed it. “He worked in a magic shop down by the pier, and doin’ all right, too, until one of his magic tricks went bad and he hurt some guy. Marcus ended up in jail, and he had no one to watch his shop. He ended up losing the place. Then his wife left him and took the kids. Last I heard, he was sweeping out and cleaning the bathroom at Palisade Books.”

The woman’s eyes never left the bill in Huggy’s hand. “His wife works at the drug store, as well as doing a little night work, if you know what I mean. And the kids? They run wild. That what you wanted to know?”

Huggy thought it was more than he wanted to know. He handed her the money, turned to leave and ran right into a large man wearing sunglasses and a dark- colored sweatshirt.

The man pushed him aside. “Jimson sent me, said you could show me a good time.” He looked at Huggy. “Hope you didn’t wear her out, bro, ‘cause I’m ready to rumble.”

Huggy didn’t look up. He heard the door shut behind him. He heard the baby crying, somebody yelling and the sound of breaking glass.

Lijah was waiting for him by the mailboxes in the lobby.

“I don’t even want to know how you got here. I was sure no one followed me over,” Huggy said, tiredly. “So, it seems Marcus is cleaning toilets at an adult bookstore, Serena’s hooking and their kids are a bunch of street rats. I suppose you want to tell me you know what this is all about.”

Lijah started to say something. Huggy put his hand up. “No. Don’t. Actually, I don’t wanna know.”

Digging in his pocket, he pulled out coins for the bus. Huggy boarded the next one without turning around.

He sat down in a seat near the back. As the bus pulled away, he saw Lijah standing on the sidewalk. It looked like he was talking to somebody; only no one was there.

XXXXXXXX

The bus got him as far as the pawnshop on Cistern. Huggy covered the six blocks to Western and 9th with a quick jog. That was where his cousin Elijah plied his wares.

But instead of Elijah’s things spread out on a sheet, the goods belonged to a guy with a face like a shiny doorknob. The man’s name was Toddy.

Toddy’s business appeared to be pencils, canned goods past their prime and used books.

“So, Elijah’s takin’ a break. Maybe a trip to the Bahamas?” Huggy asked as he studied the items on the ground.

“Elijah?” Toddy looked bored. “Man, you’re about six years out of step. And no, I won’t hit you up with what he was peddlin’. His was a nasty business. Look at where it got him?”

“Where?”

“Prison, blood, prison.”

“Elijah? Prison? For selling Dingle Dollies?”

“If that’s what you want to call them, go right ahead. The man ought to be ashamed of himself. I don’t have a problem with a guy trading a buck for a fuck once in a while, but any decent man should draw the line at getting it off with girls not even old enough to be on the rag.”

Huggy felt sick to his stomach. Elijah was a decent man, full of pithy sayings and obsessed with his teeth. He and Elijah would sit and shoot the shit, Huggy with a cigarette between his fingers and Elijah chomping on a toothpick. “Gotta keep those chompers clean, my man. You take care of your teeth, and they’ll never be false to you,” he’d tell his nephew, hitting him on the shoulder.

“How long’s he in for?” Huggy asked.

Toddy reached over and rearranged some of the pencils on the ground. “Beats me, though I know it’s a long time. Hey, you gonna buy something or not.”

Huggy walked away from Toddy with two Golden Eagles, a can of elderly creamed corn and a tattered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

“I suppose you’re gonna tell me how my ineffectual but benign cousin ended up in prison for child prostitution.” He saw Lijah waiting at the end of the block.

“Only if you ask.”

“I’m askin’”

“He depended on you, both as a friend and as a source of income. When you left him the business of those metal, wind-up toys, you also kept him in the loop.”

“The loop? Loop of what? Anyone can sell stuff on the street. He didn’t need me. Hell, he wouldn’t even need a permit; I never got one.”

“Yes and no. But you were a big part of the equation. People trusted you, and that trust was extended to Elijah. Your creditability overcame some of Elijah’s faults, one of them being his too-trusting nature,” Lijah explained. “Huggy, your cousin didn’t start out with an underage crib, but he needed a job. He didn’t have the contacts or the drive, got in over his head and well, he got caught holding the bag.”

“So, he was just a victim of circumstances?”

“Sort of. Just like anyone is, I suppose. Elijah’s biggest problem is that once he got a taste of what he shouldn’t, he couldn’t turn it down. It’s impossible to know if your presence kept him from tasting sin in the first place, or if he’d be strong enough to look it in the eye the next day and go no further. He’s no different than any other man or woman.”

Huggy sure knew that part was true. He asked, “Where’s Elijah now?”

“He was doing his time here in California, but got moved to a pen in Missouri a year ago. Prison life isn’t easy on a guy who sold little girls. Your cousin has only two more years to live, which in his present circumstances, is one hundred and three weeks too long.”

XXXXXXXX

After using the john at the Gulf Station on 12^th Street, Huggy was ready for his next visit.

“Leotis Brown? What’s my mathematical pal up to?”

“He’s been working in accounting. It’s a company that…” Lijah replied.

Huggy smiled through the headache that had started underneath his brow. “Sounds like that’s one cousin that’s doing all right.”

Lijah didn’t reply. Instead he told Huggy the address of Leotis’s employer.

“First Federal Enterprises? Sounds like a classy joint.”

Again, Lijah didn’t answer. He looked over his shoulder.

“You looking for something, angel?”

“Just Charles. I thought he’d’ve caught up to me by now.”

“Maybe he’s got to step in-between two neighboring superpowers, you know, help them write up a truce? Or solve world hunger or something?”

“I don’t think so,” Lijah said, turning back. “It’s more likely he’s trying to track down some decent coffee.”

“Riiiight…” Huggy said as he hopped aboard a westbound bus.

He watched Lijah out the back window, and saw the older man start to slowly walk away from the street. For a moment, Huggy had a moment of worry for Lijah. He’d been so busy finding people that he hadn’t given much of a thought about how Lijah was getting from one place to another. Then again, it didn’t seem to be stopping him from turning up every time Huggy turned around.

The bus ride to the business district by the harbor was a long one and took two transfers. Huggy knew he needed to make this a quick visit; he was out of money and counting on the last transfer to get him back to his neighborhood. Luckily, Leotis’s situation sounded like a good one, and one that wasn’t going to be too complicated.

According to the sign in the lobby, First Federal Enterprises was on the twelfth floor of the Plaza West Building. Huggy pushed the button to the elevator and waited for a car.

The doors on the middle elevator opened, and Huggy stepped in, joining three men that must have come up from the underground garage. He stepped to the side; there was something about these people that made him not want them at his back.

He reached over to push the button for the twelfth floor but saw it was already lit. Huggy jabbed the one for the fourteenth floor instead.

“You got the books done for the boss? You know he needs them for that audit,” one of the men said as the door shut.

“I got them all worked up. The main one and the one that …”

Huggy recognized that voice. It was Leotis. He shifted his gaze to his cousin’s face without turning his head. Leotis was looking up at the changing numbers above the door.

“Shut up, Mr. Brown. The boss don’t allow no indiscretion. You should know that by now.” The man who said this made the simple statement sound like a threat.

“Don’t worry, sir, everything’s all set. You can tell Mr. …ahh, the boss, that I got everything to line up right for him.”

“Better be, Mr. Brown, for what the boss man is paying you.”

Huggy could smell Leotis’s fear.

The elevator stopped at the tenth floor and a young woman got on. She looked nervous as the door shut.

Huggy asked her, “What floor?”

“It’s already lit. Thanks.” Her voice was flat.

Huggy could feel the tension in the small space. It was the same energy he often felt when one of his patrons was getting an unwanted move made on him or her.

The taller of the men in the car took out a cigarette. “Say, baby,” he asked the woman, just as the door to the twelfth floor opened. “You got a light for me?” The man held the door open with his foot.

“A light? You got one?” he repeated.

The woman stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

“C’mon, Pizzo, leave her alone,” said one of the other men. “We’ve got a meeting to get to.”

“Maybe later, little pretty,” his partner said, pocketing the cigarette. The four men moved into the hallway. Huggy watched one of them pull Leotis’s arm. “This way, dummy. You’ve been up here a hundred times, and you’re still too stupid to remember which way to go.”

Huggy heard one of them laugh. “Math’s the only thing this idiot’s …” The last part of the sentence was cut off by the closing door.

“Later, my ass. Try never.” The woman let out a deep breath.

“I’m guessing those dudes are bad news?” Huggy asked.

“Worse than bad news. I’m thinking I might quit my job at the mortgage company upstairs to avoid running into those freaks.”

The elevator dinged and the door opened on the fourteenth floor. Huggy blocked the door with his back. “After you, Ma’am. And good luck.”

Huggy let the door close behind her.

As he rode the back down to the lobby, Huggy thought of Leotis. He knew the kid was in trouble, and he knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

The sight of Lijah standing on the sidewalk outside the building’s glass doors just made him want to hit something.

XXXXXXXX

Huggy didn’t like the way the bus bench felt on his back. The curve was all wrong. Lijah sat next to him and from the way he was shifting his body, Huggy thought the other man was just as uncomfortable.

“Between getting around town to various disappointments and buying some of Toddy’s crap, I’m out of money, angel. So how about instead of visiting the next bunch of people, you just tell me what’s happened to them? Either that, or I could read aloud to you about Atticus Finch’s do-gooding.” He held up the book he’d bought off the sheet on the ground.

“Just tell you?” Lijah smiled. “You’re going to believe me without seeing for yourself?”

“You’ve been up front so far, angel.” Huggy picked at his light jacket. “I don’t see no reason for you to lie to me now.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait for Charles?”

Huggy narrowed his eyes. “Charles? Why? He got some special angel information you don’t have?”

“No. I just worry about him sometimes. He’s got a lot further to go.”

“Go where?”

Lijah didn’t answer him. The two sat in silence for a while.

“Mervin. My cousin Mervin Brown, how’s he doing?”

“Mervin’s fine. He’s gotten a promotion at the City Works Department, got married, divorced, sees his two kids on the weekend and will retire a happy man in about ten years.”

“What? No angst for Mervin? Without me, he’s not miserable?”

“No. His life without you in it is just about the same as if you had been born.”

“Pretty much. You said pretty much. What’s the difference?”

“He didn’t end up getting suspended for lending you that jackhammer. But it was only for a day. And it didn’t make any difference in his outcome.”

“So, me bein’ born or not doesn’t affect Mervin at all?”

“Huggy, not everything’s about you.”

Huggy grumbled, “Could have fooled me with this Bay City tour.”

Huggy crossed his ankles and leaned back a little against the bench. “How about Cora Lee? Tell me her story.”

“Brother, I can’t tell you her story, or anyone else’s for that matter. Things, people, are a lot more complicated than that. All I’m showing you is what your absence changed with them.”

“Fine. Fine.” Huggy felt impatient. “Just tell me about the difference with Cora Lee!”

“You may have backed off after her mother punched you out for stealing those kisses…”

“They were hardly stolen, angel,” Huggy scowled. “I’ll have you know they were freely given.”

“Maybe so, but Sour Joe got those same kisses, the same punch and kept coming back for more. And that more got them pregnant. Cora Lee works at the Funky Chicken, weighs one hundred and four pounds and is as crabby as a sack of wet snakes.”

“Life with Sour Joe would do that to you,” Huggy said sadly. He rubbed his hands together and stuck them in his pocket. “Lijah, I’m gonna ask you about one more person, then we need to get a move on, find somewhere warm to sit. It’s getting colder as it gets dark.”

Lijah nodded.

“Louie? What about Louie, you know, my cousin with the Venezuelan frog ranch, the Play Pen and troubles with the IRS?”

“With you in the world, Louie was able to navigate those challenges. Without you, well …”

“Well, what?”

“He’s one of the guys who falls in with Al Roper.”

“You mean, my watching the Play Pen for him keeps him from a bad end?”

“No. Watching the Play Pen for him doesn’t really affect him one way or another.”

“I didn’t really do anything else with, or for, Louie. So what’s my presence do for him?”

“Huggy, it’s not what you’ve did for him, it’s what you will do.”

“What will I do?”

“That falls into the realm of ‘I can’t tell you’.”

“Can’t tell me? You’ve told me everything else.”

“Not everything, brother, in fact, not even close. What you will do for Louie hasn’t happened yet in that life. That means I can’t tell you.”

“Fuck!”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Double fuck.”

“That either.”

XXXXXXXX

“I was hoping Charles would join us here.” Lijah looked around the bar he and Huggy were sitting in. “The Boondocks isn’t the sort of place he likes to go to, but they do serve a good cup of coffee.” Lijah smiled. “Charles says it’s because they haven’t washed the pot in fifty years.”

Huggy looked up from his cup. “That’s what makes coffee good? A patina on the pot?”

Lijah just shrugged. “Charles would know. He knows a lot of things.”

Huggy thought Charles must if he’d been able to avoid Huggy so far.

“It’s not my first choice of a place to be, brother, but it’s cold and it’s late and …”

“And, there’s probably someone here you want me to see,” Huggy finished for him.

Lijah shifted in his chair and looked towards the back of the bar.

“I didn’t know angels used the john,” Huggy grumbled.

“If they’re drinking coffee, it’s likely they will,” Lijah said, as he stood up.

Huggy sat for a while. He didn’t like the way the Boondocks smelled. It was a combination of stale beer and mildew. Huggy’s professional eyes figured the only way it had passed its last health inspection was by bribery.

He turned his attention to the television above the bar. It was easy to ignore the commercial for insurance that played out on the screen. It wasn’t so easy to look away from what was next.

Dewey Hughes’s face appeared. There was a sheen of sweat on his dark face, and he was dressed in a black, natty suit. Dewey was standing at a pulpit, his back to a choir. Through the din of the bar, Huggy could hear Dewey, his voice earnest, and his hands telling a story. Huggy recognized that look.

“And she told me she was sitting in her house …there was a lot of pain, and she was cryin’. But I knew what she needed!” Dewey’s face got that intense look that happened when he was trying to convince someone to buy what ever it was he was selling.

“Uh huh,” the crowd replied. There was a cut to a woman in the audience, her face a study in rapture.

“And I said, it’s the Lord you need, the Holy Spirit. Just draw him into your heart and…”

Someone dropped a tray of empty glasses, and there was a shout from the kitchen.

Huggy watched the image of Dewey raise his hands into the air and his body shook. “It’s the Holy Spirit. My fellow people, it only took a moment and she was healed. That is the proof…”

Someone put a quarter in the jukebox. Huggy could hear the familiar journey the coin made to the box. “No more fuckin’ Frampton!” someone shouted.

Huggy watched an 800 number roll across the television screen, along with a list of credit cards. Some things never changed.

The bartender reached up and turned the set off.

The sounds of Foghat’s “Slow Ride” filled the room. Huggy heard a rhythmic tapping to the music. He turned his head and saw a man with a stocking cap sitting at a table near the basement door. The man was playing along to the music with a set of drumsticks.

Huggy watched him for a while, alternating between the man and the bathroom door to which Lijah had headed.

When the song ended, the man put the sticks down and took a long draw on his beer bottle.

Huggy got up and walked over to him. “Lionel? Lionel Rigger?”

Without looking up, the man asked, “Depends on who’s asking. You got a job for me?”

Huggy could see Lionel’s hands shake as he put the bottle down on the table. Another song started on the jukebox, and Lionel picked up the drumsticks back up again.

“Damn bitch kept talking about wanting a darkroom. I gave her a dark room all right; I took a baseball bat to all the lights in the kitchen. ‘There, there’s your darkroom, baby’.”

Huggy felt something hot and sharp move up through his body. Before he realized he’d even stood up, he had Lionel pressed against the side of the jukebox, his forearm across Lionel’s throat.

“You bastard, treating Mardean like that, I oughta…” Huggy pressed harder, and Lionel’s face went from white to red.

Then Lionel snapped back with his left arm and twisted his leg around Huggy’s lower body. It was an effectual move, one that spun Huggy around and up against the wall.

“Listen, asshole, I don’t know who you are or who sent you, but no one touches me like that.” Lionel’s nose was running and his pupils were dark and the size of nickels. He kept his arm on Huggy just enough to hold him in place.

“What happened to you, man?” Huggy asked, breathing hard. “You made a pact, a solemn oath that night on the beach, one that said you were gonna be better than your daddy. You were gonna do the right thing no matter how hard it was.”

Huggy felt his eyes tingle with sudden tears. “You and me, we both decided that night that no one, no one was gonna keep us down! But that we was gonna do it on our own terms. Lionel, you can talk a bird right out of a tree, you have a gift, man.” Huggy felt his voice crack. “And you have Mardean. You and me and Mardean, remember? You were the lucky one. I’d have treated her like a queen, but she chose you, and I spent my life making that okay.”

Lionel dropped his arms, and Huggy slumped against the wall. He could feel the wallpaper sticking to his clothes, years of grease making it tacky.

“What are you talking about? A beach? You and me? And as for choosing me, Mardean didn’t choose me, so much as she got knocked up. And me, I did the stupid, honorable thing and married her. It was something she never forgave me for. ‘You should have just let me go,’ she’d say. ‘Just let me walk away.’ And you know what? That’s what she did. She took the brat and left me. Something she should have done before she even met me, man.”

Huggy looked straight into Lionel’s face. It was too pale, and one of Lionel’s eyes had an odd twitch. There was a chemical smell to his sweat.

“What are you doing now?” Huggy asked.

“Running merchandise for…the man. I buy off the cops, grease ‘em up. The…man pays me off with this and that.” Lionel drew his forearm over his nose, putting a damp line on his sleeve. “That’s me, brother, Daniel in the lion’s den.”

Huggy looked down. The bar’s linoleum floor, was dark and had a pattern that reminded Huggy of stars. He shuffled his feet a bit and straightened his back of against the wall.

“Lionel, I…”

“Don’t know what the fuck I’m telling you this anyhow. I must be really losing it to spill my guts to some nobody off the street. For all I know, the man’s tryin’ to set me up.”

Lionel picked up his beer bottle and drank the last bit. He tilted the bottle towards Huggy in a mockery of a toast, shoved the drumsticks into his back pocket and walked away.

XXXXXXXX

Huggy found Lijah out on the sidewalk. “How’d you get past me?” Without waiting for an answer, Huggy asked, “So, Charles decided to skip a visit to the Boondocks, despite the fabulous coffee?”

Lijah gave him a small smile. “Guess so. He must have been detained.”

“Whatever.” Huggy put his hands in the air. He felt defeated. “I’m beginning to wonder just what is it with this pal of yours, Lijah. He’s supposed to be here, yet he isn’t.”

Huggy saw the look on Lijah’s face. “Just like me, huh? You keep looking for him, and he isn’t where he should be.”

“Should be? It has nothing to do with ‘should.’ It is what it is.”

“You’re talking in riddles, angel. And I’m not in the mood.”

“No riddles, brother. We’d both be assuming something we shouldn’t if we thought there was a ‘should’ out there at all. What is, is. It’s all just a combination of events, a pattern here, a pattern there, all possibilities. You wished you’d never been born. So that’s what you got.”

Huggy’s head felt like it was stuffed with a dozen dirty socks. He reached up and pulled on his short hair, hard and mean. It felt good for a moment.

And then it felt worse.

Huggy dropped his hands to his side. He felt like hitting something. Lijah’s face, half in the light of the Boondocks’s neon sign, blinked off then on, giving the man the look of someone in a stop-motion movie.

“Tell me, angel, what about Diane?”

“Diane? Without you, her boyfriend wouldn’t have killed her. In fact, she wouldn’t have even worked in a bar. Diane is a cashier at Pico Drugs and working on becoming a stenographer. In the world you were never born in, Diane lives to the age of seventy-two and dies in her sleep.”

“You tellin’ me that to make me feel better?” Huggy asked.

Lijah looked puzzled. “I don’t tell you these things to make you feel better or worse. I’m just telling you how it is.”

“So, you tell me, angel man, if I hadn’t helped Diane leave her boyfriend in the life I did lead, does he kill her anyway?”

“That would be a whole different life, Huggy, one with another set of choices and experiences. Perhaps that would be the life where you stay on the South Side becoming partners with Sour Joe and Fingers?”

“Partners with those two bums?”

Lijah shrugged. “There’s not a lot of choices for a young, angry black man. In that life, the path you took was one that led to a whole set of different circumstances. Perhaps that’s the life that J. T. Washington would like to wish away if he could. I know. Charles’s been there when that man thought about doing what you are planning.”

The thought of J. T. putting a gun in his own mouth or standing on the Bay City Bridge felt like a red-hot coal in Huggy’s stomach. “Don’t tell me anything more about my old running buddy,” he said, putting his hands in the air. “I can’t… He means… Just shut up, angel.”

Lijah pulled his dirty shawl tighter around his body. He looked down the street just as the sound of a siren sounded. Huggy watched as a black and white flipped on the lightbar and pulled a blue, four-door sedan over on the next block.

“It’s just a routine traffic stop. At least, it is for now. All the cop wants to do is give him a warning for a burnt out tail light.” Lijah tuned his gaze back to Huggy. “That is, unless the cop decides to look in the trunk.”

Huggy decided to ignore that comment. “Tell me, Lijah, in the life with me, if I didn’t encourage her to leave that man, would Diane still be alive?”

“Why does it matter, Huggy?”

“Matter? Why would you even ask that question? You’re the one out here trying to teach me somethin’.“

“I’m not trying to teach you anything. I’m just answering your questions and showing you what happened when you decided you never wanted to be born.”

Huggy felt like kicking something. He settled for slamming on shoe against the newspaper box Lijah was leaning on.

“I want to know if my advising Diane to leave got her killed. Is that too hard to answer, old man?”

“Why?”

“Because, if Anthony was gonna kill her anyway, it would make me feel better to know that in helping her leave him, I gave her more time to live.”

“If only it were that easy, brother.” Lijah looked sad. “Fact is, if you hadn’t helped her move out, Diane would have lived another fairly happy twelve years. You see, Anthony would’ve died in a poker game three days later, five aces in his hand.”

XXXXXXXX

The Bedford Bar’s south exterior wall was spidered with ugly graffiti.

Standing on the sidewalk, Huggy could hear the thump of bass, then the shouting and the sound of breaking glass. Huggy hesitated a moment before putting his hand on the front door’s pull.

He stepped back just in the time; the door swung open and a woman was pushed through. She would have fallen to the sidewalk if Huggy hadn’t caught her by the arm.

“You tryin’ to get a piece of me, too?” Her breath stank of alcohol and bad dental care.

“No, I just,” Huggy looked more carefully at her face. “Anita?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Anita? Sugar, no one’s called me that in years.” She pushed away from Huggy, swaying. Putting her hand on her hip, her stance was more awkward than the look of seduction she was aiming for.

“Forget Anita, baby. That girl’s been up and gone a long time,” she slurred. “The name’s Kitty Cat now. And for fifteen, I’ll lap up your cream.” She ran her tongue over her lips. Huggy’s stomach felt like it might lose whatever slippery hold it had on its contents.

“Or I could do you and the old guy together.” Anita’s eyes moved over Huggy’s shoulder. “It’ll cost you another five.”

Huggy felt a hand on his upper arm. He knew it had to be Lijah standing there. It made it easier to not look at the woman as he pulled open the door to the bar.

The first thing Huggy noticed about the Bedford was how many people were in it. The bar was packed. Huggy felt a twinge of pride that even without him, his bar kicked up the business, and on Christmas Eve to boot.

The second thing he noticed was how loud the bar was. But it wasn’t the good-natured din he was used to. The sounds here were rough voices, threats and anger.

Huggy didn’t recognize the barkeep, though for a moment he had a sinking feeling it was Connie, Danner’s thug. The man had the same stance and the same attitude.

Huggy made his way to a table in the corner. The surface was sticky and dulled by grime that was never really scrubbed away. Huggy straddled a chair, keeping his back to the wall. Lijah pulled over a third chair and then sat down on the other side of the table. “For Charles when he gets here,” Lijah explained.

Huggy nodded. “Sure. For Charles.” He hadn’t seen Charles yet and doubted he’d make this dive his first appearance. Huggy wasn’t in the mood to interact with an angel’s imaginary friend. The actual angel was bad enough.

Realizing they were not going to get table service, Huggy stood up and asked Lijah what he’d like to drink.

Lijah looked thoughtful, and then nodded his head. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Gets you a Grasshopper then.” Huggy felt a little bad when Lijah looked puzzled. “Never mind. I’ll get…”

He was interrupted by a blast of fresh air from the back door opening.

It was Hutch. He didn’t look too different, not at first glance anyway. Huggy felt him brush by him with no recognition. Hutch approached the bar, picked up two whiskey sours and made his way to the booth by the jukebox.

A woman was sitting there, a cigarette drooping in her shaking hand. It was Roxy, Huggy realized, the hype that worked out of O’Riley’s Bar. And it seemed like she was up to her old tricks.

Hutch put the drinks down on the table between them, and then slid into the seat beside her. He gave her a kiss full on the mouth, something that looked long and desperate.

Hutch picked up his drink. It was then Huggy could see the lines in his face.

“What’s the story with my blond brother?”

“He graduated from the academy with average grades, got partnered with a cop named Leo Moon. Hutchinson had been in uniform for seven years when Moo