DETECTIVE MORT SANDERS and his partner, Jake Thompson, stood in the eye of a crowd of onlookers held at bay by yellow crime scene tape. Uniformed officers scanned the area daring the public to cross their line. The victim lay on a gurney surrounded by EMTs and firemen. Buildings on either side of 111th Street barricading the location flashed in angry red and icy blue hues as warning beacons spun atop emergency vehicles. Their fire escapes appeared as slashes of lightning bolts in the garish lights. The suspect sat on the curb, her hands cuffed behind her back, her chin sunk into her chest. Thompson glanced at her and snickered. Sanders looked at him. “What?” he asked.

A Crime Scene Investigator walked up to the two detectives before Thompson could answer. Sanders turned his attention to the young technician. “The assault didn't take place here,” the CSI reported.

Sanders winced and scratched his nose. “Damn,” he muttered to himself.

Thompson waved for the uniformed sergeant to join them. “Get your men to begin canvasing the area,” he instructed when the uniformed commander arrived. “Start with the houses on both sides of the street and work outward. They couldn't have gotten too far to get here,” he added.

The sergeant left the minimum number of men in place needed to control the crowd, and sent the rest off to look for the room or alley where the assault took place.

Sanders and Thompson took a few minutes to catch up on their notes as the search got underway. Police and fire radios crackled with calls relating to emergencies in other parts of the city. Manhattan was teeming with them. It was a typical Friday night.

Sanders finished first and walked towards the suspect. Thompson lagged behind making a sketch of the scene. 

Sanders stopped next to the woman in cuffs sitting on the curb and waited for her to look up. She didn't. 

“Here we are again,” the detective began.

BOB RICHARDS WAS footsore and tired. Cowboy boots weren't made for walking, especially not his good ones. The heat radiating from the pavement and through his soles convinced him that his work boots wouldn't have been much better, but they might have been a little more comfortable.

The crowd that flowed around Bob was better equipped. They wore sensible walking and running shoes, some almost as expensive as Bob's hand tooled leather boots. They were dressed differently, too. There were a variety of costumes reflecting a myriad of cultures and socioeconomic strata, but none stood out more than Bob's Stetson hat. Strangers might have overlooked his jeans and his pearl-buttoned long sleeve shirt, but that hat drew their attention every time.

It was afternoon now, and Bob had been walking ever since he left the Hotel Taft after breakfast. Two breakfasts actually. The waitress may have wondered how he kept his boyish figure eating Texas-sized meals, but she had no doubt that his smile was a winner. She scowled the first time he called her “ma'am,” but quickly forgave him when she discovered that he used the appellation freely, even with women of every age seated around him.

SHARON WAS WAITING on the beach when I arrived in the early evening. I came as soon as I got her letter. She had included a hand drawn map or I would never have found the secret trail that led to it from the deserted road. It was a tortuous path cut in the sandstone by a tiny spring-fed rill that descended in steps, each one forming a small pool inhabited by minnows and water striders. The whole distance was overgrown by scrub oak and walled by cacti.

The sun hesitated above the horizon as though waiting for me, and she stood watching it. Her body was silhouetted in the sheer fabric. It didn't appear that she wore anything beneath it. My breath caught. She looked exactly the same as when I last saw her, what, thirty years ago. 

I rolled up my pants legs and removed my shoes and socks before setting off across the sand. I paused after a few steps, strangely aware of every sensation. The soft sand between my toes. The cool sea breeze on my face, stirring the hair on my forearms and calves. But mostly, I was aware of her. I caught her scent and wondered if that was possible.

The sun resumed its descent as I approached her from behind and stopped. She turned her head and I gasped at her profile. It was exactly the same as I remembered. I should. I had stared at her in class every day throughout high school, pining to be with her and yet, afraid to even mention her name. She was a goddess and I was a goat.

A smile caressed her face and she spoke. “I'm glad you came.”

A PENCIL-THIN BEAM of light aligned with two holes, one in the mausoleum door and the other in the side of the sarcophagus, as the sun passed the Vernal Equinox, and struck Don Esteban Rodriguez in the eye, and he awoke. Slowly, he flexed every muscle in his body to dispel the cramps that had gathered during his year-long slumber. The pain was excruciating, but he bore it stoically, silently, waiting for his servant to arrive and remove the lid. It was the four hundred and eighty-seventh year of his curse.

The face that he saw when the lid was removed was unfamiliar to him. “Tomas is dead,” he guessed.

“Sí, Don Esteban,” the face replied. “He was my father. I am Bernardo.”

“Of course,” Don Esteban replied. The duty to attend him was hereditary. 

“Do you require help?” Bernardo asked.

“Sí, gracias,” he replied, and the new servant lent him a hand as he sat, then stood up. The stairs were already in place, and Don Esteban descended to the mausoleum floor with stiff steps, one hand on the young servant's shoulder.

“YOU'RE AWAKE.”

“Yes.”

There was no use denying it. He always knew.

Ben cleared his throat, the rasp fled, and his breath quieted to a gentle wheeze. He closed his mouth and collected the little spit that he could find, and used it to wet his parched lips.

“You need a sip of water.”

“Yes.”

“The glass is next to your right hand. That's it. A little further. Good.” The gentle voice guided Ben's hand.

Some spilled. Ben couldn't raise his head to drink, not yet. He poured a dribble where he thought that his mouth might be. Most of it entered, and he choked a little.

“Careful.”

“Yes.”

I AM POSSIBLY the worst practitioner of cow pasture pool to ever pick up a golf club. Friends have assured me that there a worse players but have failed to ever provide the identity of even one. I usually shoot in the eighties, on the front nine. (That's eighty strokes in nine holes for anyone who knows less about the game than I.) By then, I sort of “warm up” and shoot in the fifties on the back nine. I went to Walter Keller's Golf Shop in Westwood, California, and signed up for lessons after having “played at” the game for some ten or fifteen years. The instructor had me “swing a few.”

“You've been playing for some time haven't you?” he asked.

I smiled and nodded like an idiot.

“Is it worth ten dollars an hour for me to take a few swings off your game?” he asked. Ten dollars was a princely sum in those days.

I smiled and shook my head like an idiot.

He then gifted me with a dozen golf balls and invited me to take my trade to his chief competitor. He must have truly despised the man.

That's as close as I ever came to a lesson.

Actually, I love the game. I love the fresh air. The pleasant walk in pleasant surroundings. A few hours spent with pleasant company.

Few of my golf-addicted friends ever asked me to accompany them. Shame, I'm certain, played a hand in their recalcitrance to be seen in my company on a golf course. Thus, I played with strangers, filling out many foursomes when a player became too ill to play due to, what I can only suspect, was a terminal illness. Surely no true golfer would miss a tee-time for any other excuse than a date with St. Peter.

“WINTER SHOULD BE WHITE. You should be able to see your breath. You should be outside sledding or ice skating or having snowball fights.” 

The old man looked each of his grandchildren in the eye to make certain that they were paying attention. They were.

“And the girls always look better in woolen sweaters. We called 'em 'snow bunnies',” he added with a wink to the boys for effect.

Jake leaned close to his cousin Nick and whispered. “There he goes again.”

“Sh,” Nick hissed. “Mom will smack me if she thinks I'm disrespectful.”

Jake snorted and scowled.

The children were all dressed for the beach. They were leaving as soon as their parents had everything ready.

The old man eyed the two miscreants at the back of the pack and raised his voice. “You think I'm just a crazy old man, don'cha?” he asked directing the question at Nick and his cousin.

“Not me,” Nick protested. “He started it,” he added leaning away and pointing at his cousin.

“Pardon me.”

The grizzled bike messenger dispatcher looked up from the scratch sheet he was studying to see a fair young man waiting with a slight smile on his lips. He didn't bother pulling the unlit cigar from his mouth. He simply shifted it to one corner of his lips. “Whatcha want?”

The young man held up the sign he had taken from the office door and held it up. “I've come to apply for the job,” he said, “for a bike messenger.”

The old dispatcher's eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Ya don' look like no messenger,” he announced and looked back at his scratch sheet. “Don't forget to put the sign back on your way out.”

The number five horse in the fifth race was looking good to him. 

“It won't win.”

The dispatcher looked up to find the young man still waiting. “What?” he asked.

“The number five horse,” the young man responded. “It's going to lose.”

“How do you know that?”

The young man shrugged. The same smile on his lips.

The dispatcher huffed. “Don't forget the sign,” he repeated.

THEY WERE IN LOVE. Desperately in love.

She was seventeen, the town belle, and the daughter of Hollis McAllister, the owner of the mine that everyone in town worked at. 

He was eighteen, a strapping youth, and the son of the mine's night watchman.

Hollis didn't approve

Hollis didn't climb the ladder of success by avoiding problems. He bulled his way through them. In that spirit, he invited the boy, Jeremy Gibbons, to his home.

The McAllister home sat at the base of the mountain that his crews honeycombed with shafts to strip it of its treasure of anthracite coal. Hard coal. Valued for making iron and steel. Long trains of hopper cars snaked their way towards the mills in the north full of McAllister coal. They returned with cash to pay wages and fatten McAllister's bank accounts.

Jeremy arrived punctually at 4:00 pm. Hollis liked punctuality. He couldn't bull his way through life's problems while waiting for someone. His daughter, Margaret, was at his side. Hollis led the young lovers to his study and seated them facing his desk. They waited as Hollis selected a cigar, snipped its end, and lit it with a wooden patch that he pulled from a cup attached to the ashtray. The ritual allowed him to establish dominance while others waited.

HE LIVED UNDER A BRIDGE. Not one of those interstate highway spans. They're cold and nasty places to live. Rather, he lived under a rustic bridge he had built for himself in a forest. It spanned a ravine allowing hikers to cross easily without sliding down one side and clambering up the other. There he dug his barrow. After all, he was a troll.

Times were never gentle for a troll. In the old days, heroes roamed the countryside, ferreting them out and slaying them to turn the head of a fair damsel. Well, there might have been other reasons. Trolls regularly ambushed travelers who happened on their bridges. This behavior irked some and they hired heroes to extract revenge. Not all heroes were motivated by carnal pleasures.

There weren't many heroes these days. But let a troll snatch a farmer's goat that wandered too near, and all hell broke loose. There were so many farms and so many goats. And so many children. Yum, children. So tender. So tempting. A troll had to practice self control or he would have to flee his comfortable barrow and build another bridge somewhere else.