Free Move to Strike by Perri O'Shaughnessy

preferred running my own show,” Paul said. “It was a natural progression.” A bumpy one, too, having to do with not accepting authority, a problem that had been solved when Paul opened his own business.
    She smiled. “Well, Paul, your office is located right here in Carmel on Delores. What kind of cases do you take? Tell me about your work.”
    “Van Wagoner Investigations handles a lot of things,” Paul said, feeling much kinder toward her now that they were getting down to it. “A lot of it is helping businesses settle bad debts. Collections. Child custody cases. Finding hidden assets. Locating missing people. Once a kid asked me to find his father. I work a lot with attorneys preparing for trial. Criminal cases, mostly.”
    “What’s the best thing about your work?”
    “Being outside in the middle of the day. I’m not the office type.”
    “No, you don’t look like the office type. What’s the worst thing about your work?”
    “Hmm. Have to say, I love my work.”
    “There must be something. You deal with a lot of emotional people. Do the emotions rub off?”
    “Not anymore.” She waited, but he didn’t add anything.
    “Why Carmel? What brought you here?”
    “The job. I like the beach. Love Big Sur, Point Lobos. Play Pebble Beach when I get the chance.”
    “Your family must love it too.”
    “My parents live in San Francisco. My ex-wives live in Reno and last I heard, San Diego.”
    She looked sympathetic, which surprised him. He felt that his bachelor lifestyle was enviable.
    “I just find it hard to believe that the little old Monterey Peninsula would have all this drama going on,” she said. “Enough to support several investigative agencies.”
    “We work all over the state, but there’s plenty going on here.”
    And then she wanted details, and he wasn’t going to talk about local cases, and they fenced for a while, and then they shook hands and the knees disappeared behind the door of her Chevy Suburban.
    Stopping in the kitchen for a Tuborg, Paul went out to the balcony overlooking the poison-oak forest on one side of the condo building. Afternoon sun filtered through the Carmel oaks. Everything felt unfamiliar. He had only arrived back from Washington a few days before, late at night. After driving thankfully into his parking spot under the building, he had vaulted up the stairs and turned the lights on in his condo to uncover only a rough approximation of the enchanting seaside hideaway of his memory. He had used the place as a way station rather than as a home lately, and it looked sorry as a bowl of rotting fruit and smelled about as zesty.
    The first thing he had done was to get his nest in order, which involved hiring cleaning and repair services at a premium for speedy work. Then he wasted time waiting while people didn’t show up, spent another few hours on the phone haranguing the miscreants, and squandered more hours supervising.
    Still, after six months of being empty, even spruced-up, the place felt as empty as a sarcophagus after a grave robber’s binge.
    He was going to have to do some hustling, too. He would have come back with a fat bank account, except that Pop had had that little stroke, and the money he had made in D.C. and most of Paul’s savings had gone to the folks up north.
    Not to worry. In a few months he would be rolling again.
    He leaned over the railing to watch a lizard on the deck below his. It slithered into the sun and froze, its blood warming slightly in the spring afternoon, waiting patiently for an excuse to move, eyes full of philosophical detachment but in fact attuned to any flicker of movement. It waited for prey, and when prey passed by it would strike. Paul observed the lizard for a few minutes, watching it jump into action, snapping at invisible passersby, and it grew larger in his mind, man-sized, and suddenly his wet hand slipped and he was on his toes, going over, madly gripping the railing and watching the full beer bottle fall with a