Thin Line Read Free

wrong question."
    "Then what's the right question?"
    "What's the difference?"
    Bear shrugged, said nothing, redirected his focus to the op-ed piece.
    "The difference," I said, "is that both halves sit on a line so thin I don't believe it exists."
    Without looking up, Bear offered a half-hearted chuckle as he hiked his thumb over his shoulder toward the cop who was leaning against a light post on the
    opposite side of the intersection. The officer wore a ski mask with a full oval cutout for his face. This resulted in the man's nose and cheeks turning
    bright red. The cop brought his hands to his face, lifted the elastic bands on his gloves, and blew into them. I doubted the effect would last long.
    "Why don't you go tell Johnny Law over there about your theory?" Bear said.
    I wasn't sure how he'd spotted the cop; the man had arrived after we sat down. I resisted the urge to check the glass behind me.
    "He'd agree with me," I said. "Think about everything he's seen working in Brooklyn. It ain't Iraq, but it sure as hell isn't a theme park either."
    "Nonsense." Bear leaned forward and dropped a thick forearm on the table. Its legs creaked as my side rose up an inch or two. "Just like you learned in
    Sunday school as a kid, there's right and wrong and laws and consequences that most people abide by. You can say they do it blindly, or willingly, or
    unwillingly but out of fear of retribution. Doesn't matter. Without those laws, chaos would ensue." He tapped on the table with two fingers and added, "To
    me, that's a pretty thick line."
    "Yet at times, the two of us are given a pass to break those laws if it's good for the government and the welfare of those law-abiding citizens who went to
    Sunday school and do everything they're told. Besides, I didn't say 'right and wrong.' I said 'good and evil.' The difference between them might as well be
    as wide as the Grand Canyon - at that spot a half-inch or less before the two sides finally meet. According to some, and I'm talking people high up the
    black ops food chain, if we take out a target on a hit they sanctioned, then we did something right. Makes us good guys for doing our job. But there are
    others, most likely our targets' loved ones, and presumably
our
targets, who'd say we are the face of evil in its purest form."
    "Face of evil." Bear waved me off. "You know who that is."
    "And yet, if you didn't know what they'd done, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from anyone else."
    "A thin line, eh?"
    "So thin your vision would blur trying to focus on it."
    Bear worked his hands against each other. "Hurry up with that coffee, Jack. I don't feel like sitting out here anymore."
    "Got somewhere you have to be?"
    "We both do. Or did you forget that, while you were philosophizing over your now-chilled java?"
    I tilted the mug to my mouth and drained the remainder, now cooled to a temperature just above freezing.
    "This stuff hasn't changed in thousands of years, Bear. My stance in 250 B.C. would be no different than it is now in 2007."
    Bear stared at me without speaking for a few moments, then turned away, stared down the street toward the brownstone.
    I said, "Does this make you uncomfortable?"
    The big man shrugged and said nothing.
    "You brought me into this line of work. Remember?"
    Slowly, Bear swung his head around and nodded. "Yeah, I remember, Jack. And, like I've said a hundred times, I don't like thinking about what we do outside
    of the times we're actually doing it. Right up until that moment, it's like a game to me. And then I can block out those few minutes where we neutralize our
    targets. In the end, it's just a way to make a living. Hell, you wanna talk about a line? I'm straddling that line every day. Besides, you know the stories
    on most of the dudes we take out. It ain't like they're heroes or Roy Rogers wannabees. These bastards deserve what they get. Every last one of them."
    I'd managed to get him worked up. But I couldn't relish the moment for too long. The