Prodigal Son

said, "Your friend in America addressed your letter to seven different names."
        "I've used many more than that."
        "Police trouble?"
        "Not for a long time. Just… always seeking a new beginning."
        "Deucalion…," the monk said.
        "A name from old mythology-not known to many people anymore." He rose from the chair, ignoring the throbbing pain of countless pinpricks.
        The old man turned his face upward. "In America, will you return to the carnival life?"
        "Carnivals have no place for me. There aren't freak shows anymore, not like in the old days. They're politically incorrect."
        "Back when there were freak shows, what was your act?"
        Deucalion turned from the candlelit mandalas on the wall, his newly tattooed face hidden in shadows. When he spoke, a subtle pulse of luminosity passed through his eyes, like the throb of lightning hidden behind thick clouds.
        "They called me… the Monster."

CHAPTER 2
    NEW ORLEANS
        
        MORNING RUSH-HOUR traffic on the I-10 Expressway flowed as languidly as the Mississippi River that wound through New Orleans.
        When Detective Carson O'Connor got off the expressway in the suburb of Metairie, intending to use surface streets to make better time, the morning took a turn for the worse.
        Stopped interminably at an intersection, she impatiently kneaded the steering wheel of her plainwrap sedan. To dispel a growing sense of suffocation, she rolled down the window.
        Already the morning streets were griddles. None of the airheads on the TV news, however, would try to cook an egg on the pavement. Even journalism school left them with enough brain cells to realize that on these streets you could flash-fry even ice cream.
        Carson liked the heat but not the humidity Maybe one day she'd move somewhere nicer, hot but dry, like Arizona. Or Nevada. Or Hell.
        Without advancing a foot, she watched the minute change on the dashboard clock display- then spotted the reason for the jam-up.
        Two young hoods in gang colors lingered in the crosswalk to block traffic each time the light turned green. Three others worked the line, car to car, tapping on windows, extorting payoffs.
        "Clean your windshield. Two bucks."
        Like a patter of semiautomatic gunfire, car doors locked one after another as the young entrepreneurs made their sales pitch, but no car could move forward until the driver paid the tariff.
        The apparent leader appeared at Carson's window, smug and full of false good humor. "Clean your windshield, lady."
        He held a filthy rag that looked as if it had been fished out of one of the city's many weedy canals.
        A thin white scar on one darkly tanned cheek was puckered at several suture points, suggesting that he'd gotten into a knife fight on a day when the ER physician had been Dr. Frankenstein. His wispy beard implied testosterone deficiency.
        Getting a second, closer look at Carson, Scar-face grinned. "Hey, pretty lady. What you doin' in these shabby wheels? You was made for Mercedes." He lifted one of the wipers and let it slap back onto the windshield. "Hello, where's your mind? Not that a long-legged fresh like you needs a mind."
        An unmarked sedan had advantages in low-profile detective work; however, back when she'd driven a black-and-white patrol car, Carson had never been bothered by crap like this.
        "You're breaking the law," she told him.
        "Somebody in a mood this mornin'."
        "The windshield's clean. This is extortion."
        "I charge two bucks to clean it."
        "I advise you to step back from the car."
        The kid lifted his rag, prepared to smear the windshield. "Two bucks to clean it, three bucks not to clean it. Most ladies, whether they're male or female ladies, take option two."
        Carson unbuckled her seatbelt. "I asked you to step back from the car."
        Instead of retreating, Scarface leaned into the window, inches from her. Breath sweetened by a morning joint, soured by gum disease. "Gimme three bucks, your phone number, a nice apology- and maybe I don't mess with your fine face."
        Carson grabbed the gink's left ear, twisted it hard enough to crack cartilage, and slammed his head sideways against the door post. His howl sounded less like that of a wolf than like that of an infant.
        She let go of his ear and, exiting the sedan,