That’s what the Nigerian had said to him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. How nice for the man. Every morning you wake up and look around for evil and then go after it. Rafe supposed that could be dangerous, but at least it was clear. It was simple. You always knew what to do. Assuming, that is, that you could recognize evil when you saw it. Evil just seemed to be so damned amorphous nowadays. Homeboy and Pleski certainly fit the bill. But what about Frank and CIA goons? And Majid? And Catherine, who, despite what she said, might have turned a blind eye? And Rafe himself, the newly-minted money launderer? How had that $675,000 he’d taken care of been earned? Off whose backs? From whom stolen, extorted, swindled? (Which brought to mind his own previous career, where he had bought and sold and shut down companies for the benefit of wealthy speculators, never mind whose jobs might be lost, whose lives might be ruined.)

Rafe drank his morning coffee and looked out the window at the street below. No sign there of last night’s hookers. A Sudanese immigrant opening a tobacco kiosk. A postwoman pushing her wagon on early rounds. Both with duties simple and clear. Rafe thought about what his purpose might be. Worst case: this could be his purpose, to think about his purpose. He remembered a story he’d read in high school, “The Beast in the Jungle.” Poor son of a bitch in the story kept waiting for something important to happen in his humdrum life, for the “beast in the jungle” to appear. But his beast in the jungle was that there was no beast in the jungle. A clever irony but sad as hell.

He set down his coffee cup, thinking “Stop thinking.” Just act, and purpose will (may?) follow. Or at least keep him too busy to dwell on these thoughts.

He stood up, ready to act, and was saved from thinking the next thought, asking the next question—“act at what?”—by the ringing of his phone.

It was Catherine.

Majid called a few hours later.