Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle by Ben English

asked. Feeling was beginning to return to his arm, and painful as it was he flexed his fingers and rotated his wrist and elbow. Nothing broken. The fellow was still chattering at Jack, trying to offer money, still speaking in broken, tourist French, and Jack switched to English. “Be quiet! There may be more of them close by.”
    A point which eluded you a few moments ago, idiot, he chided himself silently. But his returning senses brought no warning, no precursor of attack.
    Jack bent over each of the assailants, patting them down for identification as he listened to their breathing. He thumbed their eyelids up, checking for the uneven dilation that would indicate concussion or brain injury. Both would wake with considerable discomfort, but at least they would wake.
    “What are you doing, um, now?” asked the American.
    Jack flipped through the cards in the larger man’s wallet. “See all these Visas?” In addition, he found what must have been over three hundred dollars in American and British currency, which he pocketed, and two more knives. The thin man also carried a snub-nosed revolver, dark with grease. Jack threw the weapons down a nearby sewer.
    The baffled tourist, Mike, returned to his wife and held her until she quieted, then the three of them made their way out of the rubbish-filled labyrinth, Jack in the lead.
    They were out under the streetlights near the Seine when the man decided to speak again. He’d had a bit of time to think, Jack noted, and even the man’s posture had changed. He now stood nearer to his wife, within easy distance. Indeed, from time to time Mike would reach out to touch his wife’s hair or hold her arm, and he was particularly solicitous toward her as the three of them maneuvered to a well-illuminated park where a pair of benches faced each other above the river. They spoke quietly for a few moments, Jack pointing out the lights of Notre Dame a few hundred yards down the river before warning them against taking any more shortcuts. Mike and Debbie were from Tennessee, recently married and celebrating their new Master’s degrees. A nice enough couple, Jack thought.
    “Well, my apartment is only a few blocks up, and I’m sure you’ll want to get down to the cathedral. I bet you’d like the archeological exhibits underneath, too. And, Mike, no more shortcuts! Debbie, don’t let him talk you into swimming the Seine, or anything like that.”
    They laughed, and then Debbie said. “You know, you look an awful lot like the guy in that movie we saw on the plane–what was his name, honey? The guy in The Walking Drum .”
    Jack nodded, letting an ounce of chagrin steal into his voice. “Yeah, I hear that a lot. Wish I made his kind of money, eh?” Mike nodded. “And that reminds me,” said Jack, fishing out the wad of money he’d taken off the two thugs. “You look like a couple who could find a way to use this.”
    They tried to refuse, but Jack pressed the money into their hands, anyway. “Courtesy of the Paris underworld, or something. Take it. Ride in taxis. Go to EuroDisney–no, never mind; you want to have a good time, don’t you?” This elicited another laugh. “Enjoy yourselves. Stay in love.”
    They parted company with enough handshakes for a crowd of twice as many. Jack walked a dozen steps before turning to watch the young couple, strolling away through the pools of amber light. They walked, heads close together, arm in arm, Mike now considerably more watchful, which pleased Jack. Debbie was leaning into her husband more than she had in the alley; allowing him to cradle her to a greater degree. Jack looked after them until the sweep of the river carried them out of his line of sight. Odd. Only a few years separated them, yet Jack felt ancient compared to the young couple. Older by eons.
    Yet maybe he could survive this.
    He looked across the bridge, and could almost see her coming to him through the gathering gloom. Almond-shaped eyes, lustrous dark hair as pure