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“Like a gun,” Hester said to Burns.

But he wasn’t listening.

“You wanna help Manny?” he asked me. It seemed as if he saw something important and lasting in the intention alone, like a burning bush or a resurrection.

“That’s what I’ve been hired to do.”

“Hired by who?” Hester asked.

The burned man’s eyes echoed the question.

“Nobody official,” I allowed. “I’m not working for the cops or the state, and the person paying me really wants Mr. Man to be released. But I can’t give you a name. That would violate client confidentiality.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Hester asked.

“You don’t,” I admitted. “But I’ve paid the shelter the money for this meeting and you don’t know anything about the case.”

There was an agenda to my answer. If Burns knew that I had money to pay for information he was more likely to want to deal with me.

“This meeting is over,” Hester said. But she was already too late.

“No,” Burns interjected. “No…I believe him. I know why Miranda send him here.”

Hester’s shoulders sagged then. She knew Theodore. She knew that he knew that I had what he needed.

I remembered something that my grandmother would say.

“You cain’t protect a wolf from bein’ a wolf. That’s like tryin’ to say it’s midnight when it’s really high noon.”

“We should probably talk alone,” I said to Burns.

“No,” Hester proclaimed.

“Yeah, we should, Auntie H.,” Burns said, a note of authority in his voice. “You don’t wanna know nuthin’ ’bout what got to do with Manny and them, and them cops.”

“You can’t do this,” Hester said to me.

I stood up from my stool. Burns followed suit.

“I’ll give you the money back,” Hester offered, realizing too late that her greed for the shelter was, in its own way, a betrayal.

“I’ll bring him back tonight,” I said.

“You’ll get him killed.”

“He’s no use to anyone as a witness, Miss Fray, and I won’t tell about our conversation if you don’t.”

“He’s vulnerable,” she said in a whisper.

Vulnerable. With that one word she was able to explain the pain of his prostitution and the need for self-destruction; his addiction coupled with the inability to escape any part of the suffering rained down upon him by a life not of his making.

There were hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of young people like Burns stumbling down the streets of rural, suburban, and big-city America. They each had the same affliction, but they could only be saved one at a time.

“No, I’m not, Auntie Hester,” the scarred man intoned. “Not even a captain in the Green Berets could survive one day in the life I got to live. I’m strong. I could take it.”

Hester Fray was defeated by this claim. I could see in her eyes that she was in love with her job and her people. This passion made me want to know more about her, but there was no time for that kind of recreation.

“I got to score before we do anything else,” Burns told me on the street.