Joe Steele was an average guy, so average in fact, that he was almost an anomaly. He was of average height and weight, average looks (he had one of those faces that were so common that a person always seemed to recognize -- even if they had never met -- but was never quite able to place a name with) and just an average touch of gray at the temples for a man his age. His wife, Marilyn, was neither beautiful nor homely and, had it been possible to have .3 of a child they would have had slightly less than half a rug rat running around the house with their son and daughter.

Steele had graduated exactly in the middle of his high school class in an average country high school, and only two above the middle of his class at the University of Indiana. He made up for that streak of pinache by finishing just below dead center of his law class at Ohio State.

Averageness was not something Steele cultivated. It was something he was. It fit him like smell fits a skunk. His only claim to being other than average in any way (at least to the common eye) was his position as the Prosecuting Attorney of Scioto County, Ohio. The point had been made more than once that he would never have been elected had not his opponent had the good grace to die two days before the election because, while Steele was so imminently forgettable, his opponent had been an extremely popular individual. Even under the circumstances Steele had won only by a narrow margin, defeating a corpse by less than fifty votes.

Even as a prosecutor Steele was totally undistinguished, serving in the county seat of Portsmouth; a small town in a small Ohio County on that great scenic sewer, the Ohio River. Steele’s performance was not really much different than any other prosecutor in Ohio, being neither better nor worse than most, definitely nothing to cause excitement in the circles where advancement to higher offices were decided.

While Steele did not strive to be bland in his person or his life, it was the perfect cover for the one thing in his life that was not boringly average. Joe Steele was a criminal; one of the local inner circle of a crime organization responsible for drugs, illegal arms, prostitution, child pornography & prostitution and gambling. At least Steele thought he was in the inner circle and, in the small pond of Portsmouth, he did have a loud croak.

As he walked though the Monday morning courthouse crowd, having just returned from a week in the Bahamas, so effective was his natural camouflage that no one even noticed him in the lobby. It sometimes irritated him to be so unnoticed. He was, after all, human enough to want that attention that most people take for granted. It would have been nice, just once in a while, to have people speak to him as he passed. He was grateful, then, for the attention showered upon him when he entered his outer office.

"Hiya! Boss!"

"Is that a tan or rust?" (He winced at that old saw).

Blake Young grasped his hand firmly. "Good to have ya back, Joe. How were the islands?"

"Not bad at all," he told his chief assistant. "It was a good trip. Everything copasetic here?" Young groaned.

"Geez, Boss, You’re gonna have to get that word out of your vocabulary. It went out with the Gemini program. But, yeah. Everything’s holding tight. I’ll be in to bring you up to date once Harlan has left." Steele was surprised.

"Harlan’s coming?"

"No, he’s here. He’s waiting in your office. Doesn’t waste much time, does he?"

"No, he doesn’t, but that’s probably why he’s a state senator while you and I are still slogging away down of the farm. I’ll talk to you after while, then." Steele walked into his private office. Harlan Wise was standing at the window, looking out over the city. The Ohio River was visible as it wound its way toward Cincinnati and the Mississippi.

Wise turned from the window, his short, pudgy form blackened against the morning light streaming through it. At sixty, Wise had been a state senator for so long it was jokingly remarked that he had given advice at the original state constitutional convention. He had allowed his hair to grow longer during the seventies in an effort to keep up an appearance of being "wit it," and, while he had shortened it again somewhat in the Eighties, he gave serious consideration to grooming it even closer to the scalp (due to an ever enlarging bald spot in the back), until someone had commented that the bald spot gave him the look of a tonsured monk. He was not only vain enough to like the comment, he was shrewd enough to realize that it could be played up to enhance the appearance on integrity so necessary for him to run for governor two years hence.

"Good morning, Joe. Welcome back." Wise plopped himself in Joe’s chair as if it belonged to him; an event that irritated Steele every time Wise visited. "I have to be back in Columbus later today, and with the legislative brew coming up over the next couple of weeks, I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to talk to you if I don’t do it this morning. How was the trip?"

"Everything’s cleared," Steele replied as he hung up his jacket. "We’ll have a hundred keys a month for the next year, starting next month. Three shipments a month: thirty, thirty and thirty-five.

The price has gone up, though. They want an extra twenty five thousand a key because of all the DEA busts lately."

"That’s hardly a surprise, is it?" Steele shook his head. "We’ve just been lucky they haven’t raised priced before now."

"We’ve also been lucky that none of our shipments have been hit by the Feds or the ODEA."

"It’s been a little more than luck with the ODEA, and I’ve made some arrangements to see that that "luck" stays good. It will be formally announced Thursday that Wayne Mitchell will be appointed as the new head of the ODEA."

"How did you swing that one?"

"That’s why I got him on as sergeant-at-arms in the Senate. It gave me a chance to get him introduced to the people he needed to know. Then it was just a matter of calling in a few favors. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the governor is one of our investors."

"I had suspected that, but I didn’t know for sure. Which makes me ask why you’re telling me now."

Wise smiled paternally. "Because now you need to know. We’ve been keeping our eye on you and we think it’s time you moved up in the organization. We want you to take over from Bruce Edwards to run the entire southeast Ohio operation. You know the right people and you have enough experience to handle it."

"What happened to Bruce?"

"He’s having a little accident this morning. It seems his brakes went out going down that big hill he lives on. The car exploded before poor Bruce could get out."

Steele sat silently for a moment, contemplating Wise’s news. "What happened? I thought Bruce was doing a good job."

"He was -- until he got stupid and started sampling the product. He was losing control of things so fast that we had to move before the Feds got too interested. We’ve had to scramble to get everything covered again."

"Where is that going to leave me?"

"You’re clear. We’ve got all the hot spots covered. They won’t be investigated any further than Bruce." Wise rose and put on his coat. "I’ve got to go. Call me if anything comes up you need help with. Someone will be in touch later in the week to fill you in better." With that Wise left abruptly, not even shaking hands with Steele, who sat where he was, mulling over the morning’s events. It was not at all expected, and the implied threat was more than he wanted to think about. Yet it was not a situation he could refuse. His reverie was interrupted by a knock at the door. He looked up to see Young’s head sticking around it.

"Are you ready for me yet?

"Ahhh, yeah." Steele said as he rose and moved behind the desk. "Grab me a cup of coffee as you come in, will you?" A moment later Young was back with a cup in one hand and a wad of papers in the other. "Anything unusual?"

Young was the picture of sartorial perfection as he sat in the chair Steele had just vacated. While his clothing was not exactly the ‘power’ clothing of the Eighties, it did express that here was a high powered young man anxious to rise to the top, but with an eye to impressing the ladies, as well.

"Not really. A couple of B&E’s, four domestics that will probably be dropped and a drug pushing charge." Steele’s eyebrows lifted. "Not one of ours. An independent that Mirage thought was getting too uppity. He’s been moving around fifty pounds of grass a month, and Mirage got wind that he was looking to score some coke from some out of town boys. He thought he’d best pull that up short."

"I agree. It’s easier to stop them small than to let them get too far out of control. What’s happening with the Pearson case? Any breaks?"

"It’s sweet. It’s his first experience with the justice system and he’s scared badly. On top of that, Judge Moore appointed Gary Martin as his public defender."

"Good. That conviction is set in cement. Have you offered them a deal?"

"I’ve offered Gary a second degree Attempted Rape and he’s pushing Pearson to grab it. He’s pretty sure Pearson will jump."
"So we’re better off than we had hoped."

"Yeah. I really didn’t think we’d get the Grand Jury to go for the Rape charge. I figured we’d have to settle for Gross Sexual Imposition. That’s all he’s really guilty of."

"That’s why I told you not to mention that charge to the Grand Jury. If you had, that’s all we’d have gotten, and a three to fifteen looks better on our records than a two flat."

"Young nodded his agreement. "By the way, we’re going to have to use Tim to do our questioning more often. He's a master. Pearson was crying out for help and Tim had him looking like he was trying to brag about what he’d done to the entire lower Forty-Eight. It was just unbelievable."

"I’ll keep that in mind," Steele replied. "By the way, does Gary know there was no penetration in this case?"

"Yeah, but he’s not going to raise the issue. He doesn’t want to fool with it. He just wants to plead it; collect his fee and go home.

What did Harlan have to say?" Steel began telling him about the visit.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Groans of agony, some soft and some not so quiet, could be heard all around Dave Randall as he sat in the emergency room waiting area. The small bundle in his arms moved as the baby he held twisted, trying to root at her mother’s breast. Dave was a little bewildered and embarrassed at her actions, not knowing how to respond. He and his wife, Caitlin, wanted a child, but thus far had been unable to conceive. Having never been around any babies, Dave didn’t know exactly what to do, so he stuck the pacifier that was pinned to her pajamas in her mouth. It seemed to satisfy her as she sucked happily.

Dave did not really see their inability to conceive as a problem yet, as they had been married only a little over a year, but he knew that Caitlin wanted a baby so badly that it was beginning to prey at the edges of her mind.

As the baby whimpered a bit, he wished Cait would arrive quickly to take over this part of things. He needed to be praying for Mitzi, the baby’s mother, who was even now behind the doors before him, being treated for a drug overdose.

"I got here as quickly as I could," said Caitlin from behind him. "what’s happened?" He turned to see her hip length red hair even before he saw her face. Noticing Carolyn, Cait reached for her. Dave gladly surrendered the baby.

"Mitzi overdosed," he replied as he handed her the child.

"Oh! No! How is she?"

"Not good, I’m afraid. I talked to the ambulance driver before he left, and he said she went into convulsions and cardiac arrest in the ambulance. He said it was a good thing I found her when I did; otherwise that would have killed her."

He watched her with Carolyn and thought, "How much she wants a baby." Even her concern for Mitzi could not hide the light in her eyes as she held the child closely, cooing to her. "Lord, please answer her prayers quickly." A lump grew in his throat as he watched the light of his life pour love into the three-month-old child. She got embarrassed as the child again tried to find a meal, and Dave could not suppress a laugh at her discomfiture.

"Dave!" she admonished him. "Remember where you are!"

"I know, I know. But the expression on your face was just so funny!"

"Well, the poor thing’s hungry. I’ll bet you didn’t even bring a bottle or diapers or anything."

"There wasn’t time, Honey. Everything was happening so fast. All I had time to do was to bring her."

"How did you find her anyway?"

"Don Ballard had dropped off a bunch of stuff for her at the center. It was stuff they had used for their kids and grandchildren, and he said it was going to be too many years before there was another crop of Ballards for them to sit in the attic, especially when Mitzi need them so badly. He asked me to deliver them so she wouldn’t know whom they’d come from.

Anyway, I knocked on the door and got no answer. Carolyn was crying, and I thought it was funny that Mitzi didn’t see to her, so I checked the door. It wasn’t even closed tightly. When it opened, I could see Mitzi lying on the couch, looking like she was dead. I called the ambulance, then I called you."

"Reverend Randall?" called a doctor coming through the double doors before them. Dave Stood.

"That’s me. How’s Mitzi?" The doctor extended his hand.

"I’m Dr. Mike Hawthorne. I’m afraid we were just too late to save her. We did everything we could, but..." His voice filled with emotion.

"I’m sure you did, Dr. Hawthorne." Caitlin was sobbing in her chair, holding Carolyn as if she were the only thing in the world. "She was in pretty bad shape when I found her, and the ambulance driver told me what happened on the way here."

"Is there anyone we can notify> Or would you rather do it?"

"No...there’s no one. She came home from school one day to find a note telling her that her father and stepmother had moved out of state. No one even knows where they went. She’s never mentioned any other family." A cloud of rage crossed Hawthorne’s face, but he quickly managed to cover it.

"Can you give me any information about her? We need to notify the police and the coroner"

"I’ll be glad to help in any way I can."

"What will happen to Carolyn?" asked Cait.

Hawthorne choked. "That’s her baby?" Cait nodded. "Oh, dear, God. Children’s Services will have to be notified, then. They’ll see that she’s taken care of. How old was the girl?"

"She was nineteen. Carolyn is three months."

Hawthorn struggled with his emotions for a moment. I hate to lose one like this; even when there’s no baby involved, but we're seeing so much of it any more. I know doctors aren’t supposed to take these things personally, but I do. Every time I lose one of them it’s like losing one of my own." He uttered a curse. "Sorry about that, Reverend. Sometimes it’s just more than I can handle. Just keep up what you’re doing down there, will you? Maybe you can stop just one."

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