Richard Seward, known as "Shaggy" to his friends and "Rick" or "Boss" to everyone else, sat in his car in a parking lot. His window was halfway down and he looked a little bored. His grey slacks and white dress shirt were easy to identify as high quality, even from a distance. His watch, large and bold, cost more than the luxury car he was sitting in. The nickname "Shaggy" seemed not to fit. It had come not from the way he dressed but from the beard he no longer had. In his first days running in the streets he had tried to grow one. It had come in uneven everywhere. He had persisted, even when his gang brothers started calling him Shaggy for the first time. Eventually he had given up and shaved it off, but the name had stuck.
If there was anything Shaggy didn't like about his life, it didn't show. He ate well, dressed well, and lived well, having paid cash for a 4-bedroom home with a large yard and pool, usually surrounded by young, attractive women who wanted his attention. His enemies were few, and even his brushes with the law were now infrequent, the local police more content to pick off the smaller, lower branches on his tree than going for the trunk. He even had a plan for succession so that he could quietly slip away and live the rest of his life with ease away from danger. He just had one more thing to do on this night. And then all would be done.
As a man approached his car, Shaggy sat up in the seat. When he saw that it was not who he was expecting, his expression changed to a look of irritation. Then he noticed the briefcase the man was carrying. That bothered him. Cops didn't carry briefcases. Shaggy reached into the center console of his car and wrapped his hand around the gun there.
"That would be a bad choice," the man said as he bent down and looked Shaggy in the eyes.
Shaggy looked at the blue eyes for only a moment before turning away and letting go of the gun.
"Go away, man," Shaggy grumbled.
"You have no idea of what I'm offering you."
"Whatever you're selling, I ain't buying."
"I think you'll like my price, Richard Seward," the man said softly. "I have something no one else can offer you and the cost is something you'll be happy to pay."
Shaggy didn't know anyone who called him by his name. No one he wanted to associate with anyway.
"Man, you smell like a cop. Get the hell away from me."
The man walked around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door. Shaggy sat up and looked in surprise. He was pretty sure the door had been locked. The man sat down in the passenger's seat, the briefcase on his lap.
"Get the fu-"
"Silence!" the man said harshly, and Shaggy felt his words stop as if they were not his own. "This is not painful, Mr. Seward," the man continued, his voice sounding irritated, "but you are making it so and that is a very dangerous thing indeed. Now, please, allow me a moment and we can conclude this business."
The man turned his briefcase so that the combination locks were facing up. As he set them, Shaggy found his voice again.
"Who are you, man?" he asked somewhat uncertainly.
"You may call me Leonard," the man said, his voice once again soft.
"Who are you?" Shaggy asked again.
"I have given you the name by which you may call me and that is all you need to know, and indeed all you will know."
Leonard opened the briefcase just enough to reach in and pull out a manila folder.
"I ain't making no deals," Shaggy said, eyeing the folder with a mix of fear and hatred. "I don't care what you think you know."
Leonard took a moment to breathe in and out before speaking.
"Richard Seward," Leonard began calmly, "I deal in choices. We all do. What do I eat for breakfast? Do I ask that woman for a date? Do I decide that a certain man has caused me a problem?"
Shaggy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Some choices," Leonard continued, his voice growing softer, "make little difference in our lives. Others can change our lives in profound ways. In most cases, we have no idea which choice made a difference. We may understand that selling drugs on a certain day to a man who turned out to be an undercover police officer resulted in time in prison, but we may not ever recognize how one choice on one day started a chain of events that ends in a life-altering event weeks, months, or even years later. Do you understand me?"
Shaggy remained silent. Leonard continued.
"Today, Richard Seward, I am offering you an opportunity. I am giving you the chance to make a choice. At many times in your life you have made choices that have brought you to where you are today. I am offering you the chance to go back and change one of them."
Shaggy laughed.
"Man, why would I want to change my life? Look at me. What's there to change? Nah, man, you got the wrong guy. I told you, I ain't buying."
Leonard matched the smile and Shaggy's quickly disappeared. There was something too unsettling about the man for his taste.
"I am not selling," Leonard said in a whisper that sounded like a lion's roar. "I am offering."
Leonard reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a picture. He held it out to Shaggy, face down.
"Take it," Leonard said. "You know who it is."
With a shaking hand Shaggy reached out and took the picture from Leonard's hand. As he turned it over his hand was trembling so violently that the picture was making flapping sounds.
"You have been searching for 10 years for the man who killed your sister. I cannot reveal to you who that man is. What I can do, however, is tell you that one of the choices I am offering you will bring this man before you. Do I have your attention?"
"Show me," Shaggy said through gritted teeth.
With no sense of urgency, Leonard handed the manila folder to Shaggy. Shaggy carefully laid the photograph on top of the dashboard of the car, then took the folder.
"Inside there are three sheets of paper," Leonard said slowly, his words carrying weight. "One of them is blank. That is the choice for you to simply continue. I will leave and your life will go on. The other two describe an event in your life at a specific date and time where you made a life-altering decision. Simply take out the sheet of paper with the choice you want to make. After you have made your choice, I will step out of your car and out of your life."
"Which one leads me to the guy who did it?"
"That I cannot tell you."
"But one of them does?"
"Yes," Leonard answered.
The word seemed to hang in the air as Shaggy opened the folder. The first page was blank, the choice to do nothing. The second page was a day in elementary school. It was the day he'd met Donnie, his best friend. Shaggy had chosen to play dodgeball at recess instead of soccer. He had been hit in the face with the ball, sending him to the nurse's office where he had met Donnie who was in there for a scraped knee from playing basketball. The two had been friends since. The third page was a day in high school. On that day a military recruiter had come to the campus. Shaggy had made fun of him to his face, trying to impress a girl. The man had simply looked at him and told him that the best way to really impress a girl was to make something of himself. Shaggy had tried to hit him. The man had blocked the punch and flipped Shaggy over his back in a judo move. While his friends had laughed at him, the man had told him that if he wanted to take that fire inside and use it to do something good, see him after school. Shaggy had run the other way.
Shaggy scowled as he looked at the third sheet of paper again. That incident bothered him. It always had. It was a blow to his ego, even now, more than a dozen years later.
"Simply take out the sheet with your choice on it," Leonard reiterated. "That will be your choice."
"And you're telling me you can turn back time and make me go back there?"
"I am telling you that once you make your choice, your life will be lived from that moment forward."
"And one of these will give me the guy I want?"
"Yes."
Shaggy flipped through the sheets again, sneaking glances at Leonard as he did so to see if the man would give him any hints as to the one that would give him what he wanted. Leonard might have been made of marble for all the reaction he gave.
"This one," Shaggy said, holding up a sheet of paper. "I choose this one."
Leonard held out his hand. Shaggy handed the folder back to Leonard with the other two sheets of paper in it.
"Is this the one?" Shaggy asked, his anger mixing with his eagerness.
Leonard opened his briefcase, placed the folder back in it, then snapped it shut.
"You will not see me again, Richard Seward. When I step from this car your life will be exactly as it would have been, and will forever be, with the choice you have made. This life, with all of its experiences, will have never been."
"Is this the right one?!" Shaggy demanded, shaking the paper in Leonard's face.
When Leonard calmly smiled, Shaggy shrank back against his seat.
"Goodbye, Richard Seward."
Leonard stepped from the car and closed the door. As he did, both the car and Shaggy disappeared. Leonard took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
"Oooh, that was cleverly done," cooed a voice behind him.
Leonard should have known she would be there, but her voice still made him turn around quickly.
"Makesha," he said, half in acknowledgement and half in tired relief.
"How did you know about that?" she asked.
"It is our business to know."
"You've changed a great many things, Leonard. One for the worse though."
"Is it?" he asked simply with just the barest trace of defiance in it.
"Some would say so."
"Would you, Makesha?"
"There is no greater good, Leonard."
"And melting gold does not remove its impurities."
She smiled at him. It was, unlike his smiles, almost warm.
"Shall we watch then?" she asked.
"Not from here."