Joe Avery’s Early Cases
by Charles C. Cole
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4 |
One Out of Many
We shut down at the end of a busy day. My half-rosebush receptionist, Calendula, rushed out to be with family at the arboretum; a niece was expecting her first bloom. My head was spinning. We had enough cases to keep us busy for weeks, at a minimum.
I was enjoying a soothing hour-long gondola ride in Central Park, letting someone else do the “driving” for a while, strongly considering a public guilt-free nap, lulled by the gentle rhythm of the gondolier. It was one of the few places where I could really get away, pull my fedora down over my eyes and escape.
Then I felt a probing presence from somewhere very close. I pushed my hat back off my face just enough to come out of the shadows and squinted up into the eyes of said gondolier. He was fashioned like a professional lumberjack: a neat black beard, barrel-chested with wide shoulders under a black-and-red plaid shirt.
“Joe Avery,” he said, as if I was the answer to a puzzle.
“Most of the time. Problem, big guy?”
“It can wait. Close your eyes. Stop thinking. I got this.”
I tried, but curiosity got the better of me. He had a look of sharp attentiveness, like my safety was his number one concern. “What’s your name, stranger?”
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked not for the first time, I sensed.
“I wouldn’t have many clients if I couldn’t.”
“Paul Bunyan. That’s me.” With that, he returned his attention to steering and oaring.
“No offense, but aren’t you supposed to be as big as a mountain?” I asked, playfully mocking.
“My ox, Blue, ran off,” he said earnestly. “Or was spooked. ‘We’ figured we’d cover more territory faster, all directions at once, if there were more of me, human-sized, rather than just one gigantic-sized me.”
“Where there’s a will.”
“We’d done it before, when Blue was still a whelp of a working steer, for playing hide-n-seek.”
“Did it work? This time?”
“That’s the rumor,” said Little Paul.
“And yet, you’re still here.”
“From what I gather, the rest of me — when word got out the mission was accomplished — merged back into one skyscraper version of me, minus one microcosmic me, who’s currently giving rides in the park.”
“A sentient cell on the lam.”
“If you like. And I plan to remain that way,” insisted Little Paul, with almost priestly conviction.
“You don’t miss looking way down on the rest of us?”
“That’s the problem: I was too far above it all. I couldn’t appreciate the world-building. Now, I do. So many personalities and food and cultures! You’re all amazing!”
“Thanks, but where do I come in?”
“Big Paul’s got to be wondering about me. I think we can agree a visit from the ‘greater whole’ would be a disaster in our fair metropolis. They mean well, probably worried I’m hurt. I want them to know I’m fine. Couldn’t be finer, in fact.”
“Big Paul was able to reassemble and function without your contribution? He’s not lying in a meadow in some delirium?”
“Let’s just say I was the equivalent of an earlobe.”
I pushed my fedora back off my face and fully engaged. “If I reach out, aren’t we effectively giving away your location?” I asked. “What’s to say Big Paul doesn’t insist you return? Maybe come looking?”
“That would be perfect, if he did it the same way as before! I could persuade another mini-me to see life from my perspective. Maybe more.”
“He’s already lost one piece, so I don’t think that would be his approach. Do you? And how could you guarantee the next piece isn’t more essential, like an eye? We have to reach him before something worse happens. How did you hear about Blue returning?”
“An occult bookstore uptown,” said Little Paul. The faintest of lights flickered in his eyes. “In his spare time, the owner collects oral histories from folktale creatures. He even has a newsletter. Everybody reads it! That’s where I first heard about you. And about my pal Blue coming home.”
“Why don’t we give this fella an interview and let word find its way back?” I suggested.
* * *
We agreed to proceed discreetly. We waited across the street for the bookstore’s proprietor to flip the sign on his front door to Closed. I felt like one of my more desperate clients: trying to carve out time after hours to catch a vulnerable human so tired he didn’t have the will to reject any wild proposals.
We knocked gently on the pane of the door as the elderly proprietor, hair down to his collar, began to disappear into the gloom. He waved without turning back; such events had probably happened many times. “Closed. Try again tomorrow.”
“I have Paul Bunyan!” I announced.
He turned back, stepped closer and arched his skeptical eyebrows. “Seems to have shrunk terribly in the dryer,” he said in a droll voice. “I give you points for originality.”
“If you let us in, we can explain. We need your help!”
His eyes bulged. “Aren’t you Joe Avery?”
“Guilty. In exchange for helping my friend, I’ll give you an interview, if you like.”
Copernicus, our guide, ushered us into a tiny, drab kitchen in the back of the shop, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. He noted the shocked expression on my face.
“I save my money for the books,” he explained. “But I figured you’d want privacy over hospitality.”
“We appreciate your taking the time.” I glanced, as in invitation, to my partner.
“You want me to say you’re traveling,” said the proprietor after hearing us out.
“Which is true,” said Little Paul.
“And you look forward to returning home to share all you’ve seen.”
“Not immediately, but also true.”
“And this is so Big Paul doesn’t worry and come questing, fully reassembled.”
“Which would not be good for any of us,” I said, trying to move the conversation along. “Faery-folk are still trying to blend in. Citywide panic is not progress.”
“One question,” asked Copernicus, and I thought: Get ready; here comes the classic investigative journalist. “Why not change clothes or shave?”
“I may be smaller, but I’m still me,” declared Little Paul.
And that was that.
Outside, I was relieved things had gone so swimmingly, while Little Paul was distracted by something.
“I don’t think it could have gone better,” I said, with profound relief.
“I’m grateful.”
“But?”
“He said he almost never has guests back there.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“He had an incense burner tray on a shelf above the sink. I could smell hemlock. Elves use that to honor the First Elf, Eldridge.”
I dismissed Little Paul: “Maybe his last source was an elf.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe not all information is for publication. Maybe he’s one of the Elf King’s informants.”
Copyright © 2026 by Charles C. Cole
