“I didn’t forget,” Hazel starts, but Hannah cuts her off.
“Don’t interrupt me. This is a story I like and one you seem to need to hear on a regular basis. You were one more little shithead with stupid parents who took a bus east and came into my fucking city. And that two-bit Cuban pimp, that greasy little Cardona, he was all ready to spike your little ass full of smack and add you to his stable. And for reasons that to this goddamn day I don’t understand, Lenore Thomas stepped in.”
“I know she did, Hannah—”
“Shut the hell up. A dozen little brats like you immigrate to Bangkok every goddamn week. It’s not our job or habit to intervene. It costs favors and it’s usually a useless, pathetic act. It’s futile and everyone who knows me knows I hate futility.”
Hannah looks away for a second, lifts her head to see Elmore staring at them from behind his register.
Hannah explodes. “Hey, Orsi, you old Italian fuck,” she screams, “when’s the last time the health board went through this dump?”
The Rib Room falls to absolute silence and Elmore turns on his heels and disappears into the storeroom.
Hannah waits a beat for the room to fall back to some degree of background noise, then continues.
“Lenore saw something in you, Hazel. Now, I’ve got no idea what it was. But she pulled you out of the Park before any damage was done. And she gave your name to her friend Flynn and told him to watch out for you in the Zone.”
Hannah picks up Hazel’s mug, sips, motions in a circle with it. “She hoped you’d do better than this. She hoped this would be a kind of way station while you grew up a little and figured out what you wanted to do.” She pauses and says, “How old are you now, Hazel?”
Hazel has to gulp to lubricate her throat. “Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three,” Hannah repeats.
They sit in silence for a few seconds, then Hannah says, “I know you do Elmore’s books, Hazel. And I know you’re good at it.”
Hazel lets out a quivering, audible sigh, like a warning sign to a perpetual quarrel, a never-ending row with a disappointed parent, a frustrated mother who’ll never understand an infinite number of facts.
“I don’t understand why you still live this way, Hazel.”
“It’s my life, Detective,” Hazel says, staring at the table.
“I don’t see why you don’t get a decent place to live. I know Flynn would help you. He helped Lenore and her brother when their parents kicked. He’s good at his job, despite the radio shit.”
“Please,” Hazel says in a whisper, but Hannah keeps pushing.
“I don’t get you. Why don’t you buy some decent clothes? Why don’t you grow up?”
The last question pushes Hazel over the limit and she finds some volume of her own and says, “It’s my fucking life,” suddenly unconcerned about the consequences of her outburst.
They stare at each other, both wondering if it’s going to get physical, if punches will be thrown and steaming coffee tossed. But Hannah defuses the moment by bringing her hands together in a half dozen claps of applause.
“Still some piss left in the girl from Kansas, huh?” Hannah says. She pauses, drains the last of Hazel’s coffee, pulls her own mug in front of her, and says, “Why don’t we start this whole thing over, okay?”
Hazel lets her head fall back on her seat. Hannah thinks she looks tired and pale, that she could use a rare steak and a full day out in the sun, away from the noise of radios and self-righteous ideology.
“Last I heard,” Hazel says, now kind of languid, maybe even, Hannah thinks, kind of sultry, “you were still a narc cop. I’m not dealing and I’m barely using and you guys are not known for your love of the Canal Zone. So, why this visit, Detective Shaw? Is there a reason for you harassing me and Elmore?”
“You’re the eternal teenager, Hazel. Can’t tell love from harassment. Normally people know when I’m harassing them.”
“The contusions are always a giveaway.”
“I’m not narcotics anymore. I’m homicide.”
“Would that be a promotion or a demotion?”
Hannah gives a mock smile. “I just want to have a little talk with you, sweet one. Elmore was just being a nuisance. I think he’s too interested in you, by the way.”
“Is this where you make the pitch for the convent school?”
Hannah smiles and says, “No, this is where I ask you what the fuck you were doing at the Hyenas’ clubhouse.”
Bingo. The timing and delivery were perfect. Lenore would be proud. Now she needs to capitalize before Hazel can think up a convincing lie.
“You backsliding, little sister?” she snaps. “You bored with the art world here? You anxious to sell your ass for all the Cambodian fuckers over on Hip Sing Street?”
“Hannah—” Hazel begins, coming upright in the booth, but Hannah’s not ready to let her explain, she wants to land a few more jabs.
“Nothing interesting happens in the Park that I don’t hear about. And white-trash bohemian bitches putting out for jarheads is definitely considered interesting.”
Hazel knows she’s beat. Part of her knew it the minute Hannah took hold of her arm out on the street. She goes docile and simply says, “You going to bust me?”
Hannah cocks her head like this is the most stupid remark she’s heard this season and says, “For what?”
“Oh,” Hazel says weakly, “you people need a reason these days.”
Hannah excises all the sarcasm and threat from her voice and speaks clearly and evenly. “The bantering part of this discussion is over, Hazel. Now sit quiet and listen to me. I’m a homicide cop. I’m also the department’s unofficial liaison to the Park. That means I know as much gang shit as the gang squad. It means I still meet up with the vice people more often than they like. If it takes place in Bangkok Park, then very simply, I am involved. By this point, everyone on both sides of the legal fence has come to understand and accept that. I think you should too.”
Hazel gives a single nod and Hannah goes on.
“Now, you probably heard about the priest who got torched in St. Brendan’s. Somebody poured benzine all over this poor bastard’s head and lit him up like a fucking rocket. Back in August, the Angkor Hyenas pulled the same stunt on a bodega that was under the protection of the Granada Street Popes. So either the Hyenas whacked the priest or somebody, maybe the Popes, maybe somebody else, wants me to think it was the Hyenas. Do you follow the story so far?”
Another nod.
“Now, we’ve had an idiot named Zarelli sitting watch over the Cambodians’ little shop on Hip Sing. And he gives me a call the other day that some blond punk goddess just strolled in the front door of slopeland. And in the back of my brain, though I don’t want to believe it, I’ve got a hunch who the Hyenas’ visitor could be. So, I follow up my hunch, ’cause I want to confirm this news before I take any action. And goddamn if my hunch doesn’t end up the truth. So, now you are going to sit there, little sister, and tell me in simple words what the fucking meeting was all about. And if it was to buy your way back into that cesspool that Lenore pulled you out of, you’re going to wish you never put your seventeen-year-old ass on a Greyhound to Quinsigamond.”
Hazel swallows, closes her eyes, rubs fingers over the bridge of her nose, opens her eyes, and looks at Hannah.
“It’s not what you think,” she says.
Hannah doesn’t speak.
“We had heard, some people had heard—”
“What people?” Hannah asks.
“Some of the hackers,” Hazel says, pleading slightly. “The little goofs with the keyboards and the modems. They kind of hang around the radio fringe. They think we’re retro but hip. They—”