“What did they hear?”
“They heard there was a huge boost at this warehouse out near Boston Harbor.”
“Go ahead,” Hannah says.
“I don’t know, you know, it was all rumor—”
“Tell me the rumor,” Hannah says.
“Huge haul. Professional. Had to be. It would take semis to clear out this place. Drivers and muscle to move the shipping crates. And buy-offs. These places use real security. You boost a shipping warehouse, you know, you really piss off the big insurance companies. Last goddamn people you want to piss off.”
“Come on, come on,” Hannah says, intrigued but impatient.
“The rumor was that the haul, part of the haul anyway, was radio shit.”
“Radio shit?”
“Yeah, quality stuff — Japan Radio, Sony, Otari.”
“Go on,” Hannah says, suddenly unsure of the. conversation, feeling an annoying shift in the air as Hazel picks up pace and a little volume.
“Well, Jesus, you know, of course this would be merchandise my people would be interested in.”
“The Wireless crowd,” Hannah says, and Hazel nods and picks up Hannah’s coffee mug.
“I mean we’d have to be talking forty percent off wholesale, even on minimum quantity.”
Hannah shakes her head. “Back up. How does this rumor bring you down to the Hyenas?”
Hazel squints at her as if the question surprises her.
“Everyone in the Zone says the Hyenas are on the move now. Since Cortez left, the Popes are in disarray. This was a huge boost, Hannah. Even if it was strictly Providence-Italian, they’ll need some distribution. We figured if the Italians shopped even part of it to Bangkok, it’d be through the Hyenas. We just wanted to be on the list to buy. You know, crap like this doesn’t fall into your lap every week.”
Hazel ends with a shrug and takes a long drink of coffee. She looks up to see Elmore back at the cashier’s station, revising menus and stealing glances her way.
Hannah shifts her weight, looks down at Elmore but doesn’t say a word. After a minute she slides back into her jacket and starts to get out of the booth.
She does a long stretch with her arms, cracks her knuckles out in front of her, and says, “First off, I’ll be checking on a warehouse boost in Boston Harbor.” She pushes her hands into her jacket pockets and says, “Then I’ll be back down here to check on you again.”
Hazel stays seated and raises her mug in a toast.
“Anytime, Detective. Next time let’s make it dinner. It’s always such a treat.”
22
A slow parade of moody regulars is starting to file into Elmore’s Rib Room for the 5 P.M. early bird special — vegetarian chili and fresh brown bread. Elmore thinks it’s some kind of crime to serve vegetarian chili in a joint that calls itself the Rib Room, but you’ve got to know your market and most of these kids put the kibosh on meat-eating.
Elmore’s got the radio tuned in to WQSG and the place is filled with the sounds of Grandslam Grab Bag, a suppertime call-in sports show. Most of the Canal Zone crowd aren’t big sports fans, but everyone’s aching for the O’Zebedee Brothers to make a hit and QSG is the most likely target.
And sure enough, at about ten after five, as Elmore is pushing a plateful of diced scallions into his chili kettle, a furious argument about designated hitters is cut off in midholler and three high-pitched trumpet blasts announce the jam.
Bunt this, you bunheads. Yer outta the game. Suspended for the duration. Hit the showers running. O’ZBON clears the bases once again.
A spontaneous cheer explodes in the restaurant, followed by a wave of applause and whistles.
The broadcasting brothers of bedlam are back. The sibling spirit voices of subterranea are signal-sailing into your souls. Crank it up, Elmore, this dinner crowd is about to feast on fib-free fodder.
Enough, Brother John, with the asinine alliteration. God, it’s infectious.
Which brings us to today’s topic — infectious diseases. Like Doubt. I said it — the dreaded D-word. And I’m sorry, but keeping silent about our growing problem only makes everything worse. Our sources tell us that since we last spoke, more and more of you, who for the past five years pined for our return to Q-town, are walking around like some spike-haired minor league existentialists moaning, “O’Zbon is dead and anarchy is absurd.” It’s an interesting turn of events — in our absence, our cult grows and flourishes; upon our return, the number of true believers starts to dwindle. I guess faith is easy to maintain from a distance. But when the brothers’ voice is heard on the home front, belief turns into a greased pig. Goddamn hard to hold onto.
Yeah, and it’s weird ’cause this is the opposite of what we always thought. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder and familiarity will sometimes breed a very hip contempt.
Now, there are two roads that Jimbo and I can navigate in this situation. We can pull up stakes tonight, get back on the interstate, and never give another thought to the hometown and the past. Or we can try to understand this backlash, do a biopsy on the locus of the doubt, work with the doubters, put ourselves at risk, and try to make you all certain that we are who we say we are.
Amen, bro. We am who is.
It’s got to be one road or the other, ’cause like Elvis said — and I mean the dead one — we can’t go on together, with suspicious minds.
I was thinking our problem over at about four A.M. and I started to wonder why we were such a hit last time ’round. Was it the freshness, the typical rush that greets any new idea or product? Yeah, it was that, but it was more than that. Since the collective we crawled out of the bubbling, primordial ooze, slapped on a bearskin, and moved into a cave, we’ve been hooked on the one narcotic that never fails to fix. Absolutely addictive on initial contact. I’m speaking, of course, of the big M. Myth. That loop of an all-too-human story that was birthed in the slime and slop and salty blood of primeval consciousness. We listen to it waking and sleeping. We suck on it with each breath we pull in. We live it out in each minute step of our inconsequential lifetimes.
When we first passed Go with our initial broadcast, my brother and I put a new spin on a specific section of an old story and bounced it down to the playground where it would be most appreciated, sustained, enjoyed — Quinsigamond’s little bohemia, the Canal Zone.
And you guys grabbed the ball and ran. What we thought was a harmless and onetime prank was entirely something else by the time it hit your unconventional ears. We were the classic rebel and madman visionary, the bad boys with the lineage that stretched from the nameless shamans of the foggy past down to St. Ti Jean and his misunderstood wanderlust. We called black white and up down and underscored the patter with a backbeat you could dance to. We were anonymous and that meant we could be anyone. We were unlicensed and that meant we were the enemies of authority.
And so, though we never planned it this way, we appealed to a wide variety of local subsets here in the city. Little groups, hybrids, cults. Small families that had nothing in common with one another, other than the fact that they felt excluded from the mainstream. And that now they had a voice that would speak for them.
Do I need to say that that kind of faith scared us as much as the Feds coming to town?
So, we ran. Picked up an AAA atlas and eased up the on-ramp. Injected ourselves into the interstate asphalt veins of this great land.
And an odd thing happened out there on the road. We started to miss being needed. That mantle of spokesman that was hung on our pirate signal started, in retrospect, to feel good and warm. So, after a time, we rolled back home.