Loke stares at her, brings his voice back to friendly, and says, “Why are you here, Detective?”
“You sit back down, junior,” she says, and he does, slowly. “I know the whole story about you and your family. Uncle Chak wouldn’t even be breathing if the Latinos hadn’t had a power vacuum at a crucial moment.”
Loke makes an ugly grin at her. “Ah yes,” he says. “Mr. Cortez. The King of Bangkok Park. My understanding is he had to leave town in a great hurry. I’ve heard rumors about Cortez. Wasn’t he a close friend of your mentor? What was her name? Lee-Ann? Lorraine? Something …”
Hannah takes a second, steadies herself, and leers back. “That’s it, friend. Show me the extent of your ignorance. Tip your whole hand. Jesus, it comes down in the genes.”
“Again, Detective, I don’t mean to offend. Like everyone in the Park, I simply hear rumors.”
Hannah looks over to the floor-to-ceiling cabinets to her left and says, “Cortez would have gutted your fat uncle on a whim. Had him served as the weekend special at Chak’s own noodle joint.”
She looks back at Loke and head-motions to the cabinet. “What’s in there?”
Loke loves the question. “The usual, Detective. Office supplies. Paper. Pens. Instant coffee.”
Hannah rubs her eyes. “Decaf, I’m sure.”
She gets up from the desk, turns her back to Loke, and studies the wall maps of Cambodia and Quinsigamond. Without turning back around, she says, “I believe that you didn’t whack the priest.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Loke says.
Hannah shrugs, moves a fingertip up to follow a local street, and says, “You’re not smart enough to grab a Yale diploma, even with Chak’s big check to the endowment. But you’re not stupid or ragged enough to make that public a hit for no reason.”
“The Hyenas have enough to be concerned about. We have no need to murder an innocent civilian.”
Hannah turns around.
“Then who did it?” she asks. “And why do they want us to think it’s you?”
Loke shrugs and tries to look bored. “Maybe the Popes? We’ve been having our differences, as you know.”
Hannah shrugs back at him. “Maybe.”
“It could be anyone, Detective. Maybe the Castlebar Road Boys. Those Irish, they always have the religious hang-ups.”
Hannah walks over to him, raises her right leg, and plants her boot on the cushion of Loke’s chair, her pointed toe a half inch from his crotch.
Loke raises his eyebrows, looks from the boot up to Hannah, and says, “It would never work, Detective. The difference in our ages—”
Hannah cuts him off and in a low voice says, “You had a visitor in here recently, didn’t you, asshole?”
“I don’t know—”
The toe of her boot edges forward just a bit and she lowers it just enough to touch the inseam of Loke’s pants.
“You answer my fucking question right now, you dickhead Ivy League scumbag. You’ve got no idea what kind of problems I can bring into your life. You already know I carry some kind of weight down here. You know that because Uncle Chak told you. But Uncle Chak is a lightweight jarhead who hasn’t been playing the Park long enough to know who backs me or why. He doesn’t know how I figure in the landscape. And he can’t risk anyone in his family pissing me off until he finds out.”
She applies some more pressure onto his crotch. His eyes stay fixed on her.
“That’s a position I love to be in, junior. I love to be feared. So keep me happy. You shiver a little bit. And you tell me who came to visit you.”
“Obviously,” Loke says, a small catch in his throat as if he needed a sip of water, “you already know.”
“I want to hear you say it, junior.”
He takes a breath, puts his hands on the arms of the chair, smiles. “A young woman named Hazel. An artist type from down in the Canal Zone.”
She stares at him for about thirty seconds, then puts her foot back on the floor and says, “Very good. What did she want? And if you make any kind of joke — any lewd reference or comment — I’ll pick a bone in your face and break it.”
He believes her. Even with six of his best muscle-boys shooting billiards outside, he knows she’s telling the truth.
“She’s looking to immigrate. Into the Park. She wants Hyena protection. She wants a franchise.”
Hannah makes a long sigh in spite of herself. She gives Loke a single, long bow of the head.
“Is she connected to you?” Loke asks. “Is there a problem with this?”
“Did you touch her?”
“I didn’t lay a hand on her,” Loke says. “I don’t touch white women.”
Hannah stares at him, but somehow his comment defuses itself, drains her edge, and she decides it’s time to leave. She takes a step to the door, stops, and says, “Wise policy, junior. That woman’s a walking plague.”
Loke’s face gives nothing up.
“If you hear who lit up the priest,” Hannah says, “be sure and give me a call.”
Loke simply says, “Come again, Detective.”
“Believe me,” Hannah says, “I will.”
25
In the glass elevator, on the way up to the studio, Ronnie and Flynn neck like anxious teenagers, breathless and dizzy, mouths overly wet and heads bobbing and twitching in an imitation of panic. They’re awkward, hands colliding in midgrope, feet stutter-stepping as they reposition. And they’re both gleeful about their awkwardness, as if it was a sign of youth and unexplainable innocence.
Flynn especially finds the feeling a wonder drug, a therapy sent from God, unasked. Since their airport slow dance his body has started to believe he’s seventeen again, bone and muscle still growing, every possibility untapped. There was no loginess or heaviness when he woke in the morning, no preoccupation and instinctual prioritizing. He feels like his vision is sharper, his teeth more rooted in his gums. He feels like his lungs have been stripped of some greasy film that caused them to work at minimal efficiency.
He moves his mouth to Ronnie’s neck and sucks there and he can feel her shiver and push in against him. He entwines his legs between hers. He lets his hand fall from her breast to the waist of her skirt. His fingers hook over the edge, nab her shirt, and start to untuck it.
The elevator bell rings and she steps backward from him in a stumble and starts to straighten clothing and hair, staring at him the whole time, no words, but a lot of breathing and the wetting of her lips with her tongue. Flynn looks at her and shakes his head and says, “There’s no way I’m going to make it till two A.M.”
She tucks her shirt in slowly and says, “Maybe you won’t have to.”
They move out of the elevator and turn right toward the studio. He falls behind her and gooses her and she makes a playful, blind swat backward with her hand.
Through the huge plate glass they can see Ray in dim light, hovering behind the microphone in a cloud of cigarette smoke. The corridor speaker is shut off, but his mouth is moving. Ronnie stops for a second to watch him.
“Well, he didn’t get bumped tonight. Your pals must be vacationing.”
“Not my pals,” Flynn says, surprised by her comment.
“Look at him,” she says, “I wonder what the topic is now.”
“Isn’t it always the same?”
“It’s weird. He’s got a short menu. Strictly seventies rants. Fluoride. Interferon. The trilateral commission. Teddy Kennedy. Sun Myung Moon. It’s like his buttons jammed in ’75 and he’s never moved on. I mean, he doesn’t even slag the Japanese. Not a word about Latin America. I always figure even the other nuts must think he’s a relic.”