Pain Management

“Or just made it hard for him to strike any matches himself.”

“There’s that,” he acknowledged, saluting me with his glass of whatever. “Anyway, whoever was shaking down the night girls, that all stopped.”

“And that’s good, right?”

“It is. Should be sweet out there now. Only . . .”

“What?”

“Only there was a shooting right on one of the strolls. Pretty unusual. I mean, around here, you can’t buy dope and pussy on the same corner. It’s just not done, you understand? If it wasn’t about dope, had to be gangbangers. The guy who got smoked, he was a black dude, so the cops, I guess they’re satisfied.”

“Why tell me?”

“Just making conversation. This black guy, he looked young, the way I’m told. Only, turns out he was thirty- four. Too old to be banging. And he sure wasn’t an OG. Not local, either—they had to get their info from his prints.”

“Doesn’t sound like he was Joe Citizen, either.”

“True. Very true. Anyway, the cops aren’t as dumb as they act. Some of them, anyway. Whoever took this boy off the count, they knew what they were doing. Heavy caliber. Close range. Nothing like a drive-by. And nobody saw a thing. Must have been a professional hit man. You know, the kind who’d know enough to make the gun disappear after he used it.”

“Who cares?”

“Sure. Anyway, Mr. Hazard, let me ask you something, all right? You know the difference between a crazy man and a professional?”

“There’s lots of differences.”

“Not really. The big difference is, the crazy man, he doesn’t have a sane reason for what he does. It may be a sane thing he’s doing, you understand. But where he comes up short is on the reason, you following me?”

“Sure. Like what the papers call a ‘senseless crime.’ “

“Exactly. So—what I want to know from you . . . You want a phone call from me, maybe. I mean, if I hear anything.”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t be impatient, now. Here’s what I want to know: Are you saying, if I did you this favor, maybe you’d do one for me? Professionally. Or are you saying, if I don’t, maybe you’d do something to me? Like a crazy man would.”

“You know what’s funny about senseless crimes?” I asked him, mild-voiced.

“What’s that?” he said, shifting his posture slightly.

“They only have to make sense to the people doing them.”

I never looked back. Ann caught up to me just as I got to the door of the club. No one gave us a glance on the way out.

“What happened?” she asked when we were a couple of blocks away.

“Nothing. And that’s what all this was worth. Nothing.”

“Kruger didn’t—?”

“I think he told me what he knows. I even think he told me the truth. But it doesn’t add up to anything I can use. Doesn’t put me any closer.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve bet on the wrong horse before.”

“What do we do now?”

“There’s no ‘we,’ Ann. Just me,” I said, an acid rain of sadness falling inside me as I realized just how purely fucking true that was.

Whatever nothing I am in this world, I’m even less of it without my family.

She dropped me off where I had the ’Vette stashed, still arguing about me helping her with her crazy plans. I had her tuned out way before I got out of her car.

I sat in the driver’s seat, alone.

If I wanted a new piece, I’d have to see Gem.

I didn’t want to see her.

No, I did want to see her. I just didn’t want her to see me.

Hong’s Acura was parked in its usual spot. I stepped inside, prepared to see him sitting with Gem. Prepared to fade if I did.

What I wasn’t prepared for was to see them dancing. Slow and close. Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” coming out of the jukebox.

I went back to being with myself.

I was cradling the cell phone, deciding whether to call Mama, when it chirped for “incoming.”

“What?” It was almost two in the morning.

“You know who this is?” Jenn’s father asked.

“Yes.”

“Come on over,” is all he said before he snipped the connection.

They were all in the living room. Joel in his chair, Jenn perched confidently on the couch, Mike standing with his hands behind his back.

“Would you like some coffee?” a woman asked, stepping into the room like it was midday. She was short and trim, dark-haired, with a face I could tell was usually pretty . . . but now it was all focused on her children. She had cave-mother eyes.

“No, thank you,” I said, politely.

“I’d like some,” Michael said.

I knew she was his mother by the look she gave him.

“Jenn has something she wants to talk over with you,” Joel said. “And she said she’d feel more comfortable if we were all together when she did. That all right with you?”

“Of course,” I said, side-stepping the warning.

“Rosa called me,” Jenn said, no preamble.

I just watched her, waiting.

“It’s up to you, honey,” her father finally said.

“She wants . . .” Jenn started, then stopped herself.

I went back to waiting.

“What Rosa wants, it’s . . . complicated. And I’m not sure it would even be legal.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” I told her, aiming the words at her father, who’d translate them immediately.

“Rosa’s . . . tired of all this,” Jenn said. “She wants it all to stop.”

“All she has to do is—”

“She’s not coming home,” Jenn said, no-argument flat. “That’s not what she wants. She wants to . . . make her own life.”

“You mean, like an emancipated minor?” I asked, remembering what I’d said to Rosebud’s father. It seemed like months ago.

“What’s that?”

“It would mean she was an adult, for all legal purposes,” Joel answered her.

“Could that truly be? Even though she’s only—?”

“That would depend,” her father cautioned her.

“Oh. Well, maybe that’s sort of it. But, even if she was . . . emancipated, that wouldn’t be enough. She wants something else. Something much more important.”

“Daisy,” I said.

“Yes! How could you—?”

“I know about big sisters,” I said, thinking of SueEllen. And my own sister, Michelle. And how I wished . . .