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She cocked her head and gazed at him sadly. “Living under the bridge suits me. There’s karma involved.”
“In becoming a troll?”
Locket nodded and looked away again. “I’m fine with being a troll. As I said, living here suits me.”
“I heard you were informally elected head high troll,” he said seriously.
The woman laughed softly. “That’s right. I ran on the trolling-with-dignity ticket. Folks responded because I actually care, and for some reason they come to me with disputes and listen to what I say.”
“Regular Queen Solomon.”
“I try to be fair. I listen to both sides.”
“Not the way Hawk does things on the south side, I hear.”
“It is not,” Locket said, her voice hardening. “Compared to me, Hawk is the Lord of the Flies.”
“Explain that,” Sampson said, though he had an idea from Boog’s description of life on the other embankment.
“It’s dog-eat-dog over there,” Locket said. “Hawk doesn’t care about anything except Hawk. He certainly suffers upstairs. Drinks. Drugs. Surrounds himself with the same kind of crew.”
“What kind is that?” Sampson asked.
“The damaged kind,” she said. “You’ve heard of the collective consciousness?”
“Vaguely,” he said.
“Over there on the south bank, it’s all about the collective psychosis.”
“Did you see the Audi burn?”
“After the fact,” she said. “After it blew up, I mean.”
“You know Anna Bananas?”
She nodded. “I know Anna Stein and her children. The girl is very smart.”
“The kids shouldn’t be living like that.”
Locket made a humming noise in her throat. “No one should.”
“Well, we’re in complete agreement on that count,” Sampson said. “Ever seen a priest or minister around here?”
Locket’s brows knit as she considered the question. “Social workers come by every once in a while. Public health nurses. But I can’t say that I’ve seen any kind of clergyperson here recently. Why?”
“Because there was a witness close to the Audi when it was torched who says that the victim inside it was already dead and that he was wearing a clerical collar.”
She rocked back on her heels and then said, “Maybe you better go to the south side, Detective. There’s a guy you should talk to over there in Hawk’s world who, if I remember right, is homeless because he got thrown out of a seminary.”
“You have a name for this seminary reject?”
“No real name. But I think they call him Choir Boy.”
23
I MANAGED TO SLEEP a few hours in a chair by Nana Mama’s bedside amid the beeping and whirring of monitors and IV drugs designed to keep her alive while her brain healed.
At seven a.m. Bree came by to sit with her, so I took an Uber home to shower, shave, and change clothes. Ali had made plans to spend all day Saturday with friends, so I was back in the hospital by nine a.m.
