Hank's Arc

Chapter 4 of 14

She came back the next morning. Hank was sitting on the same step with a different beer when Queen V. walked through the gap in the fence. She didn't bring the cart this time. Just herself and empty hands. He stood up, unsure what this visit meant. She stopped a few feet away and looked at him straight on. She pulled a flask from her jacket pocket, engraved steel with worn leather wrapped around it. She unscrewed the cap and took a drink, not hiding it. Then she held it out to him. Hank took it and drank. The beer was cold and good, better than what he'd been drinking. He handed it back and she took another pull before putting it away. "I have a cellar under my garden house," she said. "Stone walls, shelves full of cases. If anyone finds it, I'm done." Hank waited. He knew there was more coming. Queen V. looked past him toward his property, then back at his face. "You want your beer garden," she said. "I can help with that. I know people on the board. But you keep what you saw to yourself. Forever." She didn't say it like a threat. More like stating terms on a contract. Hank thought about the permit he'd been chasing for two years, the commissioner who blocked him at every turn, the lawyer who took his money and quit. "Deal," he said. Queen V. nodded once and turned to leave. She stopped at the marble bench with the carved lions that sat near the old lamppost marking the property line. She ran her hand along the stone lion's mane, then looked back at him. "I'll make some calls this week," she said. "But Hank—if you ever talk about my cellar, the calls I make next will be to the county about those twenty-three cases." She walked back through the fence line without waiting for an answer. Hank sat back down on his step. He'd traded silence for access, and now someone with real power owed him a favor. The beer garden was closer than it had ever been.