Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Torstein was blue about the Dunker. He went off by himself for a while. Not long, a few days. We carried on same as always ... which is to say, we went to Story Hour in the park in the afternoons, then sat around shooting the breeze with some of the regulars. Without Torstein floating from group to group like a shimmering green dragonfly, though, it wasn’t the same.

That detective, Waverling, came around. He sat and listened to Story Hour, looked everybody there up and down like a cop would. Wondering who was armed, maybe, or who was high? I don’t know. One thing we’d all learned from Torstein was armed, or high, or sober, or whatever, every person was a human being with dignity and value. We weren’t as quick to size each other up anymore. But I guessed I had sized up Waverling. I figured he was there because Nikolai had sent him.

He recognized me and Pete from that time he tried to arrest us, and after story time he came and sat down with us and a few old bums who always came to hear the stories. Franz wasn’t far away, but he managed to look like one of the homeless rather than like one of us ... and it wasn’t how he dressed; he was dressed OK. He just had that ability to blend in.

“Where’s your boss?” Waverling asked us.

Pete and I looked at each other, shrugged. “No boss,” Pete said.

“The green jacket,” Waverling said.

“Torstein took some time off,” I said.

“Where’d he go?”

Another shrug. I really didn’t know. He’d just said he’d be away a few days.

The old guys we’d been sitting with started to drift away. They could recognize a cop, I guess. They liked the chance to chew the fat with somebody besides each other, but they sensed there was no advantage in their conversing with a police officer. He watched them go with an expression somewhere between boredom and contempt. It wasn’t an expression we saw often here.

“You guys bankroll Torstein’s operation here?” Waverling asked.

Again Pete and I shot a glance to one another, but there was no way to answer that, really. “No operation,” Pete said.

“Whatever,” Waverling said. “You give money to Torstein?”

Pete was smooth. He said, “If you want to join us, there’s no fee. You don’t have to fill out any forms or make a deposit. Friendship’s free.”

Waverling wrinkled his nose as if the idea of our friendship — or Torstein’s — was repugnant.

“I’m just trying to warn you, buddy, about giving money to a con man, okay?”

We both laughed at this. It had never occurred to us anyone might think of Torstein as a con man. If he was one, he was the worst ever, as he gave away any money anyone might actually give to him.

“You think it’s funny? This Torstein character, he takes your money, and he doesn’t mind putting you guys crossways with Nikolai.”

 “None of us is crossways of Nikolai,” Pete said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fine. Right now it’s your money he’s throwing away. If you don’t mind that, that’s your business. But when he starts taking money out of a mobster’s pocket, you gotta watch out for your own safety.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “None of us has anything to do with Nikolai, and Torstein certainly isn’t stealing from him.”

Waverling shrugged. “Whatever you say. But you got two story ladies who used to be big attractions at one of Nikolai’s clubs. You got a muscle-head who used to do collections for him.”

“Why are you delivering Nikolai’s messages, anyway?” I asked. “Aren’t you a police detective?”

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