Hard News

honey. I’m on the phone. Make a momma Easter bunny now.”
    “That
is
the mommy.”
    “Then make a daddy.”
    Rune’s poll of the tenants so far:
    One was Miss Breckman. Eight had unlisted numbers. Twenty weren’t home when she called. Thirty-three had moved into their apartments after Hopper’s death. Eighteen hadn’t been home the night of the killing (or said they hadn’t). Nineteen were home but didn’t see anything related to the murder (or said they didn’t).
    That left twelve on her list.
    A bad number. If there’d been only three she would’ve called them. Twenty, she’d have given up and gone home to sleep. But twelve …
    Rune sighed and stretched, hearing some remote bone protest with a pop.
    Courtney yawned and tore a bunny in half with fidgety glee.
    Quitting time, Rune thought. I’m going home. Then she thought of Sutton’s raspy, bitchy voice and fuming eyes and she picked up the phone.
    Which was fortunate because when she asked Mr. Frost, 6B, if he knew anything about the Lance Hopper killing he paused for only a moment then responded, “Actually … I saw it happen.”
    “ YOU PUT THAT IN A BOTTLE AND YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF something,” she said.
    Rune had walked into the apartment, right past the elderly man who’d opened the door, and stepped up to a glass case. Inside was an elaborate model of a ship—not a rigged clipper ship or man-of-war but a modern cargo ship. It was four feet long. She said, “Audacious.”
    “Thank you. I’ve never made ships in bottles. To tell you the truth, I don’t like hobbies.”
    She introduced herself.
    “Bennett Frost,” he said. He was about seventy-five years old. He wore a cardigan sweater with a moth hole on the shoulder and cheap gray pants. He was balding and had dark moles on his face and head. He leaned forward, a vestigial bow, as he shook her hand. He held it for a moment longer than one normally would have and looked at her closely. The touch and the examination, though, were not sexual. He was appraising her. When he was done he released her hand and nodded at the glass case.
    “The
Minnesota Princess
. Odd name, don’t you think, for a ship that spent most of her time in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic? My very first ship. No, I shouldn’t say that. My very first
profitable
ship. Which is, I suppose, better than my first ship. I named her
Minnesota
because I was born there.”
    He walked into the large apartment. Rune followed him. In the cluttered living room she noticed suitcases.
    “You going on a trip?”
    “I have a place in Bermuda. Haiti was my favorite. The Oloffson—what a hotel that was. Not true any longer, of course. I never used to go to British colonies but you know how things are elsewhere.” He looked at her with slits of eyes, a shared secret. She nodded.
    His eyes fell on her camera.
    “You have a press pass or something?”
    She showed him her Network ID. He scanned her up and down again, a CAT scan of her soul. “You’re young.”
    “Younger than some. Older than others.”
    He gave that a curly smile and said,
“I
was young when I got started in business.”
    “What did you do?”
    He gazed at the model. “That was my contribution to the shipping industry and the aesthetics of the sea. She isn’t beautiful; she isn’t a stately ship.”
    “I think she looks pretty nifty.”
    Frost said, “‘And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill/But O for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.’ Tennyson. Nobody knows poetry anymore.”
    Rune knew some nursery rhymes and some Shakespeare but she remained silent.
    He continued, “But that ship made money hand over fist for a lot of people.” He lifted a heavy decanter and started pouring two glasses of purple liquor, as he asked, “Would you like some port?”
    She accepted the glass and sipped. It was cloying as honey and tasted like cough medicine.
    “I started out as a ship’s chandler. Do you know what that is?”
    “A candle maker?” Rune shrugged.
    “No, a provisioner. A supplier. Anything a captain wanted, from a ratchet to a side of beef, I would get it. I started when I was seventeen, rowing out to the ships as soon as they dropped anchor, even before the agents arrived or they’d started off-loading. I gave them cut prices, demanded half as a deposit, gave them fancy-looking receipts for the cash and always returned with what they wanted or a substitute that was better or