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New York City: St Dympna’s Parking Lot
“Let’s go,” Cameo said flatly. She took off her old, battered hat and climbed into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac Seville she’d hot-wired moments before.
Nighthawk gave a final wave to whoever the fellow was who looked like Butcher Dagon as he and the boy peeled out of Dympna’s parking lot. He looked at Cameo. She looked back. She seemed different, somehow.
“I’m driving,” Cameo said.
Nighthawk shrugged. It was all the same to him. He went around the car and got into the passenger’s side and had just settled down when Cameo gunned it. They hit a pothole, bounced, and roared out of the lot, jouncing about like Mexican jumping beans. Nighthawk grabbed the dashboard and watched Cameo. She had a tight smile on her face. Her eyes, her whole expression, were harder, somehow tougher. As if she were a different person.
Maybe, Nighthawk thought, she was.
“You all right, missy?” he asked.
“No thanks to you,” she replied shortly. The inflection of her voice was different. Her words were as hard as her expression. Nighthawk wondered who he was dealing with now.
“You’re not Cameo, are you?”
She snorted. “We’re all Cameo, honey.”
Nighthawk nodded. “If you say so.”
“Where are we headed?”
“I’ve got some places around town,” Nighthawk said. He thought for a moment. “How about Staten Island?”
“Staten Island?” Cameo asked. “It stinks. It’s the sticks.”
“It’s quiet. It’s out of sight. We’ll be able to rest and talk some.”
“Talk?” Cameo asked. “About what?”
“About a job I want you to do for me.”
Cameo glanced at him as she skidded around a corner practically on two wheels.
“You’ve got your nerve,” she said.
Nighthawk nodded. “That I do, missy. That I do.”