1984.

They didn’t want Hank back at the Infantino Fishery. “You gotta understand, we’re a family business,” the foreman told him. “People around here know each other’s wives, each other’s kids. They knew Carla.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Hank. He couldn’t say it in full, couldn’t say, “kill her,” not back out in the world, in the office of Infantino’s, in the light of day and all.

“No, of course not. But it doesn’t look good, you know? I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is.”

“Okay,” said Hank.

“I wish there was more I could do, honest.” Maybe he honestly did and maybe honestly didn’t. But Hank didn’t get any help there. 

The shelter where he stayed over on 76th and Bickle Street regularly posted flyers for places willing to hire people with problems in their background, and that’s how he ended up washing dishes at Bobby D’s Delicatessen and doing a little prep cooking when they needed. It wasn’t much, but it was something. 

When you’re starting from zero, that’s what counts, anything to keep from having to beg for spare change outside the elevated train station. Some guys could actually pull in a decent amount from panhandling, but Hank wanted — he needed — something to do with himself, something more than just sitting beside a cardboard sign.

Washing dishes kept him busy. Kept him fed too. Bobby didn’t mind guys making themselves a little sandwich on their break. So, that was good. 

And the work was hard, hard on his body, standing over that steaming dish pit for hours at a time. That was good too — the ache in his bones at the end of the night, the burning in his legs, and that stabbing pain he got from where his shoes were giving way in the sole. Part of Hank still felt like he deserved to hurt.

Bobby’s little sister Iris managed the deli. Hank liked her. She could talk as tough as any of the guys but never let them get away with being sloppy or lazy. And her daughter, Betsy, worked the register after school. 

Betsy seemed smart. Hank could just tell that from how she talked. She was going places, definitely getting into college. And when she said, “Hi,” to him, she smiled and looked Hank in the eye. Betsy didn’t know he was a killer. To her, he was just a man doing a job. It was like having a secret identity, and it felt nice to pretend he was just like anyone else, without a past to haunt him.

The night that Hank met Jasmine, Betsy was celebrating her sixteenth birthday at the delicatessen. She brought around slices of cake from the bakery across the street — yellow with white frosting and strawberries. 

“Thanks,” said Hank, looking up from the steaming hot sink to the piece she handed him on its little paper napkin. “I’ll get it on my break.”

“Hey,” she said. “It’s my birthday. You can eat it now.”

He wasn’t going to disappoint her. So, he wiped the suds from his hands and accepted the piece. 

Everyone stopped working. For just five minutes, the whole kitchen, whoever they were and wherever they were standing, was just having cake. Even though they weren’t sitting down at a table together, it kind of felt like they were sharing a meal. 

And Hank thought, maybe, he could do this. Maybe his past could disappear like dishwater down the drain. Maybe he could just be a person again.

That thought made his steps feel a bit lighter as he walked home after closing that night. Although the first buds down in Keaton Park had started opening, there was a sharp chill in the late night air. But Hank could manage it. He pulled the hood of his red sweatshirt up over his head, set his fists in his front pockets, and hunched his shoulders against the breeze. 

From the doorway of a hardware store about a mile from Bobby D’s, an older man with wild red hair streaked with gray and one lens of his glasses cracked, pointed to Hank and cackled, “I know the Crimson Wraith’s secret! Yes, I do! I know it all!” 

Hank didn’t turn his eyes from the sidewalk. On the streets of Titan City, a person wanting to avoid trouble has to pretend they don’t see certain things and don’t hear others. 

But then, just a couple blocks later, the sound of a woman’s cry cut through the night from the alleyway. There was no way Hank could pretend not to hear it. 

This was where his rehabilitation training told him to pause, to ask himself what he wanted to accomplish, and to choose a rational course of action. But there was a woman in peril, and Hank had a debt to repay. Without being able to think, he broke into a run. 

Her purple sequined dress glimmered in the alleyway where she had been knocked to the ground. Hank could make out little more of her than that her skin was dark and her hair was light. The man standing over her wore a white tank top and a broad-brimmed hat. His hair came down to his shoulders.

“Fucking scratch me? Man, you got some nerve! Owe the kind of money you owe, and you fucking scratch me?”

“I don’t owe you shit, Matthew,” said the woman at his feet. “I earn my money.”

“On my fucking block you earn it!” And he kicked her in the stomach.

Hank could feel that kick as if he were the one receiving it. “Stop!” he shouted.

Matthew looked up and seemed unimpressed by the behemoth in a sweatshirt in front of him. “What’chu looking at, Red Riding Hood? Go on, back home to Grandma’s House.”

“This ain’t got nothing to do with you!” the woman on the ground added, “I got this!”

But Matthew somehow didn’t appreciate the two of them being in agreement. “How about you just shut the fuck up-” And then he was screaming as she sank her teeth into his ankle. 

Matthew raised a fist to strike her, but Hank ran up from behind and brought his arm down over Matthew’s head in a hammer blow, knocking him to his knees.

As she spit Matthew’s blood from her lips, the woman made it to her feet. Hank could see now that her hair was a platinum blonde wig. Its strands tangled across her face as she turned toward him. “What did you do that for?” 

From the ground, Matthew groaned. “All right, Little Red. You want the wolf? You got the wolf!” And he shot to his feet and swung a knife in an upward arc toward Hank’s stomach. 

Hank had blades come at him in prison. He was used to getting out of their way. That was the only reason this one didn’t spill his guts all over the concrete, although he didn’t manage to miss it entirely.

In one smooth movement, the woman whipped off one of her high-heeled shoes and threw it with perfect accuracy at Matthew’s hand and knocked the weapon free from his grasp. 

He turned to her in shock. “How in the hell-?”

Once more, Matthew couldn’t finish a sentence. Now disarmed, he had nothing to defend against Hank, who delivered a right hook across the jaw, three gut punches, and an uppercut that threw him back into a pile of overstuffed garbage bags from the closed Chinese restaurant beside them. Lo mein noodles slithered across Matthew’s face.

But the woman still was not done with Hank. “The hell did you do that for?”

“You needed help,” said Hank.

“You think I need you to tell me what I need?”

“He hurt you,” said Hank.

“Man, I been hurt way worse by way better than this punk. And now look at you! Starting to bleed all over yourself.”

“I didn’t want to let him hurt you.”

“You think, just because you got a red hood over your head, that make you the Crimson Wraith or something?”

“No.” That thought could never have occurred to Hank. No way could he see a criminal like himself in the man who handed him to the police with words that might have saved his life.

“You sure acting like you wanna be him. And you gonna be a for-real ghost you don’t get that knife wound looked at.”

“It’s not that bad,” Hank said, but then he saw just how much blood was making its way down his pants. 

Running into the fight for someone else felt a whole different thing than picking fights in prison. It had a rush that propelled him forward effortlessly and, apparently, kept him from noticing just how badly he’d been wounded. 

Hank said, “It does look bad.”

“I told you it did,” she said. “All, right, look. My place ain’t far from here. Damn sight closer than St. Gabriel’s anyway. I ain’t no doctor, but I got a needle and thread, and I seen every episode of M*A*S*H on the TV.” Then she sighed, “And maybe you did help me out with Matthew, just a little.” 

She looked down at the unconscious body of her attacker. “Sucker punch me with them weak-ass baby-boy fists!” Hank couldn’t blame her for kicking Matthew where he lay. “One for the road,” she said and led Hank to the sidewalk.

“My name’s Hank,” he said, as they stepped out under the streetlights.

“You can call me Jasmine,” she said. So he did.