East was not sure. What East didn’t know about his brother would fill the van. You heard stories. Things he’d done, scenes he’d been on, that he could get in anywhere, was too little to catch, too young for the police to bother with. Only stories, and nobody, least of all Ty, would say what was true.
Gloomily East glanced at the closed, smoky window where Ty lay listening to them talk. Or not. Then across the pavement came Michael Wilson, white shirt glowing, white teeth grinning, paid up and ready, his hands clean.
6.
Then it was late and dark, the scenery switched off, somewhere in the flat, empty Nevada that lay past Las Vegas. “So this the Wild West, huh?” Michael Wilson said. “Like, if the sun was up, they’d be riding horses and shit.”
Walter rode beside Michael Wilson, who drove, and Ty slept, his video game switched off, across the back bench of the van. East sat tired and worried on his middle seat, crouched forward, hands uselessly figuring atop his knees, listening to the two boys in front telling lies.
“One time when I was at UCLA, man,” Michael Wilson remarked, “we had a horse.”
Walter said, “Horses don’t like black people.”
“Why don’t horses like black people?”
“Why you think?” Walter said. “Who owns them?”
“But black dudes train horses. That one horse, what’s his name, in the movie. Secretariat. Old nigger trained that horse.”
“Train him to what?”
“He was a racehorse, man.”
“Huh. He any good?”
“He won the Kentucky Derby.”
“Course he did,” said Walter. “All right, that’s one.”
“Anyways,” said Michael Wilson. “This horse liked me fine. He was a stolen horse.”
“What do you mean, a stolen horse?”
“Some dude stole the horse,” said Michael Wilson. “And he kept it on campus. The horse grazed the yard and shit on the sidewalk. Everybody giving it ice cream and pizza all the time.”
“Horses don’t eat ice cream.”
“This one did,” Michael Wilson said.
“Could you ride the horse?”
“Wasn’t that kind of horse.”
“What kind of horse was it?”
“I don’t know what kind of horse it was, fat boy. Just stayed put and made a mess.”
“What’s interesting about that?”
Michael Wilson exploded. “You ain’t supposed to have no horse in college, man. Simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because you ain’t. You got to follow the rules, or they kick you out.”
“Why they kick you out?”
“They didn’t,” said Michael Wilson. “I left.”
“You told Diamonds you got kicked out. I heard you.”
“Oh, you were there for that?” Michael Wilson laughed. “Don’t nobody tell Diamonds the truth, man.”
“Who is Diamonds?” East put in.
“Eastside runner,” singsonged Michael. “Sorry-ass Covina wannabe with one gun and a Nissan, trying to muscle in. Didn’t know what he was doing. Fin involved him in a little business for about three weeks.”
“Why they call him Diamonds?”
Walter said, “I think that’s cause it’s his name.”
“Diamonds Wooten.” Michael Wilson nodded. “Nice name. Back in Covina now.”
“I don’t like horses,” Walter said. “They big and they bite and they mess you up. You like horses, East?”
“I never seen a horse,” East said, “except with a cop on it.”
“You a professional street nigger, East. I like you,” Michael Wilson said. He laughed delightedly at himself.
Walter told a story about the U who’d walked into his house one day a few years ago with a Food 4 Less bag with two rattlesnakes in it, trying to scare his way into a fix. It might have worked, except the rattlesnakes went into a hole in the wall, and when the word spread, nobody wanted to use that house till Walter announced he’d gotten them out—though he never had. The snakes might still be in there.
Michael Wilson told about the research he’d done for Fin at UCLA. Michael Wilson said Fin wanted to know how much weed he could run at UCLA, thinking the college kids had to be underserved. What Michael Wilson found out was that there was more weed at UCLA than you could keep track of. More supply, more lines you never saw on the street, varieties, hybrids, designer weed, organic weed, heirloom weed, weed that was vanilla and weed that was chocolate, weed cut up this way and that, kindergarten weed all the way to cop grade. Selling for nothing. Giving it away. What happened rather than Fin trying to move in, said Michael Wilson, is that Fin started bringing weed out. UCLA was like Fin’s docks. What UCLA did not have was cocaine. They didn’t have it, didn’t know how to get it, didn’t know how much to pay for it. So that was a great couple of years, said Michael Wilson.
Walter said he thought Michael Wilson went to college one year. Michael Wilson said that for one year at college he studied; the second year was business.