Sidney stood away in the darkness with his little snub gun eyeing East’s head.
“Failing, third-rate, sorry motherfucker.”
East went still. They said that down here people got killed sometimes, bodies dropped down the airshaft into the dark where nothing could smell them. He looked flatly past the gun.
Sidney was hot. “I don’t like losing houses. Fin don’t like losing houses.”
“I ain’t found out yet what happened,” East said simply.
“Your boys ain’t shit. Who was it?”
“Dap. Needle.”
“Someone’s stupid. Someone didn’t care.”
East objected, “They know their jobs. That was my house I had for two years.”
“I had the house, boy,” Sidney spat. “You had the yard.”
East nodded. “I was there a long time.”
“Best house we had in The Boxes. Fin loves your skinny ass—you tell him it’s gone.”
It was not the first gun East had talked down. You did not fidget. You showed them that you were not scared. You waited.
Just then, Sidney’s phone crackled. He uncocked his gun and stuck it away. Behind him, Johnny wagged his head and got off the car. Johnny was a strange go-along, dark black and slow-moving where Sidney was half Chinese, wound up all the time. Johnny was funny. He could be nice; he handled problems inside the house, kept the U’s from fighting with each other. But you did not want to raise his temperature.
“Sidney don’t relish the running,” Johnny laughed. “In case you wasn’t clear about that.”
East breathed again. “Did everyone get out?”
“Barely. They got some U’s. No money and no goods.”
“Who was shooting out?”
“I don’t know, man. Some old fool, shotgun in his pants. We was grabbing and getting. I guess you could say he was too.”
Sidney put his phone away. He turned, fuming. “Someone did get shot.”
“I know it,” said East. “Little girl.” He could see the Jackson girl, the roundness of her face, like a plum, a little pink something tied in her hair.
“In the news it ain’t gonna be no little girl,” said Johnny. “Gonna be a very big girl. It’s a little girl when your ass gets shot.”
This had been a bad time. Fin’s man Marcus had been picked up three months ago. Marcus kept bank, never carried, never drove fast or packed a gun, quiet. He had a bad baby arm with seven fingers on his hand. He knew in his head where everything came from and where it went, where it was—no books, nothing to hide. Twenty-two years old, skilled, smart: Fin liked that. But they had him now, no bail. No bail meant the PD could just keep asking him questions till they ran out of questions. Since then, everything was getting tight. One lookout picked up just loitering—they kept him in for three days. Runners getting scooped off the street, just kids, police rounding them up in a boil of cars and lights, breaking them down.
Some judge wanted a war, so everything had gotten hard.
—
They rode the black wagon south unhappily. Sidney coughed wetly, like the running had made him lung-sick. He wiped his gargoyle face. “Don’t look at the street signs,” he snapped.
“Man, who cares? I know what street this is,” said Johnny.
Something went pumma, pumma, pum in the speaker box, and the AC prickled hard on East’s face. He closed his eyes, like Sidney said, and didn’t look out at the street.
Losing the house—it was going to be on him. He owned the daytime boys; he owned their failure. He’d run the yard for two years, and he’d taught the lookouts, and until today everyone said he’d done it well. His boys knew their jobs; they came on time, they didn’t fight, didn’t make noise. He could not see where it’d gone wrong. That girl—he shouldn’t have talked to her for so long. Maybe she would have wandered off. He could have let Antonio muscle her a bit. She wound up dead anyhow.
What could he do? That many cops come to take a house, they’re gonna take it.
A pair of dogs went wild as the car slowed, but East didn’t open his eyes. Some of the neighbors’ dogs likely were Fin’s. Most people would keep a good dog if you gave them the food for it. And the cops looked where the dogs were. You didn’t keep dogs where you stayed.
“Don’t look at the house numbers.”
“Man, how I’m not gonna see what house it is?” countered Johnny.
They parked down the street and walked. A little girl on a hollow tricycle scraped the sidewalk with her plastic wheels. The day had turned hot and windy. When Sidney said, “Hyep,” they all turned and mounted two steps up toward a flat yellow house.
FOR SALE, said a sign. Someone had blacked out the real estate agent’s name.
—