“Straight up?” Ty laughed. “Huh.” They walked back along the highway without a word.
The day was coming up, black thinning to silver. The two boys crossed the damp lot, and East unlocked the door. The holiday bells rang. They’d been on there since he arrived, but weeks had gone by without his really hearing them.
Ty stalked around the place, examining the counter and the merchandise, trying on a pair of goggles. East stood watching until he felt time again, stretching long. He went to unknot the rope that slung the bag from the rafters and lower it to the floor.
Ty finished his circuit. “Now you sit down,” he said. “I brought a message.”
Gingerly East sat on one of the sofas. Ty took his perch opposite.
“Ready to listen?”
“I guess,” said East.
“Then—you’re coming back. This ain’t home. You don’t belong here.”
East shrugged.
“The organization changed. So I came to get you. Here on, it’s business.”
“Business,” East repeated blankly.
“Maybe the fat boy told you. Somebody bought The Boxes.”
“Walter told me,” East said. “So, they sold Fin out?”
“Streets and houses. Those shit holes you stand by, man,” Ty sneered. “Like this place. You remember how your place got taken down? That took five minutes. Police took two more while you were gone. It ain’t even hard for them; they come before lunch. So, yeah, we sold them out.”
East shook his head.
“Things change,” Ty insisted. “They paid us like fools. Businessman from Mexico. In love with America, man. Paid us one and a half million dollars.”
East whistled. “But what’s left? What’s the business now?”
Ty’s face tightened. “Don’t you ever pay attention, man? Houses got no future. Police like hitting them, mayors like hitting them, news likes hitting them.” He wiped his mouth. “You the only one doesn’t get it. Your boys, your crew? They back in school now. Making something of themselves.”
“What about us?”
“Us. We’re making money. All that what Michael did at UCLA, we work other colleges now. Them schoolkids love weed. Smoke too much. Pay too much. They’ll even go pick it up. Walter’s back in school too. But he still works Saturdays at the DMV. They think he’s, like, twenty-five. So far up in them computers now, they can’t stop him.” Ty smiled. “You know Walter just makes up people, man.”
“He makes up licenses.”
“No. He makes people. He made you, Antoine Harris. We talked about this.”
East’s arm smarted. “So how you gonna make money on that?”
“Shit, boy. People pay. You know what a college kid will pay to be twenty-one, have a second name? What a Mexican dude will pay to be in the computer for years going back?” Ty wiped his mouth. “People make lives on that shit.”
“Police gonna catch you on that too?”
“Walter is smart,” Ty said. “And careful. You don’t even know his name.”
“Walter is his name,” snapped East.
Ty laughed in his face. “You don’t listen. You don’t even know who you are.”
“Your brother,” East said.
“Half brother. Right,” said Ty. “We got your mother in common. But since you always been Fin’s boy, that organization gonna be yours. That’s what Fin wants.”
“Fin’s boy?”
Ty’s face filled then, no longer just a talkative skeleton. It filled and flexed with the old hatred.
“Nigger, you know,” he said. “Half brother. But you are what I ain’t.”
People had always whispered at it. But there was nothing he could trust upon. A father wasn’t anyone he’d ever known.
It wasn’t anything he could use now.
“We left town for that reason,” Ty said.
“What reason?”
“Protect the core.”
“The core?”
“You think Fin gonna send the four of us to kill a dude?” Ty said. “Makes no sense. Why not just two guns? Why not one?”
“To protect us,” East said dubiously.
“Get you out of town. Walter and you. Brains and blood.”
“But what about…” East said, and then it was as if he couldn’t remember anyone’s name. “What about Michael Wilson?”
“Michael Wilson was a babysitter. Bad one, we found out. He handled the polite situations. I handled the impolite ones.”
“But people higher up,” East said. “Sidney. Johnny.”
“There is no Sidney or Johnny.” Ty made a quick gesture that East didn’t want to see. Something slipped, pulsed under East’s ribs.
“But what about the dude?” he protested. “The judge? Why was that?”
“An excuse.”
“An excuse?”
“Prosecution got a hundred witnesses, man. They didn’t need Judge Carver Thompson.”
“Why we kill him, then?”
“You,” said Ty.
“Me?”
“You were the only one took that seriously. It was you who kept on. Mission-focused—I hand it to you, man. Fin says something, you do it.”
Ironically Ty bowed.
“No,” East said. “That ain’t how it was. Don’t put it on me. We killed the man. What comes of that?”
“Nothing comes of it.”