"Yeah. Right. I'll be in touch, Smitty."
The cool cop hung up the phone. Jambo Jambone X heard the phone mechanism click the quarter into the change-return slot. The dude was so cool he didn't even check the slot. That was way cool.
Still holding on to Jambo's wrist with a grip that felt like a redwood tree had grown up and around it, the cool cop started talking.
"I'm looking for a friend," he said.
"You got one. I am your friend for life, which I hope extends beyond the millennium what is comin'."
"Glad to hear it. But I already got a friend. He's about five feet tall, old as your mother's reputation, and he wears a Korean kimono."
"I know what a Korean is, but the kimono part's got me stumped."
"It's like a robe."
"Ain't seen no robe Korean," Jambo said.
"Tell you what, you help me look for him and I'll give you a quarter."
"A whole quarter?" asked Jambo Jambone X, who just last week had cleared three grand selling crack back of the high school. He wouldn't pick a quarter off the soles of his pumps, ordinarily. But the quarter the dude now offered meant his Glock wouldn't go off with his chin under it.
"No teeth marks, either. How about it?"
"Deal. Do I get my wrist back?"
"Sure."
The cool dude's fingers came away, leaving white marks and a spreading numbness. The numbness made Jambo drop his Glock.
The cool dude caught it up in one hand. His hand was like a blur. The other hand joined it, and they started squeezing the Glock like it was dirty tinfoil.
"Only it didn't make a tinfoil kinda sound," said Jambo Jambone X, a few minutes later at a crack house on Manchester Street.
"Yeah?" said Jambo's right arm, Dexter Dogget. "What did it sound like?"
"Like . . . like . . . like the guy was mushing up Silly Putty."
"What's Silly Putty?" asked a thirteen-year-old, wiping oil off the breech of his Mac-11.
"They used to have it when I was a kid, back before kids had guns," Jambo explained. "They played with this stuff. It's kinda like chewing gum, only you don't chew it."
"How high it get you?"
Jambo had to think about that one.
"Pretty damn buzzed, but not the way you know," he said truthfully.
"You been doing PCP again, Jambo?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact."
"Better take a hit of this stuff. Clear your head."
Jambo swiped the tinfoil crack pipe away.
"Don't need that!" he snapped. "This is serious. We gotta help the cool dude find his friend."
"Why?"
"Because I got a feelin' bad things gonna happen to us if we don't," Jambo said truthfully.
"What makes you say that?"
"This white guy, he could rule the 'hood if he had a mind. I seen it in the way he carried himself. No lie."
The other Bloods conferred among themselves. The discussion was brief. There were only two options raised. Smoke Jambo to shut up his stupid face, or go along.
"I say we go along," said Dexter. "Man who smokes the white guy and shows up Jambo rules the Blood. Any dissent?"
There was none. Smiling faces came out of the huddle.
"Lead the way and we'll take the day," said Dexter.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Jambo, as they strolled out.
"Who cares?" he was told. "It rhyme, don't it?"
Jambo frowned. Things are deteriorating. In the old days, about three-four months ago, everybody could lay down a cool rap. Now they'd become a bunch of mushmouths. What the hell was going on? They were doing only premium blow.
They found the old Korean on Compton Street, putting a poster on a peeling stucco wall that was covered with competing gangs' graffiti, until it was like a dead computer screen covered with the fading ghosts of its memory banks.
"Hey, you-old guy!" Jambo called.
The old Korean declined to turn around. Deep in thought, he positioned and repositioned the poster several times.
"We lookin' for you."
"Yeah," added Dexter. "Wanna word with you. You coverin' up our spray."
"I'll take this," said Jambo Jambone X, striding up to the guy.
"You deaf, coot?"
The old Korean looked up, as if noticing Jambo Jambone X for the first time.
Jambo Jambone X received two simultaneous impressions of the old Korean.
One, that his face was a network of wrinkles.
Two, that his eyes somehow reminded him of the cool white dude's eyes. There was the same scary confidence in them.
This second impression made more of an impression.
Jambo Jambone X had just started to backpedal to safety when a bony yellow claw took hold of his throat and squeezed. Jambo started choking. His tongue came out of his mouth.
And without any seeming effort, the old Korean used his head like a brush, washing the back of the poster and the face of the stucco wall with Jambo's long tongue.
Jambo was released only when he had no more moisture to give. He fell on his rump. The poster was smacked on the wall.
Jambo Jambone X pulled himself to his feet, trembling. He swallowed unidentifiable grit, which scraped his throat raw.
"Dude wants to see you," he croaked.
Behind him, the Blood were all laughing. He heard the click of safety latches.
"What's the matter, Jambo?" Dexter taunted. "You lost yourself?"
More laughter. They didn't know. What did they know? They were kids. Kids with just a few Glocks between them facing . . . Jambo Jambone X didn't know what they were facing, but he instinctually understood that it was better than a Glock. Better than any weapon.
"You jerks don't know!" he shouted. "This guy's a friend of the cool white guy! You better not disrespect him none!"
The laughter rang out in raucous peals.
"I am the Master of Sinanju," said the old Korean.
"You tell 'em, Master."
"I am with Esperanza, who would be governor."
"You hear that?" Jambo said. "This man with the governor! He be important. You listen up, you punks."
"When the one called Esperanza comes to this place of despair," the old Korean went on, "he will be treated with proper respect."
"Say it again!" Jambo exclaimed.
"There will be no shooting. No violence. You will listen quietly, and you will vote as I say you will vote."
"Hey! You can't say that!" Dexter protested.
"I am saying it."
"It's un-American. Besides, we can't vote. We're too young."
"I say we shoot the un-American gook," a youth announced, waving his pistol.
"I second that."
"Yeah," Dexter growled. "This we can vote on. All those in favor of smoking the uppity gook, vote with your pieces."
A fan of pistol muzzles arrayed themselves in the precise direction of the old Korean, whose eyes narrowed before the menace. Cold fingers touched colder triggers.
Jambo Jambone X realized that when those triggers were jerked back-jerked, not squeezed-the old guy who was a friend of the cool white guy was probably going to get dead. If he got dead, then Jambo Jambone X was going to have to tell the cool white guy with the thick wrists and very fast hands that his own brothers had done this.
Jambo Jambone X then made one of the most intelligent decisions in his short life. He stepped between the fan of pistols and the old Korean.
It was not bravery. It was not self-sacrifice. It was a simple subtraction. Take away the old Korean, and the white guy was going to take away Jambo Jambone X. One from one equals zero. Even a Blood could do that kind of subtraction.
"You sayin' don't shoot?" asked Dexter Dogget of Jambo Jambone X.
"I ain't sayin'."
"You sayin' shoot, then?"
"I ain't sayin' that, either."
"Then what are you sayin', man?"
"I'm sayin' you shoot him, you might as well shoot me."
"Okay," said Dexter Dogget, the second oldest and next in line to lead the Blood. The trigger fingers began turning white at the knuckle joints.