The heavy young man pulled back the tail of his shirt and let it drop back against his waist. The butt of an automatic, stainless with black grips, rose out of his waistband and lay across the elastic of his boxer shorts. Quinn couldn’t seem to move. His face was hot. He was frozen there.
“You know why I remember you?” said the young man. “Wasn’t because of no girl.”
“What was it, then?” said Quinn.
“I remember you ’cause you were so little, and so white. Mini-Me, comin’ up here, acting so tough. ’Cause you knew that we wouldn’t hurt no white boy down here, bring all sorts of uniforms to our neighborhood. And you were right, the first time around. I don’t want to do no time over some miniature motherfucker like you, don’t mean shit to me no way. But you keep on standing around here, I might just go ahead and take my chances.”
Quinn could feel his free hand shaking and he balled it up to make it stop. He stood straight and kept his eyes locked on the heavy young man’s.
“You want somethin’ else?”
“I’m comin’ back,” said Quinn.
“Yeah, okay. But for now? Walk while you still can.”
Quinn turned and headed back toward his car. He heard someone say, “Mini-Me,” and a burst of laughter, and the slapping of skin. It was like he was a kid again, cutting through the woods at night. His humiliation was chasing him like something horrible, a screaming, maggot-covered corpse with an upraised knife. He was ashamed, and still he wanted to run.
Quinn dropped into the bucket of his car. It would be different if he still had the street power of a cop. But he knew he’d never have that kind of power again. He turned the ignition key and drove away from the curb.
Quinn wished he’d brought his gun.
THE salon was dark inside when Strange arrived. On the glass door was a hand-painted sign that gave the store hours. That Inez Brown had gone and closed the store up two hours early, but Devra had said she’d be working till closing time.
Strange paced the sidewalk while he phoned Devra from his cell. She wasn’t in, or wasn’t answering. He left a message on her machine.
Strange looked around. Where was that old man, the one who’d given him the information yesterday, when he needed him? The real question was, where the fuck was Quinn?
Even as he was thinking it, he watched the Chevelle pull into the lot, easing into a space beside the Caprice. Strange dropped off the sidewalk to the asphalt and walked to the driver’s side of the car. He put his palm on the roof as he leaned in the open window.
“Where’s Devra?”
“She’s not in there?” said Quinn. He looked through the windshield at the darkened shop.
“Goddamnit, Terry, I told you to keep an eye on her.”
“You said it was my call,” said Quinn, his face pale and taut. “Looks like I shit the bed.”
Strange studied Quinn’s troubled eyes and doughy complexion. “What’s wrong with you, man?”
“I found some guys who know where the Welles girl is, but I got nothin’ out of them. Matter of fact, I let myself get punked out.”
“Shit, that’s all this is?” Strange shook his head. “Terry, I let people out here disrespect me every day. It’s part of how we do our job. Let them have their little victory and get what you can.”
“It was worse than disrespect.”
“Besides, you come down here gettin’ violent on people, how long you think you’d be able to work these neighborhoods? You’d be a marked man, and it doesn’t even matter if the people you fucked with got put away. They have friends and relatives, and those people never forget. I started shakin’ down people like I was wearin’ a uniform again, I’d be out of business. Get it through your head, man, you’re not a cop.”
“This was something else,” said Quinn. He stared straight ahead, unable to look at his friend. “It never would have happened, I had my gun.”
“Nah, see, you don’t even want to be considering that. You had your gun, you’d a killed someone and got yourself some lockdown, or got your own self killed. Either way, you’d be fucked.” Strange put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Look, man, I don’t have time for all this now. I got to find that girl and her kid. Time to visit McKinley. You with me?”
“Let’s go,” said Quinn.
“I’ll follow you,” said Strange.
BERNARD Walker lit the candles on the first floor of the house on Atlantic and put a couple on the steps going up to the second floor. He came back into the living room, where Dewayne Durham sat at a card table ending a call. Durham flipped the cell phone closed and placed it on the table.
The house was oddly quiet. Dewayne had sent out all his people to work the school on Mississippi. He had told Walker that he didn’t want him playing that beat box tonight like he liked to do, and Walker had complied. So it was just the two of them and the silence now.
Dewayne nodded at the cell. “I just called my brother at the girl’s place. He ain’t there.”
“Maybe he’s taking a shower,” said Walker.
“He better be. What he better not be is out. I told him to sit tight.”
Durham rubbed his face and stood, walking into the hall that led to the galley kitchen and the door at the rear of the house. Walker followed. They stood beside each other and looked across the darkened alley at McKinley’s house on Yuma. All of McKinley’s people, it looked like they were out working, too.
McKinley had the lights on all over the first floor. Though the front of the house had wood in its windows, there wasn’t any plywood on the back windows, only curtains, and most of those had been torn down. They could see McKinley walking around in there slowly, gesturing to someone who was half his size.
“There go the Candyman right there,” said Walker. “Looks like… Shit, he’s got a woman with him.”
“Ain’t like him to be any goddamn where without that boy Monkey,” said Durham. “Much less with a woman.”
“He don’t know how to treat a woman no way,” said Walker.
Durham squinted. “Zu? Why is it we’re in here lightin’ candles and shit, worried about the police, when fat boy is over there with all the lights burning bright?”
“He’s bold, I guess.”
“Right,” said Durham. “He is bold. Just ain’t right, how bold he is.”
Walker felt his stomach rumble. “I’m hungry. Thirsty, too. You want to go out for a while, pick up somethin’?”