"No," I said quietly. "I need to see Samuel Larkin."
The young man pulled up his shirt and put his hand on the grip of a semiautomatic stuck in his waistband. "I ain't gonna tell you again."
I met his gaze in silence, and didn't move. He expected me to, I could tell, and as the seconds ticked by he started to get nervous. He had his hand on a gun, all of his friends had guns, and I would have had to be insane not to be afraid. He had expected me to back off or produce a gun of my own, or attack him—anything, really, but stand there calmly. The basic tactics of bullies hadn't changed since I was in school—cause fear and control peo-ple with it. Granted, they hadn't carried around the handguns quite so obviously. And if one of them had backed down back then, it probably would have meant a little bit of embarrassment. Depending on how hard-core this gang was, backing off could cost this kid his leadership—which could well mean his life, or at least everything he thought was of value in it.
I lowered my voice so that only he could hear it. "Don't," I said quietly. "Please."
He swallowed. Then his shoulder tensed to draw the gun.
"George," bellowed a deep voice from above us. "What you think you doing to my coach?"
I looked up and found Samuel's scowling face looking down from a window on the fourth floor.
George, presumably, looked away from me and put his hands on his hips to scowl up at Samuel. "I don't know no George."
Samuel rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah. G. You just G now, huh. George got too many letters."
"You got a big mouth," George said, scowling.
Samuel barked out a laugh. "G, you always been a funny guy." Then he looked at me and said, "Hey, Coach Parker."
"Mr. Larkin," I replied, nodding. "Got a minute to talk?"
"Buzz you in," he said. "Don't be too hard on my man G. Nobody ever gave him a hug or a puppy or anything like that, so he grew up with a bad attitude."
I nodded to him and walked to the door.
Behind me, George stepped in front of Felicia and said, "Now you, girl. You're fine. Maybe you should stay here and hang with me. Me and my crew will keep you safe from the bad element."
Felicia took off the glasses and smiled at him. Not a pretty smile. It was a slightly unsettling kind of smile, very Lecter-like. "I
am the bad element," she said, toothily. "The question you should be asking is, Who is going to keep you and your crew safe from me?"
George let out a laugh, but it sort of died a strangled death a second or two in.
Felicia kept smiling and took a step closer to him.
George took a wary step back from her.
"That's good, G," she told him. "That's smart. Smart men are sexy."
The door buzzed, and I opened it for Felicia. She sauntered through, giving George a dazzling smile on the way, and vanished into the building.
I nodded to George, pointed a finger at my temple, and spun it in a little circle.
"Yeah," George said, shaking his head as the door closed. "Crazy white people."
The elevator was out, so we took the stairs up to the fourth floor, then found the Larkins' apartment. I knocked. It took Samuel a minute to get to the door. He opened it, stepped out, and closed it behind him, so that we didn't get to see the apartment.
"Mister Science," he said. He looked from me to
Felicia. "I really wasn't expecting to see this kind of thing until college recruiters started showing up."
Felicia asked me, sweetly, "How hard is it to play basketball without kneecaps?"
I put a hand on her arm and said to Samuel, "Thanks for stepping in with those guys down there."
He shrugged. "You get killed here, there's gonna be a lot of trouble for people I know. It ain't 'cause I like you, Mister Science."
"Yeah. I can tell what a public enemy you are," I said. "I came by to see if you'd had any luck with getting the shots set up."
"Oh sure," he said. "Soon as my driver gets back with the limo, he gonna take me to my private doctor. Doc's on vacation in Fiji, but I got my personal jet waiting to pick me up."
I gave him a flat look for a minute. Then I said, "I'm serious."
"Then you're stupid," he replied, his tone frank and not bitter. He stared at me for a second and then said, "Shoot." (Which he didn't say, again.) "You really think that I was gonna get to a doctor?"
"I think you really want to," I said. "I thought maybe there'd be something I could do to help you."
"And you came down here?
And with your woman, too. And you face off with G." He shook his head. "You gotta be brave or stupid or crazy, Mister Science."
"I am not his woman," Felicia said, tartly.
"And my name is Parker," I said, putting a re-straining hand on Felicia's arm again. "Look, Samuel, if there's something I can do to help you, I want to do it."
"Like what?" the big young man said. "You gonna get my father back to New York, back with my mom, maybe? So he can work a job, so my mom got time to get us taken care of? Maybe you can make her arthritis disappear." He shook his head. "That ain't gonna happen."
"I know that," I said.
"You even know any doctors?" he asked.
"Um. Not the medical doctor kind," I said. I didn't think Doctors Octavius, Conners, Osborne, or Banner would have the most recent inoculations sitting around ready to go. Reed Richards might, or might know someone, but I didn't like the idea of asking him for his help for something so… normal. Mister Fantastic's time is pretty well eaten up by cosmic devices and mad Latverian dictators and threats to the entire universe.
"What use are you then, huh? Part-time science teacher gonna save us urban kids. You're a bad joke, man."
Felicia's hands clenched, the way they did when she wore the gloves with the built-in claws.
"Easy," I said to her. "Samuel. Look. If you don't want my help, you can tell me that. You don't have to keep trying to insult Ms. Hardy and me so that I'll get mad and walk away."
Samuel fell quiet for a long minute, and the door to his apartment opened. A little girl, maybe four or five years old, came out. She was cuter than a whole jar of buttons, with little pink bows in her hair, blue overalls, and a pink T-shirt.
"Samm'l," she wheezed, rubbing at her eyes. "Chris'fer keeps kicking me."
Samuel glanced at us once, suddenly nervous, and turned to kneel down and speak to the little girl, picking her up as he did. "Did you tell him to stop that?"
"Yeah, but he's sleepin'."
"Oh," Samuel said, and his voice was warm and gentle. "Well, he doesn't mean to do that. You know that, right?"
"He won't stop."
"Uh-huh," he said. "How 'bout I put you in my bed for your nap."
She frowned. "And Peter Rabbit?"
He snorted. "Okay. And Peter Rabbit. But only once."
The little girl smiled at him. " 'Kay."
Samuel kissed her on the head and set her back down. "Go on. I'll be right there."
The little girl nodded, gave me and Felicia a shy little glance, then fled inside.
Samuel stood up slowly and shut the door after her. Then he turned to face us, clearly uncomfortable. "My little brother does a lot of running around in his sleep," he explained. "They share a bed. Hard on her sometimes."
"She's a beautiful child," I said.
Samuel glanced back at the door and smiled.
"Yeah, she…" He was quiet for a moment, and the smile faded. "She's a sweetheart."
"Okay," I said. "You want to stop with the insults now?"
He rolled one shoulder in a shrug. "I guess you mean well, at least. You shouldn't have come down here, though. Dangerous." He looked up at Felicia and gave her a nod that somehow conveyed an apology. "Especially for you, Ms. Hardy. But there's nothing much you can do."
"Samuel," I said. "Maybe I can talk to someone. I might be able to—"