"Then I need to ask different questions." The boy was good, but had a square streak to him which gave him pause. He wasn't built for the streets, not to survive them anyway.

"I'm just saying, we can't afford to get our heads up when on the clock."

"You looking down your nose at me, boy?" Naptown Red cautioned. "Trying to show me up in front of Garlan?"

"Naw, man. I just know how easy it is to get caught up and become an addict."

"There's addicted and there's addicted. I may smoke a few blunts, but I'm in control. Them dope fiends? s.h.i.t. There's no talking to them."

"Folks want what we be selling." Even when your market was dope fiends, one still had to battle for market share, and that came down to building a brand. Fathead called his brand of meth "The End". "Can't argue with the free market."

"Didn't you sell to your folks?" Prez asked.

"h.e.l.l yeah I did. A customer's a customer." Fathead didn't care if it were them trading in their ghetto credit cards he called food stamps. "That's their choice. Their problem. They gonna buy from someone, might as well be me. Least they won't get ripped off."

"Most times," Naptown Red sneered.

"A fool's a fool. And I won't sell to my brother. He needs to find a better way. How player is that?"

Naptown Red was still a believer. In his heart he thought that the streets could be his savior. They gave him purpose, meaning, and a place of belonging. The accusatory glare of the car side light first caught his attention. Like any believer, there were times of testing of his faith, and Naptown Red's began as soon as the flashing lights erupted and car tires screeched to a halt as Five-O jumped out all over their spot.

The Boar's first months of school, sixth grade, were an endurance marathon of tests. Instructive on what life was really about. He wasn't The Boars then, just Bo Little. In his cla.s.s, a majority of the students were black with the rest evenly split between whites and Mexican. In the seat next to him was some Mexican boy, Lonzo. Weighed less than he did, was shorter than he was, but his group of friends carried on like he walked on water. Deferred to him, laughed at his corny-a.s.s jokes.

Bo's very existence seemed to bother Lonzo. He refused to bow before him. Hating the humiliation of the free lunch program, Bo sat away from other kids so they couldn't hear his stomach grumble. Lonzo made a special point to seek him out to sit across from him at lunch.

"You can't sit here, homes."

"Who says?" Bo searched for a nearby teacher, hoping to catch an eye and tacitly plead for help.

"You talk funny, hese. Like a nerd and s.h.i.t." He laughed and his pack of hyenas brayed alongside him.

Bo needed a comeback, but fear and embarra.s.sment paralyzed him. The best he could come up with was "What's your problem?"

"You my problem. You coming in here like you own the place, like you better than the rest of us simply cause you black. You ain't s.h.i.t."

"Why you explaining yourself to this puta?" one of his boys chimed in, backed by their amen corner.

Bo made up his mind then. The instigator was larger than Lonzo and for that matter, larger than Bo, but he dove across the table at him. Slamming his lunch tray at him, sent that day's portion of peas, mashed potatoes with gravy, and meat perpetrating as meatloaf into the air. Scattering the rest of the boys. Bo landed atop the larger boy and rained down punches on him before anyone could intervene. A smile crossed his face. No one would mess with him now. He had taken on the largest one and handed him his a.s.s. Maybe he could walk the halls in peace. He just wanted to be left alone.

Then the rest of the boys stepped in.

Let by Lonzo, they let loose a beating so ragefilled, Bo didn't know where the anger came from. For the slight trespa.s.s which occurred, they swarmed on him with other students circling around as living bricks forming a wall to hide the scene. Kicks slammed into his side, Bo covered his face as best he could and tensed his muscles against the blows.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on over there?" a teacher yelled.

Lonzo and his boys dispersed like dead leaves on a strong breeze, skittering down the hallways with only a stream of obscenities to mark their pa.s.sing. The teacher helped Bo to his feet and walked him to the nurse's office. Limping slowly, his fellow students lined up and parted to let him through. Bo couldn't meet their eyes, but still felt the weight of shame on him. Their eyes bored into him. The stifled snickers. The inner pain of damaged pride. The helplessness of being a victim.

All turmoil and confusion, aggression and anger, pain and contempt, the need to belong and the inability to value anyone. Darkness, robbed innocence, with only fear and violence to earn power and respect. The Boars was born.

The Boars was wild, always being suspended from school. Quickly gaining a reputation for having low eyes: he never told anyone when he had money. Never chipped in on anything, but ate like he paid twice his share. He never escaped that fight. Thing was, he was doing all right in that tussle until Lonzo and the rest stepped in. He needed his own crew to have his back when the time came.

And the time would always come.

It began with a bang on the door.

Barely even a courtesy shout of "Police" before they knocked the front door off the hinges. Naptown Red was used to police raids. Coming up, it was as natural a part of their family's rhythms of life as family reunions. The routine was as practiced as a fire drill: the police charged the house with guns drawn even as Fathead threw bags at the open window and Pres flushed others down the toilet. When over one hundred quarter bags of China White heroin were being packaged, even in the worst of economic times, their business was recession-proof.

The rest of the boys scattered. The threat of imminent jail or death had a way of focusing one's attention on their future. Sobering up from the heady mix of respect and power. Garlan simply disappeared. Prez, Fathead, and Naptown Red all ended up scooped up.

Naptown Red relaxed, quite pleased with his present circ.u.mstance. The way he imagined it, law enforcement from all over wanted to talk to him. Specific, highly detailed questions awaited him, which meant he enjoyed a new kind of rep, respect, and notoriety. No one noticed him or took him seriously in the past. Now everyone would know who he was.

"G.o.d, where are you?" Prez struggled with his own faith, wanting G.o.d back in his life, but He never answered. Knowing that no one would believe this misunderstanding. That he was working on the inside to supply King with information, not feed his own wallet or habit. The metal bench of the lock-up was harder than any at Stylez, his local barbershop. Head ducked, his palms on either side as he cradled it, he waited for his name to be called. They led him into the hallway after finger-printing, where he was forced to disrobe and toss his clothes into a pile in front of him. Like a slave facing inspection on the auction block, the guards performed their medical check, examining his hair, eyes, ears, and mouth for tracks. Thankful he wasn't a woman because he didn't think he could take the final act of being forced to crouch then cough to clear his v.a.g.i.n.a. Next, he picked up his belongings and walked single file to processing where he was given new underwear and clothes. Whatever shards of faith he had remaining he clutched to like a life preserver on an ocean of open water. As a storm approached.

Time had little meaning, but at ten o'clock at night, shadows steeped in the night. The vague stairs which dappled the house out into a smooth, neutral gray. The spotlights of patrol vehicles crisscrossed the house. Cops had set up in back and in front of the house, a pincer closing in on the stash house. They had the doors covered. The cops trapped a few pee wees trying to slip out a bedroom window. They checked the alleys, locked down the backyard and street, but no one looked up.

The Boars, rather than chance running out the back or the front, ran up the stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he weighed his options. He spied the trap door leading to the attic, but he knew it was only a matter of time until the cops searched there. They knew enough to hit this house, they knew enough to check the walls and the ceilings. There were three bedrooms, one overlooking the front yard, another the rear. The side bedroom had a window which opened onto a deck. He went up there sometimes to smoke at the window. He tested the rotted deck with his heavy foot. It held. Beneath him, cops scurried about tramping through the yard in a game of hide-and-seek with the pee wees. For a brief moment, The Boars thought about leaping onto the over-hanging tree branch and scampering down it over the fence into the neighbor's yard. But that played-out Tarzan s.h.i.t would probably end with him busting his a.s.s when he missed the branch or it breaking beneath his two-hundred pound frame else the cops simply waiting for him to climb his monkey a.s.s out of the tree.

His cousin made the same mistake once. Robbed a liquor store then ran behind it back to his apartment where his girl chased him out of the place, not wanting him to bring any police bulls.h.i.t back to their house. Around their child. His dumb a.s.s climbed a tree, hoping to elude the police. They had his tree surrounded in a halfhour. Couldn't fool them canines. His cousin weighed his options. He couldn't do jail. Not a bit like that. So he shot himself in the chest. His body didn't topple out of the tree. They had to call in the fire trucks to get him down.

The Boars tugged at the shingles leading to the pitched room with three chimneys. Lights beamed along the stairway as police crept up into the waiting shadows. Bracing himself he had to do this in one shot or the police would hear him for sure he took a step back. He leapt. His fingers latched on to any purchase they could, ignoring the sandpaper sc.r.a.pe as he pulled himself up. The shouts of "clear" echoed about as the officers checked each room.

"Upstairs secure," an officer shouted.

"The Boars stretched out on the roof. Pulling his coat over him, he figured he could wait them out. Sneak off before dawn once the scene was secured by only a couple of cops.

Bo Little might have taken a beating, but The Boars handled his business.

At his desk, Cantrell turned the framed pictures of his wife and kids face-down before walking Prez past his desk to the interrogation room. Cantrell always knew he wanted to be a cop. Wanting to be where the action jumped off, he chose the most violent beat as a rookie. He wanted to make a difference. His was a simple plan. Let black kids in the neighborhoods see one of them. Have a cop treat them as a citizen, both valued and respected. Each person he met with a steady gaze, firm handshake, and served with honesty and diligence. He was the kind of detective who constantly asked questions and needed answers and didn't stop until he had them. For his effort, he was treated as the enemy: more blue than black. It broke his heart a little every time he had to haul in another brother in cuffs. Chains.

"You breaking my arm. You breaking my arm," Fathead said as he was ushered into a seat by Lee.

"You ain't got to do all that. We barely touching you." In contrast, Lee could give a s.h.i.t about community. He couldn't tell you why he became a cop. Falling into it more than anything else, his sheer mediocrity allowing him to rise through the ranks. More diligent f.u.c.k-up than conscientious detective, most figured he'd have long been drummed out of the force. Except that he had an eye for the streets. He understood its rhythms and at the same time loathed that intimate knowledge. He was one with the musk and misery of the city's grimy underbelly. These days, the two graying strands in his mustache disconcerted him more than his clearance rate.

Lee was that kind of police. The kind who drank vodka because it had no smell even though it did. The kind who hid bottles around the house: in the basin of the toilet, in a kitchen cabinet, in the trunk of his car, in a desk drawer. The kind who wore his relationship with alcohol on his face. The kind who had no friends besides his brother officers and even those he had a propensity to p.i.s.s on then p.i.s.s off. The kind with no relationship to speak of; only s.e.x with the occasional prost.i.tute or other lost soul cast adrift in a bar. The kind with no family, no home, no roots, with his one-bedroom apartment having one room too many. Utilitarian at best, a television, couch, refrigerator, microwave, and a place to s.h.i.t was all he needed.

All he had was the job. A job he hated most of the time but would be lost without.

"This case sucks. But they always suck till I get someone in jail." Cantrell s.n.a.t.c.hed the folder from his desk. Opening the door, he found Fathead pouring a lot of sugar into his coffee.

"Can you get me some donuts?"

"Detective McCarrell read you your rights?" Ignoring him, Cantrell took off his jacket and wrapped it around the chair closest to the door. His chair. If Fathead was ever going through the door to see the light of day and freedom again, he had to go through Cantrell.

Fathead nodded while his fingers fussed with each other in nervous fumbling.

"We ran your prints. Your name is Bartholomew DiGora. Why they call you Fathead?"

"I don't know. Just a name, I guess," he mumbled, eyes cast shoeward.

"I love this room, Fathead. The truth comes out in this room." Cantrell perched on the edge of the table that separated them. "Mind if I call you Fathead? I don't mean to be presumptuous."

"It's all right." The boy wore a constant quizzical expression, more of a listener type.

"I just didn't want to disrespect you. Figure in the end, all a man's got is his good name. folks want to trample on that, they disrespect the man. I figure, you show a man respect, give him his due as a man. Less'n they do something to lose that respect. You feel me?"

"I guess."

"Now your boys, Preston Wilc.o.x and Robert Ither who you know as Prez and Naptown Red them I got no use for. Prez's new to me. Looks like a bit of a burnout, but he ain't been in the system. Red, he a bit of a problem. He been in and out as long as he been breathing. He's what we call incorrigible."

"What you mean?"

"Mean he gonna see the inside of a cell for a long time. He one of them three-strike brothers. Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless he makes a deal," Cantrell offered, helpfully resting his fists, knuckles down, into the table. "You see, we got a little girl dead. You knuckleheads want to sling to one another, do harm to one another, that's one thing. It ain't cool, but it's part of the game. You do what you got to do, we do what we got to do. But bodies start dropping, especially a little girl..." Cantrell removed an eight-by-ten glossy from a manila folder and placed a photograph of Lyonessa Maurila Ramona Perez in front of him. "Well, folks come down hard on something like that. Put a brother under the jail for something like that. You hear what I'm saying?"

"Yeah."

"Now we got witnesses. Puts three people in an SUV." Not a lie, per se, about the witness. More like a poker bluff, and Cantrell knew from poker faces.

"I was at home."

"How you remember? I ain't told you what day."

"Everybody know. I was home sick."

"All day?"

"All day," Fathead echoed.

"Anyone vouch for you?"

"I ain't got no one. Sick alone. In bed."

"You ain't got no one? No one to take care of you when you sick? No one to be with you when you alone? No one to have your back when you in a jam?"

"No."

"Cause you know you in a jam, right?"

"What you mean?"

"The kind of weight we seized? Someone's going up for a long time. And that's if we can't put you in that SUV. But someone will. Cause you ain't got no one."

"No." Fathead's bloodshot eyes drifted into a sullen gaze.

"Not even Red. What you think he's going to tell us when I say there were three people in the SUV and that he can lessen his years by giving them up?" Cantrell came around the table again to meet his gaze. His voice lowered to a whisper. "A little girl is dead. Someone's going to pay."

Fathead was unmoved, in the way the truly innocent were unconcerned. A little c.o.c.ky cause he knew he wasn't there. So Cantrell changed tack.

"On the other hand, I wonder what Red will tell me. Like whose dope that was. Think he'll put it on you if I ask him for a name? He doesn't exactly strike me as a stand-up guy." Cantrell's eyes bored into him like trained laser sights on a target.

Fathead squirmed, his lips taut and bloodless. Cantrell knew he had him. It was time for one of his artfully told lies.

"Then again," Cantrell's voice dropped to a confidential drawl, "if I were to ask you for a name, you probably will be looking at a walk. I'm no lawyer, but I can talk to the District Attorney. Let him know how cooperative you were."

"One of my lieutenants have a problem, he squash it. I got zero knowledge."

"Lieutenants? Come on, now, let's be straight: you low man on the totem pole. Ain't s.h.i.t you got to say to me about that."

"I know I ain't no cheese-eating rodent."

"I wouldn't want to cast no aspersions, if you know what I'm saying."

"I'm not a snitch."

"I'm not asking you to snitch. Just... speculate." Boy, you better swallow your pride like it's your favorite dish, Cantrell thought to himself. "You got a name for me?"

Fathead calculated the numbers in his head. A lot of dope meant a lot of years. Federal time maybe. Conspiracy. Murder. Intent to distribute. They were looking to close a lot of cases on him. Who had his back? Some public defender, his Johnny Cochran? Nah, they would take one look at him and be skipping out of work. Wasn't like Dred was going to post bond or nothing. Barely put up for Mulysa, and he stood tall with him for years. Plus, it wasn't like they were on the clock for him. They were on their own. He was on his own.

"I said, you got a name for me?" Cantrell repeated.

"Dred."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A wanderer by nature, Lott never dreamed of peace or justice or love or being loved. He barely planned into the following week. He hated being trapped in a story that had been written about him. That he was "the betrayer" or "the outcast" or "the unredeemable one" (despite the fact that some of those stories were only written in his own head). He feared that he'd never be able to outrun those stories; that he'd never have the chance to write a new story of himself; that the stories would always define him and he'd be powerless to do more than be moved around more like pieces than characters.

"If you must die, die for something greater than yourself. Better yet, live. Live to serve others."

He longed to believe King's words again. To be a part of King's crusade. To be led by King again. It had been a while since he visited the Eagle Terrace apartments, an obtuse layout of living s.p.a.ces, a large swathe of pot-holed asphalt surrounded by labyrinthine walls of rooms winding along curving streets. The first time in a long time he walked its sidewalks alone.

"Jesus help me," he cried out to the sky. In his heart he prayed that there was a peace to be had on the other side of war. Lott startled the Hispanic woman carrying two bags of groceries. Keeping a wary eye on him, she paused then walked a wider path around him. On any other evening, he'd have offered to carry her groceries for her. Now her wary eyes could see to his heart and know his sins. Everyone could. It weighed him down, pressed on him with a constant smothering.

Writhing in Lady G's embrace was what he had so longed for. Antic.i.p.ated. Now the image was burned into his mind and tasted like ashes in his mouth. The cost was too high. He tried to not think about all the relationships he'd damaged, all the people he had hurt, all the damage he had caused. He no longer belonged anywhere. Rootless and wandering not by choice but by circ.u.mstance.

Redemption was a dream he tried not to put too much hope in. All he wanted was to be restored in their eyes. For them to look at him and see the Lott of old. Their boy. Not this stain that sullied their memories. The idea came to him that maybe he could nudge the process along. Perhaps if he could come to their rescue, help them in some way, maybe they'd be able to forgive him. Sure, their lips said they forgave him, but he recognized that look in their eyes. The one that said they'd never look at him the same. That look of resentment mixed with distrust. The look of his mother after too many drinks. The look of the endless parade of "uncles" who streamed through his life. The look of something that needed to be flushed out of their lives.

Loneliness gnawed at Lott's reason. Solitude was painful. Isolation the worst form of torture. Scared, longed to reach out. He hopelessly wanted someone to find him. To reach out to him. To hold him. Any attention. The madness of alienation created a desperation which drove folks to strange places, to reach out in strange ways.