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Kevin didn't smile. "Where's the benjamins?"
Jax slipped Kevin the money.
"Where's the girl?"
"Come on. I'll show you."
"Just the address."
"You afraid of me?"
"Just the address." Eyes not wavering.
Kevin grinned. "Don't know the number, man. I know the building. I walked her home last spring. I gotta point it out."
Jax nodded.
They started west and south, surprising Jax; he thought the girl would live in one of the tougher neighborhoods--farther north toward the Harlem River, or east. The streets here weren't elegant but they were clean, and many of the buildings had been renovated, it seemed. There was also a lot of new construction underway.
Jax frowned, looking around at the nice streets. "You sure we're talking Geneva Settle."
"That's the bitch you ask about. That's the crib I'm showing you . . . . Yo, man, you wanta buy some weed, some rock?"
"No."
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"Sure? I got some good shit."
"A damn shame, you going deaf and all at your young age."
Kevin shrugged.
They came to a block near Morningside Park. On top of the rocky incline was the Columbia University campus, a place he had frequently bombed with Jax 157 years ago.
They started to turn the corner but both of them stopped fast.
"Yo, check it out," Kevin whispered. There was a Crown Vic--clearly an unmarked police car--double-parked in front of an old building.
"That's her crib? The car's in front of?"
"Naw. Hers's two buildings closer. That one there." He pointed.
It was old but in perfect shape. Flowers in the window boxes, everything clean. Nice curtains. Paint looked new.
Kevin asked, "You going to fuck up the bitch?" He looked Jax up and down.
"What I'm about is my business."
"Your business, your business . . . . Sure it is," Kevin said in a soft voice. "Only . . . the reason I'm asking is, 'cause if she was to get fucked up--which I have no problem with, I'm saying--but if something was to happen to her, yo, check it out: I'd know it was you. And somebody might come round and wanna talk to me 'bout it. So, I'm thinking, with all that tall paper you carrying around in your pocket there, maybe I had a little more of it, I might forget I even seen you. On th' other hand, it's possible I could remember a lot 'bout you and that you was interested in the little bitch."
Jax had seen quite a bit of life. Been a graffiti king, been a soldier in Desert Storm, known gangstas in prison and outside, been shot at . . . If there was a rule in this crazy world it was that however stupid you thought people were, they were always happy to be stupider.
In a fraction of a second, Jax grabbed the boy's collar with his left hand and swung his fist up hard into the boy's gut, three times, four, five . . .
"Fuck--" was all the boy got out.
The way you fought in prison. Never give 'em a single second to recover.
