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Turning onto a dead-end street lined with drab buildings, Evan was hit with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Patches of dead grass, faded red stone, bathtub-size balconies crowded with burst armchairs and rusting bikes. Another dismal government project aimed at producing cheap housing. He’d lived in these apartments before. He knew the shortcuts the city builders had taken, how the toilets didn’t flush unless you pulled the chain in the tank, the way the breeze blew right through the prison-small window frames, that in the winter you had to wear a jacket to sleep and that the rooms turned into broilers during peak summer hours. He knew what wasn’t in the refrigerators. The water stains on the ceilings. The tattered clothes always a size too small. When all you could do is hold on for something, anything to get better.
Two low-riders were parked nose to nose, blocking the road. Young men sat on the hoods and trunks, drinking from brown paper bags. They wore flat-bill hats and pristine sneakers. Their eyes were pinked up, and they looked restless, directionless, dangerous.
They looked like Evan and the other boys from the Pride House Home.
As Evan coasted up to the roadblock, they set down their bottles and slid off their positions. They surrounded the Buick Regal. Ruby made a little noise in the back of her throat.
Evan said, “Stay here,” and got out, leaving the car running.
The locks clicked behind him, Ruby taking precautions.
The leader approached Evan, standing uncomfortably close. The kid couldn’t have been twenty years old. He wasn’t the biggest of the bunch, but he had the requisite gleam in his eyes. Handsome, too. In another life he could’ve been a movie star. His shirt was unbuttoned, showing off a white sleeveless undershirt and the handle of a crappy 9-mil Ruger with a turquoise frame. One of the boys standing behind him looked like he could be a starting lineman in the NFL.
The leader ducked down to peer in the passenger window. “Who’s the pretty white girl?”
“A friend.”
“Yeah? A lotta out-of-town motherfuckers like you bring ‘friends’ ’round here, know what I’m sayin’? Maybe we do something about it this time.”
Evan said, “Mind clarifying?”
“These aren’t fucking whorehouses. These aren’t pedo crash pads. We live here, know what I’m sayin’? Ourmomslive here. I don’t care who the fuck you paid off on this block for an hour of time where your wife can’t find you. You come in here and do your dirty shit with some white bitch and guess who deals with the fallout when her long-lost daddy calls the PD?”
“I’m not here for that,” Evan said. “I want to ask a few questions at ninety two eff three.”
Door 90 on the street, second floor, third door. According to Joey’s report, that’s where the super who managed Angela Buford’s building lived.
“Questions ’bout what?” the leader asked.
“About Angela Buford.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Fuck that, Mack,” the big kid said. “I say you chin-check this motherfucker.”
Evan stared at Mack evenly. “What respect do you want me to show you to get past?”
Mack hiked up the leg of his loose baggy jeans, showing off old-school Wheat Nubuck Timberland 6?s with the laces undone. He flashed a matinee-idol smile. “Why don’t you kiss my boots?”
The others laughed and fanned around Evan in a semicircle, thrumming with low energy like idling cars. Ruby had cracked the window to hear, her flushed face all but pressed to the glass.
Evan said, “Ask for something real.”
He held eye contact with Mack even as the others jeered and murmured.
He knew Mack would understand from his stare alone. That he didn’t have to do the usual,Look at me and ask yourself: Do I look scared?routine. That he was unafraid to escalate the confrontation as far as it needed to escalate. That his request for safe passage had been in good faith.
Mack tilted his head back, sucked his teeth. “Okay. We grew uphere. This isourhood. It’s just us who take care of it, know what I’m sayin’? So don’t come and start shit that we have to clean up or act like whyever you’re better out there entitles you to a damn thing in here.”
“I understand. I’m asking questions. That’s it.”
Mack nodded. “A few questions.”
“If someone starts shit,” Evan said, “I might have to rough them up some. Is that okay?”
“Iftheystart it?” Mack nodded again. “Yeah.”
Evan held out his hand.
