The Best American Mystery Stories 1997

S. J. Rozan Hoops from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

A cold wind was pulling sharp waves from the Hudson as I drove north, out of town. The waves would strain for height, pushing forward, reaching; but then they’d fall back with small, violent crashes, never high enough, never breaking free.

I was heading to Yonkers, a tired, shabby city caught between New York and the real suburbs. I’d been there over the years as cases had taken me, but I’d never had a client from there before. I’d never had a client who was just eighteen, either. But it was a week since I’d closed my last case. Money was a little tight, I was getting antsy, and working was better than not working, always.

Even working for a relative of Curtis’s. I’d been surprised when he’d called me. The ring of the telephone had burst into a practice session where a Beethoven sonata I’d thought I had in my fingers was falling apart, where rhythm, color, texture, everything was off. I usually don’t like being interrupted at the piano, but this time I jumped at it.

Until I heard who it was, and what he wanted.

“A nephew of yours?” I said into the phone. “I didn’t know scum like you had relatives, Curtis.”

“Now, you got no call to be insulting,” Curtis’s smooth voice gave back. “Though it ain’t surprising. I told the boy I could get him a investigator do a good job for him, but he gonna have to put up with a lot of attitude.”

“What’s he done?” I asked shortly.

“Ain’t done nothing. A friend of his got hisself killed. Raymond think someone should be paying attention.”

“When people get killed the cops usually pay attention.”

“Unless you some black kid drug dealer in Yonkers, and you the suicide half of a murder-suicide.”

He had a point. “Tell me about it.”

He told me. An eighteen-year-old high school senior named Charles Lomax had been found in a park where the kids go at night. His pregnant girlfriend, beside him, had a bullet in her heart. Lomax had a bullet through his head and the gun in his hand.

The bodies had been discovered by the basketball coach, who said he’d gone out looking after Lomax hadn’t shown up for practice. He hadn’t shown up for class, either, but apparently that wasn’t unusual enough for his classroom teachers to be bothered about. Lomax had been a point guard with a С average. He’d been expected to graduate, which distinguished him from about half the kids at Yonkers West. He’d been in trouble with the police all his life, which distinguished him from nobody. There was nothing else interesting about him, except that he’d been a friend of Raymond Coe, and Raymond wasn’t happy with the official verdict: murder-suicide, case closed.

“What’s Raymond’s theory?” I asked Curtis, shouldering the phone so I could close the piano and stack my music.

“Let me put it to you this way.” Curtis oozed. “I ain’t suggested the boy hire hisself a honky detective because I admire the way you people dance.”

I pulled slowly around the corner, coasted past the cracked asphalt playground I’d been told to find. The late-day air was mean with the wind’s cold edge, but six black kids in sweats and high-tech sneakers crowded the concrete half-court. Their game was fast, loud, and physical, elbows thrown and no fouls called. One kid, tall and meaty, had a game on a level the others couldn’t match: Faster and smarter both, he muscled his man when he couldn’t finesse him. But it didn’t stop the rest. No one hung back, no one gave in. Slam dunks and three-pointers flew through the netless rim. They didn’t seem to be keeping score.

A kid fell, rolled, jumped up shaking his hand against the sting of a scrape. Without missing a beat he was back in the game. I parked across the street and watched. One of those kids was Raymond; I didn’t know which. Right now I knew nothing about any of them, except for what I could see: strength, focus, a wild joy in pushing themselves. I finished a cigarette. In a minute I’d become part of their world. This moment of possibility would end. Knowledge can’t be shaken off. And knowledge is always limiting.

The game faltered and then stopped as I walked to the break in the chain-link fence. They all watched me approach, silent. A chunky kid in a hooded sweatshirt shifted the ball from one hand to the other. To the one who’d fallen he said. “Yo, Ray. This your man?”

“Don’t know.” Raising his voice as though he suspected I spoke a different language, the kid said, “You Smith?”

I nodded. “Raymond Coe?”

“Yeah.” He jerked his head at the others. “These my homeboys.”

I glanced at the tight, silent group. “They in on this?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Should I?”

“Maybe you don’t like working for a bunch of niggers.”

I stared into his dark eyes. It seemed to me they were softer than he might have wanted them to be. “Maybe I don’t like having to pass an exam to get a case.” I shrugged, turned to go.

“Yo,” Raymond said, behind me.

I turned back.

“Curtis say you good.”

“I don’t like Curtis,” I told him. “He doesn’t like me. But we’re useful to each other from time to time.”

Surprisingly, he grinned. His face seemed, for a moment, to fit with what I’d seen in his eyes. “Curtis tell me you was gonna say that.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“That you the man could find out about my man C.”

“What’s in it for you?”

A couple of the other kids scowled at that, and one started to speak, but Raymond silenced him with a look. “Nothing in it for me,” he said.

“I cost money.” I pressed. “Forty an hour, plus expenses. Two days up front. Why’s it worth it to you?”

The chunky kid slammed the ball to the pavement, snatched it back. “Come on, Ray. You don’t need this bull.”

Raymond ignored him, looked steadily at me. “C was my main man, my homie. No way he done what they say he done. Somebody burned him. I ain’t gonna let that pass.”

“Why me?” I asked. “Curtis knows every piece of black slime that ever walked the earth, but he sent you a white detective. Why?”

“’Cause the slime we looking for,” Raymond said steadily, “I don’t believe they black.”

Raymond, his homies, and I made our way to the end of the block, to the pizza place. The day had gone and a tired gray evening was coming in, studded with yellow streetlights and blinking neon. The homies gave me their names: Ash, Caesar, Skin. Tyrell, the one who could really play. The chunky one, Halftime. None of them offered to shake my hand.

Inside, where the air swirled with garlic and oregano, we crowded around a booth, hauling chairs to the end of the table. Halftime went to order a pizza. He came back distributing Cokes and Sprites, and he brought me coffee. Across the room, from the jukebox, a rap song began, complicated rhythm under complex rhyme, music with no melody. I drank some coffee. “Well?”

Everyone glanced at everyone else, but they all came back to Raymond. Raymond looked only at me. “My man C,” he started. “Someone done him, make it look like suicide.”

“People kill themselves,” I said.

Some heads shook: Tyrell muttered, “Damn.”

“You don’t know him,” Raymond said. “C don’t never give up on nothing. And he had no reason. He was gonna graduate, he was gonna have a kid. The season was just starting.”

“The season?” I left the rest for later.

“Hoops,” Raymond told me, though it was clear I was straining the patience of the others. “My man a guard. Tyrell, Ash, and me, we on the squad too.” Tyrell and Ash, a round-faced quiet kid, nodded in acknowledgment. “The rest of them,” Raymond’s sudden, unexpected grin flashed again, “they keep us on our game.”

“So you’re telling me if Lomax was going to kill himself he would have waited until after the season?” I lit a cigarette, shook the match into the tin ashtray.

“Man, I am telling you no way he did that.” Raymond’s voice was emphatic. “C don’t have no reason to want out. Plus, Ayisha. Ain’t no way he gonna do her like that, the mother of his baby.”

“He wanted the baby?”

Halftime grinned, poked at something on the table. Raymond said. “He already buying it things. Toys and stuff. Bought one of them fuzzy baby basketballs, you know? It was gonna be a boy.”

“How was he planning to support a family?”

Raymond shrugged. “Some way. Ayisha, she bragging like he gonna get tapped to play for some big school and they gonna be rich, but she don’t believe it neither.”

“It wasn’t true?”

“Nah.” Raymond shook his head. “Only dude around here got that kind of chance be my man Tyrell. He gonna make us famous. Put us on the map.”

I turned to Tyrell, who was polishing off his second Coke in the corner of the booth. “I watched you play,” I told him. “You’re smart and fast. You have offers?”

Tyrell stared at me for a moment before he answered. “Coach say scouts coming this season.” His voice was deep, resonant, and slow. “He been talking to them.”

Halftime’s name rang out; he went to the counter for the pizza. I looked around at the others, at their hard faces and at their eyes. Seventeen, eighteen: They should have been on the verge of something, at the beginning. But these boys had no futures and they knew it; and I could see it, in their eyes.

I didn’t ask where the money was coming from to pay me. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t ask what would happen to Tyrell if he didn’t get a college offer, or whether the others, the ones who weren’t on the squad, were still in school. So what if they were? Where would it get them?

I asked a more practical question. “Who’d want to kill Lomax?”

Raymond shrugged, looked at his homeboys. “Everybody got enemies.”

“Who were his?”

“Nobody I know about,” he said. “Except the cops.”

“Cops?” I looked at Raymond, at the other grim faces. “That’s what this is about? You think this was a cop job?”

Halftime came back, with a pizza and a pile of paper plates. Everyone reached for a slice but me; Raymond made the offer but I shook my head.

Raymond didn’t answer my question, gave Tyrell a look. Tyrell’s deep voice picked it up. “C and me was in a little trouble last year. Gas-station holdup. It was bull. Charges was dropped.”

“But them mothers didn’t let up,” Raymond said impatiently. “Tyrell, nobody care, but С been a pain in the cops’ butt for years. You know, up in their face, trash-talking. I tell him, man, back off, you leave them alone and they leave you alone. But he don’t never stop. С like to win. Also he like to make sure you know you lose. Cops was all over him after he get out.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They couldn’t get nothing else on him.”

“And?” I said again, knowing what was coining.

“I figure they get tired waiting for him to make a mistake and make it for him.”

I pulled on my cigarette. There was nothing left; I stubbed it out. I wanted to tell them they were wrong, they were crazy, that kind of stuff doesn’t really go on. But that would be pointless. They might be wrong, in this case, but they weren’t crazy and we all knew it.

“Anyone in particular?” I asked.

Raymond shook his head. “Cops around here, they run in packs,” he said. “Could be anyone.”

Two slices were left on the tray. Without discussion, and seemingly by general consent, Raymond and Tyrell reached for them.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about her.”

Tyrell looked away, as though other things in the room were more interesting than I was.

“Ayisha?” Raymond asked. He seemed to think about my question as he ate. “He can’t get enough of her,” he finally said.

“But you didn’t like her?”

“Nah, she okay.” He flipped a piece of crust onto the tray, sat back, and popped the top of a Sprite. “She sorta — you know. She got a smart mouth. And she been around.”

A couple of the other guys snickered. I wondered whom she’d been around with.

“She have enemies?”

“I don’t know. But like I say, everybody got them. Can’t always tell what you done to get them, but everybody got them.”

I left, trading phone numbers with Raymond. I took the homies’ numbers too, though I was less than certain that getting in touch with any of them would be as easy as a phone call. But I might want to talk to some of them, separately, later. Now, I wanted to talk to a few other people.

The first, from a phone booth down the street, was Lewis Farlow, the basketball coach who’d found the bodies. I called him at the high school, to find a time he’d be available. Half an hour, he told me. He knew about me; he’d been expecting my call.

Next I called the Yonkers P.D., to find the detective on the Lomax case. Might as well get the party line.

He was a high-voiced Irish sergeant named Sweeney. He wasn’t impressed with my name or my mission, and he wasn’t helpful.

“What’s to investigate?” he wanted to know. “That case has already been investigated. By real detectives.”

“My client’s not sure it was suicide,” I said calmly.

“Yeah? Who are you working for?”

“Friend of the family.”

“Don’t be cute, Smith.”

“I’m just asking for the results of the official investigation, Sweeney.”

The grim pleasure in Sweeney’s voice was palpable. “The official results are, the kid killed the girlfriend. Blam! Then he blew his own brains out. Happy?”

Start out with an easy one. “Whose was the gun?”

“The Pope’s.”

“You couldn’t trace it?”

“No, Smith, we couldn’t trace it. Numbers were filed off, inside and out. That a new one on you?”

“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a suicide weapon.”

“Maybe suicide wasn’t on his mind when he got it.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“How the hell do I know why he did it? You suppose it had anything to do with her being pregnant?”

“And what, his reputation would be ruined? Anyway, his friends say he wanted the baby.”

“Yeah, sure. Da-da.” Sweeney made baby noises into the phone.

“Sweeney—”

“Yeah. So maybe he did. And then maybe he finds out it isn’t his. You like that for a motive? It’s yours.”

“You have any proof of that?”

“No. Matter of fact, I just thought it up. I’ll let you in on something, Smith. I got better things to do than bust my hump to prove a kid with his brains in the dirt and the gun in his hand pulled the trigger.”

“I understand you guys knew this kid.”

“We know them all. Most of them have been our guests for short stays in our spacious accommodations.”

“I hear you couldn’t hold on to this one.”

“What, for that gas-station job?” He didn’t rise to the bait. “Way I look at it, it’s just as well. If we could hold them all as long as they deserve, the streets would be clean and I’d be out of a job.”

“Come on, Sweeney. Didn’t it steam you just a little when the kid walked? I hear it wasn’t the first time.”

“Matter of fact, it wasn’t.”

“Matter of fact, I hear there were cops who had this kid on a special list. Was he on your list, Sweeney?”

“Now just hold it, Smith. What are you getting at? I killed him because I couldn’t keep his ass in jail where it belonged?”

I’d made him mad. Good; angry men make mistakes.

“Not necessarily you, Sweeney. It’s just that I’ll bet there weren’t a lot of tears in the department when Lomax bought it.”

“Oh,” he said slowly, his voice dangerously soft. “I get it. You’re looking for a lawsuit, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Crap. The family wants to milk it. You find a hole in the police work, they sue the department. The city settles out of court; it’s got no backbone with these people. You drive off in your Porsche and I get pushed out early on half my stinking pension. That’s it, right?”

“No. Sweeney, that’s not it. I’m interested in what really happened to this kid. That’s what any good cop would be interested in, too.”

“You know what, Smith? You’re lucky I don’t know your face. Here’s some advice for free: Don’t let me see it.”

The phone slammed down; that was that.

Yonkers West High School filled the entire block, a sulking brick-and-concrete monster whose windows were covered with a tight wire mesh. I asked the security guard at the door the way to the gym. “I’m here to see Coach Farlow,” I said.

“You a scout?” he asked after me, as I started down the hall.

“No. You have something worth scouting?”

The guard grinned. “Come back tomorrow, at practice,” he said. “You’ll see.”

I found Lewis Farlow behind his desk in his Athletic Department office, a windowless, cramped, concrete-block space that smelled of liniment, mildew, and sweat. Dusty trophies shared the top of the filing cabinets with papers and old coffee cups. Here and there a towel huddled on the floor, as though too exhausted to make it back through the connecting door to the locker room.

I knocked, checked Farlow out while I waited for him to look up from his paperwork. He was a thin white man, smaller than his players, with deep creases in the sagging skin of his face and sparse, colorless hair that might once have been red.

“Yeah.” Farlow lifted his head, glanced over me swiftly with blue eyes that were bright and sharp.

“Smith.” I said.

“Oh, yeah. About Lomax, right? Sit down.” He gestured to a chair.

“The guard at the door asked me if I was a scout,” I said as I moved into the room, trying to avoid the boxes of ropes and balls that should have been somewhere else, if there’d been somewhere else for them to be. “He meant that big guy? Tyrell?”

Farlow nodded. “Tyrell Drum,” he said. “Best thing we’ve had here in years. Everybody’s just waiting for him to catch fire. You seen him play?” He looked at me quizzically.

“He was with Raymond Coe just now.” I explained. “You have scouts coming down?”

“I already had some stringers early last season. Liked what they saw, but the big guns didn’t get a chance to get here while Drum was still playing.”

“He didn’t play the whole season?”

“Sat it out.” One corner of Farlow’s mouth turned up in a smile that wasn’t a smile.

“Hurt?”

“In jail.”

“Oh,” I said. “The gas-station job?”

“You heard about that?”

“He told me. It was him and Lomax, right?”

“They say it wasn’t either of them. Charges were eventually dropped, but the season was over by then.”

“Did he do it?”

“Who the hell knows? If he didn’t, he will soon. Or something like it. Unless he gets an offer. Unless he gets out of here. Look, Smith: about this Lomax thing.”

Farlow stopped, turned a pencil over in his fingers as though looking for a way to say what he wanted. I waited.

“The guys are pretty upset,” Farlow said. “Especially Coe; he and Lomax were pretty tight. Coe’s got this half-assed idea that the cops killed Lomax. He’s sold it to the rest of them. They told me they were going to hire a private eye to prove it.”

“How come they told you?”

“I’m the coach. High school, that’s like a father confessor. Wasn’t it that way when you were there?”

“The high school I went to, all the kids were white.”

“You surprised they talk to me? They gotta talk to someone.” He shrugged. “I’m on their side and they know it. I go to bat for them when they’re in trouble. I bully them into staying in school. Coe wouldn’t be graduating if it weren’t for me.”

He threw the pencil down on the desk, slumped back in his chair. “Not that I know why I bother. They stay in school, so what? They end up fry cooks at McDonald’s.” Farlow paused, rubbed a hand across his square chin; I got the feeling he was only half talking to me. “Eighteen years in this hole,” he went on, “watching kids go down the drain. No way out. Except every now and then, a kid like Drum comes along. Someone you could actually do something for. Someone with a chance. And the stupid sonuvabitch spends half his junior year in jail.”

He looked at me. The half-grin came back. “Sorry, Smith. I get like this. The old coach, feeling sorry for himself. Let’s get back to Lomax. Where the hell was I?”

“The guys came to you,” I said. “They told you they wanted a P.I.”

“Yeah. So I told them to go ahead. Coe’s like Lomax was, a stubborn bastard. Easier to agree with than to cross. So I said go ahead, call you. He probably thinks I think he’s right, that there’s something fishy here. But I don’t.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the simple answer is the best. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s the best. Lomax killed the girl and he killed himself.”

“Why?”

“Some beef, I don’t know. Old days, he’d have knocked her around, then gone someplace to cool off. Today, they all have guns. You get mad, someone’s dead before you know it. By the time he realizes what he’s done it’s over. Then? She’s dead, the baby’s dead, what’s he gonna do? He’s still got the gun.”

He reached for the pencil again, turned it in his hand, and watched it turn.

“A guy’s best friend turns up dead,” he said in a quiet voice, “he wants to do something. Hiring you makes them feel better. Okay.” He looked up. “So what I’m asking you is, go through the motions. You gotta do that; they’re gonna pay you for it. But try to wrap it up fast. The sooner they put this behind them the better off they’ll be.”

I had my own doubts about how easy it ever was to put a friend’s death behind you, but that didn’t make Farlow wrong.

“If there’s nothing to find, I’ll know that soon enough,” I said.

Farlow nodded, as though we’d reached an agreement. I asked him, “You found the bodies?”

“Yeah.” He threw the pencil down again.

“What did it look like?”

“Look like?”

“Tell me what you saw.”

Farlow’s bright eyes fixed me. He paused, but if he had a question he didn’t ask it.

“She’s lying on her back. Just this little spot of blood on her chest; but God, her eyes are open.” He stopped, licked his dry lips. “Him, he’s maybe six feet away. Side of his head blown off. Right side; gun’s in his right hand. What do you need this for?”

“It’s the motions,” I said. “What kind of gun?”

“Automatic. Didn’t the police report tell you?”

“They won’t let me see it.”

“Jesus, don’t tell Coe that. Is that normal?”

“Actually, yes. Usually you can get someone to tell you what’s in it, but I rubbed the detective on the case the wrong way.”

“Jim Sweeney? Everything rubs him the wrong way.”

“How about Lomax?”

“You mean, Coe’s theory? There’s not a cop in Yonkers who wouldn’t have thrown a party if they could make something stick to Lomax. Backing off wasn’t something he knew how to do. They all hated him. But I don’t think Sweeney any more than anyone else.”

“Tell me about Lomax. Was he good?”

“Good?” Farlow looked puzzled; then he caught on. “Basketball, you mean? He was okay. He could wear better guys out, is what he could do. He’d get up for balls he couldn’t reach and shoot shots he couldn’t make, even after the bell. He was everywhere, both ends of the floor. Bastard never gave up.”

“Did he have a future in the game?”

“Lomax? No.” There was no doubt in Farlow’s voice. “Eighteen years in this place. I’ve only seen two or three that could. Drum is the best. An NCAA school could make something out of him. Right school could get him to the NBA. Even the wrong school would get him out of here.” I thought back to the concrete playground, to the eyes of the boys around the pizza-parlor table. Here, I had to admit, was a good place to get out of. “But Lomax? No.”

“About the girlfriend,” I said. “Had you heard anything about trouble between them?”

“No. She had a rep, you know. But all the guys seemed to think she’d quieted down since she look up with Lomax.”

“Who’d she been with before?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know anyone with a reason to kill Lomax, or the girl?”

He sighed. “Look,” he said. “These kids, they talk big, they look bad, but these are the ones who’re trying. Coe. Drum, even Lomax — still in school, still trying. Like something could work out for them.” He spread his hands wide, showing me the shabby office, the defeated building, the dead-end lives. “But me, all my life I’ve been a sucker. My job, the way I figure, is to do my damnedest to help, whenever it looks like something might. That’s your job too, Smith. You’re here because it makes Coe feel like a man, avenging his buddy. That helps. But you’re not going to find anything. There’s nothing to find.”

“Okay.” I stood. I was warm; the air felt stuffy, old. I wanted to be outside; where the air moved, even with a cold edge. I wanted to be where everything wasn’t already over. “Thanks. I’ll come back if I need anything else.”

“Sure,” he answered. “And come see Drum play Saturday.”

Seeing the family is always hard. People have a thousand different ways of responding to loss, of adjusting to their grief and the sudden new pattern of their lives. A prying stranger on a questionable mission is never welcome: there’s no reason he should be.

Charles Lomax’s family lived in a tan concrete project about half a mile from the high school. There were no corridors. The elevators went to outdoor walkways; the apartments opened off them. The door downstairs should have been locked, but the lock was broken, so I rode up to the third floor, picked my way through kids’ bikes and folding beach chairs to the apartment at the end.

The wind and the air were cold as I waited for someone to answer my ring, but the view was good, and the apartments’ front doors were painted cheerful colors. Here and there beyond the doors I could hear kids’ voices yelling and the thump of music.

“Yes, can I help you?” The woman who opened the door was thin, tired-looking. She wore no makeup, and her wrists and collarbone were knobby under her shapeless sweater. Her hair, pulled back into a knot, was streaked with gray. It wasn’t until I heard her clear soft voice that I realized she was probably younger than I was.

Electronic sirens came from the TV in the room behind her. She turned her head, raised her voice. “Darian, you turn that down.”

The noise dropped a notch. The woman’s eyes came back to me.

“Mrs. Lomax?” I said. “I’m Smith. Raymond Coe said you’d be expecting me.”

“Raymond.” She nodded slightly, “Come in.”

She closed the door behind me. Warm cooking smells replaced the cold wind as we moved into the living room, where a boy of maybe ten and a girl a few years older were flopped on the sofa in front of the TV. An open door to the left led into a darkened bedroom. On the wall I glimpsed a basketball poster, Magic Johnson calling the play.

Charles Lomax’s mother led me to a paper-strewn table in one corner of the living room, offered me a chair. “Claudine,” she called to the girl on the sofa, “come and get your homework. Don’t you leave your things around like that.” The girl pushed herself reluctantly off the pillows. She looked me over with the dispassionate curiosity of children; then, fanning herself with her papers, she flopped onto the floor in front of the TV.

Sitting, Mrs. Lomax turned to me and waited, with the tired patience of a woman who’s used to waiting.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I began. “But Raymond said you might answer some questions for me.”

“What kind of questions?”

I looked over at the children, trying to judge whether the TV was loud enough to keep this discussion private. “Raymond doesn’t think Charles killed himself, Mrs. Lomax.”

“I know,” she said simply. “He told me that. I think he just don’t want to think it.”

“Then you don’t agree with him?”

She also looked to the children before she answered. “Raymond knew my boy better than I did. If he says someone else had more reason to kill Charles than Charles had, might be he’s right. But I don’t know.” She shook her head slowly.

“Mrs. Lomax, did Charles have a gun?”

“I never saw one. I guess that don’t mean he didn’t have one.”

A sudden sense of being watched made me glance toward the sofa again. My eyes caught the boy’s; the girl was intent on the TV. The boy turned quickly back to the set, but not before Mrs. Lomax lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders. “Darian!” The boy didn’t respond. “Darian,” she said again, “you come over here.”

Darian sullenly slipped off the sofa, came over, eyes watching the floor. His sister remained intent on the car chase on TV.

“Darian,” his mother said, “Mr. Smith asked a question. Did you hear him?”

Hands in the pockets of his oversized jeans, the boy scowled and shrugged.

“He asked did your brother have a gun.”

The boy shrugged again.

“Darian, if you know something you ain’t saying, you’re about to be in some serious kind of trouble. Did you ever see your brother with a gun?”

Darian kicked at a stray pencil, sent it rolling across the floor. “Yeah, I seen him.”

I looked at Mrs. Lomax, then back to the boy. “Darian,” I said, “do you know where he kept it?”

Without looking at me. Darian shook his head.

“You sure?” said his mother sharply.

“’Course I’m sure.”

Mrs. Lomax looked closely at him. “Darian, you know anything else you ain’t saying?”

“No, ’course not,” Darian growled.

“If I find you do...” she warned. “Okay, you go back and sit down.”

Darian spun around, deposited himself on the sofa, arms hugging his knees.

I turned back to Mrs. Lomax. “Can I ask you about Ayisha?”

She shrugged.

“Did you like her?”

“Started out I did. She was smart to her friends, but she was polite to me. I remember her when she was small, too. Bright little thing... But after I found out what she did, no, I didn’t like her no more.”

“Do you mean getting pregnant?” I asked.

She frowned, as though I were speaking a foreign language she was having trouble following. “Not the baby,” she said. “The baby wasn’t the problem. Though she didn’t have no right to go and do that, after she knew. You got to see I blame her. She killed my son.”

“Mrs. Lomax, I don’t understand. According to the police, your son killed her, and himself.”

“Oh, well, he pulled the trigger. But they was both already dead. And that innocent baby, too.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Raymond didn’t tell you?” Her eyes, fixed on mine, hardened with sudden understanding, and the realization that she was going to have to tell me herself. “She gave him AIDS.”

Back on the winter street. I dropped a quarter in a pay phone, watched a newspaper skid down the walk, and waited for Raymond.

“Your buddy Charles was HIV positive,” I said when he came on. “Did you know that?”

A short pause, then Raymond’s voice, belligerent around the edges. “Yeah, I knew it.”

“And his girlfriend, too.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What difference do it make?”

“Sounds like a motive to me.”

“What you talking about?”

“Hopelessness,” I told him. “Fear. Not wanting to wait around to die. Not wanting to watch his son die.”

“Oh, man!” Raymond snorted a laugh. “C didn’t care. He say he never feel better. He tell me it gonna be years before he get sick. Not even gonna stop playing or nothing, even if it so piss Coach off. Just ’cause you got the virus don’t mean you sick, you know,” he pointed out with a touch of contempt. “You as ignorant as some of them ’round here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Some of the homies, they nervous round С when they find out he got the virus. Talking about he shouldn’t be coming ’round. Like Ash, don’t want to play if С stay on the squad. I had to talk to that brother. But С just laugh. Say, some people ignorant. Don’t pay them no mind, do what you be doing. Maybe someday I get sick, he say, but by then they have a cure.”

“Goddamn. Raymond,” I breathed. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth, lit it to keep from saying all the angry things I was thinking, things about youth, strength, arrogance not lasting, about consequences, about decisions closing doors behind you. I took a deep drag; it cleared my head. Not your business. Smith. Stick to what Raymond hired you for. “All right: Ayisha,” I said. “Who else was she with?”

“Ayisha? She been with a lot of guys.” Raymond paused. “You thinking some jealous dude gonna come after С and Ayisha ’cause they together?”

“It happens.”

“Oh, man! Ain’t no homie done this. Black man do it, it be straight up. Coming with this suicide bull, this some crazy white man. That why you here. See,” he said, unexpectedly patient, trying to explain something to me, “C and me and the crew, we tight. Like...” He paused, reaching for an analogy I’d understand. “Like, you on a squad, maybe you don’t like a brother, but you ain’t gonna trip him when he got the ball. You got something to say to him, you go up in his face. You do what you gotta do, and you take what you gotta take.”

Uh-huh. I thought. If life were like that.

“Okay, Raymond. I’ll call you.”

“Yeah, man. Later.”

I turned up the collar of my jacket; the wind was blowing harder now, off the river. You could smell the water here, the openness of it, the movement and the distance. To me there had always been an offer in that, and a promise: Elsewhere, things are different. Somewhere, not here, lives are better; and the water connects that place and this.

That offer, that promise, probably didn’t mean much to Raymond and his buddies. This was what they had, and, with a clear-eyed understanding I couldn’t argue with, they knew what it meant.

Except Tyrell Drum, of course. “Offer” meant something different to him, but maybe not all that different: a chance to start again, to climb out of this and be somewhere else.

I started back to my car. I was cold and hungry, and down. I’d been buying into Raymond’s theory. A conspiracy, the Power bringing down a black kid because they couldn’t get him legally and they knew they could get away with it. I’d bought into it because I’d wanted to. Wanted to what. Smith? Be the righteous white man, the one on their side? The part of the Power working for them? Offering them justice, this once, so the world wouldn’t look so bad to them? Or so it wouldn’t look so bad to you? So you could sleep at night, having done your bit for the oppressed. Terrific.

But now it was different. Lomax had a motive, and a good one, if you asked me. Teenage swagger can plunge into despair fast. One bad blood test, one scary story about how it feels to die of AIDS: Something like that could have been enough. Especially if he really loved Ayisha. Especially if he already loved his son.

Running footsteps on the pavement behind me made me spin around, ready. The electricity in my skin subsided when I saw who it was.

“Mister, wait.” The voice was small and breathless. Jacket open, pink backpack heavy over her arm. Claudine Lomax stopped on the sidewalk, caught her breath. She regarded me with suspicion.

“Zip your jacket.” I said. “You’ll freeze.”

She glanced down, then did as she was told, pulling up her hood and tucking in her braids. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Mister, you a cop?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a private detective.”

“Why you come around asking questions like that?”

I thought for a moment. “Raymond asked me to. There were some things about Charles he wanted to know.”

She bit her lower lip. “You know Raymond?”

“I’m working for him.”

“Raymond was Charles’s friend.”

“I know.”

She nodded; that seemed to deride something for her, looking me in the eye, she said, “You was asking Mama about Charles’s gun.”

“That’s right. I was asking where he kept it. Do you know?”

“Yeah. And so do Darian. He gonna kill me when he find out it gone. But he just a kid. I been crazy worried about this ever since Charles...” She trailed off, looking away; then she lifted her head and straightened her shoulders, her mother’s gesture. Putting her backpack on the ground with exaggerated care, she pulled a paper bag from it, thrust it at me. “Here.”

“What’s this?” It was heavy and hard and before I looked inside I knew the answer.

“I don’t want it in the house. Mama don’t know nothing about it. I don’t want it where Darian can get it. He think he stepping like a man, gonna take care of business. Make me laugh, but he got this. Boys like that all the time, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Boys are like that all the time.”

“I thought Charles took it with him. Meeting some guy at night like that. But he must have — he must have had another one, huh?”

“Maybe,” I said carefully. “Claudine, what do you mean ‘meeting some guy at night’?”

“Charles don’t like to go do his business without his piece. But maybe it wasn’t business,” she said thoughtfully. “’Cause usually he tell Ayisha stay home when he taking care of business.”

I asked her, “What guy was Charles meeting? Do you know?”

“Uh-uh. He just say he gotta go meet some guy, and Ayisha say she want to come. So Charles say okay, she could keep him company. Then he tell me I better be in bed when he get back, ’cause I got a math test the next day and he gonna beat my butt if I don’t pass.” In a small voice she added, “I passed, too.”

I opened the bag, looked without taking the gun out. It was a long-barreled .32. “Claudine, how long had Charles had this?”

“About a year.”

“How did you know he had it?”

“I hear him and Tyrell hiking on each other when he got it. Tyrell say it a old-fashioned, dumb kind of piece, slow as shit. Oh.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry. But that what Tyrell say.”

“It’s okay, Claudine. What did Charles say?”

“He laugh. He say, by the time Tyrell get his fancy piece working, he gonna find out some guy with a old-fashioned dumb piece already blowed his head off, every time.”

She stared at me under the yellow streetlights, a skinny twelve-year-old kid in a jacket not warm enough for a night like this.

“Claudine,” I said, “did Charles and Tyrell argue a lot?”

“I hear them trash-talking all the time,” she answered. “But I don’t think nothing of it. Boys do that, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They do.”

Tyrell, then. Claudine told me where to go; I drove over. Tyrell Drum lived with his family in a run-down wood-frame house with a view of the river in the distance and the abandoned GM plant closer in. Towels were stuffed around the places where the warped windows wouldn’t shut. The peeling paint had faded to a dull gray.

My knock was answered by a young boy with hooded eyes who left me to shut the door behind myself as I followed him in. From the room to the left I heard the canned laughter of a TV game show; from upstairs, the floor-shaking boom of a stereo. “Tyrell be in the basement,” the boy told me, pointing without interest to a door under the stairs.

“Who’s that?” a woman’s voice called from above as I opened that door, headed down.

“Man to see Tyrell,” the boy answered, and the household went about its business.

The basement was a weight room. The boiler and hot-water tank had been partitioned off into dimness. On this side of the partition were bright fluorescent lights, mats, weights, jump ropes. The smell of damp concrete mixed with the smell of sweat; the hum of the water heater was punctuated by grunts. Tyrell was on the bench, working his left biceps with what looked like sixty pounds. He lifted his eyes to me when I came down, but he didn’t move his head out of position, and he finished his set. He was shirtless. His muscles were mounds under his glinting skin.

When he was done, he clanked the weights to the floor, ran a towel over his face.

“Yeah?” he said. He took in air in deep, controlled breaths.

“I want to talk about Ayisha,” I said. “And Lomax.”

“Go ahead.” He kept his eyes on me for a few moments. Then, straightening, he picked up the weights with the other hand, started pumping. “Talk.”

“She was your girl once, wasn’t she?”

He smiled, didn’t break his rhythm. “She been everyone’s girl once.”

“Maybe everyone didn’t care.”

“Maybe not.” Nineteen, twenty. He put the weights down, left the bench, moved over to a Universal machine. He loaded it to 210, positioned himself, started working the big muscles in his thighs.

“But you did.”

He stopped, looked at me. He held the weights in position while he spoke. “Yeah. I cared. I was so glad to get rid of her and С at the same time I coulda went to Disney World.” Slowly, in total control, he released the weights. He relaxed but didn’t leave the seal, getting ready for his next set.

“What does that mean, get rid of them?”

Either he really had no idea what I was getting at or he was a terrific actor. “Didn’t have no time for her.” Pump, breathe. “For him neither. С always got something going, some idea.” Hold. Release, relax. “Always talking at you. Get me confused. Lost my whole last season because of him.”

“The gas-station job was his idea?”

He gave me a sly grin. “Charges was dropped.” He strained against the weights again. “C talking about, only way to make it be stealin’ and dealin’.” Pump, release, pump. “I try that, ain’t no good at it. Now Coach be telling me—” pump, breathe “—say, I got a chance, a real chance. But I ain’t got all the time in the world. Got to do it now, you understand?”

He looked at me. I didn’t respond.

“C, he don’t never shut up. Don’t give a man no chance to think.” Hold, release, relax. He swung his legs off the machine, picked up the towel again, wiped his face. “C don’t like to think. Don’t like it quiet. Dude get nervous if horns ain’t honking and sirens going by.” He laughed. “Surprise me him and Ayisha end up where they do.”

“Meaning?”

“C don’t never go to the park. They got nothing there but trees and birds, he say. What I’m gonna do with them?”

“His sister says he was going to meet someone that night.”

Tyrell shrugged. He put his legs bark in position, started another set.

“And that was it?” I said. “You were through with Lomax and his ideas? You weren’t helping him take care of business anymore?”

This time he ran the set straight through before he answered. When he was done, he looked at me, breathing deeply.

“Coach be talking at me. I’m seeing college, the NBA, hotels and honeys and dudes carrying my suitcase. C up in my face. I’m looking at the inside of Rikers. Now what you think I’m gonna do?”

“And that was what you thought of when Lomax took up with Ayisha?”

“Damn sure. They both out my face now. I can take care my business.”

“Your business,” I mused. “You have a gun, right? An automatic. Can I see it?”

“What the hell for?”

“Lomax was a revolver man, wasn’t he?” I asked conversationally. “He had a .32.”

Tyrell shook his head in mild disbelief. “Man, Wyatt Earp coulda carried that piece.”

“Why do you carry yours, Tyrell?”

“Now why the hell you think I carry mine?” He scowled. “You some kind of detective, can’t figure out why a man got to be strapped ’round here?”

“Is it like that around here?” I asked softly. “A man has to have a gun?”

“Goddamn!” Tyrell exploded. “You think I like that? Watching my back just whenever I’m walking? Can’t be going here, can’t be going there, you got beef or your homies got beef and someone out to get you for it, go to school, everybody packing, just in case. You think I like that?” A sharp pulse throbbed in his temples; his eyes were shining and bitter. “Man, you can forget about it! I’m gonna make it, man. I’m gonna be all that. C, he got this idea, that idea, don’t never think about what come next, what gonna happen ’cause of what he do. I tell him, you got Ayisha, now get out my face, leave me be. I got things to do.”

His hard eyes locked on mine. The stereo, two floors up, sent down a pounding, recurring shudder that surrounded us.

“Tyrell,” I said, “I’d like to see your gun.”

For a moment, no reaction. Then a slow smile. He sauntered over to a padlocked steel box on the other side of the room. He ran the combination, creaked the top open, lifted out a .357 Coonan automatic. Wordlessly he handed it to me.

“How long have you had this?” I asked.

“Maybe a year.”

“You sure you didn’t just get it?”

He looked at me without an answer. Then, climbing the stairs to where he could reach the door, he opened it and yelled, “Shaun!” He paused; then again, “Shaun! Haul your ragged ass down here!”

The boy with the hooded eyes appeared in the doorway. “You calling me, Tyrell?” he asked tentatively.

Tyrell moved aside, motioned him downstairs. The boy, with an unsure look at me, started down. He walked like someone trying not to take up too much room.

“Shaun, this my piece?”

The boy looked at the gun I held out. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

“Don’t be guessing,” Tyrell said. “This my piece or ain’t it?”

The boy gave Tyrell a nervous look, then peered more closely at the gun, still without touching it. “Yeah,” he said. “It got that thing, here.”

“What thing?” I asked. I looked where the boy pointed. A wide scrape marred the shiny stock.

Tyrell said, “Shaun, where that come from?”

Shaun answered without looking at Tyrell. “I dropped it.”

“When?”

“Day you got it.”

“What happen?”

“You mean, what you do?”

“Yeah.”

The kid swallowed. “You be cursing at me and you smack me.”

“Broke your nose, didn’t I?”

The kid nodded.

“So you remember that day pretty good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“When was that?”

“About last year.”

“You touched it since?”

“No, Tyrell.” The kid looked up quickly.

“Good. Now get the hell out of here.”

Shaun scuttled up the stairs and closed the door behind him.

“See?” Tyrell, smiling, took the gun from me. “My heat. Had it a year. How about that?”

“That’s great, Tyrell,” I said. “It must be great to be so tough. Two more questions. Where were you the night Lomax and Ayisha died?”

“Me?” Tyrell answered, still smiling, looking at the gun in his hand. “I was here.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Depends. You could see if my two cousins remember. I went to bed early. Coach say discipline make the difference. You got to be able to do what need to be done, whether you want to or not.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a model citizen, Tyrell. One more thing. Did you know Lomax was HIV positive?”

Tyrell shrugged, locked his gun back in the box.

“Did it bother you? Friend of yours, with a disease like that?”

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Don’t got no time to worry about C. He got his troubles, I got mine.”

I drove south, found Broadway, stopped at a tavern near the Bronx line. It was a half-empty place, the kind where dispirited old-timers nurse watery drinks and old grudges. In a scarred booth I lit a cigarette, worked on a Bud. I thought about Raymond, about the simple desire to do something, to try to help. About wanting justice, wanting what’s right.

Of course, that meant so many things. To Sweeney it could mean taking a taunting, slippery drug dealer out of the picture. To Tyrell Drum it could mean getting rid of a smooth-talking, dangerous distraction. To Lomax himself, it might have meant having the last laugh: not cheating death, but choosing it, choosing your time and your way and your pain. None of these kids had ever had a lot of choices. This was one Lomax could have given himself.

But I didn’t like it.

I had a couple of reasons, but the biggest was what Raymond had instinctively felt: Lomax wasn’t the type.

I hadn’t known Lomax, but the picture I’d gotten of him was consistent, no matter where it came from. Suicide is for when you give up. Lomax never gave up. Taunting cops. Trying to fast-talk Tyrell into his kind of life. Going up for balls he couldn’t reach and shooting shots he couldn’t make. That’s what the coach said.

Even after the bell.

I lit another cigarette, seeing in my mind the asphalt playground in the fading light, watching the kids charge and jump, hearing the sound of the pounding ball and of their shouts. I saw one fall — I knew now it was Raymond — roll to his feet, try to shake off the sling of the scrape on his hand. Then, immediately, he was back in the game.

Even after the bell.

Suddenly I was cold. Suddenly I knew.

Wanting justice, wanting to help.

There was something else that could mean.

The next day, late afternoon again. The same gray river, the same cold wind.

It would have been pointless to go earlier. I would have been guessing, then, where to look; at this hour, I knew.

I’d made one phone call, to Sweeney, just to check what I already was sure of. He gave me what I wanted, and then he gave me a warning.

“I’m giving you this because I know you’ll get it one way or another. But listen to me. Smith: Whatever road you’re heading down, it’s a dead end. The first complaint I hear, you’ll get a look up close and personal at the smallest cell I can find. Do I make myself clear?”

I thanked him. The rest of the day I worked on the Beethoven. It was getting better, slowly, slowly.

Yonkers West loomed darker, bigger, more hostile than before. At the front door I greeted the guard.

“You were here yesterday.” He grinned. “Go on, tell me you’re not a scout.”

“Practice in session?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. Go on ahead. I’m sure Coach won’t mind.”

I wasn’t. But I went.

The gym echoed with the thump of the basketball on the maple. The whole team, starters and bench, was out on the floor practicing a complicated high-low post play. They were rotating through it, changing roles so that each man would understand it in his gut, know how each position felt; but in play, the point would be to get the ball to the big man. To Tyrell. As many times as the play was called, that’s how it would end up. Tyrell shooting, Tyrell carrying the team’s chances, carrying everyone’s hopes.

Coach Farlow was standing on the sideline. He watched the play as they practiced it, following everyone’s moves, but especially Tyrell’s. I walked the short aisle between the bleachers, came and stood next to him.

He glanced at me, then turned his eyes back to his players. “Hi,” he said. “Come to watch practice?”

“No,” I said. “I came to talk.”

He looked over at me again, then blew the whistle hanging around his neck. “All right, you guys!” The sweating players stopped, stood wiping their faces with their shirts, catching their breath. He rattled off two lists of names. Four guys headed for the sidelines; two teams formed on the court. Raymond, on one end of the floor, caught my eye. I nodded noncommittally. The others looked my way, curious, but snapped their attention back to Farlow when he shouted again.

“Okay, let’s go,” he called. “Hawkins, take the tip. You and Ford call it.”

One of the guys who’d been on his way off the court chased down the ball. Another trotted over to take the coach’s whistle. The ball was tossed up in the center of the circle; the game began.

“You let them call games often?” I asked Farlow as he stood beside me, following their movements with his sharp blue eyes.

“It’s good for them. Forces them to see what’s going on. Makes them take responsibility. Most of them get pretty good at it.”

I said, “I’ll bet Lomax wasn’t.”

“Lomax? He used to tick them all off. He’d call fouls on everyone, right and left. Just to throw his weight around.”

“Did you stop him?”

Farlow watched Raymond go for a lay-up and miss it. Tyrell snatched the rebound, sank it easily. Farlow said, “The point is for them to find out what they’re made of. What each other’s made of. Doesn’t help if I stop them.”

“Besides,” I said, “you couldn’t stop Lomax, could you?”

This time his attention turned to me, stayed there. “What do you mean?”

“No one could ever stop Lomax from doing whatever he wanted. No matter how dangerous it was, to him or anyone else. He wouldn’t stop playing, would he?”

“What?”

“That was it, wasn’t it? He had AIDS and he wouldn’t stop playing.”

A whistle blew. Silence, then the slap of sneakers on wood, the thump of the ball as the game went on. Farlow’s eyes stayed on me.

“You couldn’t talk him out of it,” I said. “You couldn’t drop him because he was too good. You’d have had to explain why, and the law protects people from that kind of thing. He’d have been back on the court and you’d have been out of a job.”

“But you couldn’t let him keep playing. That could have ruined everything.”

Shouts came from the far end of the court as Tyrell stole a pass, broke down the floor, and dunked it before anyone from either team got near him.

“Could have ruined what?” Farlow asked in a tight, quiet voice.

“You’re going through the motions,” I said. “You know I have it. But all right, if you want to do that.”

I watched the game, not Farlow, as I continued. “If Lomax had stayed on the team there might have been no season. Some of his own buddies didn’t want to play with him. Guys get hurt in this game. They bleed, they spit, they sweat. The other guys were afraid.

“That’s what happened to Magic Johnson: He couldn’t keep playing after everyone knew he had AIDS because guys on other teams were afraid to play against him. Magic had class. He didn’t force it. He retired.

“But that wasn’t Lomax’s way, was it? Lomax felt fine and he was going to play. And if it got out he had AIDS his own teammates might have rebelled. So would the teams you play against. The whole season would have collapsed.

“That’s what you were afraid of. Losing the season. Losing Drum’s last chance.”

We stared together down the court, to where a kid was getting set to take a foul shot.

“Lomax killed himself,” Farlow said, harshly and slowly. “He took his gun and shot his girl and shot himself.”

I said, “I have his gun.”

“He had more than one. He bragged about it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. But the one I have is a revolver. Guys who like revolvers — I’m one — like them because they’re dependable. You can bury a revolver in the mud for a month and it’ll fire when you pull it out. Lomax was like that about this gun. There’ve been times when I’ve had to carry an automatic, and it always makes me nervous. Even if I owned one, it’s not the gun I’d take if I were going out to shoot myself.”

Farlow said nothing, watching his kids, watching the game.

“Then there are the guys who like automatics,” I said. “They’re fast. They’re powerful. That’s what you have, isn’t it?”

“Me?” Farlow tried to laugh. “You’re kidding. A gun?”

“An automatic,” I said. “Same make and model as the one that killed Lomax and Ayisha. Drum got me thinking about it. He said everyone around here was packing. I started to wonder who ‘everyone’ was. I checked your permit with Sweeney. He told me about it, and said if I harassed you he’d throw me in jail. Does he know?”

The ball was knocked out of bounds, near us. The officials and players organized themselves, resumed the game. The ball flew out again almost immediately. Another whistle blew, play began again.

“No,” Farlow said quietly.

We watched together in silence for a while. Some of the ball handling was sloppy, but the plays were smart, and every player played flat out, giving the game everything he had.

“Not every coach can get this from his players,” I said.

Farlow asked, “How did you know?”

“Little things. They all clicked together. The gun. The fact that Lomax didn’t like the park.”

“Didn’t like the park?” Farlow said. “A guy might pick a place he doesn’t like, to die in.”

“Sure. But his coach wouldn’t think to go looking for him there, unless he had some reason to think he might be there.”

Farlow didn’t answer. He glanced at the clock on the gym wall; then he stepped onto the court, clapped his hands, and bellowed. “All right, you guys! Looking good. Showers! Stay and wait. I’ll talk to you afterwards.”

The kid with the whistle brought it back to the coach; the kid with the ball sent it Farlow’s way with a bounce pass. Raymond raised his eyebrows as he went by on his way to the locker room. I shook my head.

Farlow watched them go. When the door swung shut behind them he stayed unmoving, its though he were still watching, still seeing something.

“One kid,” he said, not talking to me. “One chance. Year after year, you tear your heart out for these kids and they end up in the gutter. Then you get one kid with a way out, one chance. Drum’s ready, but he’s weak. Not physically. But he can’t keep his head in the game. If he loses this season, too, there’ll be nothing left. He’ll hold up another damn gas station, or something. It has to be now.”

“Lomax was eighteen.” I said. “Ayisha was seventeen. She was pregnant.”

“They were dead!” The coach’s eyes flashed. “They were dead already. How many years do you think they were going to have? Baby born with AIDS, it wouldn’t live through Drum’s pro career.”

“You did them a favor?”

He flinched. “No.” His voice dropped. “That’s not what I mean. But Drum — so many people are waiting for this. Smith. And they were already dead.”

I needed a cigarette. I lit one up; the coach didn’t try to stop me.

“You asked him to meet you at the park?”

He nodded. “In this weather there’s no one there. I knew he didn’t like it there, but...” He didn’t finish.

“But you’re the coach.”

“I knew Lomax. He’d never let me see he was nervous. Afraid. It never occurred to me he’d bring her along.”

“For company,” I told him. “That’s what his little sister said.”

“I almost didn’t — didn’t do it, when I saw she was there. I tried one more time to talk him out of it. Told him I’d get his academic grades raised so he’d be sure to graduate. Told him I’d get him a job. Told him Drum needed him to quit.”

“What did he say?”

The coach looked across the gym. “He said if scouts were coming down to look at Drum, maybe they were interested in point guards, too.”

He brought his eyes back to me. “It was the only way, Smith.”

“No,” I said.

I smoked my cigarette. Farlow looked down at his hands, tough with years of balls and blackboards.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Will you tell Sweeney?”

“Sweeney won’t hear it. I have no hard evidence. To him this case is closed.”

“Then what?” he asked. His eyes lit faintly with something like hope.

I looked toward the door the players had disappeared through. “I have a client,” I said.

“You’ll tell Coe?”

I crushed the cigarette against the stands, dropped the butt back in the pack. “Or you will.”

We stood together, wordless. “You know what’s the worst part?” he finally said.

“What?”

“Coe’s twice the man the rest of them are. Drum’s a bulk, Lomax was a creep. Ash is a coward. But Coe, he’s tough but not mean. He can tell right from wrong and he doesn’t let his ego get in the way. But there’s nothing I can do for him. I can’t help him. Smith. But I can help Drum.”

“Yesterday,” I said, “you told me I was here because avenging his buddy made Raymond feel like a man. And that helped.”

He stared at me. He made a motion toward the door where the players had gone, but he stopped.

“I’ll wait for Raymond to call me.” I said. “I’ll give him a few days. Then I’ll call him.”

I looked once more around the gym, then walked the short aisle between the stands, leaving the coach behind.

I was at the piano the next afternoon when Raymond called. No small talk: “Coach told me,” he said.

I shut the keyboard, pulled a cigarette from my pocket. “What did you do?”

“First, I couldn’t believe it. Stared at him like an idiot. Coach, man! You know?”

I did know; I said nothing.

“Then I feel like killing him.”

I held my breath. “But?”

“But I hear С in my head.” Raymond said. “Laughing. ‘What so damn funny, homie?’ I ask him. ‘This the guy burned you.’ С keep laughing, in my head. He say, ‘For Tyrell, brother? This about the funniest thing ever.’ Just laughing and laughing.”

“What did you do?”

“Slammed out of there, to go and think. See, I was stuck. What you gonna do, Ray, I be asking myself. Go to the cops? Give me a break.”

“If you want to do that,” I said, “I’ll see it through with you.”

“No,” he said. “Ain’t my way. Another thing, I could do Coach myself; but that ain’t my way neither. So what I’m gonna do, just let him walk away? He done my main man; got to pay for that. Got to pay. But in my head, С just laughing. ‘For Tyrell, man?’ And then I know what he mean. And I know I don’t got to do nothing.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“’Cause Tyrell, he been with Ayisha before C.”

It took a second, then it hit.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah,” Raymond agreed. “What Coach done, he done to get Tyrell his shot. But Tyrell ain’t gonna have no shot.”

No shot. No pro career, no college years. Two murders. A lifetime of hard-won trust, everything thrown away for nothing. Tyrell might be able to avoid going public, might be able to keep his mouth shut the way Lomax hadn’t; people might not know, at first. But the virus was inexorable. It would get Tyrell before Tyrell had a chance to make everyone’s dreams come true.

“Raymond,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“Man,” he said, “so am I.”

There wasn’t anything more. I told Raymond to keep in touch; he laughed shortly and we both knew why. When we hung up I stood at the window for a while. After the sky turned from purple to gray, after the promise faded, I pulled on my jacket, went over to the Fourth Street courts, and watched the kids play basketball under the lights.