Tuff

13- TIPPECANOE, TYLER, AND TUFFY TOO

Look at Ben Franklin. Tuffy, holding a starched one-hundred-dollar bill up to his face, was scrutinizing the old statesman’s portrait. Nigger look upset. Like somebody just told him, “You discovered electricity? So what, the radio ain’t been invented yet.” Crisp notes of the same denomination as the one in his hands swelled his pockets. So much so, he barely had room enough for his keys and bubble gum, much less his pistol, which he now toted in his sock. And Ben look like he about to say, “Motherfucker, if I was twenty years younger I put my pilgrim shoes so far in your ass …” Winston smelled the bill, aahed, then stuffed it back into his pocket.

On every corner of the intersection of Lexington and 106th Street his newly hired support staff, consisting of Inez, Fariq, Charley, and Yolanda and Jordy, canvassed the Monday-morning commuters. Fariq handed a woman a flyer, then shoved a clipboard in the drowsy worker’s face. “That’s him, right there,” he said, pointing across Lexington Avenue in Winston’s direction. “Hell yeah, he’s a good man — the best.” Fariq called out to his candidate, “Tuffy! Come over here, yo!” Winston kept his head down, his eyes fixed on his new shoes, looking for scuff marks on the burnished leather. “Get over here, son, and shake this lady’s hand. She wants to meet you!” Pretending he couldn’t hear Fariq’s request over the traffic noise, Winston cupped his ear, mouthed “Thank you” and greeted the woman with a grand-marshal parade wave. The woman waved back and signed the petition. Shouting over the woman’s head, Fariq cursed his friend’s lethargy. “Tuffy, you want these people to vote for you, you supposed to come running. You they servant. You doing for them. Don’t let that little chump change in your pocket fill your head, nigger!” Winston juggled his testicles and shouted, “Suck my dick, motherfucker!” The potential voter slunk into the subway, looking at the composed figure on the flyer, then crazily at the real candidate holding his crotch and yelling obscenities.

Winston thrust his hands into his pockets and squeezed the knot of bills. A jolt surged through his body. It was as if the bills were electrified. His joints jumped. His skin tingled with privilege — proving Ben Franklin’s research on conductivity is still incomplete.

A slim-hipped woman in a receptionist-tight black skirt walked past Winston and did a double-take. “That you on that poster?” she asked. He peered over his shoulder at the campaign poster in the restaurant window behind him. He and Inez had designed it two nights ago over gin and lemonade. It read:

THE REVOLUTION MAY BE DEAD,

BUT THERE IS A GHOST IN THE MACHINE

EAST HARLEM — VOTE FOR WINSTON FOSHAY

CITY COUNCIL 8TH DISTRICT

A SCARY MOTHERFUCKER

AMBIVALENT ON DRUGS, GUNS, AND ALCOHOL IN THE COMMUNITY

AGAINST CATS IN THE SUPERMERCADOS

ANTI–COP

ANTI–COP

ANTI–COP

TOPPLE THE SYSTEM: VOTE SEPTEMBER 9TH — A PARTY

Underneath “A Scary Motherfucker” was an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch photo of a sullen-faced sixteen-year-old Winston staring directly into the camera. His features were ashen. His eyelids drooped to an angle two degrees from slumber. An unlit cigarette hung in the corner of his mouth. Inez had taken the snapshot moments after a judge cleared him on drug-trafficking charges because the arresting officer was two hours late to the proceedings. She had implored him to smile. “You’re free,” she said. Winston looked relieved, not free. He made the obligatory vow to go straight, but never smiled. Soon after taking the suit and bow tie back to the Nation of Islam member Fariq had borrowed it from, he returned to his old ways.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said to the woman.

“I thought so.” The hesitancy disappeared from her voice; her posture slumped with a friendly casualness. Her hand dropped away from the flap of her purse. “Why you look so mean in that picture? You a rapper or something?”

Winston frowned. The woman’s misconception was a common one. There was a slew of overweight rap artists, and rarely a week passed in which someone didn’t mistake him for Chub Boogie, Fat Max, or Tonnage, and request that Winston “kick a verse” or “bust a rhyme.”

“Why a fat nigger always got to be a faggot-ass rapper?”

“I’m sorry. I just thought since you out here handing out flyers and got a poster up, you was promoting your album. You never see a poster of a nigger your age on the wall unless he selling records.”

“True, but I’m running for City Council.”

“Oh snap, you really running? I thought City Council was the name of your posse or something. You serious?”

“I guess so.”

Winston gave her a flyer and showed her his clipboard.

“You registered?” he asked. The woman shook her head.

“Well, fill out this card, sign right here, and you can vote for me come September.”

As she scribbled in the pertinent information, Winston looked over her shoulder. “Mmm, you smell good. Let me ask you something — what’s that you wearing?”

“Let me ask you something — how you funding your campaign?” Snapping to attention, Winston stalled for time. He wasn’t about to admit that this morning Inez gave him fifteen thousand dollars, two thousand flyers, the campaign’s single poster, and a pep talk. With tears in her eyes, she explained half in Japanese and half in English, how at seven-fifteen this morning, she stormed into the local congressman’s office, an ex-socialist ally turned capitalist pawn, and threatening his lone staffer that she knew her reparation check was old, but if the United States government didn’t cash it immediately, she’d rally every concentration camp survivor, bus them down to Washington, D.C., bind their wrists with barbed wire, and sit them down on the steps of the Capitol building until they bled to death trickle by trickle or her check was cashed. Then she handed the staffer a photo of the congressman as a young radical intern proudly showing off his birthday gifts, a framed photo of Stalin, a plastic Sputnik model, a signed copy of Das Kapital, and a lid of grass — Maui Wowee to be specific. A call was made to D.C., and an hour ago Inez gravely pushed fifteen thousand dollars across her coffee table.

Winston had seen ten times that amount in various neighborhood drug spots, but he knew how much suffering the money represented, and like the millionaire Hollywood megastar who acts flabbergasted at having found one hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag, he perfunctorily bulged his eyes and dropped his jaw. As he jammed the money into his pockets, his mood changed. He began to feel a sense of indebtedness to Inez. “Ms. Nomura, I’ll help collect the nine hundred signatures, but I ain’t doing shit else but the sumo thing and the debate. No shaking hands and kissing babies.”

“I know,” she had said, and handed him an extra five hundred dollars.

“I got a little scratch saved up,” Winston told the woman. “You know, gots to be prudent with your funds.”

The woman brushed aside a loose braid and tucked it behind her ear.

“Where I know you from?” he asked her.

“Didn’t you run with Eric and Tango over on Mount Pleasant?”

“Yeah, how you know?”

“I’m Isabel’s sister.”

“You shitting me. So you must’ve been there when Alex and Kayson got into their little thing.”

“Who you think mopped up the blood? I knew I knew you. Now I know how you got your money — that place was a goldmine. You the only one I know who held on to any of it. You must’ve broke out before Lester got popped.”

“Right after. Fifty came in and blew up the spot, next day my shit was ghost.”

“You know T.J. got a thirty-year bid behind that.”

“I heard.”

“Well, anyway, I got to go to work,” the woman said, handing back the clipboard. “I’m going to vote for you — I like a man who supports the community. You better not get in office and start fucking up.”

“What could I possibly do to make things worse?”

When the morning rush hour ended, Fariq and Charley surrendered to the tedium. Turning their clipboards in to Inez, they abandoned the struggle, going home to catch up on the sleep they’d lost the night before. Winston spent the rest of the day fending off the advances of aggressive women who were just glad to see a young nigger doing something positive, listening to people’s problems, and shrugging his shoulders when they asked what would he do for them if elected. “At least you honest,” they’d say, signing the petition while prattling on about an inept mayor, a do-nothing school board, disrespectful kids.

It was now late afternoon. The old-timers were out in force, trolling the streets for opportunity; yet their protégés, those wild-eyed, disrespectful kids, were missing in action. Now that Winston had noticed it, their absence was off-putting, and he was angry with himself for not being aware of it earlier.

Winston counted the number of signatures on his petition. Eighty-six. That ain’t so bad. With what everybody else got I’m probably damn near halfway there.

A voice came to Winston from above. “You got my vote, you fat motherfucker! Anything to keep your crazy ass off the streets, moreno.” Tuffy looked skyward, not bothering to shield his eyes from the sun. “Amante, what up, bro? Where the party at?” Perched on a rooftop, Edgar Amante, the local party promoter, was running wires from a small transformer into a washtub-sized satellite dish, working his day job. “Qué te pasa, papi? I heard you was running for City Council, I ain’t believe the shit till I seen the poster.”

“But I’m saying, where the set at tonight? I need to get loose.”

“No party tonight. Everybody’s gone to the Rock or to the Tombs.”

“What?”

“Word up, son. You ain’t know? The task force was rolling deep last night. UCs was popping niggers left and fucking right, bro. The news said it was something like nine hundred niggers arrested. Matter fact, what you doing out here?”

“I was in Brooklyn last night.”

“You lucky, B.”

“Thanks, yo. I’m out.”

“How’s the descrambler I hooked you up with working out?”

“Straight.”

Winston ran across the street toward Inez, Yolanda, and Jordy. “Honey, I’m going down to the precinct. I know where I can get some signatures.”

Winston kissed Jordy, then reversed course and tromped up the hill to 102nd Street. He was headed for the police station with a dumbfounded Yolanda and Inez in tow. Halfway down the block he spotted a police cruiser backing out of its parking space and blasting hip-hop music through the PA system. Winston threw himself into the backseat, slamming the door behind him. Both officers stopped bobbing their heads and wheeled about, guns drawn, yelling commands over the music: “Hands, motherfucker!”

Slowly, Winston peeked around the barrels of the guns pointed in his face. “Bendito, that you?” he asked the driver.

“Tuffy? Puñeta, I almost blew you away.”

“Bendito!” Tuffy lowered his hands, “You’re a real cop now? Gun, badge, and everything? Shit, man, congratulations.” Bendito’s partner went ballistic. Leaning over the seat, he jabbed the gun into Winston’s cheek. “I said hands, you son-of-a-bitch!”

Winston glowered at the officer and dropped his hands into his lap. “Son, you best to get that gun out my face before I take it from you and beat you to death with the butt end. Bendito, you better tell your boy something.” Bendito lowered the music and his partner’s gun. “It’s okay, I know this one.” The officer holstered his weapon, “You don’t know how close you were to getting lit up.”

“You don’t know how close you were to a bagpipe funeral and a plaque on the wall: ‘In memory of Officer—’ “—Winston tugged on the officer’s nametag—” ‘Officer Bitch-Ass.’ ” Insulted, the officer raised a fist, but Winston slapped him before he could deliver the punch. And until Bendito separated them, the two flailed at each other like children fighting over dinner scraps. “Tuffy, get out of the car, now!”

“Naw, Bendito, man, you’ve got to arrest me.”

“It’s our first day, I can’t arrest you. And it’s not Bendito anymore, it’s Ben.”

“I need to go to jail and I don’t feel like taking the bus, Ben.”

Bendito turned the music off. “Listen, if I arrest you on day one, fifteen minutes into my tour, we’ll look like gung-ho supercops out to impress the brass and none of the other guys will trust us.”

“Officer Negro here a new jack?”

“Dave’s been on a year. Why do you want to get arrested anyway? Because you rappin’ now, you want some bad publicity for your album or something?”

“I’m not rappin’,” Winston protested.

“I had breakfast at Delia’s, I seen the poster.”

“I’m running for City Council.”

“You’re what?”

“I not really running, I’m …” Winston looked hopelessly out the window. He could see Inez and Yolanda, carrying Jordy like a bag of groceries, huffing their way toward the car. “Look, do me this solid. Just take me in.”

“And charge you with what?”

With the heel of his hand, Winston cuffed Dave in the temple just hard enough to knock the officer’s hat askew. “Slapping Officer Negro upside the head.”

“First arrest, assault on an officer? I don’t think so. I’d be the laughingstock of the precinct.”

“Bendito, why you acting like I shot your dog? Just give me a break.”

Fueled by memories of his beloved Der Kommissar lying dead in the gutter, Bendito gunned the car into reverse, just as Inez, Yolanda, and Jordy reached the passenger-side door. “Winston, where in the hell you going?” Yolanda asked, holding on to the door handle and jogging alongside the car.

“Jail.”

“Motherfucker, if you leave me to go to jail, don’t bother comin’ back. You hear?”

“Calm down, damn. It ain’t serious. I’ll be out tomorrow — Wednesday at the latest.”

Winston knew that if he had any outstanding warrants Tuesday or Wednesday could easily be February, and as a precaution, he peeled off two one-hundred-dollar bills from his bankroll, then, knowing Bendito wouldn’t say anything, brazenly reached into his sock for his gun. “Hold this for me,” he said, tossing the pistol and the rest of the money out the window. They continued to back down the street, while Inez and Yolanda stared at the money and the automatic. Yolanda picked up the gun. “Somebody get my money from out the goddamn street!” Winston ordered, his head sticking out the window. Inez and Yolanda both reached for the money. Inez yielded, and Yolanda slipped the cash into her purse.

As Bendito backed the cruiser into the precinct parking lot, Winston, hoping to speed up the time it took to process him, removed his belt and shoelaces. Hands cuffed behind him, struggling to keep his baggy britches from falling to his knees, he entered the station looking like a maladroit circus clown. His size-fourteen boots flapped against the linoleum floor like shower slippers. Bendito shoved him into an empty cell and Winston began the interminable wait. Thinking the worst, he resigned himself to being Rikers Island — bound. Three dull months in a hangar-sized white fiberglass tent, trying his damnedest to stay out of trouble. Yolanda, right. I need to stop being so “impetuous.” Fuck am I doing? It’s easier to get jail time in jail than it is on the outside. I’ll be in Rikers forever. Fucking with them niggers and catching charges just for defending myself. In the cramped dampness of the holding tank, head against the bars, Tuffy heard his name. Someone reported to the process officer that the check came up clean, he didn’t have any outstanding warrants. The desk sergeant asked Bendito what charges he was filing. Bendito cited cruelty to animals and illegal possession of a firearm. Then the sergeant began adding what he termed “obligatory counts”: loitering, endangerment of public safety, criminal negligence, resisting arrest.

“Well, no, Sarge, he didn’t exactly resist arrest.”

The Tombs were overcrowded because of the previous night’s sweep, and Winston was hustled to a storage space that had been converted into a temporary billet. Designed to hold forty men, it currently held fifty, not including the seven corrections officers. Winston walked directly to an empty cot, shook the pillow, lifted the foam rubber mattress, then ran his hand underneath the bed frame. Turning to face the rest of the inhabitants of temporary holding pen D-6, he said, “Any motherfuckers got some shit hid up in, near, around, over, or under my area, come get it now. I’m not trying to catch no kind of charges on this bid, but I will get in your ass if I have to.” Winston immediately recognized at least two-thirds of the inhabitants, and his caveat, though earnest, was inflected with a bit of whimsy. No one spoke, though judging by the grins on their battered faces, most of his bunkmates were happy to see him.

“Stop woofing, yo! This is a Blood thing, son.” A slim boy of about seventeen with a red bandanna tied around his neck stepped out of a pack of twelve rumpled, red-clad black men languishing about the center of the room. “We’ll hide anything we want, where we want.” Winston glanced at the nearest corrections officer, who was reading the paper and not paying much attention to the conversation. “I know you will,” he said, opening his hands and taking an easy stride toward the goateed young man. “But I’m just letting you know, you don’t want to hide jackshit my way.”

Winston knew who he was talking to: Yancey “Whip Whop” Harris, member of the upper echelon of the Spanish Harlem Bloods, and once a gifted comedian. When he was younger Yancey was as far from the thug life as a boy could be. An honor student, he was the neighborhood funny man, whose antics and impressions made two hours’ worth of grade-school detention fly by. Whip Whop was the type of guy people fought to sit next to on the subway. When a merchant killed his two brothers during an armed robbery three years ago, Yancey stopped telling jokes, stepped off the stage, and joined the shock troops.

Winston and Yancey both knew that in a fair fight Winston would beat Yancey like a slave, but none of the soldiers standing behind Yancey were fair. They also knew that after a night of police brutality from arrest to arraignment, Yancey wasn’t spoiling for a fight, just asserting his leadership. “Zero-zero-one,” Yancey said to his aide-de-camp, relaying some command in their coded binary language. The acolyte muttered back, “One-Zero-One-One-Zero,” then asked a guard to turn up the volume on the boom box, an implicit okay that it was now safe for Winston to turn his back.

There was some temptation for Tuffy to throw his lot in with the Bloods — sit at their table, playfully pinch their wounds, thump their bruises, and stare down the Puerto Ricans. Though he remained alone, he found himself staring at the Puerto Ricans anyway. Not long ago they ran the city’s jails. Powered by overwhelming numbers and a loose coalition, the Latin Kings and La Ñeta regulated every aspect of a prisoner’s life, from what hand he ate his meals with to when he could defecate. The two groups feuded and the Bloods stepped in to fill the breach. Now reduced to being the French Résistance of the New York State prison system, the Latinos sat on their beds, observing the occupying forces. Scattered about the makeshift holding pen were the independents, most of their anuses puckered tight with fear. Three Asian boys huddled in a corner doing cigarette tricks. Two stray white boys, arrested on the wrong weekend for minor violations, changed positions every few minutes, trying to stay within the guards’ sight lines. The unaffiliated colored kids congregated in the corners. Those who had their sneakers stolen wore orange foam-rubber slippers that made a sickening crinkly noise when they walked. The mentally ill were the only ones who mingled.

Tuffy, the collective eyes of the Bloods hawking him, approached a stocky Latin King, Brody Onteveras, known as King Bro. “You got case quarters for a dollar?”

“Here.” King Bro slapped three quarters in his palm.

Winston straightened. “Give me my fucking quarter, motherfucker. How you going to show, charging me a quarter for a dollar change?”

“You lucky I don’t charge you four dollars a quarter.”

“You better stop playing. Did I charge you when you needed a place to stay after Marisol …? Motherfucker, don’t let me put your shit in the street.” Blushing, King Bro handed Winston the fourth quarter.

Winston cut the line of inmates waiting for the phone and placed a call home. No answer.

“What’s this I hear about you running for City Council?” King Bro asked, his question quickly followed by a chorus of “For reals?” from every corner of the room.

“For reals. I’m running.”

“Why you doing something foolish like that?” asked Whip Whop, rising from his seat and almost treading into the Latin King side of the bunker.

Winston grabbed a chair, spun it backward, and sat in it so that his chin rested on the top of the seat back. He positioned himself between the Latin and the black camps. “Because I was talking out the back of my neck and said some shit without really thinking. Then someone put some money in my pocket.” The prisoners gathered around Winston as close as warring factions could gather around anything. “Man, can you imagine if a nigger like you won?”

“No, I can’t.”

“That be some out shit, though.”

“But if I did win, you know what I’d do?”

“What?”

“I’d sit in the meetings, take my shoes off, and put my funky feet on the table, and say, ‘I don’t know what you stupid motherfuckers is making laws about, but don’t forget the poor smelly motherfuckers like me.’ At the very least I’ll tell y’all niggers when the next roundup is.”

“On the real, though,” Whip Whop and King Bro said simultaneously. With a nod Whip Whop yielded the floor. “We need a voice. One of us speaking, instead of some television nigger speaking for us. Tuffy, if you ran I’d vote for you just on some ol’ humbug-I-don’t-give-a-fuck-type-shit.”

Winston took out a couple of empty petition pages and some voter registration cards, items neither the police nor the guards who frisked him deemed dangerous weapons. “CO,” he called out, “pen, please. I’m writing a letter to my lawyer.” The guard tossed him a felt-tipped pen. “All y’all sign here then, put me on the ballot. You nonfelony motherfuckers, fill these out. I’m going to send you misdemeanor bench warrant niggers absentee ballots.”

While the men passed around the petition, Winston spoke until lights out, not politicking a bloc of potential voters, but just simply getting some thoughts off his chest. “Look at us — in jail, treated like animals. Take a last look at the white boys, because they fixing to get desk appearance tickets. Judge going to wave his finger in their faces, ‘Don’t do it again.’ For us it don’t matter if we do it once or two million times, we headed for Rikers to spend sleepless nights listening to jet airplanes take off and land, and niggers getting tossed. Look at y’all niggers, niggers I’ve known since back in the day when we was shorter than shorties. I played in the johnny-pump with Ramón, Peehole, Felipe, Point Blank, Carlos, Tony Bump-off, Yancey. Stolen petty shit with Foster, Pan-Pan, Hard Top, and Hennessey. Lent money, borrowed money from damn near everybody in this piece. But I realized soon as I walked in here, seen so many niggers I know to be down decent motherfuckers, I was like, ‘Damn, there’s some good niggers in jail.’ Most of us in here because we was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Been that way since our births, if you think about it.” As he spoke, the circle tightened around him, cinching like a drawstring to a felt bag of valuables. With Winston as the midpoint of the circle, the friction between the gangs eased. The arc of each gang circumscribed a disjointed circle around him. Winston imagined the ghost of Musashi Miyamoto, stick in hand, filling in its gaps. The young gangsters listened, sucking on razor blades lodged alongside their callused gums, rubbing the crescent-shaped scars on their faces with their fingertips.

Ten minutes before his arraignment hearing, Winston was in a small holding cell behind the upstairs courtroom. Across from him sat his legal aid lawyer, Ms. Rachel Fisher. Rachel had the sniffles. As she leafed through the stack of Winston’s files, hawking and wiping her runny nose with the back of her hand, errant droplets of snot fell on his docket. “Mr. Foshay?” Winston grunted, offended and pleased she didn’t offer to shake his hand. “You got some record here. Because of your propensity to skip bail and miss court appearances the Criminal Justice Agency has decided your bail should be set at three thousand dollars. Since there’s no way you can afford that amount, I’ll try to get it reduced.”

“I can afford it.”

Rachel looked up with a snort. “You can? We’ll make a plea, then they’ll send you home,” she said with a lawyerly finality.

“Yeah, but I ain’t paying it. I need that money for other things.”

“Well, then no matter how you plead, there’s a chance you’ll be remanded to Rikers if you don’t post bail. I think if we plead guilty now to the cruelty charge the district attorney will drop the other counts without much of a fight. Possession of firearm — there’s no evidence of a firearm. The rest of these are bullshit. I think you’ll get four months max, maybe a fine. Maybe nothing.”

“I ain’t pleading guilty to shit. I ain’t done shit but get arrested.”

“But Mr. Foshay, you’re charged with a weapons violation and cruelty to an animal. Specifically the shooting of a pit bull”—the lawyer lifted a sheet of paper—“named Der Kommissar in the head, so they arrested you for something.”

“Nobody arrested me. I made a citizen’s arrest on myself because I needed to go to jail to take care of some business, but I ain’t done nothing.”

“You were arrested, but no crime was committed, per se?”

“No, I didn’t commit no crime, per se.”

“Per se.” Winston allowed the phrase to dangle on the tip of his tongue, enjoying its foreign tang. “ ‘Per se’? What language is that?”

“It’s Latin.”

Fighting to breathe through her clogged sinuses, Rachel tilted her head back. For the next five minutes she counseled Winston on the efficacy of making a guilty plea with her nose pointed to the ceiling. “Any questions, Mr. Foshay?”

“What’s the judge’s name?”

“Judge Weinstein.”

“He Jewish?”

“Yes, I believe he is.”

“Then I might got a chance. Maybe I’ll represent myself.”

“You want to make a fool out of yourself, too cheap to hire a lawyer or post bail, you go pro se, be my guest.”

“I don’t know about no pro se, but I arrested myself, and I’m going to represent myself. Shouldn’t be a problem. If I start losing I’ll just go Al Pacino in And Justice for All on them. Start screaming, ‘No, you’re out of order. In fact the whole system is out of order!’ ” The lawyer cleared her nasal passages with a loud sniffle, pinched her red-rimmed nostrils closed, and gathered her papers. “Fine, whatever,” she said. “Have you ever seen To Kill a Mockingbird?”

“Of course.”

“Then I suggest you do a Gregory Peck and charm the judge.”

Before she stood to leave, Winston grabbed her wrist. “Can you do like Gregory Peck and get an innocent nigger like me out the door?”

Rachel affected a southern drawl and asked Winston, “You ain’t raped any white women, have you, boy?”

Winston played along. “No, ma’am. Least not nones that’s lived to tell the tale.”

“Winston, did you shoot the dog?”

“Yes, but he tried to bite my son.”

“I’ll talk to the DA.”

As they entered the chambers Winston had a small panic attack when he remembered that in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck lost the case.

Judge Weinstein was presiding, barricaded against the hordes of miscreants seated in front of him by a nameplate and a tall mahogany bench. The cases heard before Winston’s moved like clockwork. Lasting no longer than forty-five seconds, each arraignment moved efficiently down the assembly line. The conveyor belt of justice moved its manufactured goods, the defendants, from their courtroom seats to the front of the judge’s bench. The assistant district attorney looked at a sheet of paper, recited the charges, and recommended that bail be set at x amount. The defense lawyer cited a mitigating circumstance, such as the defendant’s being the sole provider for a destitute family, and requested the bail be reduced by a third. The prosecution would say the substantial bond was more than fair, since the defendant was a previous offender, a danger not only to law-abiding citizens of the community but to his own physical well-being. The judge would agree; the defendant would be stamped “Made in the USA” and shipped out on a bus to Rikers Island. During the paper shuffling between hearings, Judge Weinstein stuffed a transistor-radio earplug into one fleshy ear. He was listening to the Mets’ game.

The bailiff called Winston’s docket number and motioned for Winston to approach the bench. As he walked through the swinging gate, the balding magistrate pulled the earplug from his ear and said, “The Mets are up five to three in the bottom of the seventh. Jenkins just hit a two-run homer.” There was scattered applause from the pews. Winston could see Weinstein was pleased with the progress of the baseball game and took it as a good sign. The bailiff called Winston’s name. He and Rachel approached the bench. The district attorney read the long list of charges. Judge Weinstein paused and put the earplug in his ear for about ten seconds. “Two strikes to Henderson. Mr. Foshay, do you understand these charges against you.”

“Yes.”

“Then how do you plead?”

Winston looked at Rachel. Rachel looked at her watch. “Guilty.”

“My client means guilty to the animal cruelty charge, Your Honor.”

The DA announced that the people of New York would drop the remaining charges. Before he could be sentenced Winston blurted out, “The dog was attacking my son, Your Honor, he’s a baby.”

Weinstein lifted his glasses to get a better look at Winston. Somewhere in Queens a Met hit a line drive that caromed off the shortstop’s mitt and into center field. This one looks like Mookie Wilson, the judge thought. God, I loved Mookie.

“Mr. Foshay, what breed was the dog you shot?”

“That would be a dog of the pit bull variety, Your Honor.”

Judge Weinstein nodded his head. “Good, I hate those dogs. But Mr. Foshay, I’m concerned about the possession of an unregistered firearm.”

“That charge has been dropped, Your Honor,” Rachel said, forcing a phony smile.

“I know that, Counsel. But I’m more concerned with the gun than the dead dog.”

“No smoking gun, Your Honor,” Winston said.

“And if there had been a smoking gun?”

“I took the gun from a little girl so she wouldn’t hurt herself or nobody else with it.”

“Did you hurt anybody else with it?”

“No, Your Honor. Just the dog. I ain’t never used a gun to do nothing.”

Judge Weinstein asked the bailiff to bring up Winston’s criminal record. He looked down the list for gun violations.

“Where’s the gun now?” the judge asked.

“In the East River, Your Honor,” Winston lied.

“Mr. Foshay, anyone ever tell you you look like Mookie Wilson?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“The people of the state of New York hereby sentence you to ninety hours’ community service.”

To the consternation of the drug-sweep detainees and the prosecutors, Winston pounded his breastbone. He thanked Rachel, then strode out of the courtroom, not quite a free man, but more an indentured servant. Close enough. As he exited, a court officer, his hands clasped in front of him, whispered, “You know who Mookie Wilson is?”

“No fucking idea.”

Winston shadowboxed his way out of the courthouse. Haymakers landed on the chins of Judge Weinstein, Rachel Fisher, and the assistant district attorney. With each punch he grunted and spat out a phrase of legalese. “Pro se”—jab. “Defendant”—jab, jab, right hook. “Penal code”—body blow. “The state sentences you to—” Winston fired an uppercut at the state, wondering exactly what the state looked like.

When he got back home he found the lock on his front door had been changed. After a few desperate knocks, he walked down the block, stopped outside Fariq’s building, and whistled the shrill bar that for over ten summers had called his best friend to the window. He whistled again. One more time.

Armello’s lockless front door opened with a haunted-house creak. The apartment was empty. He took a half-eaten Jamaican beef patty from the Salcedos’ refrigerator and washed it down with two gulps of ginger ale. Then it was on to Whitey’s. “Hey, Ms. O’Koren, is Whitey home?… Where he at?… Come on, they ain’t going rob no bank. Plus, they need a white lady to go in with them.… Well, as long as you only thinking about it.… Do mind if I use the phone?”

Winston couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one of these lonesome summer weekdays. He felt betrayed. How dare his friends live the portions of their lives that didn’t include him? On days like this, he used to shovel breakfast cereal into his mouth, then bolt outside to play, only to discover nine-tenths of his world missing. Downcast, he’d return home and skim his sole Hardy Boys mystery, The Missing Chums, blind to the title’s irony. After a few boring pages, he’d behead a few of his sister’s dolls, then fight her off with the knife. Then they’d share a cantaloupe half, arguing about whether it tasted better with or without salt.

Thinking of Brenda, Winston rubbed the two one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, went back to Armello’s apartment, and made a phone call.