A few minutes later he turned onto Eighty-first Street and saw Ryan coming toward him along the sidewalk.

  The little bastard turned up the walkway leading toward his house, and Jake pulled up to the curb, maybe fifty yards away. Jake was ready to bolt out of the car when he saw the car that had been going down the street ahead of him slow down near the Rossettis’ house. The driver pointed a gun out the window and started shooting at Ryan. Ryan stood there, wobbling for a second or two, and then collapsed onto his side. The car - dark blue, maybe a Subaru - sped away.

  Jake’s first clear thought was, Run like hell, but he did nothing -just sat in the car, watching Ryan lying still on the ground. Rose-Marie Rossetti was the first to Ryan’s side. She started wailing, screaming for help. A guy from up the block came running over and, when he saw Ryan lying there, made a call on his cell -probably to 911. Then other neighbors came out and rushed over to see what was going on. Jake’s mother, sister, and brother-inlaw came out and went toward the Rossetti house without seeing Jake.

  Watching the scene unfold through the windshield, Jake felt like he was watching TV, like what was happening had nothing to do with him. Then he realized that Cornrows, or one of his gangsta friends, must’ve shot Ryan. Jake had no idea why Cornrows would want Ryan dead, but he couldn’t think of any other idea that made any sense.

  Now there must’ve been thirty, forty people in front of the Rossetti house. Jake decided he couldn’t just sit in the car - being at the scene and not going over there would look as bad as running. So, casually, he got out, flipped down his Ray#Bans, and strutted toward the crowd.

  Eighteen

  Lying on a bench in Canarsie Park, staring at the black sky, Saiquan wondered how everything had gotten so fucked-up.

  It was supposed to be easy - get a piece, smoke J, and then he could get a job, make some clean money, and go on with his life. But along the way, everything got stupid. First stupid thing was getting in with Marcus. He knew that sick-ass crackhead was bad news - he just didn’t know how bad. Second stupid thing was smoking rock himself. Hadn’t touched that shit in years - why’d he have to start again? Third stupid thing was stupidest of all: not shooting Jake Thomas when he had the chance.

  When he had the gun pointed at Thomas and Marcus was saying all that, ‘Shoot him. What you waitin’ for? Shoot him,’ shit, Saiquan was saying to himself, Why should I listen to Marcus? I been listening to that stupid-ass motherfucker all night, and what it get me ‘cept a chance to go away for life?

  Then, after J.T. shot Marcus, Saiquan had another chance to smoke the man. He had the gun aimed right at J.T.’s head. All he had to do was pull the trigger and he would’ve had a chance to live a life outside of jail. Maybe Marcus was dead and maybe the cops wouldn’t figure out what happened at the house. Maybe if he capped J.T. he would’ve been a free man.

  But he didn’t pull the trigger - he ran like a pussy, and he knew Thomas probably got right on the phone, gave the cops a description of the dude that ran away. The cops probably had that shit going out on their radios all night - black man, six-two, cornrows, wearing a black North Face jacket, armed and dangerous.

  Saiquan went into Canarsie Park, figuring he’d hang out there till he came up with a plan. A plan . . . Like he had any plans for his life that didn’t get fucked-up. He wondered how long it would take the cops to find him in the park. Not too long, if they were looking hard enough. He couldn’t go home - that was for damn sure. If Marcus was alive, Saiquan knew that motherfucker would say anything to save his own ass. He’d tell the cops Saiquan’s name, where he lived, anything the cops wanted to know, if it cut down his own time. Shit, Marcus would probably try to pin the other shootings on Saiquan too - say Saiquan shot Jermaine and that dude with the shopping bags and he had nothing to do with none of it.

  And if the cops didn’t catch Saiquan, the Crips would, after Ramona started talking.

  Thinking, Fuck it, Saiquan took the Glock out. He looked at it for a while, playing with the safety, and then he stuck the shit deep in his mouth. He wanted to get it over quick - get to heaven or hell or wherever the fuck dead people went. Shit, even hell had to be better than where he was right now.

  His finger started to move and he was screaming at himself, Do it, bitch! Just do it! Do it, man! Do it! and he was all ready to die.

  Then he started thinking about when he was eighteen years old, when Desiree told him she was pregnant. He felt like his whole life was about to get fucked-up, although, truth was, it was fucked-up already - he was just too young and stupid to know it. So he left her on her own for a few months, then came back to her a week before she was gonna have it, because it hit him one day that it was the right thing to do. He was in the hospital room with her when she was all screaming and shit and he was scared as hell. He didn’t know nothing about being a father, and he was afraid he was gonna be like his old man - beating his kids, smoking crack. Then the nurses started yelling, ‘Push! Push!’ and Saiquan saw the baby’s head coming, and he knew he wasn’t gonna be like his old man. Because Saiquan loved that kid, even before he held him or looked at him, and his father never loved him, ever.

  Saiquan put the gun down. There had to be some way out of this - some way out besides putting a bullet in his brain - and after thinking about it a long time he had an idea.

  He could leave the park right now, stop at the first bodega he saw, and put the gun up to the Spanish motherfucker’s head and take all the cash. Maybe he’d make four, five hundred bucks. Then he’d jack the first car he saw and book the fuck out of Brooklyn. He’d go to Mexico. Naw, that was too far - Canada. Go up someplace far up there, Bigfoot land, where there was ice and snow even in the summer, and just chill out. Maybe he’d hit stores along the way to get some more cash, and then he’d go straight - find a job, place to live. After a while, maybe a year or two, he’d call Desiree and tell her where he was at. She’d give him hell for sure, for disappearing and shit, but once she calmed down she’d understand why he did it. She’d put the kids in a car, drive up north, and they could all be together again, living happily ever after.

  The idea sounded good, for a couple minutes anyway. Then Saiquan realized there was no fucking way that shit was gonna work. With all the heat on him now, how the hell was he gonna make it up to Canada? Shit, he wouldn’t even make it out of Brooklyn. Maybe if he and Marcus didn’t try to rob Jake Thomas, if they just went after somebody else, somebody nobody gave a shit about, he would’ve had a chance. But with Jake Thomas, man, there was no fucking way.

  So Saiquan just lay on the bench, staring at the night sky, feeling the way he did some nights in jail. He fell asleep crying like a damn baby.

  When he woke up it was raining - at least, that’s what he thought. He heard water hitting the ground, and then he looked over and saw it was just a dog pissing next to him.

  The dog, one of them pit bulls, was on a leash - some old man holding it.

  ‘Yo,’ Saiquan said.

  ‘C’mon,’ the man said, pulling the damn dog away.

  Saiquan sat up. He was still wearing his North Face jacket, but he was freezing his ass off anyway. He was hungry too, and his head . . . shit, felt like somebody was hammering nails into it.

  Then Saiquan thought, This shit’s bullshit.

  If the cops or the Crips were gonna get him, they were gonna get him, and hiding in the park like a pussy wasn’t gonna help. Far as he saw it he had two choices - shoot himself or go out into the world and see what happened. Thinking about his kids, about how he couldn’t do them any good if he was dead, he picked choice number two.

  Leaving the park, Saiquan passed the basketball courts where he used to play ball with Ryan, that white dude from last night. Nobody was out there now, but he remembered how it used to be on all them hot summer days, playing full-court for five hours straight, never getting tired. He saw himself grabbing a rebound and bringing the ball up court with Ryan. He gave a head fake and went around the dude defending him and drove to the hoop. He got closed off and spun around, not losing the dribble, and no-looked a pass to Ryan in the corner. Ryan nailed the jumper with a man in his face.

  He and Ryan made up some backcourt, all right. Ryan always seemed like a cool dude too - not like other white people Saiquan knew. But last night, something about the dude seemed different. He never used to dress the way he did now, all trying to be hiphop and shit, and he looked like a drunk old man, slumped over by himself at that bar. Maybe it was his baseball career getting fucked-up, or what he said about losing his girl, but something went wrong somewhere.

  Saiquan left the park. Walking with his hands in his pockets, he kept his head down, staring at the sidewalk. He looked over his shoulder a lot too, checking for cops or Crips, but nobody was around.

  Saiquan didn’t like the idea of walking around with Marcus’s piece. He didn’t need the shit now, and even though Marcus said the shit was clean, that was probably bullshit. A motherfticking serial killer probably used that gun, shot forty people with it. Saiquan wiped his prints off the handle and dropped the gun into the first sewer grating he saw and kept walking.

  He was heading up Flatlands, near Ninetieth Street, when he spotted a cop hanging out on the corner a block ahead, across the street, in front of a funeral home. He was going to turn around, go a different way, and then he thought, Fuck it, man. He couldn’t go around the rest of his life running. If they were gonna catch him he might as well get it over with and get caught.

  He jaywalked across the street, right past where the cop was standing. Maybe he should’ve been scared, but he wasn’t. He was sick of being scared. He’d been scared his whole damn life, since he was a kid and had to hide in the closet at night, afraid his father would come home high on crack and beat the fuck out of him. He was sick of all that shit. He wasn’t gonna be afraid of nothing no more.

  Saiquan looked right at the motherfucking cop as he passed, his eyes saying, Here I am. You want me? You got me. I don’t give a shit no more. He thought the cop would pull a gun on him, cuff him, and that would be it - he’d start a new stretch upstate, twenty-five to life, whatever - but the cop didn’t do shit. He just let Saiquan walk right on by.

  Marcus must be dead, Saiquan decided. And J.T. must not’ve described Saiquan to the cops right either. Those were the only reasons Saiquan could think of why the cops didn’t catch on to him by now.

  Saiquan kept walking, deciding that if the cops didn’t catch him yet, maybe they never would.

  After going a few more blocks, he realized he was starving. He stopped at a Korean place and bought a couple of muffins, a big thing of peach Snapple, and a little pack of aspirin. He took the aspirin and sucked down the food. He was heading home to be with Desiree and his kids, where he belonged, when he decided there was one thing he had to take care of first.

  ‘Yeah, I wanna see Desmond Johnson.’

  The sister at the desk - a different one from yesterday, but with the same attitude - said, ‘He a patient?’

  Wondering why the hospital hired only nasty, something-stuck-up-their-ass bitches to work at the front desk, Saiquan said, ‘I just saw him last night.’

  The girl looked at the screen.

  ‘How you spell his name?’

  ‘Yo, I don’t got time for this shit,’ Saiquan said. ‘I went through all this same shit yesterday.’

  ‘How you spell the name?’

  Saiquan shook his head, then spelled Johnson. He messed up the first time, leaving out the h, and then spelled it with an e. Finally he got it right.

  ‘First name?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Desmond.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Desmond.’

  The girl looked at the screen a long time, hitting keys, using the mouse, then said, ‘You sure he a patient here?’

  ‘I just saw him,’ Saiquan said. ‘Don’t y’all hear what I’m sayin’?’

  ‘Just ‘cause he was here yesterday don’t mean he’s here today.’

  ‘He’s here today. He can’t move. He didn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Wait,’ the girl said. ‘There he is.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Saiquan said.

  ‘But you can’t see him now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Visiting hours don’t start till eleven o’clock.’

  Saiquan looked up at the clock behind the desk. It was only twenty past eight.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  Saiquan fell asleep in the hospital’s coffee shop. He woke up when a security guard tapped him on the back and said, ‘No sleeping.’

  Saiquan forced himself to stay awake, drinking coffee, till eleven o’clock finally came. Now, of course, somebody else was on duty at the desk, an older brother, and Saiquan had to go through the same ‘Desmond Johnson, Desmond who?’ bullshit before the dude gave him the pass to go upstairs.

  A different cop from yesterday was at Desmond’s door - a black dude who kind of reminded Saiquan of Marcus. He didn’t have Marcus’s braids, but the face and skin tone were the same, like he could’ve been Marcus’s cousin or something.

  The cop said to Saiquan, ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m here to see my brother - Desmond.’

  The cop stared at him, and Saiquan knew it was a big mistake to come here. The cops probably figured that Jermaine’s getting shot last night had something to do with Desmond, and they were probably watching D extra close today, just in case there was retaliation.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the cop asked.

  Saiquan felt the muffins he’d eaten sinking though his stomach.

  ‘Saiquan,’ he managed to say.

  He expected the cop to throw him up against the wall, slap the cuffs on him, tell him he had the right to shut the fuck up.

  But instead the cop frisked Saiquan quickly, then said, ‘Wait,’ and went into the room for a few seconds. Then he came out and said, ‘Go ‘head.’

  Saiquan went into the room, which was as dark as it was yesterday, and it smelled like somebody had taken a shit in the middle of the floor. The curtains were up around the bed near the door, and Saiquan wondered if the old dude had died and shit up his pants. A nurse was sitting in a chair, reading some book, and the TV was playing CNN crazy loud, like the doctors thought Desmond was deaf, not paralyzed.

  Desmond looked like he did the last time Saiquan had seen him - zoned out, staring at the ceiling. For a second Saiquan felt bad for his old best friend, and then he remembered why he was there.

  Saiquan stood next to the bed and waited till Desmond’s eyes shifted toward him. Then he said, ‘I took care of it.’

  Desmond kept looking at Saiquan for a few seconds, then looked away, and Saiquan knew that Jermaine had been telling the truth - Desmond’s getting shot had nothing to do with Ramona. That was just bullshit Desmond made up so Saiquan would go ahead and take Jermaine out.

  ‘Why’d you lie to me, man?’ Saiquan asked.

  Desmond kept looking away.

  ‘Why, man?’ Saiquan went on. ‘After all we been through, knowing each other since we was little kids and shit. Shit’s fucked up, what it is. Why couldn’t you tell me the truth? Why’d you do that shit? Look at me, man. I said look at me.’

  Now Desmond looked at Saiquan, his eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Yeah, you sad,’ Saiquan said. ‘I bet you real sad. You got what you wanted. What the fuck you gotta be sad about? I got cops after me, Crips after me. It’s my life got fucked-up, not yours. Your life was already fucked-up.’

  Desmond mouthed, Sorry.

  ‘Fuck you, bitch,’ Saiquan said, and grabbed the big tube that was connected to D’s neck. He wanted to do it - pull out the plugs and tubes and watch D die - but he knew that would be the stupidest thing out of all the stupid things he’d done in the past twenty-four hours. Alarms and bells would start going off, and with the nurse and the cop right there he was guaranteed to get busted.

  So Saiquan let go of the tube and said, ‘Naw, I’ll let yo’ sorry ass live. But I’m tellin’ you right now - you better hope they don’t teach you how to walk, ‘cause if they do I’m paralyzin’ yo’ ass all over again.’

  On his way out, Saiquan reached up and turned off the TV. Bitch didn’t deserve no entertainment.

  Heading toward the Breukelen Houses along One Hundred Fifth Street, Saiquan walked right by another cop car. The car was at a red light with two cops in it - a black man driving and a Latina sitting shotgun. The Latina looked right over at Saiquan, staring at him for a couple of seconds, then looking away. Then the light changed and the car drove on.

  In Saiquan’s building the elevator was still broken, so he had to take the stairs. Before he opened the door to his apartment, he took a couple of deep breaths. Whenever he took too long getting milk or toilet paper from the bodega, Desiree gave him all kinds of shit. For going out last night and not coming home Saiquan was ready for all hell to break loose.

  But when he opened the door, Desiree wasn’t there. Only Trey and Felicia were in the living room - sitting on the bottom of their bunk bed, watching cartoons on TV.

  ‘Hey,’ Saiquan said, excited to see his kids. ‘What up?’

  Trey and Felicia, looking at the TV, didn’t seem to notice that Saiquan had just come home.

  ‘I’m talkin’ to y’all,’ Saiquan said, louder.

  Still, the kids didn’t look at him.

  Saiquan tossed his jacket onto a chair and went over to the bunk and sat down, squeezing between his boy and girl. They moved out of the way to give him room, but didn’t stop watching TV.

  Saiquan put his arms around their shoulders. Now the kids looked at him for a second, realizing their father was acting funny.

  ‘It’s so good to see both y’all,’ Saiquan said. ‘What y’all watching?’

  ‘Why you wanna know?’ Trey asked. ‘

  ‘Cause I’m yo’ father, that’s why,’ Saiquan said. ‘I wanna know what my kids be doin’ all day. I wanna be involved, know what I’m sayin’?’