The Twelfth Card

upper Fifth Avenue, heading toward St. Ambrose Park, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Enjoying the cold fall air, enjoying the sun. Enjoying the fact that people round here gave him a wide berth. Some of it was his unsmiling face. Some of it the prison tat. The limp too. (Though, truth be told, his wasn’t any hard-ass, playa limp, wasn’t a gimme-respect gangsta limp, it was an oh-fuck-I-been-shot limp. But nobody here knew that.)
    Jax wore what he always wore: jeans and a tattered combat jacket and clunky leather work shoes nearly worn through. In his pocket he carried a good-size wad of benjamins, mostly twenties, as well as a horn-handled knife, a pack of cigarettes andon a single chain a single key to his small apartment on 136th Street. Its two rooms featured one bed, one table, two chairs, a second-hand computer and grocery-store two-for-one cookware. It was only a notch better than his recent residence in the New York State Department of Corrections.
    He paused and looked around.
    There he was, the skinny dude with dusty-brown skin—a man who could’ve been thirty-five or sixty. He leaned against an unsteady chain-link fence around this park in the heart of Harlem. The sun flared off the wet lip of a malt or wine bottle half-hidden in the yellow grass behind him.
    “S’up, man?” Jax asked, lighting another cigarette as he strode up and stopped.
    A blink from the skinny guy. He looked at the pack Jax offered. He wasn’t sure what this was about but he took a cigarette anyway. He put it in his pocket.
    Jax continued, “You Ralph?”
    “Who you?”
    “Friend of DeLisle Marshall. Was on S block with him.”
    “Lisle?” The skinny guy relaxed. Some. He looked away from the man who could break him in half and surveyed the world from his chain-link perch. “Lisle out?”
    Jax laughed. “Lisle put four rounds into some sad motherfucker’s head. There’ll be a nigger in the White House ’fore Lisle gets out.”
    “They do parole dudes,” Ralph said, his indignation unsuccessfully masking the fact he’d been caught testing Jax. “So what Lisle say?”
    “Sends his word. Told me to look you up. He’ll speak for me.”
    “Speak for you, speak for you. Okay. Tell me,what his tat look like?” Skinny little Ralph with a skinny little goatee was recovering some of his bravado. It was testing time again.
    “Which one?” Jax responded. “The rose or the blade? And I understand he’s got another one near his dick. But I never got close enough to see it.”
    Ralph nodded, unsmiling. “What yo’ name?”
    “Jackson. Alonzo Jackson. But I go by Jax.” The tag had a righteous reputation attached to it. He wondered if Ralph had heard about him. But apparently not—no raised eyebrows. This pissed Jax off. “You want to check me out with DeLisle, go right ahead, man, only don’t use my name over the phone, you know what I’m saying? Just tell him the Graffiti King came by to have a confab with you.”
    “Graffiti King,” Ralph repeated, clearly wondering what that was about. Did it mean Jax spread motherfuckers’ blood around like spray paint? “Okay. Maybe I check. Depending. So you out.”
    “I’m out.”
    “What was you in fo’?”
    “AR and weapons.” Then he added with a lowered voice, “They went after me for a twenty-five, twenty-five attempt. That got knocked down to assault.” A shorthand reference to the Penal Code provision for murder, Section 125.25.
    “An’ now you a free man. That phat.”
    Jax thought this was funny—here’s sad-ass Ralph nervous and all when Jax comes along with a cigarette and a s’up, man. But then starts relaxing when he finds out that he did hard time for armed robbery, illegal weapons possession and attempted murder, spraying blood like paint.
    Harlem. Didn’t you just fucking love it?
    Inside, just before he’d been released, he’d tapped DeLisle Marshall for some help and the brother hadtold him to hook up with Ralph. Lisle had explained why the little skel was a good man to know. “That man hang out ever ’where. Like he be ownin’ the streets. Know ever’thing. Or can find it out.”
    Now, the blood-painting Graffiti King sucked hard on the cigarette and got right down to it. “Need you to set me up, man,” Jax said in a soft voice.
    “Yeah? Whatchu need?”
    Which meant both whatchu need and what’m I going to make from it?
    Fair enough.
    A glance around. They were alone except for pigeons and two short, fine-looking