The Twelfth Card

Dominican girls striding past. Despite the cold they wore skimpy tops and tight shorts on their round, knock-me-down bodies. “Ay, papi,” one called to Jax with a smile and kept going. The girls crossed the street and turned east into their turf. Fifth Avenue had been the dividing line between black and Spanish Harlem— el barrio —for years. Once you were east of Fifth, that was the Other Side. Could still be down, could still be phat, but it wasn’t the same Harlem.
    Jax watched them disappear. “Damn.” He’d been in prison a long time.
    “Word,” Ralph said. He adjusted how he was leaning and crossed his arms like some Egyptian prince.
    Jax waited a minute and bent down, whispered into the pharaoh’s ear, “I need a piece.”
    “You fresh, man,” Ralph said after a moment. “Yo’ ass get caught with a piece, they violate you back in a minute. And you still gotta do a annual in Rikers fo’ the gun. Why you wanta take a chance like that?”
    Jax asked patiently, “Can you do it or not?”
    The scrawny dude adjusted the angle of his lean and looked up at Jax. “I think we phat, man. But I ain’t sure I know where to find anything fo’ you. A piece, I’m saying.”
    “Then I ain’t sure I know who to give this to.” He pulled out a roll of benjamins, peeled off some twenties, held them out to Ralph. Being real careful, of course. One black man slipping another some money on the streets of Harlem could raise a cop’s eyebrow, even if the guy was just tithing to a minister from the nearby Baptist Ascension Pentecostal Church.
    But the only eyebrow going up was Ralph’s as he pocketed the bills and looked at the rest of the roll. “You got yourself some tall paper there.”
    “Word. And you’ve got yourself some of it now. And a chance for more. Happy day.” He put the wad away.
    Ralph grunted. “What kinda piece?”
    “Small. Something I can hide easy, you know what I’m saying?”
    “Cost you five.”
    “Cost me two, I could do it.”
    “Cold?” Ralph asked.
    As if Jax would want a gun with a registration number still stamped on the frame. “Whatta you think?”
    “Then fuck two,” said the little Egyptian. He was ballsier now; you don’t kill people who can get you something you need.
    “Three,” Jax offered.
    “I could do three and hemi.”
    Jax debated. He made a fist and tapped Ralph’s with it. Another look around. “Now, I need something else. You got connections at the schools?”
    “Some. What schools you talkin’ ’bout? I ain’tknow nothin’ ’bout Queens or BK or the Bronx. Only here in the hood.”
    Jax scoffed to himself, thinking, “hood,” shit. He’d grown up in Harlem and never lived anywhere else on earth except for army barracks and prisons. You could call the place a “neighborhood,” if you had to, but it wasn’t “the hood.” In L.A., in Newark, they had hoods. In parts of BK too. But Harlem was a different universe, and Jax was pissed at Ralph for using the word, though he supposed the man wasn’t disrespecting the place; he probably just watched a lot of bad TV.
    Jax said, “Just here.”
    “I can ask round.” He was sounding a little uneasy—not surprising, considering that an ex-con with a 25-25 arrest was interested in both a gun and a high school. Jax slipped him another forty. That seemed to ease the little man’s conscience considerably.
    “Okay, tell me what I supposed to be lookin’ fo’?”
    Jax pulled a sheet of paper out of his combat jacket packet. It was a story he’d downloaded from the online edition of the New York Daily News . He handed the article, labeled Breaking News Update , to Ralph.
    Jax tapped the paper with a thick finger. “I need to find the girl. That they’re talking about.”
    Ralph read the article under the headline, MUSEUM OFFICIAL SHOT TO DEATH IN MIDTOWN . He looked up. “It don’t say nothin’ ’bout her, where she live, ’bout her school, nothin’. Don’t even say what the fuck her name be.”
    “Her name’s Geneva Settle. As for everything else”—Jax nodded at the little man’s pocket where the money had disappeared—“that’s what I’m paying you the benjamins for.”
    “Why you want to find her?” asked Ralph, staring at the article.
    Jax paused for a minute then leaned close to the man’s dusty ear. “Sometimes people ask questions, look around, and they find out more shit than they really ought to be knowing.”
    Ralph started to ask something else but then