The Twelfth Card

116th Street, he paused and looked at the place where the Woolworth’s five-and-dime had stood. The store hadn’t survived the chaos after the famous blackout of 1977 but what had sprouted in its place was a righteous miracle, the number-one hip-hop club in the nation, Harlem World. Three floors of every kind of music you could imagine, radical, addictive, electrifying. B-boys spinning like tops, writhing like stormy waves. DJs spinning vinyl for the packed dance floors, and MCs making love to their microphones and filling the room with their raw, don’t-fuck-with-me poems, pounding in time to the rhythm of a real heart. Harlem World was where the throw-downs started, the battles of the rappers. Jax had been lucky enough to see what was considered themost famous of all time: the Cold Crush Brothers and the Fantastic Five . . . .
    Harlem World was long gone, of course. Also gone—scrubbed or worn away or painted over—were the thousands of Jax’s tags and ’pieces, along with those by the other graffiti legends of the early hip-hop era, Julio and Kool and Taki. The kings of graffiti.
    Oh, there were those lamenting the demise of hip-hop, which had become BET, multimillionaire rappers in chrome Humvees, Bad Boys II, big business, suburban white kids, iPods and MP3 downloads and satellite radio. It was . . . well, case in point: Jax was watching a double-decker tour bus ease to the curb nearby. On the side was the sign Rap/Hip-Hop Tours. See the Real Harlem . The passengers were a mix of black and white and Asian tourists. He heard snatches of the driver’s rehearsed spiel and the promise that they’d soon be stopping for lunch at an “authentic soul food” restaurant.
    But Jax didn’t agree with the claimers bitching that the old days were gone. The heart of Uptown remained pure. Nothing could ever touch it. Take the Cotton Club, he reflected, that 1920s institution of jazz and swing and stride piano. Everybody thought it was the real Harlem, right? How many people knew that it was for white-only audiences (even the famed Harlem resident W. C. Handy, one of the greatest American composers of all time, was turned away at the door, while his own music was playing inside).
    Well, guess what? The Cotton Club was fucking gone. Harlem wasn’t. And it never would be. The Renaissance was done and hip-hop had changed. But percolating right now in the streets around him was some brand-new movement. Jax wonderedwhat exactly this one would be. And if he’d even be around to see it—if he didn’t handle this thing with Geneva Settle right he’d be dead or back in prison within twenty-four hours.
    Enjoy your soul food, he thought to the tourists as the bus pulled away from the curb.
    Continuing up the street for a few blocks, Jax finally found Ralph, who was—sure enough—leaning against a boarded-up building.
    “Dog,” Jax said.
    “S’up?”
    Jax kept on walking.
    “Where we goin’?” Ralph asked, speeding up to keep pace beside the large man.
    “Nice day for a walk.”
    “It cold out.”
    “Walking’ll warm you up.”
    They kept going for a time, Jax ignoring whatever the fuck Ralph was whining about. He stopped at Papaya King and bought four dogs and two fruit drinks, without asking Ralph if he was hungry. Or a vegetarian or puked when he drank mango juice. He paid and walked out onto the street again, handing the skinny man his lunch. “Don’t eat it here. Come on.” Jax looked up and down the street. Nobody was following. He started off again, moving fast. Ralph followed. “We walkin’ ’cause you don’ trust me?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So why you ain’t trust me all of a sudden?”
    “ ‘Cause you had time to dime me out since I saw you last. What exactly is the mystery here?”
    “Nice day fo’ a walk,” was Ralph’s answer. He snuck a bite of hot dog.
    They continued for a half block to a street that seemed deserted and the pair turned south. Jaxstopped. Ralph did too and leaned against a wrought-iron fence in front of a brownstone. Jax ate his hot dogs and sipped the mango juice. Ralph wolfed down his own lunch.
    Eating, drinking, just two workers on their meal break from a construction job or window washing. Nothing suspicious about this.
    “That place, shit, they make good dogs,” Ralph said.
    Jax finished the food, wiped his hands on his jacket and patted down Ralph’s T-shirt and jeans. No wires. “Let’s get to it. What’d you find?”
    “The Settle girl, okay? She