The Twelfth Card

then he looked at Jax’s eyes, cold as dirt, and then the muscles and the prison tat. Maybe thinking: Jax’s age would’ve made him head-high O.G.—who you fucked with at your peril. Original Gangstas had AKs and Uzis and Hummers and a dozen badasses in their posses. O.G.s were the ones used twelve-year-olds to cap witnesses and rival dealers ’cause courts couldn’t send them into the system forever, like they did when you were seventeen or eighteen.
    An O.G. would bust you up bad for calling him “grandpa.”
    The kid started to look uneasy. “Yo, yo, whatchu want exactly, man? Where we goin’?”
    “Just over there. Don’t want to talk in front of the whole world.” Jax stopped behind some bushes. The boy’s eyes darted around. Jax laughed. “I’m not going to fuck you up, boy. Chill.”
    The kid laughed too. But nervous. “I’m down, man.”
    “I need to find somebody’s crib. Somebody going to Langston Hughes. You go there?”
    “Yeah, most of us.” He nodded toward the courts.
    “I’m looking for the girl was on the news this morning.”
    “Her? Geneva? Saw some dude get capped or something? The straight-A bitch?”
    “I don’t know. She get straight A’s?”
    “Yeah. She smart.”
    “Where’s she live?”
    He fell silent, cautious. Debating. Was he going to get fucked up for asking what he wanted to? He decided he wasn’t. “You were talking ’bout paper?”
    Jax slipped him some bills.
    “I myself don’ know the bitch, man. But I can hook you up with a brother who does. Nigger of mine name of Kevin. Want me to give him a call?”
    “Yeah.”
    A tiny cell phone emerged from the boy’s shorts. “Yo, dog. It’s Willy . . . . The half courts . . . Yeah. Listen, dude here with some benjamins, looking fo’ yo’ bitch . . . . Geneva. The Settle bitch . . . Hey, chill, man. S’a joke, you know what I’m saying? . . . Right. Now, this dude, he—”
    Jax snatched the phone from Willy’s hand and said, “Two hundred, you give up her address.”
    A hesitation.
    “Cash?” Kevin asked.
    “No,” Jax snapped, “American Fuckin’ Express. Yeah, cash.”
    “I’ma come by the courts. You got those C-notes on you?”
    “Yeah, they’re sitting right next to my Colt, you’re interested. And when I say Colt I don’t mean malt in a forty.”
    “I’m down, man. Just askin’. I don’t go round fielding folk.”
    “I’ll be hanging with my crew, ” Jax said, grinning at the uneasy Willy. He disconnected the phone and tossed it to the kid. Then he walked back to the fence and leaned against it and watched the game.
    Ten minutes later Kevin arrived—unlike Willy, he was a real playa, tall, handsome, poised. Looked like some actor Jax couldn’t place. To show off for the old dude, show he wasn’t too eager to earn any C-notes—and to impress a few of the bling girls, of course—Kevin took his time. Paused, tapped fists, hugged a boy or two. Tossed out, “Yo, yo, my man,” a few times and then stepped onto the court, commandeered the ball and did a couple of impressive dunks.
    Man could play hoops, no question.
    Finally Kevin loped up to Jax and looked him over, because that was what you did when an outsider walked into a pack—whether it was on half courts or in a bar or even in Alonzo Henderson’s Victorian-era barbershops, Jax guessed. Kevin tried to figure out where Jax was carrying the piece, how much paper he really had on him, what he was about. Jax asked, “Just lemme know how long you’re going keep giving me the bad-eye, okay? ’Cause it’s gettin’ boring.”
    Kevin didn’t smile. “Where’s the benjamins?”
    Jax slipped Kevin the money.
    “Where’s the girl?”
    “Come on. I’ll show you.”
    “Just the address.”
    “You afraid of me?”
    “Just the address.” Eyes not wavering.
    Kevin grinned. “Don’t know the number, man. I know the building. I walked her home last spring. I gotta point it out.”
    Jax nodded.
    They started west and south, surprising Jax; he thought the girl would live in one of the tougher neighborhoods—farther north toward the Harlem River, or east. The streets here weren’t elegant butthey were clean, and many of the buildings had been renovated, it seemed. There was also a lot of new construction underway.
    Jax frowned, looking around at the nice streets. “You sure we’re talking Geneva Settle.”
    “That’s the bitch you ask about. That’s the crib I’m showing you . . . . Yo,