The Twelfth Card

man, you wanta buy some weed, some rock?”
    “No.”
    “Sure? I got some good shit.”
    “A damn shame, you going deaf and all at your young age.”
    Kevin shrugged.
    They came to a block near Morningside Park. On top of the rocky incline was the Columbia University campus, a place he had frequently bombed with Jax 157 years ago.
    They started to turn the corner but both of them stopped fast.
    “Yo, check it out,” Kevin whispered. There was a Crown Vic—clearly an unmarked police car—double-parked in front of an old building.
    “That’s her crib? The car’s in front of?”
    “Naw. Hers’s two buildings closer. That one there.” He pointed.
    It was old but in perfect shape. Flowers in the window boxes, everything clean. Nice curtains. Paint looked new.
    Kevin asked, “You going to fuck up the bitch?” He looked Jax up and down.
    “What I’m about is my business.”
    “Your business, your business . . . . Sure it is,” Kevin said in a soft voice. “Only . . . the reason I’m asking is, ’cause if she was to get fucked up—which I have no problem with, I’m saying—but if something was to happen to her, yo, check it out: I’d know itwas you. And somebody might come round and wanna talk to me ’bout it. So, I’m thinking, with all that tall paper you carrying around in your pocket there, maybe I had a little more of it, I might forget I even seen you. On th’ other hand, it’s possible I could remember a lot ’bout you and that you was interested in the little bitch.”
    Jax had seen quite a bit of life. Been a graffiti king, been a soldier in Desert Storm, known gangstas in prison and outside, been shot at . . . If there was a rule in this crazy world it was that however stupid you thought people were, they were always happy to be stupider.
    In a fraction of a second, Jax grabbed the boy’s collar with his left hand and swung his fist up hard into the boy’s gut, three times, four, five . . .
    “Fuck—” was all the boy got out.
    The way you fought in prison. Never give ’em a single second to recover.
    Again, again, again . . .
    Jax let go and the kid rolled into the alley, groaning in pain. With the deliberate, slow movement of a baseball player picking out a bat, Jax bent down and pulled the gun from his sock. As terrified Kevin watched helplessly, the ex-con worked the slide of the automatic to chamber a round then wrapped his do-rag around the barrel a number of times. This was, Jax had learned from DeLisle Marshall on S block, one of the best, and cheapest, ways to muffle the sound of a gunshot.

Chapter Eighteen
    That evening, 7:30 P.M ., Thompson Boyd had just finished painting a cartoon bear on the wall of Lucy’s room. He stepped back and glanced at his work. He’d done what the book had told him to do and, sure enough, it looked pretty much like a bear. It was the first picture in his life he’d ever painted, outside of school—which is why he’d worked so hard studying the book in his safe house earlier today.
    The girls seemed to love it. He thought he himself should be pleased with the picture. But he wasn’t sure. He stared at it for a long time, waiting to feel proud. He didn’t. Oh, well. He stepped into the hallway, glanced at his cell phone. “Got a message,” he said absently. He dialed. “Hey, it’s Thompson. How you doing? Saw you called.”
    Jeanne glanced at him then returned to drying the dishes.
    “No, kidding?” Thompson chuckled. For a man who didn’t laugh, he thought he sounded real. Of course, he’d done the same thing that morning, in the library, laughing to put the Settle girl at ease, and that hadn’t worked so well. He reminded himself not to overact. “Man, that’s a bummer,” he said into the dead phone. “Sure. Won’t take too long, will it? Got that negotiation again tomorrow, yeah, the one we postponed . . . Gimme ten and I’ll see you there.”
    He folded the phone closed and said to Jeanne, “Vern’s over at Joey’s. He’s got a flat.”
    Vernon Harber had once existed but no longer did. Thompson had killed him some years ago. But because he’d known Vern before he died, Thompson had turned him into a fictional neighborhood buddy he saw occasionally, a sidekick. Like the dead real Vern, the live fictional one drove a Supra and had a girlfriend named Renee and told plenty of funny stories about life on the docks and at the pork store and in his neighborhood. Thompson knew a lot more about Vern