“Name’s Hawk,” he said. He jerked his head at me. “His name’s Spenser.”
The kid who’d taken the punch had gotten to his feet and edged to the fringe of the group where he stood, shaky and unfocused, shielded by his friends.
“There some rules you probably didn’t know about, ‘cause nobody told you. So we come to tell you.”
Hawk paused and let his eyes pass along the assembled gang. He looked at each one carefully, making eye contact.
“Satan,” he said, “you care to, ah, promulgate the first rule?”
“As I understand it,” I said. I was still watching behind us. “The first rule is, don’t sit on Hawk’s car.”
Hawk smiled widely. “Just so,” he said. Again the slow scan of tight black faces. “Any questions?”
“Yeah.”
The speaker was the size of a tall welterweight. Which gave Hawk and me maybe sixty pounds on him. He had thick hair and light skin. He wore his Raiders cap bill forward, the old-fashioned way. He had on Adidas high cuts, and stone-washed jeans, and a satin Chicago Bulls warm-up jacket. He had very sharp features and a long face and he looked to be maybe twenty.
Hawk said, “What’s your name?”
“Major.”
“What’s your question, Major?” Hawk showed no sign that the shotgun might be heavy to hold with one hand.
“You a white man’s nigger?” Major said.
If the question annoyed Hawk he didn’t show it. Which meant nothing. He never showed anything, anyway.
“I suppose you could say I’m nobody’s nigger,” Hawk said. “How about you?”
“How come you brought him with you?” Major said.
“Company,” Hawk said. “You run this outfit?” I knew he did. So did Hawk. There was something in the way he held himself. And he wasn’t scared. Not being scared of Hawk is a rare commodity and is generally a bad mistake. But the kid was real. He wasn’t scared.
“We all together here, man. You got some problem with that?”
Hawk shook his head. He smiled. Uncle Hawk. In a minute he’d be telling them Br’er Rabbit stories.
“Not yet,” he said.
Major grinned back at Hawk.
“Not sure John Porter believe that entirely,” he said and jerked his head at the guy that had been sitting on Hawk’s trunk.
“He’s not dead,” Hawk said. Major nodded.
“Okay, he be bruising your ride, now he ain’t. What you want here?”
“We the new Department of Public Safety,” Hawk said.
“Which means what?”
“Which means that starting right now, you obey the 11th commandment or we bust your ass.”
“You Iron?” Major said.
“We the Iron here,” Hawk said.
“What’s the 11th commandment?”
“Leave everybody else the fuck alone,” Hawk said.
“You and Irish?” Major said.
“Un huh.”
“Two guys?”
“Un huh.”
Major laughed and turned to the kid next to him and put out his hand for a low five, which he got, and returned vigorously.
“Good luck to you, motherfuckers,” he said, and laughed again and jerked his head at the other kids. They dispersed into the project, and the sound of their laughter trailed back out of the darkness.
“Scared hell out of him, didn’t we?” I said.
“Call it a draw,” Hawk said.
CHAPTER 5
“She was hit seven times,” Belson said. He was sitting at his desk in the homicide squad room, looking at the detectives’ report from the Devona Jefferson homicide. “They fired more than that. We found ten shell casings, and the crime-scene techs found a slug in the Double Deuce courtyard. Casings were Remington-nine-millimeter Luger, center-fires, 115-grain metal case.”
