'Maybe you didn't call us right away.'
'C'mon, Harry,' DiBella said to Cromwell. 'You know he's legit. Besides, the crime scene matches his story.'
'He could have arranged that,' Cromwell said.
'Why, for crissake?' DiBella said. 'You're just sulky 'cause there's another shooting in your town.'
'I don't like it,' Cromwell said.
'For crissake, Captain Healy vouched for him to me,' DiBella said. 'Shit happens.'
'I don't like it when it happens in my town,' Cromwell said.
'Nobody does,' DiBella said. 'But it's gotta happen someplace.'
'We through here?' I said.
'What's your hurry.'
'My dog's home alone,' I said. 'She'll need a walk.'
Cromwell looked puzzled.
'You need to borrow a piece until they return that one?' DiBella said.
'Got one in the car,' I said.
'I hope it's locked up safe,' Cromwell said.
'Gun safety is job one,' I said.
Cromwell looked at me and then at DiBella and then at the bodies on the ground and then at my stubby .38, which he was still holding.
'You can shoot,' Cromwell said after a time. 'I'll give you that.'
I didn't say anything.
'Come by in a couple days,' Cromwell said. 'I'll see that you get the gun back.'
'Am I free to go?' I said.
Cromwell stared at me for a minute.
'Yeah. Get some dry clothes. Come in tomorrow, give us a statement.'
I nodded and turned toward the street. DiBella came, too.
'Where you going?' I said.
'You're unarmed,' DiBella said. 'I'm walking you to your car.'
Chapter 43
MY BACKUP GUN was a .357, which was heavy to wear, but I thought it worth the weight on this occasion. I was with Major Johnson and the bald guy with the prison tattoos who had shown such instant affection for me the first time we met. We were sitting on a bench at the edge of a hot top walkway in a playground in Roxbury. I was once again uniquely white.
There were black children playing on the swings and slides that the park commission had set up. There were black mothers and grandmothers, most of whom were younger than I was, watching the kids. There were some black teenagers smoking cigarettes and looking bad in gangsta-rap jeans and hats on sideways.
Past the play area, I could see Jose Yang and two of his people coming toward us. They sat across the hot top walkway from us on a bench just like ours. The management team of Los Diablos was as black as everyone else, except for Yang, whose skin tone was lighter, but far darker than mine.
The scary-looking teens watched us covertly. I was an aberration, and they would naturally have stared at me. But I was with two legitimate gangbangers, and I knew the kids were struggling to look just as dangerous, while desperately trying to do nothing that would annoy any of us.
Nobody spoke for a while. Jose Yang looked at me without expression.
'I killed your brother,' I said.
Yang's face didn't move. No expression. The men on each side of him didn't do anything.
'Why?' Yang said.
'He tried to kill me,' I said.
'Tell me.'
I did. In outline form. Yang listened without any reaction.
'He shot the broad for talking to you,' Yang said when I was finished.
I nodded.
'What it looks like,' I said.
'And he tried to backshoot you?' Yang said.
I shrugged.
'He tried to shoot me from cover,' I said.
