'What about your people?'
'Long as it's you behind it, they gonna be straight. You send some underlings to do this thing, it might make mine feel like they got the right to be heroic and shit. But ain't nobody gonna come at Nigel Johnson.' Deacon looked Nigel in the eye. 'You got my word.'
They rounded the curve of the track.
'Where the police at on this?' said Nigel.
'They workin' the murders from last night. They got nothin' so far. Far as the probation lady goes, I don't know. They got to be lookin' hard for Melvin. But Rico must have left his prints all over that apartment. They put those prints into the system, they gonna identify him through his priors. Won't be long before they after Rico too.'
'Means I don't have much time.'
'You know where Rico at, right?' said Deacon.
'Northeast,' said Nigel.
Deacon's eyes moved to Nigel. 'He at that same place…'
'Forty-sixth and Hayes,' said Nigel.
'Right.'
They walked farther. Nigel thought of Lorenzo, back in high school, running this track at night in his jeans and basketball sneaks. Nigel watching him, cutting on his technique. Lorenzo bragging about how he'd smoke anyone in the forty, they had the mind to try him. Talking about running for the school, wearing the colors of the Rough Riders. Nigel telling him that he had no business in school, that school was for faggots and suckers. That if he stuck with Nigel, the two of them were going to have it all.
'Shit,' said Nigel softly.
'What?' said Deacon.
'Nothin'. I'm tired, is all. You ever feel that way?'
'Yeah,' said Deacon, narrowing his eyes. 'Sometimes I do get tired. Just like you.'
Nigel got behind the wheel of the Lexus. Lawrence Graham slipped into the bucket beside him.
'I'm on,' said Nigel.
'What about me?' said Graham.
'I'm gonna need you for somethin' else.'
Nigel turned the key and put the car in drive.
'Where we goin'?' said Graham.
'Pick up Lorenzo at the hospital. Listen to me careful, 'cause we ain't got all that far to go.'
Nigel drove up Iowa, passing the Mercedes on the other side of the street.
Deacon Taylor and Marcus Griffin, sitting in Deacon's car, watched Nigel pass.
'You two square it up?'
'Yeah,' said Deacon. 'We good.'
'What's the plan?'
'Told you, I don't plan,' said Deacon. 'I look for opportunities.'
Nigel picked up Lorenzo outside the hospital, where they dropped off the people going in for surgery and picked up those who were recovering. Lorenzo, slump shouldered, standing by an old head smoking a cigarette, looked like he'd been under the knife himself.
Graham got out, allowing Lorenzo to take the passenger bucket, and slid into the backseat.
'How she doin'?' said Nigel.
'She's dead.'
Nigel drove back into the old neighborhood. No one spoke or reached for the radio. Nigel pulled into a spot on Warder Street, by Park View Elementary, and cut the engine.
'Why we stoppin' here?' said Lorenzo.
'Thought we'd walk some,' said Nigel. 'Talk.'
'I'm done talkin'. I'm ready to go. You said you were lookin' for some clean hardware. I got everything back at my apartment that we gonna need.'
Nigel looked past the headrest to the backseat. He tossed his keys over his shoulder into Graham's cupped hands. 'Stay here, Lawrence.'
Nigel got out of the car. Lorenzo hesitated for a moment, then got out too.
They walked onto the elementary school grounds, lighted in some spots and in others under a blanket of full dark. The silhouetted figures of two boys, no older than eleven or twelve, moved through the night. Marijuana smoke roiled faintly in the air.
Nigel had a seat on a wooden bench by the swings. Lorenzo sat beside him.
'You see them kids?' said Nigel.
'Yeah.'
