He was on the floor, alone, in a room at the front of the building. A piece of cardboard was propped in the window, leaving this room gloomier than the rest. Maybe Bobo had blocked the window himself, looking for privacy or a place to sleep. He lay against the wall, apparently sleeping. There was a needle by his side with a little yellowish fluid remaining in the syringe. It was unlikely that Bobo had shot up only half a syringe. He had probably passed out while preparing a second one.
‘Bobo!’ I knelt beside him and felt his neck for a pulse. I shook him. ‘Bobo!’
He groaned. His eyes opened, fixed on me with milky pupils, closed again.
‘Bobo! Wake up. Are you alright?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Jesus, Bobo, I’m going to get you an ambulance.’ I took out my radio, which I’d been given in case I spotted Braxton over on Hewson Street.
‘No am-uh-lance, no am-uh-lance.’ Bobo pushed himself up to a sitting position. Drowsily, he covered his face with his hands, rubbed, then opened his hands like a child playing peekaboo. ‘I seen you before?’
‘I’m a friend of Martin Gittens. We saw you at that garbage place the other day.’
‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ he murmured. ‘You hit me in the balls.’
‘No.’
‘Those were my balls, man. You think I forgot?’
‘They were your balls but it wasn’t me that hit them.’
He closed his eyes again. ‘’At’s alright, ’at’s alright. I’m not mad at you. Just balls, right?’
‘That’s right, Bobo.’
I wondered what he’d been shooting. Heroin, presumably.
‘Give me my works, man.’
‘I can’t do that. I’m a cop.’
‘You gonna arrest me?’
‘No.’
‘Then give me my works.’ He stretched out his hand toward the needle but seemed incapable of moving further to get it.
‘Can’t help you, Bobo. Sorry’
He closed his eyes and drifted off. After a while he said, ‘What you come here for?’
‘I’m looking for Braxton.’
‘Thought you were looking for Ray. You heard about Ray?’
‘Yeah, I heard. That’s why we’re looking for Braxton.’
‘You guys fucked Ray good.’
‘We did not fuck Ray, Bobo. Braxton did that.’
‘Whatever you say, boss.’ His head lolled. ‘You come in here looking for Braxton? Ain’t going to find him here.’
‘I came in here to talk to you.’
‘Yeah? What we going to talk about?’
‘Braxton. You know where he is?’
‘Maybe I do.’ The sound of this answer pleased him, and he repeated it with a crooked smirk. ‘Maybe I do.’
‘Bobo, I could still take you in if I had to.’
‘You already said you weren’t going to.’ He opened one eye. ‘Besides, Gittens won’t let you. He helps me out.’
‘Is that how it works?’
‘That’s how it works. Come on, boss, you help me out too.’ He pointed with his chin toward the syringe on the floor.
‘Bobo, I can’t do that.’
‘What’s your name, anyway?’
‘It’s Ben Truman.’
‘Well, Officer Truman, let me tell you how it is. You want to get, see, you got to give. That’s what it’s all about. Capitalism.’
‘Bobo, do you know where Braxton is?’
‘See, that’s it. You want to get, but you don’t want to give.’
I took out a twenty and tossed it on his lap. This was no small thing. Twenty dollars was a lot to me. I didn’t have Gittens’s Robin Hood instinct for robbing the dealers to pay the snitches.
He glanced down at it but did not move. Struggling to lift his eyes from his lap, he mused, ‘Just give me my works, will you.’
‘No.’
‘Go find Braxton yourself then.’
‘Bobo, I could give you another whack in the balls. That seems to help you open up.’
‘You could but you won’t.’
‘Yeah? Why not?’
‘Because you don’t want to.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Bobo assured me. ‘Yes, I do.’
He made a lethargic grab at the syringe, but I snatched it away. Bobo fell on his side and lay there, laughing. I took the syringe to the window to look at it in the light. It was a cheap plastic thing but surprisingly clean. It weighed almost nothing. I shook the little bit of fluid in the cartridge.
‘Just give that here.’
‘Bobo, I told you, I can’t do it. You don’t need it now, anyway’
‘Suppose you let me decide that.’
‘Suppose you tell me where Braxton is.’
‘Suppose I do? Then you help me out?’
I shook my head no.
‘Then we’ll see who he kills next.’
I walked over and handed the needle down to him.
‘I need that too.’ He nodded toward a belt on his own lap.
‘Just take it,’ I said.
‘I can’t, man, I’m fucked up. You help.’
I handed him the belt.
Bobo prepared the syringe with a few flicks of his finger, then he wrapped the belt around his upper arm, pulled it tight into a tourniquet, and clasped the free end in his teeth. He held the needle out to me.
I walked away, refusing it.
Bobo laid the needle down and took the belt out of his mouth. ‘You want me to tell you about Braxton or not?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I can’t talk with this in my mouth. I only got two hands.’
I knelt beside him.
‘Hold this.’
I held the belt tight.
Bobo searched a long time for a vein. The needle pierced his arm four times. When he’d found one, he sighed and asked, ‘You want to do it?’
‘Bobo, just tell me where Braxton is. I gave you the dope.’
‘You want to do it?’
‘Where is he?’
‘You do it.’
‘No.’
He took the thumb of my free hand and placed it on the plunger, then put his own thumb over mine. ‘We’ll do
