caressed her breasts.
She moaned and made a stab at working his jeans zipper, but she lacked the coordination to get it down. She said, “You wan’ it, babe? No shit I do you in front ’f the queen an’ the House of Commons if you want, innit.”
The Blade looked around at Joel, then, and it came to Joel that this was a performance on his part, something from which he himself was supposed to take a message. But what it was didn’t compute because of what Joel knew of the man in front of him.
Ivan had said Stanley Hynds was intelligent and self-educated. He’d studied Latin and Greek and the sciences. He had a part to him that was not a part of what people saw when they had a run-in with him. But what all that meant in light of the man who was looking at him from across the room as a strung-out teenager tried to massage his member... This was something Joel did not understand, and he did not struggle to understand it. All he knew was that he needed the Blade’s help, and he meant to have it before he left the squat.
So he waited for the Blade to decide whether he’d allow Arissa to service him in front of Joel, and he did his best to look unconcerned in the matter. He crossed his arms as he’d seen Cal do, and he leaned against the wall. He said nothing and kept his face without expression, hoping this reaction was the key to proving whatever he needed to prove to the Blade.
The Blade laughed outright and disengaged from Arissa’s ineffectual fingers. He crossed back over to Joel and, as he did so, he took a spliff from the breast pocket of the suit jacket he was wearing, and he lit it with a silver lighter. He took a toke and offered it to Joel. Joel shook his head. “Cal give you the knife?” he asked.
The Blade observed him long enough to let Joel know he wasn’t meant to speak before being told it was appropriate to do so. Then he said, “He give it. You lookin for summick in return, I spect. Dat what dis is?”
“I ain’t lying,” Joel said.
“So what you need from the Blade, Jo-ell?” He drew in a lungful of smoke that seemed to go on forever. He held it there. In the corner, Arissa scrambled unenergetically on her futon, apparently looking for something. He said to her sharply, “No more, Riss.”
She said, “I comin down, baby.”
“Dat’s where I want it,” he told her. And then to Joel, “So what you need?”
Joel told him in as few words as possible. They amounted to safety. Not for him but for his brother. One word on the street that Toby had the Blade’s protection and Toby wouldn’t have anyone vexing him any longer.
“Whyn’t you get what you need from someone else?” the Blade inquired.
Joel, hardly an idiot in these matters, knew the Blade was asking so that he would have to say what the Blade believed about himself: There was no one else with his power in North Kensington; he could sort people out with a single word, and if that didn’t work, he could pay them a visit.
Joel made the recitation. He saw the gratified gleam come into the Blade’s dark eyes. Obeisance made in this form, Joel went on to make specific his request.
This required a history of his encounters with Neal Wyatt, and he gave it, beginning with his first run- in with the other boy and concluding with the fire on the barge. He crossed the final line when he said Neal’s name in advance of any agreement he might garner from the Blade to help him. He could think of no other way to demonstrate how willing he was to trust the older man.
What he hadn’t considered was that the Blade might not reciprocate that trust. He hadn’t considered that the return of a flick knife might not serve as an adequate expression of his good intentions. Because of this, he waited for the Blade’s reply in mistaken confidence, assuming that now all would be well. He wasn’t prepared, therefore, to receive a response that was noncommittal.
“Ain’t my man, Jo-ell,” the Blade said, knocking ash from his spliff onto the floor. “Spitting on me, ’s I recall. Outside Rissa’s, you remember?”
Joel was hardly likely to forget. But he’d also been pushed because the Blade had spoken badly about his family, which was unacceptable. He told the Blade something of this, saying, “M’ family, mon. You can’t be talkin bad ’bout them and ’xpect me to do nuffink. Dat ain’t right. You would’ve done the same ’s I did, I reckon.”
“Did and have done,” the Blade noted with a smile. “Dat mean you want dis patch someday, bred?”
“What?” Joel asked.
“You take on the Blade cos you want to run his patch someday yourself?” In the corner, Arissa laughed at this notion. The Blade silenced her with a look.
Joel blinked. That idea had been so far from his consideration that it hadn’t even made it onto his radar screen. He told the Blade that what he wanted was help with his brother. He said he didn’t want Toby vexed any longer. Neal Wyatt and his crew could take on Joel as much as they wanted, he explained, but they were meant to leave Toby alone.
“He can’t do nuffink to defend himself,” Joel said. “It’s like going after a kitten wiv a hammer.”
The Blade took all this in and looked thoughtful. After a moment, he said, “You willing to owe me?”
Joel had thought about this in advance. He knew the Blade would extract a payment of some sort. It was inconceivable that the kingpin of North Kensington would do something out of the milk of human kindness since whatever he might have once had of that substance had long ago curdled in his veins. From what he’d seen tonight, Joel assumed it would have to do with drugs: joining the Blade’s delivery team. He didn’t want to do it—the risks of getting caught were great—but he was down to his last hope.
The Blade knew that. His expression said that Joel was caught in a seller’s market: He could walk away and hope Neal Wyatt had done the most he intended to do to Toby, or he could strike a bargain in which he knew he was going to end up paying more than the product was actually worth.
Joel saw no other choice. He couldn’t go to Cal, who would do nothing without the Blade’s permission. He couldn’t go to Dix, who was out of the picture. If he asked Ivan to intervene, what would likely come of that was a poetry duel between conflicting parties. If he waited for his aunt to track down and speak to Neal, that would make life infi nitely worse.
There was simply no alternative that Joel could see. There was only this moment, and during it he felt a stabbing that he knew was regret. Nonetheless he said, “Yeah. I owe. You do this for me, I owe.”
The Blade took a toke of his spliff, and his face showed satisfaction and the kind of enjoyment that Joel suspected he otherwise got from a woman on her knees in front of him. He told himself that it didn’t matter. He said, “So we got a deal or what?” and he tried to sound as rough as he could. “Cos if we don’t, I got other business to conduct.”
The Blade lifted an eyebrow. “You like to take th’ piss, eh? You got to stop dat, bred. It’ll buy you trouble ’f you don’t.”
Joel made no reply. Arissa stirred in her corner. She curled into a foetal position on the dirty futon and said, “Baby, come
He ignored her. He nodded at Joel, the message implicit: It said, I know who you are and don’t forget it. He stubbed the rest of his spliff out on the wall, and he motioned Joel to approach him. When Joel did so, the Blade dropped a hand to his shoulder and spoke into his face.
“Your family vex me,” he said. “I get dissed by dem. You recall dis, mon? I t’ink you setting me up for more just now, and dat being the case—”
“Dis ain’t no setup!” Joel protested. “You t’ink any diff’rent, you talk to the cops. They tell you what happened. They tell you—”
The Blade’s hand clamped down brutally. So tight and hard was the grasp he had on Joel that it cut off the rest of what the boy wanted to say. “Do not in’errupt me, blood. You listen good. You want help from me, you got to prove yourself first. You prove dis situation here ain’t ’bout dissing me more, y’unnerstan? You do the job I give you—in advance, eh?—then I do the job you want done as well. And then you owe me. An’
“Prove myself how?” Joel asked.
“Dat’s the deal,” the Blade said. “You ain’t need to worry ’bout the hows. They come to you when they come to you.” He walked back to Arissa, who’d begun to snore slightly, her lips parted and her tongue lolling
