“Well,” I said, and I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
She sat back in her chair for a moment and gave me a smile.
“Hmmm, I suppose that’s, um, doable, but only after I’ve had an extra-special dessert.”
“Waiter!” I said. “A double order of your profiteroles.”
Chapter 27
The next morning I called Dennis at his office.
“JB. What’s cookin’, son?”
“Gotta cancel tonight, Denny,” I told him.
“Todd’ll be disappointed, JB. I saw him yesterday, and he told me there was no way he was gonna let you get him off his feet on D again.”
“Yeah, well, tell young Todd he’ll have to maintain his membership in the Helicopter Club a little while longer. I’m working tonight.”
And I told Dennis about my encounter with T-Man the day before. As I’d expected, Denny immediately honed in on one particular aspect of that meeting.
“I’m going with you.”
“Thanks, Denny, but I don’t think T-Man’s invitation included any minions of the law.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “And you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I do. But I don’t think there’s any connection, Denny. I mean, I doubt if T-Man even knew about Laura before yesterday afternoon.”
“He knows about her now.”
I thought about that for a minute.
“Okay, Denny. The two of us. Nine o’clock tonight at Green Street.”
“I’ll come by your place a little after eight-thirty,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Minions of the law?”
“I thought you’d like that.”
* * *
Later that morning, I called Augie to tell him that Dennis and I wouldn’t be at the Y that night. I also asked him if Tyrone Nichols had ever attended Franklin.
“Gimme a minute,” he said. “I’ll punch him up on my computer. Just one more minute. Okay, here he is. He attended but just barely. Enrolled in ninth grade four years ago, was already sixteen years old at the time. Stayed just two months.”
“What happened?”
“Dunno. All I have here is that he left school late October of that year, never came back.”
“Shuman?” I asked. Shuman Center was the city’s juvenile detention facility. Some of the hard-core gang kids in my classes had spent weekends at Shuman the way other people headed to their cabins in the mountains.
“Probably,” said Augie. “But I don’t have those kinds of records. Check with Dennis.”
“Yeah, I will,” I said. “Thanks, Aug. Give my best to Pat.”
* * *
Green Street playground is located a few blocks from Franklin High. There was a basketball court there, along with a couple of swing sets and a sliding board and some monkey bars for little kids. That was it. The whole thing was paved over and surrounded by a high chain-link fence. No grass or trees or shrubs. Even so, when Denny and I were in our early teens, the place was fairly busy, especially during summers. Winters, of course, were another matter, except for Messrs. Barnes and Wilcox. Even in the middle of February, the two of us would bundle up and head to Green Street to hoop. If it had been snowing, we’d take shovels to clear the court. We also took Band-Aids to put over our fingertips where the skin cracked from the cold. Our parents thought we were crazy, and they were probably right.
Green Street wasn’t much of a playground anymore. Mostly, it was a place where gang kids hung out and where minor drug transactions took place on a daily basis. Every once in a while, there was talk of fixing the place up, putting in new equipment and laying down a padded surface so kids wouldn’t get hurt when they fell. But before any of that was even begun, the neighborhood had to be revitalized, and that was another problem altogether.
We drove over to Green Street in Denny’s black Navigator. He also had the BMW and, because his parents had owned one before he’d been born, a 1963 tan Impala in mint condition. There had once been a time when Denny owned more cars than I did suits.
“Find out anything about T-Man?” I asked as we passed Franklin.
“Found out we’d all be better off if he was locked up somewhere,” said Denny. “Tyrone Nichols, AKA T-Man, spent enough time at Shuman that he could have put it down as his permanent residence for a year or two. He’s twenty now, been arrested a bunch of times, mostly thefts and minor assaults, never done hard time, but he’s heading in that direction. Oh, and here’s an interesting twist. There was abuse in the home, but not what you’d ordinarily expect. Dad was never in the picture, but when T-Man was fourteen, he and his mother got into an argument, and he beat her so badly that she spent a few days in the hospital. After that, he was passed around from relative to relative, then ended up in foster homes until he was eighteen.”
“Current address?” I asked. “Job?”
“I talked to his probation officer this afternoon. T-Man checks in just often enough to avoid getting into trouble, and he lists an apartment over on Bleeker Street as his current residence. Supposedly, he works at a small market near his apartment, but his PO told me that he doesn’t have the time to really check that out on any kind of regular basis. He called once, and somebody claiming to be the owner said Tyrone Nichols worked there.”
“Whaddya think the odds are that T-Man actually earns a living at the market?” I asked.
“None and none,” said Denny, “especially considering what I’ve learned about his personality. I talked to Paris Soloman today, and he said T-Man’s got a reputation as a real hardass.”
I nodded.
“That’s what Asaan Witherspoon told me, too. Said T-Man’s the main obstacle to any kind of peace between the gangs right now.”
“And you’re gonna, what, ask this guy to do a favor for you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m gonna smile pretty when I do.”
“Well,” said Denny, as he
