“Shit, you don’t look like no fuckin’ English teacher to me. Gym, maybe, not English. What made her think you could convince me to let her boy out the gang?”
I smiled at him.
“My winning personality,” I said. “People just naturally seem to want to do my bidding.”
He frowned and said, “Fuck that shit!”
So much for the traditional approach.
“Look, T-Man, why don’t we quit screwing around here, okay? Anthony didn’t want to ask you to meet with me, said he didn’t want to leave the gang, but his mother threatened to send him to live with a friend of hers down South if he didn’t put me in touch with you. So he did. And here we are.”
“And you want me to say it be okay for Anthony to leave the Links?”
“That’s about it,” I agreed. “Anthony told me that some of the kids in the neighborhood have your permission not to be in the gang. So it’s not like you haven’t done this before.”
“Don’t mean I gonna do it for Anthony. Why should I?”
I shrugged and said, “A good-will gesture? Might show everybody you’re not just some tough guy, you’re a tough guy with brains.”
“What you mean?”
“If you don’t let Anthony out of the gang, his mother’s probably going to send him away. That way, you lose him as a member of the Links, and that’s it. On the other hand, if you give him permission to leave the gang, he’s still in the neighborhood, and everybody’ll know that the only reason he’s not in the Links is because you said so. He’ll be a constant reminder to everyone of your authority, your power.”
T-Man was quiet for a moment. I hoped I hadn’t played up to him too much. Finally, he looked at me and said, “I gotta think about this.” Then he turned and walked away, followed, as usual, by his buddies, one of whom was still clearing his throat.
* * *
Back in the car, I asked Denny, “Just out of curiosity, if you had arrested Rodney, what would you have charged him with?”
“Being stupid in public.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that would work.”
Chapter 29
So once again I was waiting for T-Man. Maybe he was with Godot. Maybe the two of them enjoyed the occasional low-fat mocha espresso with a double shot of ginger. If so, maybe I’d run into them at the Starbucks in Shadyside, which is where I was the next morning, fortifying myself for the day ahead with a latte and an orange scone. I’d asked for a cranberry scone, but there weren’t any, so I’d gone with orange. I try to be flexible in matters culinary.
Irv was on his break and sitting across from me at a small table by the front window.
“Making any progress on that gang thing?” he asked.
“Depends on how you define progress,” I said.
He smiled and said, “That much, huh?”
“Hey,” I said, “I’ll have you know that my investigation has thus far opened up several promising avenues of exploration.”
“Sure,” he said. “Help me out here, JB. Your goal is to get that kid out of the gang, right?”
“That would be our mission statement for this particular case, yes,” I said.
“Kid still in the gang?”
“You mean right now?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Probably,” I replied.
Holding his palms up, he said, “I rest my case.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “if you’re going to insist on the rather narrow focus of a results-oriented perspective, then I suppose the only possible response is to ask why this establishment doesn’t have any cranberry scones this morning.”
Getting up from his chair, Irv smiled again and said, “I’ll go look into that right now. Meanwhile, watch your back out there, okay? Remember what I told you about some of these gang kids, JB.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
Before I left a little while later, Irv gave me a bag with two cranberry scones fresh out of the oven. I assumed it was his way of apologizing for having challenged my investigative techniques, but he said it was his way of getting me out of the joint before the lunch hour, ‘cause I scared the yuppies.
That afternoon I worked out at the Y and drove over to Whole Foods to pick up the fixings for a chicken oriental salad for dinner. Since the weather was still unseasonably warm, once I got home, I sat on the deck off my bedroom and read some more of David McCullough’s John Adams. Not too much about gangs there, although that bunch in Philadelphia had managed to stir things up a bit.
That night I met Denny at Reizenstein Middle School to watch Matt’s basketball team play. Simon helped coach the team, and Denny and I tried to get to as many games as we could, mostly for Matt’s sake, but also because it reminded the two of us of a time many years earlier when we’d been the ones racing around the court, yelling gimme the ball, gimme the ball.
I was wearing navy Dockers and a Lands’ End burgundy crew neck sweater over a white button-down Oxford cloth shirt and feeling pretty good about it until Denny showed up midway through the first quarter. As he climbed the bleachers, several people glanced at him, especially a few of the mothers in the crowd, probably because he was the only person in the gym wearing a designer suit and custom-made Italian loafers.
The suit was light gray with a very faint gold weave and the shoes were black. Denny’s shirt was white-on-white with a spread collar, and the tie that was now hanging loose around his neck appeared to be the exact same shade of gold as the weave in the suit. Probably just a coincidence.
As he settled down next to me and took off his coat and folded it neatly in his lap, I turned and said, “Show-off.”
Denny grinned and said, “Had a meeting at the mayor’s office, ran late, so I didn’t have time to go home and change.”
“Still a show-off,” I said.
“But a well-dressed one,”
