Anthony frowned again.
“Huh?” he said.
“Jason and I play racquetball occasionally. I’m a little better player than he is, so in return for his services today, I have to spot him five points a game for the next couple of months.”
Anthony chewed on that for a minute. Then he said, “Why you doin’ this? Whaddya you care what happens to me, anyway?” He didn’t seem angry or confrontational, just curious. “I mean, you ain’t gettin’ no money from my mom or anyone else, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“So why’re you tryin’ to help me get outta the Links?”
I glanced over at him. Instead of looking away, as kids often do when they’re talking to adults, Anthony’s attention was solely on me at the moment. I took a deep breath before responding.
“There’s no one answer to that question, Anthony. In no particular order, I’m helping you because your mom’s a good person, and she and I have a history. Because I think you’re a good kid and you don’t want to be in a gang and you shouldn’t have to be in one. Because I think I can help you get out of that gang. Because I think people should help people.”
I looked over at him.
“Ever hear of Barbra Streisand?”
“Un-uh,” he said.
“Good. I was getting way too close to a cliché there.”
I turned into the parking lot of Number 5 and pulled around to the side and into a numbered space. I opened my door and started to step out, then turned back to Anthony.
“Mostly, I guess what this comes down to is that we have something in common, Anthony.”
He’d opened his door also, but he stopped and looked at me.
“I was brought up right, too,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go see if someone’ll let us into this joint.”
For the next twenty minutes, everything went very smoothly. Sergeant Kowalski took us to a small room upstairs, where Jason Dean and a young man wearing pink suspenders were waiting for us. Pink suspenders was from the DA’s office, and while I stood around in the hallway, he took Anthony’s statement. Then Anthony and Jason came back outside. Jason reminded me of our five-point deal before he left, and Sergeant Kowalski escorted Anthony and me down the hall to the same flight of stairs we’d used when we arrived.
As we reached the top of the stairs, several members of the Links, including Razor and Rodney, walked up past us, along with four uniformed cops. Nobody said anything, but everybody’s eyes were open. I could tell the sergeant was both surprised and upset, and when we got outside, he motioned for Anthony and me to wait for a minute while he walked a few steps away and talked to someone on the walkie-talkie attached to the epaulet on his left shoulder. When he was finished, he came back over to us.
“I’m sorry about that,” he told me. “Apparently, ADA Waggoner decided to bring the Links in earlier than planned. My guess is that somebody reminded him that Eyewitness News just started that four o’clock Early Edition broadcast, and old Phil figured he could wrangle a live remote interview. Anyway, he sent some cops out to bring in some of the Links, so he could stand out front later and say he’d had a sit-down with members of both gangs. Our guys used the side entrance with the Links just in case some of the Gates were still hangin’ around out front. Like I said, I’m sorry. Paris Soloman and I go back a ways, and I was trying to help him out today.”
“Hey, Sarge,” I said, “don’t worry about it. No harm, no foul.”
As Anthony and I drove away from Number 5, he turned to me and said, “T-Man gonna know I was with you today.”
I nodded in agreement.
“You think he gonna be pissed?” asked Anthony.
“I doubt it,” I said. “You didn’t implicate him, or any other member of the Links, in the shooting. In fact, you pretty much gave him an alibi, so I don’t know why he’d be upset.”
Which, of course, just goes to show you.
Chapter 37
I may not have been taking any money from Larretta, but that didn’t necessarily mean that I was adopting a pro bono policy as the standard at Barnes, Inc. I mean, somebody’s gotta pay for all those lattes. Which is why I got up early the next morning and walked the few blocks to my office in Shadyside. I had an actual appointment with an actual client, and in honor of the occasion, I was wearing a navy silk blazer over my dress jeans and a white cotton shirt with button-down collar. When you throw in my off-white Saucony crosstrainers, I was the very essence of casual chic.
I got to the office a little early so I could air the place out a bit and go through my mail. There were a couple of bills, a note from my landlord informing me that, no, he wouldn’t be painting the interior of the building anytime soon, and the usual assortment of junk mail offers. There was also a free introductory copy of Spymaster magazine, which I perused whilst sitting at my desk waiting for my client to arrive. Spymaster appeared to be devoted entirely to advertisements for what I’ve heard some women call toys for boys, a term that seemed particularly appropriate to the issue in my hands. On three consecutive pages, I found ads for a small can of pepper spray with matching leather holster, a digitized telephone voice changer, and, honest to God, a pair of rear-view spy sunglasses that, as an extra-added bonus, also provided protection from those pesky ultraviolet rays. I was trying to decide between the harvest brown leather holster, since I’m an autumn, and the sky blue, which would provide the perfect complement to my eyes, when Marlene Taylor walked into the office and sat down in the
