Seemed a little warm for a leather jacket.
The five of them stood close together at the foot of my driveway. Not what I would have done, but again, no Mensa pins.
“T-Man,” I said, “you didn’t tell me you were bringing your buddies from the book club. What’s Oprah recommending this month?”
“Recommend you git yo ass kicked, what she recommend.”
“Strange,” I said, while my eyes shifted from one to the other of them. Rodney’s hands were in his pockets, and he seemed very nervous, bouncing slightly from one foot to the other. “O doesn’t seem the violent type.”
“Fuck O,” said T-Man. “Thought I told you to stay away from my boy Anthony.”
Rodney took his left hand out of his pocket and began tapping it against his leg.
“Not sure what the problem is here, T-Man,” I said. “I was at Home Depot, talking to Anthony’s mother, and she asked me if I’d drive him over to Number 5. I was just a taxi service.”
The other three Links were all big, too, like Rodney. They just stood still and gave me the look. I concentrated on T-Man and Rodney.
“Boy coulda walked to Number 5,” said T-Man. “Coulda taken a jitney. Didn’t need a ride from some asshole private dick I tole to stay away.”
This wasn’t like that day in front of Anthony’s house, when Razor and a couple of his friends just wanted to get a look at me and prove how tough they were. There was something else going on here, something with the potential to go very bad, very fast. I could feel it. So could the tiger. He stirred inside me, just a little. His eyes peered out through mine, and the focus, as usual, got a little sharper. I kept my breath steady.
“I drove Anthony to the police station,” I said. “Then I drove him home. Just doing a favor for his mom.”
I didn’t like that it was just Rodney’s left hand that was moving around.
“Fuck favors!” shouted T-Man. “And fuck you, too, while we’re at it!”
Rodney’s hand started to come out of his pocket, and there was a glint of something metallic. He was surprisingly quick, especially given his size, but not quick enough, and before his hand had half cleared his pocket, Rodney was staring down the muzzle of my Smith & Wesson .38.
“Don’t,” I told him.
He didn’t. His right hand stayed still, but his eyes flickered over to T-Man, and I realized I was aiming at the wrong person. I slid my arm twelve inches to the left, so that the Smith & Wesson was trained directly on T-Man.
“If he moves that hand,” I said to T-Man, “I’ll put three rounds into you before he gets off his first shot.”
For a minute, T-Man just stood there and gave me an icy stare. I’d seen the look before, years earlier, on the faces of gang kids whose sense of self-worth was so screwed up that they’d actually rather die than be seen backing down from a rival gang member. The question now was, How screwed up was T-Man?
Fortunately, not as screwed up as he could have been.
“Rodney,” he said, “be cool.”
“That’s good advice, Rodney,” I said. “Be cool.”
I kept my gun level with T-Man’s head. Actually, it’s better to aim at the largest area of the mass you’re trying to hit, which in the case of a human being is usually the chest. But I wanted T-Man’s eyes to look right down the barrel of the .38.
The tiger continued to pace. It wanted to get out, but this was neither the time nor the place. I needed to play this just right.
“I didn’t start this,” I told T-Man, “and I can’t end it. Only you can. If you came here to kill me, then you and me and some of your boys are all going down. If you came here to warn me off Anthony, I get the message. The next move’s up to you.”
For another minute, we all just stood there, like some sort of contemporary urban tableau. Then T-Man’s eyes shifted from my gun to me, and without changing expression, he said, “Next time I see you, mother-fucker, you be dead.”
Then he abruptly turned and got into the van parked in front of my driveway. Rodney and the others joined him, and within a minute, the van was pulling away.
The tiger relaxed and retreated.
I put my gun back in its holster and continued watching the van until it made a left onto Walnut and moved out of my sight. Then I let my breath out and went inside and made three phone calls.
Chapter 39
The first call was to Denny, not because he was a cop, although that entered into it, but mostly because he was Denny. I told him what had happened, and he put me on hold for a few minutes while he called the desk sergeant at Number 5. Then he came back on with me and said he’d be over within thirty minutes.
The next call was to Paris Soloman. He listened without interruption to my account of the morning’s activities and then said, “You done good, JB. I’d have handled it the exact same way, with the possible exception being that the kid with the gun maybe would be learning to write with his other hand today.”
There was a pause, and I could almost hear the mental head-scratching at the other end.
“Penny for your thoughts, Detective,” I said.
“I was thinking that you were probably too good this morning. From what you’ve told me, you reacted so quickly that yours was the only gun actually showing, right?”
I knew where he was going.
“Yeah,” I said. “At the time, I thought it was to my advantage not to let the kid get his gun all the way out of his pocket.”
“I agree,” said Paris, “and I’m gonna have my people out looking for T-Man and his buddy, but I doubt if the DA’s office would be willing to prosecute
