– No big deal.
– Uh-huh?
– Just looking for the son of a bitch who’s sending bags of Vyrus downtown for the new fish to shoot.
– Huh. No shit.
He holds out his hand and one of the rhinos passes him his Armani jacket. He pulls it on and does the buttons.
–
He picks up the razor.
– That is some in-ter-es-tin’ shit.
He hands the razor to the barber.
– Finish the man up.
He starts for the door, talking to Timberlands as he goes.
– When he done with his shave, toss him in the Hummer and haul his ass up to the Jack. We gonna show muthafucka some shit.
He walks out the door with the two rhinos on his heels. The barber looks at my throat.
– Look there, that all closed up already. Nothin’ no how but a scratch that.
He freshens the lather on my face and gives me a shave.
The Jackie Robinson Recreation Center looks like a Civil War fortress: red brick with round turrets at the corners and huge steel doors. The Jack.
Timberlands parks the Hummer on an empty basketball court just inside a chain-link gate. Behind the Jack, a cliff of whatever rock Manhattan is made out of rises several stories above us, Edgecomb Avenue running along its top. It’s cold outside the Hummer.
I look at Timberlands.
– How ’bout you give me my jacket back.
He runs his hand down the sleeve, feeling the leather.
– This jacket?
– Uh-huh.
– This my jacket. Why’m I gonna give you my jacket?
– Brotherly love?
He gives me a good push, letting my face open the door for us. He tilts his head at the guy sitting at the check-in desk and muscles me down a corridor of white-painted cinderblock.
At the end of the hall a guy in a cheap black suit and wraparound black shades leans against a door. We stop in front of him. He keeps staring at whatever he’s staring at, not bothering to turn his head in our direction.
Timberlands snaps his fingers.
– Open up.
Slowly, Shades rotates his face to us.
– Private party.
– We on the guest list.
Shades unbends a finger and points it at me.
– He ain’t.
– He with Digga.
Shades leans his head back, relaxing a little more.
– Already got a main attraction. Don’t need an opening act.
Timberlands steps up.
– Say he from Digga.
Shades unrelaxes.
– Digga don’t have no free white boy passes.
– This the Hood. This Digga’s turf.
– So they say.
The scent is up on them, rank Vyrus pheromones spraying the air. Blood will be spilled. I start looking for a window I can dive through.
– What all this?
Digga and his rhinos come up the hall behind us.
– What all this hostility I see? Where the love?
He stops, looks at the standoff in front of the door, a big smile across his face.
– What the problem, we ain’t got the juice to get beyond this velvet rope? Doorman don’t like our kicks? We ain’t up to the clientele inside?
Shades points at me again.
– He’s white.
Digga looks at me.
– Damn! How’d I miss that? Well, shit, you right ’bout that. Still doan see the problem.
– He’s white.
– Uh-huh. Well, as to that, know what Luther X used to say? He say,
He loses the smile.
– Or you can open the damn door.
– Papa won’t like it.
– Somebody elect Papa president of the Hood? Somebody give him my job, forgot to tell me ’bout it? Open up.
Shades takes a step to the side.
– I di’nt say move, muthafucka, I said,
Shades opens the door.
Digga sweeps his arm in front of me.
– After you.
I walk through followed by Digga, Timberlands, and the rhinos. The door swings shut behind us and we start down a stairwell.
Digga talks to the rhinos.
– You know that fool?
– Uh-huh.
– Get his name on a list.
– Uh-huh.
Below us comes a rumble of many voices and the howl of crazed dogs. The air smells like sweat, chlorine, blood, and the Vyrus.
There are a lot of them. I’ve never seen so many in one place. There are at least two hundred packed into the old basement baths. Two hundred of them. Two hundred of us. When I lead the way out of the stairwell every face turns toward me. The room goes silent except for the barking of the dogs that echoes off the tiled walls and ceiling. I have an instant vision of what it will be like to be torn literally to ribbons. Then Digga steps up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
– Hey, all. He with me.
He keeps his hand on my shoulder, leading me through the crowd, closer to whatever is at its center. Way is made for him. With his free hand he bumps fists and exchanges backslaps, passing a word with the men and women of the crowd. They are mostly young, mostly hip-hop, all wear the Ecko rhino somewhere on their person, and none are white.
He puts his mouth next to my ear as we press through them.
– Shit, muthafucka, I knew I coulda made a entrance like this, I woulda got me a white boy sooner.
We’re approaching the pool. It’s drained of water. An eight-foot-high chain-link fence has been strung around it. The barking comes from inside. He brings me right up to the fence. The cement walls of the pool are stained
