Rodney had hand lettered the name on the painted sky-blue cinder blocks under the window, following it with a partial list: “candy, sofe drinks, milk, games.” No one, if they noticed, had the guts to tell Rodney that he’d misspelled “soft.” Rodney had learned to read and write in prison when he was twenty-one, had earned his high school equivalency degree there and had been reading- and writing-crazy ever since. He was obsessed with tests, taking every possible written exam just to show he could pass and get some payback for all those humiliating classroom years. He now held six licenses: barber, beautician, real estate, travel agent, driving instructor and Xerox repair. Strike knew Rodney was deeply proud of his mail-order education, even though he had little to show for it outside of a bunch of framed diplomas hanging on the walls of the candy store. He never used any of the skills that came with all that paper, save for giving the occasional free haircut when he couldn’t stand looking at some kid’s scruffed-up head anymore.

Rodney wasn’t there when Strike walked in. Six young teenagers played pool under the harsh fluorescent overheads, another two banged away on the Super Mario video game, all of them silently taking in Strike with dopey frowns. The kids weren’t clockers: Rodney didn’t allow any hustling in the store, and working for Rodney meant working.

Strike knew about that up front. He had spent a full year in here making five dollars an hour under the table, straight, no-nonsense, mule-team shopkeeping—inventory, cash register, mopping the floor, sometimes putting in fifteen-hour days, sleeping in back, then putting in another twelve. He had loved every minute of it and thought he was rolling in dough until Rodney sat him down one day and offered him a different kind of job. Now Rodney carried Strike on the books as the night manager of Rodney’s Place; if Strike ever got stopped with a few thousand on him, he could account for the roll by saying he was on his way to the bank to make a night deposit for the store. Rodney was smart that way, and he charged Strike only five hundred dollars for the honorary title. Sometimes Strike missed working here; his stomach hurt him less back then, and he used to savor the charge he felt whenever Rodney would roll in and make some noise about how shipshape the place looked.

The first time they met, Rodney had startled Strike by telling him that he “admired” his speech defect because Strike didn’t let it stop him from wanting to make something of himself, didn’t let it turn him into one of those people who would drown in a rain puddle. Rodney said he could see that Strike knew that the only place a man can be truly handicapped is in his mind, and that a man who can conquer his own mind has got the world at his feet.

Strike didn’t know he knew all this until Rodney said he did, but once he heard it, Strike began believing it. Rodney was always doing that to him: teaching him things in a way that made him feel as if he knew it all along, making Strike recognize himself. And sometimes Rodney introduced Strike to people as “my son.” He was smart that way too.

The only other guy who had worked as hard as Strike in here, and who Rodney liked as much as Strike, was a kid named Darryl Adams. Darryl was a lot like Strike’s older brother, Victor: heads down, brick-by-brick, never shooting off his mouth but never smiling either. He was quiet, neat and dependable, the sort of person Strike’s mother would like. These days Darryl held down an assistant manager’s job at Ahab’s, a fast-food shithole a few blocks from Rodney’s store, the same kind of job Strike’s brother had over at a competing grease pit called Hambone’s.

Strike wandered the cramped store in a lazy circle, scowling, resisting the impulse to clean up: the place looked like shit.

Rodney’s chubby teenage daughter sat behind the counter, staring into space and chewing air. Across the room and under a Budweiser Kings of Africa poster, Rodney’s father sat propped up on a bar stool behind his thick glasses and his cigarette smoke, watching the game of pool and jabbering away, mostly to himself. An eighteen-month-old boy chewing a Pay Day bar sat in a stroller in front of the candy counter, dressed in a denim jumpsuit. His hair had two neat slices running front to back like stripes on a football helmet, and he wore high-top baby Nikes on his feet. He was Rodney’s son, one of three Strike knew about, this one by the woman who lived a few houses up from where Rodney lived with his wife and two teenage daughters.

The kids around the pool table and video game were mostly here by default, half of them living on the street or with mothers on the pipe. Rodney kept the store open twenty-four hours, and a lot of them never went home. They wore linty sweat suits and cheap sneakers, baseball hats and no jewelry. Two of them were still sucking their thumbs.

Strike watched the game for a minute. None of the kids could sink more than one ball at a time or had the patience to line up a shot right, and with him standing there, they all got worse, knowing he wasn’t just a docker but Rodney’s lieutenant. Some of them, and some of the other kids Rodney was constantly collecting, would be getting a tryout on the street in the coming months. Most would fall off into the product right away, but a few would wear Nike Airs and gold for at least a little while before they went down too. A good run on the street was six months, and you had to have a clear head and a lot of self-confidence to make it even that long. Strike had been out there almost nine months now, and he knew that almost nobody made it out of the game in one piece, and almost everybody thought they would be the exception.

Strike turned away so the players could relax.