As long as she got ten dollars. And if The Word gives up the bottle, then The Word better have ten dollars.

Strike drank some more Yoo-Hoo and massaged his gut. Sweetness coated the pain, lukewarm sweetness now that he’d been holding the bottle between his palms for an hour.

The red-headed white boy came loping back into the semicircle and Strike had a bad feeling. He looked to Peanut, who was watching the street to see if the Fury was playing peekaboo around a corner. Peanut looked to Strike and touched his cheek again. Strike had whacked him good with a full bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and Peanut had fallen down so fast his hat stayed in place right over where his head had been, like in a cartoon. People stealing from him turned Strike’s brain red: If somebody pulled something like Peanut did, you had to kick their ass, then put them back on the street. And if they did it again, then you had to really fuck them up bad. And you never, never let that shit slide, because if you did they’d be all over you, them and everybody else, and then the game would be over.

Strike knew he’d done’the right thing; Peanut knew it too. But then Strike began to wonder if Peanut would try a little payback now, let the Fury come by without raising up. Can’t trust nobody: everybody was dense one minute, devious the next, always talking about being brothers, watching each other’s back, but when it came down to it Strike preferred enemies to friends. At least with enemies, you knew what they were right up front. Either way, this business could chew you up, and Strike would do anything to get off the street and just deal weight like Rodney.

The white guy fanned out the singles to The Word as if he wanted The Word to pick a card, any card. The Word swept the bills into his hand, said “Two-oh” to Horace, and Horace vanished into 6 Weehawken.

The Word walked away and the white guy said, “Hey…” For a minute he stood there alone, blinking and confused, but then Horace came back out of the building holding a crumpled-up paper bag. He dropped it in a garbage can, hissed “Yo” to get the customer’s attention, then walked away too. It took a few seconds for the guy to figure it out, but then he snatched up the bag and hustled off toward the street.

It was Strike’s idea to move the store to the benches at the edge of the projects. Whites were too scared of walking all the way in and copping their bottles while being surrounded by the towers, too scared that they wouldn’t make it back out. Working from the benches also made it a lot easier to spot the Fury when it rolled, especially when the knockos pulled a pincers move, trying to sneak attack from both sides at once.

Strike had suggested it to Rodney, Rodney saying, “Hey, you’re the man,” letting him run his own show as long as he moved half a kilo a week. And in six months on top out here, Strike had never failed to hit that figure, partly through his vigilant fretfulness, partly through marketing novelties like two-for-one Happy Hours, Jumbos, Redi Rocks and Starter Kits, but mainly because he understood that good product rules. People always knew who had it; all Strike had to do was not get greedy and step on Rodney’s bottles when they came in. That way he’d always have the best, because all the other lieutenants stretched out their re-ups by diluting the product. Strike counted on the greed, knowing it would drive all the pipe-heads right to him.

“Five-oh!” Peanut hissed, whirling, spinning on one foot.

Shit. Strike looked past Peanut to the street, saw the knockos still in the car and heard one of them, Crunch, calling to the white guy, “Hey, you!”

Strike looked to Horace and The Word, both of them flying back into the building. Strike sat tight, just watched as Crunch stepped out and escorted his grab to the rear of the Fury.

Blasting from the open door was some Rolling Stones garbage, one of the tapes the knockos played in order to get pumped up when they were hunting bounty.

Strike saw Spook and Ahmed walk away as if they had something to hide—wannabes, the only idiots who walked. He heard Big Chief still in the shotgun seat whisper into the hand radio: “Batman Hat guilty, Red Hat guilty.” Then Strike saw Smurf and Thumper sneaking up on foot from the Dumont side, closing the pincers, grabbing Spook and Ahmed and throwing them up against the chain fence.

The white guy was pleading with Crunch, yammering, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, look listen I’m, look listen,” then babbling on about how he was a caulker, how he just got the job this week.

Crunch began cutting a deal right on the street, and Strike heard him say something about “just a desk appearance if you ID the kid who served you.” The white guy was barely able to talk, wanting to say so much so fast. He called The Word “stocky” instead of fat: “Stocky kid in a St. Louis Cardinals cap, Officer.” Officer, like he was in the army.

Strike, hunched over on his perch, watched Thumper press a splayed palm on Ahmed’s chest, saying, “What’s up, Yo? Where you going?,” saying it with that honking street lisp he liked to use. Trembling and pop-eyed as if he was really holding, Ahmed squeaked back, “I ain’t going nowhere, Thumper!”

“Whatta you so nervous about, Home?” Thumper was already in his pockets, shaking out the snotrag, scrabbling through his vinyl wallet.

“I ain’t nervous!” Ahmed sounded like a fire alarm at noon.

“Ya ain’t nervous? Feel ya heart!” Thumper squawked, moving his hand on Ahmed’s chest, whump whump, as if it was pulsing. He pulled out Ahmed’s money—two dollars, a real big-time gangster—then put the bills back in Ahmed’s pocket and pulled off his Batman hat, checking inside before flipping it over the fence, into the grass.

Big Chief was giving Peanut the same drill, while Smurf sniffed around the benches, picking up paper bags and looking for bottles, rooting around in the garbage cans like a bum. They all looked like bums, except they were healthy bums, six-foot, two-hundred-pound white bums with lead saps and Clock Nineteens on their hips.

Strike had no idea why, but the Fury definitely had a thing for the Weehawken benches.