Thumper said, “Allow me,” then dropped to one knee as if they were in a shoe store, undoing Strike’s sneakers and then slipping off his socks.

“Let’s go, there, Thumper,” Big Chief yelled from the car. Thumper sighed, rising, shaking out the socks for hidden dope.

“OK. I gotta go, hon.” Thumper swiveled on his hips like a discus thrower. Strike tensed, bracing himself for the goodbye. Thumper uncorked it, slapping Strike between the shoulder blades, a heavy, bone-rattling pock, sending a shock wave of pain through Strike’s 125-pound frame. “Catch you later.”

Thumper walked over to a group of little kids who were watching the show, dropped his hand on a six-year-old shoulder: “Walk me, Big Time.” He strolled to the car with the kid as security against a toaster thrown out a window, Strike’s socks dangling from his back pocket.

Strike pulled on his sneakers over bare feet, clenching his teeth so the porcelain squeak was a hundred times magnified in his head, thinking: Lose all the idiots around me. Clowns, thieves, juveniles…

Strike walked to the curb and looked into the Fury: The Word sat in the back. Strike tried to catch his eye, throw some fear, but The Word was sitting on the street side and wouldn’t look his way. Crunch sat on the curb side, elbow out the window, waiting to roll. Little kids hung all over the car, wide-eyed; Big Chief nodded to one kid and growled, “What’s up, yo? Dempsy burnin’?”

Strike turned and noticed a boy of eleven or twelve standing there staring at Crunch, stick legs in wide-cut shorts, arms crossed high on his chest like an old-time comic-book weightlifter. The kid was giving Crunch the thousand-yard stare, testing himself, putting on his I-ain’t-afraid-a-no-knocko face. Crunch, feeling the eyes, the attitude, stared right back. “What’s your problem?”

The skinny boy didn’t answer, just kept staring, and Crunch went with it, playing, staring back.

But Crunch couldn’t hold it. He started laughing, and what happened next threw Strike completely. Strike expected the kid to go on staring or walk away triumphant, but when Crunch started laughing, the kid laughed too. The kid had play in him. The kid had flex, and flex was rare. Flex was intelligent, special, a good sign, like big paws on a puppy. For a minute Strike lost his anger, entranced by this kid, by possibilities.

As the Fury rolled off, Big Chief said goodbye to Strike by making a gun with his fingers and winking. As soon as they were gone, the baby-fat girl came up to him again.

“Can I ask you something?” she said. Her smile was tense, jittery, begging.

Strike ignored her, then asked a question of his own. “Who’s that kid there?”

“Where?”

“Him.”

“That Tyrone Jeeter.”

“He live here?”

“He just moved into Eight Weehawken from over on the other side. You know his mother? That woman Iris? Strike, can I borrow a bottle?”

Strike started to walk away, thinking about flex, when the rust-colored Caddy came rolling up again, Rodney at the wheel with his arm flung out along the back of the shotgun seat. Rodney ducked his head down to see over the gold frames of his sunglasses, then curled a finger for Strike.

Strike looked right and left, frowning, not liking to be seen talking to Rodney out in the open, even though any kid in the street could draw a diagram: Champ on top, then down to Rodney, then down to Strike and finally down to whomever Strike was trusting this week.

Strike walked to the car, stuck his head in the passenger-side window and got hit with a heavy cherry smell coming from the deodorizers Rodney had in front and back. Six Garfield cats were suction-cupped and spread-eagled on all the rear and side windows, staring bug-eyed out at the traffic.

Rodney sat with a hand on his crotch. Zodiac and Apollo XII patches sprouted from the thighs of his dry-cleaned jeans, and a button was missing from the belly of his white ruffle-paneled shirt. But he was handsome, smooth-skinned and in pretty good shape from all the prison time and from being an ex-boxer.

“Who’d they take?” Rodney thumbed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“The Woo-Word.” Strike was annoyed to hear the stutter come back on him. “He ain’t holding or nothing.”

“You gonna go tell his aunt to get him?” Rodney spoke in singsong, like a schoolteacher.

“I’ll take care of it.” Maybe Rodney should take care of some things too, Strike thought, like losing the Garfields. And lose the Caddy while he was at it—the only monied nigger left in creation to drive a big-body Cadillac.

“What you want?” Strike sniffed, picking up a vague fried-food smell underneath the cherry scent.

“You go to that doctor yet?” Another singsong nag.

“I ain’t had time.”

“That shit’ll kill you quicker than anything out here.” Rodney tilted his chin at the Yoo-Hoo.

“What you want, Rodney?” Strike tried to come off patient, but barely, wanting to get back to the bench and reorganize the post-attack situation.

“Come by the store.”

Rodney’s long fingernails were shiny and gray with food grease. Strike’s gut rippled reflexively.