That’s how it went sometimes. But if Erroll Barnes was behind all this, that could be the best insurance for Strike, because Erroll and Rodney grew up together used to pull stickups together, did time together, and now Erroll was Rodney’s troubleshooter and dope mule and Strike couldn’t see Erroll shooting up Rodney’s people. Still, it wasn’t unheard-of once you understood that after all the We Are Family bullshit went down everybody was really just out for themselves.

Strike hated having a gun, only got it because Rodney had told him he was too little and skinny to get anybody to toe the line just on say-so, that he had to have a piece to do the job. But the truth of it was, he was scared of the gun once he got it—not scared of shooting somebody, but scared of his own anger and what trouble he could get into for shooting somebody. His fear of having to use it probably served him just as well, sometimes even made him creative. One evening three months before, he had found out that some kid working for him was going over to Rydell and selling his bottles for fifteen instead of ten, then pocketing the extra five for himself. Not wanting to use the gun, Strike went over to a pet store, bought a dog chain and whipped this greedy little motherfucker to the ground in front of an entire Saturday night’s playground crowd, standing over him like some heave-chested slave master. It was just business, but Strike didn’t like to think about how good it felt, didn’t like to imagine where that might have ended for him if he’d had that gun in his hand.

Strike took a vanilla Yoo-Hoo out of the glove compartment and sipped it as he trolled the boulevard. About every two blocks some JFK docker would wave in recognition or yell out his name, or some pipehead girl from the projects would get all happy-faced seeing him, tiptoe out into traffic and try to wheedle a bottle out of him before the light changed. Despite his wariness, there was a part of him that loved the charge he generated in others: the lit-up look the pipeheads got on seeing him, the salute of the clockers. Someday it would be the end of him, this recognition, this power, but other than the lifelong tug of war between him and his mother, it was the closest thing to love he had ever experienced.

At the light before the turn to Rodney’s store, two plainclothes cops pulled up alongside the Accord. Strike made a point of casually looking into their window, then looking away. It was only natural to look at a cop car; nothing gave a docker away to a profiling cop like that stony straight-ahead stare at a red light.

The cop in the shotgun seat, a pink-skinned albino with a wild white Santa Claus beard, rolled down his window and tilted his chin at Strike. Panicking a little, Strike forgot about the gun in the step well and worried instead about the open Yoo-Hoo.

“Yo, Strike.”

Strike rolled down his window.

“Tell Rodney to give me a call.”

Strike nodded, relieved, but freaked too. The guy must be on Rodney’s payroll, but how did the cop know who he was? Strike had never seen him before. The light turned green and Strike let him roll off first.

Give me a call … like Rodney would know which cop this was. The guy probably thought he was the only eyes and ears Rodney had. Strike hissed out his disgust: everybody was full of shit in this game. The cops bullshitted each other, the dealers bullshitted each other, the cops bullshitted the dealers, the dealers bullshitted the cops, the cops took bribes, the dealers ratted each other out. Nobody knew for sure which side anybody was on; no one really knew how much or how little money anybody else was making. Everything was smoke. Everything was pay phones in the middle of the night. Being in this business was like walking blindfolded through a minefield. It was hard to know what to do or what not to do, but in order to survive Strike went by three unbreakable rules: trust no one, don’t get greedy, and never do product. Most people who lasted out here lived by the same rules as Strike did, plus rule number four, which was kind of a balancing act with rule number one: you got to have someone watch your back. You got to have a main somebody to cover your ass. You didn’t have to trust him completely but alone is tough There’s always something you’ll need help with. Bail jail collections muscle the impossibility of being in two places at one time. That’s why Rodney had Erroll. Strike didn’t have anybody like that in his life yet, but he thinking hard on it.

 

The store was called Rodney’s Place, a little hole in the wall on a side street off JFK Boulevard.