Is it OK I feed him dinner, feed her dinner, give him a book, buy her a, a ice cream cone.”

There was some solemn nodding going on out there now, a pickup in the weeping.

“They were old-school folks!”

“That’s right,” someone said amidst a rising mutter.

“Old school! The best people in the world! They were here back in the day! Back when everybody in this project looked out for each other!”

People nodded more vigorously, peppering him with responses.

“Tellit, Big Daddy!”

He eyed old Miss Bankhead, suffering in her chair, rocking with her secrets. She’d been ducking him for a solid year now. There was a crackled report on one of the police radios in the back.

“When I was a kid here growin’ up? If I messed up on one end of these houses, I got my butt kicked all the way home. My mother had her fifty pair a eyes back then!”

People laughed a little, wary, Lorenzo wincing for them, for what he was about to do to them.

One of the cops yawned audibly.

“If, if I played hookey or smoked me a cigarette, I had fifty mothers to yank my ear. Old school!” He was still pacing. “Old school! Mother Barrett—” Then he stopped, making himself laugh like he had lost his train of reproach. “Mother Barrett, one time, when I was a kid? I stole some chocolate sprinkles from the Chilly Willy truck. You remember that truck came around in the summertime?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yes-s.”

Jesse Haus of the Register quietly collected her stuff and crouch-walked up the aisle to the exit. Lorenzo was slightly stung by the bad review—he was just getting started.

“The Chilly Willy truck,” he repeated, having momentarily lost his place. “Had this, like, a, a service tray hanging out the side, had all the toppings in it, the sprinkles, chocolate, blue, green, rainbow, dip your ice cream cone in there, kids’ eyes gettin’ all, you know.” Lorenzo bugged his eyes, licked his lips.

The laughing came easier now. Even a couple of the housing cops were smiling, heads turned to the windows.

“One time, in what I call my pre-po-lice days, I couldn’t help it, I just got so greedy crazy I just, just snatched me a fistful, two fistfuls. The hell with the ice cream cone!”

Lorenzo acted it out, and people were throwing back their heads, laughing at the ceiling. Miss Bankhead was still rocking, a hand over her mouth, the burden of her knowledge making her oblivious to the show.

“Man, I just run like the devil, got all up behind One Building.” Lorenzo thought of those damn knuckleheads out there. “Chilly Willy man didn’t even know what hit him. I turn around, gettin’ ready to scarf me a mouthful…” Lorenzo was doing Cosby now, turning, then freezing, his eyes popping with fear, staring up at some invisible gigantic adult. “Turn around, there’s ol’ Mother Barrett give me that eye. You remember that eye she had? Kind of, kind of freeze you in your tracks.”

“Tell it!”

“That old lady, she don’t even ask for my side of the story, don’t even let me prepare a lie for myself. She gave me a whack on my behind? I swear, people on the benches was pickin’ sprinkles out their hair for a solid week! That lady done propelled me home that day!”

People were jerking back and forth in their folding chairs as if someone had them by the scruffs of their necks—hissing with glee, backhanding one another on the arms, Lorenzo laughing with them, one of the cops looking right at him now, grinning like, “OK, you win.”

“Old school!” he bellowed amiably, waiting a beat for them to come down and then saying in that same pleasant tone: “Yeah, ol’ Mother Barrett. You know when I got called into her apartment this time last year? There was so much blood on the floor that I slipped and fell flat on my back. Yeah.”

Lorenzo smiled at his sneakers. The air had gone dead and heavy now.

“She had been shot so many times and at such close range—” And then he just stopped himself, thinking, They got the message. Just let them know you’re here.

“And don’t tell me the police ain’t doin’ their job. We are the police in our area.” He thrust a finger at the cops in the rear. “They are not here twenty-four hours a day. We are. We got to stand for something. We got to walk upright. If somebody’s doing wrong, they’re doing wrong and we got to stand up. In our homes, in our families, in our hallways, our buildings, our courtyards, and our projects—we, we are the police.”

A patrol radio crackled again back at the rear wall.

“Yes-s,” came forth the disembodied response.

“We lost two in one day. Two beautiful old folks, watched over all of us, year in, year out.”

Lorenzo prowled the stage, shifting his Glock out from under his gut.

“There are people in these houses that live in their windowsills.” He was speaking softly now.