“The world’s biggest TV, right? That’s what you call it, and you know who you are. I ain’t gonna point you out by name.” He shifted his gun again, hitched up his jeans, and smiled down at the crowd. “People, I just might be this far away from a lockup, and that little bit you got for me might be all that I need.

“You know me. I’m here twenty-four, seven. All it takes is a phone call.” He scanned the beat-down faces, trying to make eye contact with the windowsill crew—all the seniors living in the two lowest floors of Three Building, the area designated for the elderly by Housing and known by the creepers as the Lamb Pen.

“All it takes is a phone call.” Lorenzo avoided looking at the Barretts’ old neighbor Miss Bankhead, gracing the room with a respectful half bow instead. “And I thank you for having the courage to come to this here meeting. Allah, Jesus, Jehovah, or Muhammad, God bless each and every one of you.”

As the rally broke up, Lorenzo lingered in the community room small-talking, looking for that furtive I-got-something-for-you-but-not-here eye, slowly working his way to the exit, people saying “I hope you get him” and other useless shit.

He tracked Miss Bankhead as she toddled from port to starboard on her three-hundred-pound arthritic bulk, pacing himself through the hugs and tears so that he could catch her outside without looking too obvious about it, but one of the housing cops snagged his arm.

“Yo, Big Daddy, you hear about your boy there, Supreme?”

Lorenzo stopped, half smiling: Your boy. “Yeah, he got himself locked up again.”

“Big time, Mo,” the cop, Eight-Ball Iovakas, said. He went up on tiptoe to let another heavy woman exit between them.

Eight-Ball’s radio crackled.

“East 202.” The dispatcher’s call-out was as flat as a dead man’s EKG.

“Two-oh-two. Go,” the responding unit answered in kind. Lorenzo and Eight-Ball were barely listening in.

“Report of a bowling ball dropped from the roof of 15 Weebawken, Roosevelt Houses. Please respond.”

Eight-Ball turned the volume down. “I heard Supreme just gave it up, like, ‘Whoop, they it is.’”

“I heard that too,” Lorenzo said distractedly, still trolling the crowd for eye contact. The room was lined with children’s self-portraits from the day-care program, big crude faces in poster paint on oak tag, each one entitled, I AM SOMEONE.

“So how’s this going here?” Eight-Ball nodded to the enlarged memorial photos, now being carried out under the arm of a maintenance worker.

Lorenzo shrugged. “People scared. You know how it is.” He started to peel off, eager to catch Miss Bankhead, but Eight-Ball’s radio came to life again.

“South 111.”

“One-eleven. Go.”

“One-eleven, please respond to medical center emergency room. See female vic of a possible carjack at that location.” Both of them were eavesdropping more intently this time, since South District was their territory.

Lorenzo peeked at his watch: ten-fifteen, batter up, Bump Rosen sitting at home now watching his kid play a preteen homicidal skinhead on prime-time TV. Lorenzo’s beeper went off, as if to confirm the favor swap. The carjack would be his once the uniforms took the preliminary report.

“Awright, boss.” He tilted in the direction of the exit, but Eight-Ball touched his arm again.

“Lorenzo.” Eight-Ball nodded toward the cleric, who at the moment was talking to the assistant on-site housing manager. “You better tell Abdool Ben Fazool over there to go easy on this ‘Raise me a army’ bullshit. Somebody might believe him.”

“Tell him yourself.” Lorenzo smiled thinly, then moved off, looking for Miss Bankhead. But she was nowhere to be found.

As he pulled the Crown Victoria out of his parking spot, Lorenzo’s headlights caught a tall woman clutching an armload of dry cleaning. She was standing in the path of his car, rocking slightly from foot to foot.

Lorenzo rolled up alongside her, laughing. “Hey, baby, what you doin’ in the middle of the street? I run you down you ain’t gettin’ dime one off me. I’m indemnified.”

“So I’ll sue the city,” she said, and moved closer to the car door. Ruth Raymond was a forever tenant, born in the Armstrong Houses some thirty-five years ago.

On a sultry night like this one, the plastic sheathing over the folded clothes adhered to her bare arm like cling wrap. Lorenzo wondered where she got ahold of dry cleaning after ten in the evening.

“I like what you said in there, Daddy.” Ruth’s face was like putty. She had been drinking heavily since her son died six months ago, shot for his shearling parka. “You know who you should talk to? Miss Bankhead.