"Maybe you shouldn't do it then," trying to come off as if he were saying it out of concern.

"Nah, it's good, I'm good with it."

They smoked in silence for a while, Tristan deciding the Manhattan Bridge was God's forearm, barring the way to Brooklyn.

"I tell you." Little Dap choked. "The one thing when we get out there? Stay off the Chinese, they get juxed so much, most times they never have nothing on them no more, and even when they do? You come up on them, they're like, 'Here,' hold out the money before you can even say something."

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's disrespectful."

"It's what?"

"How do they know what I got in mind before I even get up on them."

"Yeah."

"But them white kids?" Little Dap laughed, snorting smoke. "Ho' shit, they're like . . ." Doubling over, hand over his mouth. "I come up on this one guy last year, put the whistle in his mug? Motherfucker din't have no money on him so he asked if I wanted him to write a check, like, whom should I make it out to?"

"What?" Tristan laughing too now, like everybody up here was a fully blooded vet.

"Here." Little Dap went to his back pocket and pulled out a wrinkled pale blue check. It was from a bank in Traverse City, Michigan, dated six months ago and made out to cash for $100.

"You gonna cash it?" Tristan suddenly dizzy with friendship.

"Naw, man, if I cash this, then they can trace it. I just keep it for a joke."

"But if they find it on you, it's like evidence, right?" Tristan murmured. "Call this bank on here, ask who's this guy, was he robbed in New York ..."

Another silence came down, Tristan worried that he had just disrespected Little Dap, made him out to be a fool.

But Little Dap was too wasted to catch it, his eyes like two cherries floating in buttermilk.

"So what do you say," passing Tristan the roach. "You gonna be my dolgier out there or what ... I need to hear you say it."

Tristan took a last hit. 'Yeah, OK." The words coming out like smoke signals.

"All right then." Little Dap offering his fist for a pound, Tristan fighting off another out-of-control smile, it felt so good, something did at any rate.

"Man, you are one grinny motherfucker," Little Dap said, popping the nub of the joint in his mouth, taking the gun out of his sweatshirt muff and attempting to hand it over.

Tristan reared back and laughed, if you could call it that.

"What." Little Dap blinked.

"Nah."

"Nah? What, you think you go out there and what, yell at a motherfucker"?" He took Tristan by the wrist. "It ain't like you use it, man," slapping it into his palm. "You just flash it."

At first Tristan tried to pass it back to him, but then got caught up with the feel of it in his hand, the giddy heft.

"Naw, man, this'll be good for you," Little Dap said. "Get you blooded, you know what I'm saying? First time's like first-time sex, you just do it to get it done with, then you can start concentratin' on getting better at it, havin' fun with it."

"All right." Tristan staring and staring at the thing in his hand. "Can I ask you something?"

Little Dap waited. And waited.

"What the fuck is a dolgier."

"A dolgier? A do-anything soldier."

"OK."

"OK?"

"OK." Grinning, grinning.

"You're in the game now, son." Little Dap studied him studying the gun. "Time to show and prove."

Chapter Two.

LIAR

At 4:00 a. M., the first to come on the scene were Lugo's Quality of Lifers on the back end of a double shift, still honeycombing the neighborhood in their bogus taxi, but as of 1:00 a. M. on loan to the Anti-Graffiti Task Force, a newly installed laptop mounted on their dashboard running a nonstop slide show of known local taggers.

What they saw in that limbo-hour stillness were two bodies, eyes to the sky, directly beneath a streetlight in front of 27 Eldridge Street, an old six-story walk-up.

As they cautiously stepped from the cab to investigate, a wild-eyed white man suddenly came charging out of the building towards them, something silver in his right hand.

Bellowing with adrenaline, they all drew down, and when he saw the four guns trained on his chest, the silver object, a cell phone, went sailing and cracked the window of the adjoining Sana a market; within seconds, one of the Yemeni brothers erupting from the store, a sawed -off fishpriest cocked over his left shoulder like a baseball bat.

At 4:15 a. M., Matty Clark received a call from Bobby Oh of Night Watch: a shooting fatality in your precinct, thought you'd like to know, just as he was leaving, for the last time, his midnight-to-four-a. M., three-night-a-week security gig at a slender Chrystie Street bar that had no sign, no listed phone number, and whose clientele were admitted ubv appointment only," buzzed in from behind a scarred narrow door on this obscure stretch of a Chinese-dominated side street; single-batch Cruzan rum, absinthe, and cocktails made with muddled ginger or ignited sugar cubes the specialties of the house.

He was a shovel-jawed, sandy-haired Irisher with the physique of an aging high school fullback, slope-shouldered and dense, his low center of gravity, despite his heaviness, making him appear to glide rather than walk. When he was asked a question, his eyes, already narrow, would screw down into slits and his lips disappear altogether as if speaking or maybe just thinking was painful. This gave the impression to some of his being slow, to others of being a sullen fumer; he was neither, although he could definitely live without ever feeling the need to verbalize the majority of his thoughts.

There wasn't a single evening in his time at the No Name when he hadn't been the oldest human in the room; the baby-faced bartender-proprietor, Josh, like a twelve-year-old in dress-up, sporting garter sleeves and suspendered pants, hair bowl-cut and pomade-parted, but as earnest as a Kinsey researcher, every drink chin-pondered before acted upon, advising his equally young patrons, "Tonight we're featuring . . . ," the entire rail-thin establishment smelling like the tea candles that were its sole source of illumination, smelling like specialness . . .

Although the clientele were primarily the Eloi of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, an incident a month earlier had involved a platinumed-out crew of Bronx Morlocks: some words tossed around about coming back and lighting the place up, immediately after which a meet had been arranged through an ex-cop intermediary between the owner and Matty, and his off-the-books job for the last few weeks had been to sit quietly in the candlelit shadows, cultivate a taste for scratchy Edith Piaf recordings, not hit on any of the silky-looking mixologists, and not get too smashed in case something did actually jump off.