I swear, that kid does ‘Bewildered’ better than anybody on two feet. ‘Mr. Rosen, what I do? Suspended! Why?’ Because you’re on your own fuckin’ planet, Edgardo . . .”

“How about Templeton . . .”

“I’m giving him one last chance.”

“Aw, he got to you with that smile, huh?”

“Nah, nah nah, I just said, ‘Hey Curtis, there’s a new statute on the books—Consorting with Known Morons. I see you with Dukey, Ghost, or any of that crew? I don’t care if it’s a country mile from school property. You’re vaporized.’”

“Vaporized?”

“Don’t worry, he understood me loud and clear.”

They were either ignoring him or simply letting him be, Ray scanning the walls, taking in the student artwork; mostly crude cut-felt mosaics featuring idyllic tableaus of urban positivism: a black family eating dinner together, multicolored neighbors planting a community garden, big brown kids reading to little brown kids.

When the bell finally rang, the teachers at the table groaned to their feet, as reluctant to go back to the classrooms as any of the students.

Three of them filed out of the lounge without ever acknowledging him, but the last one made a stop at the desk, leaning forward on his knuckles to offer a confidence.

“I would rate ninety-six percent of the kids in this school from OK to Great; the other four percent are just stone fucking assholes taking up space and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Alone now, Ray took in the disembodied sound track of the students out in the halls, a steady murmurous stream of agitation, punctuated by squawks, bird caws and bellows.

Five minutes went by, the muffled hullabaloo gradually fading away out there, yet he found himself still facing an empty room.

To conceal how awkward and vaguely embarrassed he was beginning to feel, he began fiddling with his cell phone; checking for messages, calling the sports hotline, the 970 weather forecast; played with his datebook; then scribbled down a few introductory notes for his phantom students; coming off busy as hell, yet when the school’s principal, Bill or Bob Egan, knocked on the open door of the empty lounge, Ray almost shot to his feet with relief.

Despite his office, the principal, whom Ray vaguely remembered coming in as a new English teacher way back when, struck him as a knockabout guy: knobby-faced, silver-haired, sporting an inexpensive suit and a broad blue tie patterned with New York Giants football helmets.

Swinging around one of the chairs from the conference table, Egan sat facing Ray across the catercorner desk.

“So I understand you’re from Hopewell Houses originally,” he said, hauling one leg up across the other, the weak afternoon sun hitting his exposed shin, making the fish-white skin there gleam like marble.

“Originally,” Ray said, waiting for more.

“I’m from the Howard Houses myself. Used to be half-Irish back then. It was never a picnic but it wasn’t like it is now.”

“No kidding,” still waiting.

“And you graduated from here, what . . . the late seventies?”

“Seventy-eight.”

“Seventy-eight. That’s great, just great. And for how long were you a writer on that show?”

“Three years,” Ray said, understanding now that all this Q and A was nothing but a preamble to an apology.

“Three years,” Egan mused. “Out in LA?”

“Yup.”

“I spent some time in San Diego when I was in the navy, but I never made it over to LA. Got any new projects in the works?”

“Not really,” that question always weighing a ton. “Just kind of recharging my batteries for now.” Then, to speed things along, “Other than, you know, teaching this class here.” He gestured to the empty conference table.

Egan looked at his wristwatch; winced. “You know I told my Language Arts people, ‘Get your kids to the workshop, it’s an incredible resource. Make sure you get them . . .’ You try to delegate responsibility around here. You try . . .” He winced. “Look, the truth of it is, getting a dozen kids in this building to commit and see through on a voluntary class? It’s like pushing a rope. But I know they want to do it. You want to shoot for tomorrow? Same time, same station. And I will personally, physically, get them in here.”

“Sure,” Ray said, the day now like chalk in his mouth.

Egan got up, shook his hand.

“Hey, we have Wall Street guys coming in here seven, seven-thirty in the morning to tutor? I call the kids at home the night before. ‘Yeah, Mr. Egan, I’ll be there, I’ll be there.’” He shrugged. “Like pushing a rope.” He shook Ray’s hand again.

“I thank you for your patience with us.”

Chapter 2

Nerese—February 9

Entering the Hook for the first time since graduation twenty-two years earlier, Detective Nerese Ammons, lugging two slide carousels featuring a freak show of murdered bodies, confiscated weapons and various drug still lifes, approached the security desk on shaky pins.

The uniformed guard, tilting back in her folding chair as she watched Nerese coming on, was Tutsi-tall and sharp as flint, the set of her eyes and mouth exquisitely unforgiving, eight silver rings dangling in a crescent along the outer shell of her right ear.

“You got a visitor’s permit?” It was more of a throw-down challenge than a question.

“A what?” Nerese half-snapped, the impersonal hostility combined with the psychic disorientation of being back in this building working on her nerves.

The guard just stared at her.

“I’m here for a special assembly,” Nerese said more evenly.

“Do you have, a visitor’s permit,” the guard said a little more loudly, a little more slowly, Nerese wondering if perhaps at some point over the years, she had locked up a member of this bitch’s family.

“Let me ask you something!” Nerese near shouted as she prowled the stage of the auditorium, mike in hand. “Let me ask you”—addressing the fistful of hyped yet surly At-Risk students who made up her audience—“who do you think, remember we’re talking the police now, who do you think, is the more dangerous of the species. Male? Or female . . .”

“Male!” the boys howled, hooted, spreading their tail feathers, but not really listening.

“Male, huh?” She laughed, the detective’s shield clipped to the waist of her dark blue skirt suit winking gold in the mahogany-stained hall. “Male, OK, male.”

Having blown off the entertaining yet useless slides after the first tray, the “Be a Leader, Not a Follower” speech altogether, Nerese was winging it this afternoon, almost free-associating.

Trailing mike cord, she walked off the stage to stand before the students in the front row.

“You.” She pointed at a big lunk slouched so low in his seat he seemed to be melting, the kid shave-headed with small turned-down ears. “Come on up here . . .”

That was enough to make the others cut loose with another twist-and-shout session, the boy tentatively rising to his feet half-smiling and fake-limping down to the police in front.

She had picked a giant; six-four, -five, towering over her self-consciously, muttering “Shut up” to his classmates in the seats.

“What’s your name . . .” She had to rear back to make eye contact.

“Jamiel.”

“Shamiel?”

“Jamiel,” then, “Shut up,” again to the seats.

“OK now,” holding Jamiel by the elbow as she addressed the others. “I’m on patrol, I come up on Jamiel here in an alley and he’s up to no good. But it’s just me and him . . . All things being equal, who do you think’s gonna come out that alley like nothing happened. Who . . .”

Some of the kids got all thinky and quiet, trying to suss it out as if it were a trick question, others spinning out to new heights, Nerese ignoring the ruckus. “Who . . .”

“You?” one girl said cautiously, the others tentatively agreeing, the alternative way too obvious.

“All things being equal, you think me?” She curled a hand against her chest.