“You think I won’t hurt you? Next time it’s a bullet, bitch!”

“Okay,” she said, “I hear you. I’ll play ball.” Until I can figure out how to kill you, you scum.

“Where the fuck the drugs? And don’t you be acting like you don’t know, because I know that’s why you came here.”

“I’m getting to it. You know we were up at Benson’s place in Millbrook this morning, right?” She was breathing heavily, her ears still ringing, but she was more determined than ever before.

“That true, Bigga?” Slice asked.

“Toldja they’s somebody with that police who killed No Joke,” Bigga said.

“It was her? Why the fuck you didn’t body ’em when you had a clear shot, then? They killed my dog.” He grabbed Melanie by the throat. She struggled for air. “Fucking bitch, you killed my dog! That dog was a warrior. You know what his name was? No Joke, because he wasn’t no fucking joke. Me and him been through mad shit together. You gonna have to pay for that.”

He let go of her throat, took a step back, and raised his gun. She couldn’t let him shoot her, because then he would win. She didn’t care if she lived or died, but she cared if he did.

“Stop!” she yelled. “We found the trap. The trap in the car, okay? I have the blueprints to this house.”

“Yeah, Slice, get the product first, then body her,” Bigga said.

“Okay, right, Big.” Slice dropped his arm. Melanie breathed again. “I get carried away. Then I don’t get the information I need. I got to focus. One thing at a time. Yo, thank you, son.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Bigga said.

“So you found the blueprints. Where they at? ’Cause this bitch useless,” Slice said, pointing at Sophie, lying so still she might have been dead. “Think you mighta OD’d her on that shit, Big.”

Melanie’s brain felt intensely focused. She saw an opening.

“Dan O’Reilly, the FBI agent, he took them to my office and put them in the evidence vault,” she lied coolly. “We were planning to show them to a trap expert to help us figure it out.”

“If that’s true, why you here now?” Slice asked.

“I wanted to get a head start. You know, take credit for finding it first.”

Slice nodded. He believed her.

“So she got to call O’Reilly and tell him to bring the blueprints here, then,” Bigga interjected.

Yes! That was exactly the result she was aiming for. Better Dan than nobody. At least she thought he’d try to prevent her death. But Slice was too smart.

“What the fuck, Big? This why I tell you to keep your stupid-ass mouth shut. That would get us locked up. We use our own people. Here, take my heat and watch her while I make some calls.”

Slice handed Bigga the gun and retreated to the hallway, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he went. She heard beeping as he hung up and dialed repeatedly. He was paging somebody. Melanie tried to focus, but she couldn’t help replaying what he’d said a moment earlier. Calling Dan would get them locked up. So Dan wasn’t on their payroll? He wasn’t working with them? God, she prayed that was what it meant!

Out in the hallway, Slice’s cell phone rang, and he answered. His voice filtered, low and intense but clearly audible, through the open doorway.

“Yo, son, you ain’t jumpin’ on my beeps like you should be,” Slice said. “Don’t gimme that shit. Now you gotta prove your loyalty. I need you to do something for me… Yes, now!…I don’t give a fuck if you busy. This more important… Don’t you be making me think nothing…I ain’t your bitch, so why you trying to fuck me?…You better be jumping on this, or you gonna wake up dead…Okay, that’s more like it… Good… This is what you do. The blueprints be in the vault in the prosecutor’s office. I need you to go in there and get ’em.”

Slice had spoken of using his own people, but he was obviously talking to an insider, to one of Melanie’s people, somebody who could get into the vault in her office. Rommie Ramirez. It had to be.

While Slice talked, Bigga stood leaning against the massive wooden desk. He had the sort of fat, doughy face that looked benevolent on some people. On him it was merely vacant and self-indulgent. His arms crossed, he held the gun casually against his chest, watching Melanie quietly.

“Who’s that on the phone with Slice, Rommie Ramirez?” she asked.

“Shut the fuck up. We ask the questions ’round here,” Bigga said.

“Whoever it is, maybe if I talked to them, I could give them a better sense of where to look for the blueprints.”

“Open your mouth again and I tape it shut.”

As she watched him warily, something clicked inside her throbbing head. She put two and two together. Bigga was the one who’d shot at her at the Benson estate this morning. Bigga was Dan’s snitch. But no sooner had she taken heart from that thought than warning bells went off. Which way did it shake out for her prospects of survival that Dan and Bigga were working together?

A FEW MINUTES LATER, SLICE WALKED BACK into the room. “Now we in play. If the blueprints be where she say, they’re on the way. If not, she don’t live another day.”

“Awright!” Bigga said admiringly. “Now what?”

“We wait. Keep the gun on her.”

Slice kicked aside debris to clear a space on the floor and, extracting a small GameBoy from the pocket of his baggy pants, slid down to a sitting position against the wall near the doorway. The beeps emitted by the video game lent an incongruously festive air to the dismal basement. Bigga stood watching Slice.

“I said watch her. What the fuck you watching me for?” Slice barked.

“Nuthin’. Whatever.”

“So don’t fucking look. You disturbing my concentration.”

“I’m hungry,” Bigga whined.

“You always hungry. That’s how come you so fat.”

“I’m starving, bro. I need me something delicious. Lemme go get some Chinese or something before the action start. I saw a place when we was driving.”

Slice looked up from his game, annoyed. “You remember that last job we pulled in Bushwick? You couldn’t climb in the window because you was so fucking fat, and that motherfucker Arturo broke out. We didn’t get nothing off’n him?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m putting you on a diet. No food for you.”

Melanie had followed this conversation intently, flooded with relief that Slice wouldn’t let Bigga leave. She cherished the hope that Bigga was on Team America, working for Dan, and that when push came to shove, he would help her out. Despite her bravado, she had no interest in being left alone with Slice. She might be reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. Slice would kill her just for kicks, even if it made no sense for his game plan, so how could she predict his next move?

Bigga sighed and sat back down on the desk. Slice returned to his GameBoy. As they sat there, the silence broken only by beeps from the GameBoy and the noise of Bigga’s stomach growling, the air putrid with a wet, burned smell, Melanie’s confidence withered and disappeared. She realized she was right near her apartment, that her beautiful baby was mere blocks away. She thought about going out with the stroller on Monday night, smelling the smoke, following it here. Her foolish pride had made her run after the Benson case, and now it would cost her her life. And ruin Maya’s. Maya would be motherless, Steve left to raise her alone, and Melanie had only her own ego to blame. She knew what it was like, growing up with one parent, always feeling the absence of the other, and now she’d inflicted it on her daughter, something she’d vowed never to let happen. In spite of herself, Melanie started to heave and shake with suppressed sobs. Goddamn it, she was thinking, she wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction of seeing her cry! But thinking also about the gaping hole she’d be leaving in her daughter’s life, she couldn’t help it.

“Aw, fuck, shut the fuck up!” Slice yelled. Just then Bigga’s stomach let out a loud rumble. “You, too, shut up with that foul shit! Between her whining and your disgusting noises, you both making me sick.”