James Edward twisted in the seat and said, "How do you stand this goddamn waiting?"

"You get used to it."

"You used to be a cop?"

I shook my head. "Nope. I was a security guard for a while, and then I apprenticed with a man named George Fieder. Before that I was in the Army."

"How about that guy Pike?"

"Joe was a police officer. Before that, he was a Marine."

James Edward nodded. Maybe thinking about it. "You go to college?"

"I had a couple years, on and off. After the Army, it was tough to sit in a classroom. Maybe I'll go back one day."

"If you went back, what would you study?"

I made a little shrug. 'Teacher, maybe."

He smiled. "Yeah. I could see you in a classroom."

I spread my hands. "What? You don't think there's a place for a thug in the fourth grade?"

He smiled, but then the smile faded. Across the park, a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen pulled her car beside the ice cream truck and bought a glassine packet. She had a pretty face and precisely cornrowed hair in a traditional African design. Washington watched the transaction, then put his forearms on his knees and said, "Sitting here, seeing these brothers and sisters doing this, it hurts."

"Yes, I guess it does."

He shook his head. "You aren't black I see it, I see brothers and sisters turning their backs on the future. What's it to you?"

I thought about it. "I don't see brothers and sisters. I don't see black issues. Maybe I should, but I don't. Maybe because I'm white, I can't. So I see what I can see. I see a pretty young girl on her way to being a crack whore. She'll get pregnant, and she'll have a crack baby, and there will be two lifetimes of pain. She'll want more and more rock, and she'll do whatever it takes to get it, and, over time, she'll contract AIDS. Her mother will hurt, and her baby will hurt, and she will hurt." I stopped talking and I put my hands on the steering wheel and I held it for a time. "Three lifetimes."

Washington said, "Unless someone saves her."

I let go of the wheel. "Yes, unless someone saves her. I see it the only way I can see it. I see it as people."

Washington shifted in the bucket. "I was gonna ask you why you do this, but I guess I know."

I went back to watching the X.

James Edward Washington said, "If I wanted to learn this private eye stuff, they got a school I could learn how to do it?"

James Edward Washington was looking at me with watchful, serious eyes. I said, "You want to learn how to do this, maybe we can work something out."

He nodded.

I nodded back at him, and then Floyd Riggens's sedan turned onto the far street and picked up speed toward the ice cream truck.

I said, "Camera in the glove box."

Mark Thurman was in the front passenger seat and Pinkworth was in the backseat. The sedan suddenly punched into passing gear and the X jumped the chain-link fence and ran across the outfield toward the basketball court. He was pulling little plastic packs of something out of his pockets and dumping them as he ran.

James Edward opened the glove box and took out the little Canon Auto Focus I keep there. I said, "You see how to work it?"

"Sure."

"Use it."

I started the Corvette and put it in gear in case the X led Riggens across the park toward us, but it didn't get that far. Riggens horsed the sedan over the curb and cut across the sidewalk at the far corner where there was no fence and aimed dead on at the running X and gunned it. The X tried to cut back, but when he did, Riggens swung the wheel hard over and pegged the brakes and then Riggens and Thurman and Pinkworth were out of the car. They had their guns out, and the X froze and put up his hands. Thurman stopped, but Riggens and Pinkworth didn't. They knocked the X down and kicked him in the ribs and the legs and the head. Riggens went down on one knee and used his pistol, slamming the X in the head while Pinkworth kicked him in the kidneys. Mark Thurman looked around as if he were frightened, but he didn't do anything to stop it. There were maybe a hundred people in the park, and everybody was looking, but they didn't do anything to stop it, either. Next to me, James Edward Washington snapped away with the little Canon.

Riggens and Pinkworth pulled the X to his feet, went through his pockets, then shoved him away. The X fell, and tried to get up, but neither his legs nor his arms were much use. His head was bleeding. Pinkworth said something sharp to Mark Thurman and Thurman walked back across the park, scooping up the little plastic envelopes. Riggens climbed the chain link and went into the ice cream truck and that's the last we saw of it because a burgundy metal-flake Volkswagen Beetle and a double-dip black Chevrolet Monte Carlo playing NWA so loud that it rocked the neighborhood pulled up fast next to us and three guys wearing ski masks got out, two from the backseat of the Monte Carlo and one from the passenger side of the Volkswagen. The guy from the Volkswagen was wearing a white undershirt maybe six sizes too small and baggy pants maybe forty sizes too big and was carrying what looked to be a Taurus 9mm semiautomatic pistol. The Taurus fit him just right. The first guy out of the Monte Carlo was tall and wearing a black duster with heavy Ray-Ban Wayfarers under the ski mask and was carrying a sawed-off double-barrel 20-gauge. The second guy was short and had a lot of muscles stuffed into a green tee shirt that said LOUIS. He was holding an AK-47. All of the guns were pointed our way.

James Edward Washington made a hissing sound somewhere deep in his chest and the tall guy stooped over to point the double twenty through my window. He looked at me, then James Edward, and then he gestured with the double twenty. "Get out the muthuh-fuckin' car, nigger."

James Edward got out of the car, and then the tall guy pointed the double twenty at me. "You know what you gonna do?"

"Sure," I said. "Whatever you say."

The tall guy smiled behind the ski mask. "Tha's right. Keep doin' it, and maybe you see the sun set."

CHAPTER 18

The guy with the Taurus brought James Edward Washington to the metal-flake Beetle and put him in the right front passenger seat. The Beetle's driver stayed where he was, and the guy with the Taurus got into the back behind Washington.

The guy in the long coat said, "They gonna take off and you gonna follow them and we gonna follow you. You get outta line, they gonna shoot your nigger and I gonna shoot you. We hear each other on this?"

"Sure."

"M'man Bone Dee gonna ride with you. He say it, you do it. We still hear each other?"

"Uh-huh." While the tall guy told me, the shorter guy in the Louis Farrakhan tee shirt walked around and got into my car. When he walked he held the AK down along his leg, and when he got in, he sort of held the muzzle pointed at the floorboard. The AK was too long to point at me inside the car. The guy in the long coat went back to the Monte Carlo and climbed into the back. There were other guys in there, but the windows were heavily tinted and you couldn't see them clearly. If Pike was here, he might be able to see them, but Pike was probably on the other side of the park, still watching the cops. But maybe not.

Bone Dee said, "You got a gun?"

"Left shoulder."

Bone Dee reached across and came up with the Dan Wesson. He didn't look under my jacket when he did it and he didn't look at the Dan Wesson after he had it. He stared at me, and he kept staring even after he had the Dan Wesson.

I said, "I always thought the AK was overrated, myself. Why don't you buy American and carry an M-16?"

More of the staring.

I said, "You related to Sandra Dee?"

He said, "Keep it up, we see whether this muthuh-fuckuh overrated or not."