Pike took the back of the house and I moved up the drive along the side. The windows along the back and sides of the house were barred, and many had been covered on the inside with tar paper, but there were gaps and tears in the paper and I moved from window to window, trying to see inside. Cool T drove away as I made the front corner of the house, and then I faded back to the rear. The rear was so crummy we could probably pitch a tent back there and no one would notice. Pike and Ray and I crouched in the bushes beside the porch.

Ray said, "Two rooms and a bath on my side. Three full-sized windows, all barred, and a half-sizer on the bathroom. Someone was in the bathroom but the other two rooms were clear." He looked at Pike. "Will the door work?"

Pike nodded. "No problemo."

"How about the front?"

"No problemo."

I said, "Kitchen and two rooms on my side. I made six people, four male, two female. No children."

Ray nodded. "Any way out the windows?"

"Not unless they can squeeze through the bars."

Ray smiled. "This is going to work."

Twelve minutes later Cool T once more turned onto the street and again stopped in front of the house. This time a couple of bangers slid off the Beetle and went toward him. When they did, Joe and I moved up the drive and across the front yard and Ray Depente trotted toward them from the opposite side of the house. One of the girls saw Ray Depente and said, "What the hell?" and then the others saw me and Joe. The second girl ran and a short guy with too many muscles clawed at his pants for a piece. Joe Pike kicked him in the head with an outside spin kick, and then Ray Depente and I were at the Beetle with our guns out. The two guys out in the street started pulling for hardware, too, but Cool T came out with an Ithaca 12-gauge and they put up their hands. Ray said, "Down."

The Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys went down onto their stomachs.

Ray said, "Make noise, and I'll bleed you."

A tall skinny kid with a Raiders cap wiggled around and said, "Why don't you kiss my goddamn ass?"

Ray punched him one time hard in the side of the head and he shut up.

Cool T opened the LeBaron's trunk and tossed me a bag filled with plastic wrist restraints. I passed a couple to Pike, and we tied them off. We worked quickly, and as we tied I glanced at the surrounding houses. You could see faces in the windows and behind doors. Watching. Wondering what in hell these fools were doing.

Ray gave two smoke grenades to Pike, kept two for himself, then pulled three ten-gallon metal gas cans from the trunk and four six-foot lengths of galvanized pipe from the backseat. When we finished with the tying, Pike took two lengths of the pipe and trotted to the back of the house. Cool T hefted the other two and started toward the front. When he was halfway there, the front door opened and a chunky guy with a thick neck and a thick belly stepped out and fired a Beretta 9 millimeter, bapbapbapbap. One of the rounds caught Cool T on the outside of his right arm. He screamed and went down, and then I had the Dan Wesson out and I was firing, and the heavy guy fell back. I said, "Guess they know we're here."

Ray grunted. "Mm-hmm. Imagine that."

Cool T scrambled behind the Monte Carlo and we went to him. Ray said, "How you doing, Cool?"

"It burns like a sonofabitch."

Pike examined the wound, then used part of Cool T's shirt to bind it. "You'll be fine."

A couple of faces peeked around the jamb, and someone in the house yelled, "The fuck you doin'? Whatchu want?"

Ray yelled back. "My name is Ray Depente. We came for Akeem D'Muere and we want to see his chickenshit ass out here."

A second voice in the house yelled, "Fuck you." It was going to be one of those conversations.

Someone pulled the heavy guy out of the door, then a guy in a duster jumped forward, fired two pistol shots, then pulled the door closed.

Ray said, "You think they'll call the police?"

We left Cool T sitting against the Monte Carlo's wheel and gathered up the pipe and the gas cans and went to the house. We put the pipes across the door and wedged them behind the window bars on either side. As we did it we could hear voices inside. They were trying to figure out what we were up to. Joe Pike came back around the house. "Back door is sealed."

"How about the windows?"

"No one's getting out."

Someone inside yelled, "The fuck you assholes want? Get away from here." The closed door muffled the voice.

I stood to the right of the door, reached around, and pounded on it. A shotgun blast ripped through the door about where I should've been standing. I said, "Hey, Akeem. It's time to pay up for James Edward Washington."

Another blast came through the door.

"Gunfire is not meaningful discourse, Akeem."

Another blast came through, this one very low.

I said, "Here's the way it's going to happen. Everybody's going to put down their guns, and everybody's going to come out one at a time, and then we're going to tell the police what really happened to James Edward Washington. How does that sound?"

Akeem D'Muere shouted, "Are you on dope? Get the fuck out of my face."

I said, "Akeem, I'm going to move in and set up house on your face."

"You can't get in here. Get the fuck away."

"It's not a question of us getting in, Akeem. The question is, can you get out?"

Ray Depente popped the top off of one of the gas cans and began splashing gas on the door and the windows and the sides of the house. The smell of it was strong and sharp in the still air.

Akeem said, "What the fuck you doin' out there? What's that smell?"

"We're pouring gasoline on your house. You told the Washingtons that you were going to burn them out, didn't you? We thought you'd appreciate the poetic justice of the moment."

A different voice yelled, "Bullshit. You wouldn't do that."

Ray Depente said, "Watch."

Ray finished with one can and started with another. Pike took the third can around to the rear. We could hear banging at the back of the house, but the pipes would hold. Across the street, a door opened and a man in his early seventies came out onto his porch and watched with his hands on his hips. He was smiling.

Inside, you could hear men moving through the house, and voices, and then the tar paper was abruptly torn off the front window and someone fired most of an AK-47's magazine out into the ground at full auto. Ray Depente looked at me and grinned. "You think they gettin' scared?"

"Uh-hunh."

He grinned wider. "These pukes ain't met scared."

Joe Pike came back. "Ready."

Ray Depente took a big steel Zippo lighter from his pocket, flipped open the top, and spun the wheel. He said, "Welcome to hell, assholes." Then he touched the flame to the gasoline.

The eastern front corner of Akeem D'Muere's fortified crack house went up with a whoosh. Ray and Pike moved around the house, tossing the smoke grenades in through the windows. The grenades had instant fuses, and in two seconds there would be so much smoke that you'd think you were in an inferno. The fire stayed at just one corner of the house, though, and didn't spread. We'd placed the gasoline so that it would smell, but we'd also placed it so that the fire would be small and controlled. The people inside didn't know that, though. There were shouts, and more shots, and someone banged on the front door, trying to get it open. Someone else started screaming for us to let him out, and smoke began to leak from windows and from around the front door. Across the street, more people came out of their houses to watch.

I shouted over the noise. "The guns come out first." "We can't get the goddamn door open." "The window." The smoke was making them choke. More tar paper was pulled off the windows, and handguns and shotguns and AK-47s were shoved through the glass. Clouds of thick gray smoke billowed out with the guns.