Lace didn’t know if the man planned to be on the street, if he had a name. Dido told them-the Mama told him -the dude was Louis Baker, but that wouldn’t be their name for him if he was going to be here. Like, Lace was Luther F. Washington. But he was Lace. Jumpup, same thing. Been called Jumpup since he could walk. Lace didn’t know his other name. Those names didn’t matter.

The man was working without a shirt, setting out a few cans of white spray paint. He wore some baggy pants with a thin black belt and hard shoes without socks. There was a long scar from the top of his shoulder swinging across his back and under his arm. It was old, blacker and shinier than the rest of him. His chest reminded Lace of a horse-maybe three times as broad as his own, covered with curly black hairs that here and there glistened with drops of sweat.

Jumpup said, “Too buffed.” Impressed.

His arms. Just moving easy, you could see the cords rippling under the skin. The man was humming.

They stood across the cut in the shade of the building opposite him, watching as he shook one of the cans and began spraying white paint over the graffiti that covered the side of the Mama’s place.

Lace checked far down to his right. Dido still doing that business. He nudged Jumpup on the arm, and together they moved out into the sun and across the cut.

The man was covering a lot of Lace’s work. Dido favored a dark blue in his cut. Course there were older colors too, from before-words, symbols, dicks, some magic stuff. Red and green mostly before the blue.

The man was being careful. Starting at the corner, he was already halfway down the side of the building. Not doing the whole thing, just spraying white over the marks so there was new white and old white, but no colors. No sign it was Dido’s cut. It got Lace a little worried, but there might be nothing in it. The man had done his hard time-he got Lace’s respect.

Lace and Jumpup were close enough now. He turned to face them and nodded. “How you boys?”

Lace felt Jumpup go back a step, but the man went back to spraying. Maybe he didn’t know.

“You stayin’ here?” Lace asked.

The man stopped long enough to nod again. “That’s right.” Spray spray spray. Nothin’ to think about.

“You back in from the big house?”

He stopped again, straightened up. Way up. “You readin’ my mail?” he asked.

“You ain’t be covering Dido’s name?” Jumpup, getting right to it.

“The blue,” Lace explained.

The man stepped back, halfway across the cut, looked at his work. “This be my home, now, with Mama. I like a nice white place.” He showed some teeth and stepped back up to the wall.

Lace had to say something. “Jumpup and me, we do the color in the cut here.”

He lowered the spray can. “No, I don’t s’pose. Gotta be just so.”

“We been doin’ it.” Jumpup sounding tougher, but, Lace noticed, still standing behind him.

The man shook his head. “I only got so much paint. Takes some skill with the can.” He stepped to the wall and sprayed, covering over a red circle. “Like that,” he said. “No waste. You learn that at the House. The Lord don’t like it much neither. Waste.”

“I can do that,” Lace said.

The man squatted down now, even with them. “If you could, it would be some help. I got some glass I want to put in. But I don’t know…”

“Lace and me can do it,” Jumpup said.

“We paint the cut,” Lace repeated.

The man handed them each a can. “All right. Slow, though. Let me see you do a little.”

Louis Baker positioned them about five feet apart and they started spraying over the graffiti while he took the plywood off the side window.

“What’s happening here?”

The boys, startled, stopped spraying and turned around. Louis Baker, about to put the glass into the window where the plywood had been, lowered the plate to the ground. Dido had his arms folded in front of him.

“That’s a white wall,” he said. “These homeboys helping you out?”

Louis Baker nodded. “That’s right. Cleaning up the new house.”

Dido stood dead still, squinting into the sun. Without his saying a word, Lace and Jumpup put their cans down and began sauntering back down the cut.

The two big men -one twenty-one, one mid-thirties -stood about two yards apart. Louis Baker straightened up, folded his arms across his bare chest the way Dido’s were. Lace and Jumpup were off a ways, looking on.

A car honked out in the street. Dido took a last look at the wall, shrugged and began trotting back down the cut. Business was business.

Louis Baker, humming again, opened a can of putty.

Chapter Five

Johnny LaGuardia couldn’t understand why people didn’t seem to get it. The concept was so simple, and these hockey pucks-now it looked like two in the last two days-either kept getting it wrong or just blew it off altogether.

Here’s the deal-you got a situation where you need some money. Gambling, women, speculation in municipal bonds- it didn’t matter to Angelo ‘the Angel’ Tortoni. The banks, for one reason or another, would not help you out. Maybe they didn’t see the wisdom of your borrowing money to go put it on the nose of Betsy’s Delight in the fourth at Bay Meadows. Maybe you had defaulted on past loans. Maybe your collateral was already hocked. Whatever.

Mr Tortoni-the Angel-he’d help you out. Johnny LaGuardia had seen grown men go down on their knees with tears in their eyes, thanking the Angel for money that appeared when there wasn’t any cash to be found anywhere. He knew for a fact that the Angel’s money had paid for college tuitions, covered a guy’s ‘lost weekend,’ helped out some married lady who didn’t want a fourth baby. This man- the Angel-took care of his people.

And most of those Mr Tortoni helped showed him respect. They paid the vig, the vigorish-a reasonable ten points a week-until they could repay the principal. Then most of them came in, not just with the money but often with a gift to show their gratitude that Mr Tortoni had believed in them when no one else would, had fronted them some of his own hard-earned money to help them out in their difficult time.

And most of them understood that the reason Mr Tortoni could do this important community work was because he remained a good businessman. He didn’t lose out on his loans. The vigorish kept him liquid.

That was most of ’em.

The other ones were why Johnny LaGuardia had a job.

He stood at the entrance to the lobby at the Ghirardelli Towers and looked back over his shoulder at the deep purple sky. Over the Golden Gate Bridge a high cloud-cover glowed deep orange, the kind of clouds he used to think, when he was a boy, had been raked by the angels.

Someone was playing congas pretty well on the steps by the Maritime Museum and the lights above Ghirardelli Square had just been turned on. It was still warm from the day, with a light breeze off the bay-the smell of crabs cooking down at the Wharf.

This was Johnny’s favorite time of year, of day and of his life so far. He was meeting Doreen for dinner at Little Joe’s in an hour. He’d have the cacciuco and a bottle of Lambrusco and then they’d go back to her place.

He should feel great.

But last night was Rusty Ingraham, and now he had a bad feeling about Bram Smyth, who was supposed to have met him at the bar at Senor Pico’s at 4:30, nearly three hours ago.

He ought to have a talk with Mr Tortoni, he thought. About these guys who do the ponies. Well, maybe he wouldn’t, now he thought about it. Mr Tortoni didn’t need two cents from Johnny LaGuardia about how he ran his business, but the fact was these guys were unreliable.

He pushed open the lobby door and crossed the marble to the bank of mailboxes with buttons under them. Bram and Sally Smyth lived in number 320.

He pushed the button, waited ten seconds, pushed it again. He looked at his watch, knowing that his impatience might make him hurry things. He counted off thirty seconds.