Then the taller of the two in the doorway nudged one of the teenagers with his foot. "Bounce on in, tell C-Note a detective wants to see him."
Jason tried to look bored, tapping his notebook. Tried not to run the odds on whether or not Playboy would be here, knowing that if he was, it was certain death. One of the guys on the steps turned up the radio, the music saying there was no such thing as halfway crooks, scared to death and scared to look. Jason glanced down the block and pretended to stifle a yawn while fear hollowed out his body.
"Don't remember calling no police." The man in the doorway wore a striped button-up with a Sean John logo, the lines stretched across the muscles of his chest and arms. The two bangers stood beside him like bodyguards.
Jason smiled. "You don't call us, Dion. We call you."
One of the bangers stepped up, head cocked and chest forward. Jason met his gaze. Knew the game, one he'd played plenty of times in the Army. No weakness, no fear. "Best control your boy. Hate to search him, find something that violates his parole."
"Go easy, cuz." Dion kept his voice level, and the banger stepped back. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Detective Martinez." The real Martinez, crazy mother that he'd been, he would have approved of this stunt.
"You don't look like no Martinez."
Jason shielded his eyes from the sun, drawled, "Get that all the time."
"How come I ain't seen you before?"
"Because I only come when shit's about to get out of hand. We need to talk." Gestured to his car. "Let's take a ride."
Dion's eyes narrowed. "Since when the po-lice drive Cadillacs?
Shit. He'd wondered about that, but hadn't seen a way around it. He controlled his expression, said, "That's my personal ride." Smiled. "Car's the Virgin Mary. You like the classics?"
"They 'aight. My boy Brillo used to have an old Monte Carlo, till that shit got disappeared the other night." He paused. "Why'n't you make yourself useful, find Brillo's whip?" The boys on the steps laughed at that.
"Hop in, we'll go look." Waited a beat, saw the hesitation in the other man's eyes. "Unless you want the whole block to know your business."
"You come here to arrest me?"
"Nope. To invite you."
"I ain't going nowhere."
Jason shrugged. He felt like his stomach was being slowly tugged away from him. "Trying to do you a favor here. You know Cruz, from Gang Intelligence?" He waited for the faint nod. "She and the lieutenant, they wanted to send in the cavalry. I said no. Said C-Note's a smart guy, that we should try to talk to him first." So much came down to the gang leader buying this, getting in the car with him. Taking a drive around the neighborhood, talking as they went, the Caddy giving Jason a tiny edge in enemy turf. Mobility and security.
A long moment. Then Dion turned and opened the door. "My office."
Jason's hands went swampy, his heart thudding against his ribs. If he went inside, he was a whisper away from death. One wrong move, and the gangbangers could do whatever they wanted to him, do it safely and in privacy.
Take as long as they wanted.
Under his jacket, the sleeves of his Oxford were soaked. Dion watched him, measuring. The look in the man's eyes lit a cold flame in Jason's belly. This lowlife had sent men to kill Billy, maybe Michael, too. Was he going to walk away from that?
Jason curled his lips in a sneer, shrugged. "Lead the way." Stepped up on the porch, brushing by the bodyguards, the skin on his neck tingling as he passed into the monster's lair. A strange déjà vu, the same combination of terror and exhilaration he'd felt every time he cleared a house with the squad, not knowing what he was walking into. A soldier's rush, the fear present but controlled, mastered. Except that then he'd been wearing body armor, slinging an M4, and representing the strong arm of the United States Army.
It was dim inside, and reeked of weed and sweat and Chinese takeout. A constellation of cigarette burns scarred the carpet. A girl reclined on one couch, a baby asleep on her chest. On the other, two shirtless teenagers were leaning forward, each furiously punching buttons on a controller. Jason looked up, saw a big plasma TV where the two were storming a dusty city block under an orange sky. A voice yelled, "Fire in the hole," and a grenade blew on screen, tossing a digital body like a rag doll. One of the gangbangers hooted. "Like that?" he asked, and then leaned forward to grab a beer from the table, exposing the gleaming handle of a pistol tucked in his back. "Want a little more?"
The office was a small bedroom. Enormous particle-board desk, pleather wing chair, green banker's lamp. A junior-executive rig in the middle of a gang house guarded by teenaged killers playing videogames about soldiers. The only things that kept Jason from laughing were the fear he wouldn't be able to stop and the knowledge that every step he'd taken forward was one he might have to fight his way back.
"All right, Po-lice." Dion turned and offered a grin laced with menace. "Now we're all alone. Now we in my house."
A muscle in Jason's thigh jumped, but he kept his face straight and stepped closer, his chest inches from the other man's. They were about the same height, but Dion had an easy thirty pounds of muscle on him. Jason stared, unblinking, feeling the wetness in his armpits, the tremor in his fingertips. From the moment he'd stepped inside it'd been play hard or die. He had to make the man believe completely. "You think I'm alone?"
"Don't see nobody else." Dion's voice had a sort of restless craziness to it.
" 'Cause you ain't looking. It's like cowboys and Indians. I'm the scout. You only see me, but the whole tribe's waiting just over the hill."
Dion's eyes narrowed. "What you want?"
"I want to know why you sent Playboy to kill Jason Palmer."
"Don't know anybody by either name."
"You sell crack out of houses on Eggleston and Ross. You run a basement club in a warehouse up on Hooker. You got a baby-mama named Cherise." He saw the reaction in Dion's eyes, and silently thanked Ronald for the details. "We're always watching. I know more about your business than you do." Jason made himself wait a beat, then put a little steel in his voice. "You really don't want to piss me off. Now, why did your boys try to hit Jason Palmer?"
Dion shrugged. "That was Playboy's deal. He was just supposed to pick him up, wait for a call."
"And what about the bangers you sent to kill his nephew the other night?"
"I don't know nothing about that." Dion had a decent poker face. If Jason hadn't been there, he might have believed.
"We've got a witness that ID'd three members of your crew, including Playboy." He was starting to feel the part. The lingo may've been pulled from television and books, but the attitude was familiar. In this part of the city, being a cop wasn't that much different from being a soldier, just as in Iraq, being a soldier had been a lot like being a cop. "You're saying they acted without you?"
"Could be. Players got minds of their own."
"Maybe I ought to talk to them." The air conditioner in the window hummed to life. "Let them know you're washing your hands. Maybe they'll remember it differently once they know you're going to let them face murder on their own Now why did you kill Michael Palmer?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Dion said. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you shit."
Jason shook his head. "You aren't giving me much choice. It's one thing to do a little business, keep it reasonable. But hijacking civilians? Breaking into houses, chasing little kids? I can't have it."
"Ain't a crime till the victim's white, huh?"