“Did Walter snitch me?”
“Naw. Walter loves you, man. He thinks you the real thing.”
“Then how?”
“You called Abraham Lincoln,” said Ty. “That got back to me. ’Cause I’m on the inside now. Not scraping along begging for jobs. Fin changed his mind. I don’t even see a gun most days. So I looked in the records, found out the number. Pay phone over there, right?” He cocked a finger over his shoulder, toward the town. “Flew out this afternoon, came into town, walked to your pay phone. I asked one person two questions, and I knew where to find you.”
“You flew out here?” said East. “By yourself?”
“East. Don’t insult me,” Ty said. “Remember Bishop Street swimming pool? You had to keep your face out of the water?”
East remembered the old, grimy, city pool. Splashing, a war of noise. Kids drowned all the time. Neither of them had ever had a teacher. The teenage lifeguards were no better — they were just the ones who’d made it that far.
“You’d dogpaddle down to the deep end with your friends. I was, like, four or five, and I’d track your ass down? Splashing and gasping because I couldn’t swim. But I found you.”
“I remember.”
“Well, nigger,” Ty said quietly, “now I can swim.”
East looked up at his brother. The light flick of his hands as the broomstick lashed this way and that, its alloy screw-tip flashing. Heels dug into the upholstery.
Almost impatiently, he said, “You gonna kill me?”
“No,” Ty said. “I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
The hanging bag had stopped swinging, now just twisted slowly. East reached down to mop his blood, wipe it elsewhere on his shirt. Tried not to drip it on the sofa. Well, finally, he thought. Family reunion.
—
“I’m hungry,” Ty said.
In the dim light, Ty looked the same. Skinnier, though. If that was possible.
“How—” East began, then stopped, abashed. He didn’t believe. A ghost. A ghost didn’t fly across the country to trade vengeance in for a whupping.
“How are you alive?” he finished.
“You ask? How I didn’t die?” Ty spun the stick and stopped it straight up, like a clock. “Thank you. I woke up in an ambulance. Coughing up pink shit. All that day I chilled out on a ventilator. You know what that is? It’s a machine that makes you keep breathing. Another four days with a tube going into my side. That bitch hurt. Hurt worse than the popgun did. That is how I didn’t die.”
“How you just walk out?” East breathed. “They didn’t cuff you, suspect you? Didn’t ask you about it?” He found the words. “The judge?”
Ty squinted. “Why would they?”
“I know they had police on that.”
“Maybe,” Ty said. “But we kept a low profile. Did it right. To them I’m just a victim, some cold, black-on-black shit. They much more likely looking for you.”
East hung his head. “So when you gonna kill me?”
“Was up to me, you’d already be getting cold,” said his brother. “But I’m here on business. And I’m hungry. So let’s eat.”
—
Early morning. So there was just one place to go. East walked Ty out to buy a box of doughnuts before the light. Ty waited down the street.
Even before six, the place was warm, confusing, alive. East stole a glance back from the counter. But he saw nothing but the windows reflecting movies of the inside.
He could run. He was faster than Ty afoot, or used to be. He knew the yards and fields here. He knew where Perry kept a key to the old truck.
But there was nothing in it, running. He could open a gap between now and his old life. But only a gap.
The doughnuts waited in their bins, blessed and bright. The counter clerk today was a thin boy, hair brushed straight up. He folded the box together, and East picked out twelve and paid.
“You get one more. Thirteen for a dozen,” the thin boy said.
East said, “No thanks.”
“What,” said the boy, “happened to your arm?”
East looked at it in the light for the first time. It was a whacked mess, the sleeve soaked and blackening. His stomach slunk downward. “Thanks,” he said.
Five people. It didn’t matter who was in there or what he might have spoken out loud: they couldn’t change things. But what Ty had said was right. If he were here to kill East, it already would have happened.
Though he could still take a notion.
Ty waited in a doorway, reviewing the morning Plain Dealer. Seeing East, he rolled the paper again and bagged it. The angle of a pistol sprang in his pants.
He fell into step beside East. “So this your house? You standing yard still?”
“Kind of the same deal.”
“Paintball? There’s money in that?”
“There’s money.” It would only amuse Ty if he said how little.
“What you running besides?”
“Nothing.”
“Straight up?” Ty laughed. “Huh.” They walked back along the highway without a word.
The day was coming up, black thinning to silver. The two boys crossed the damp lot, and East unlocked the door. The holiday bells rang. They’d been on there since he arrived, but weeks had gone by without his really hearing them.
Ty stalked around the place, examining the counter and the merchandise, trying on a pair of goggles. East stood watching until he felt time again, stretching long. He went to unknot the rope that slung the bag from the rafters and lower it to the floor.
Ty finished his circuit. “Now you sit down,” he said. “I brought a message.”
Gingerly East sat on one of the sofas. Ty took his perch opposite.
“Ready to listen?”
“I guess,” said East.
“Then — you’re coming back. This ain’t home. You don’t belong here.”
East shrugged.
“The organization changed. So I came to get you. Here on, it’s business.”
“Business,” East repeated blankly.
“Maybe the fat boy told you. Somebody bought The Boxes.”
“Walter told me,” East said. “So, they sold Fin out?”
“Streets and houses. Those shit holes you stand by, man,” Ty sneered. “Like this place. You remember how your place got taken down? That took five minutes. Police took two more while you were gone. It ain’t even hard for them; they come before lunch. So, yeah, we sold them out.”
East shook his head.
“Things change,” Ty insisted. “They paid us like fools. Businessman from Mexico. In love with America, man. Paid us one and a half million dollars.”
East whistled. “But what’s left? What’s the business now?”
Ty’s face tightened. “Don’t you ever pay attention, man? Houses got no future. Police like hitting them, mayors like hitting them, news likes hitting them.” He wiped his mouth. “You the only one doesn’t get it. Your boys, your crew? They back in school now. Making something of themselves.”
“What about us?”
“Us. We’re making money. All that what Michael did at UCLA, we work other colleges now. Them schoolkids love weed. Smoke too much. Pay too much. They’ll even go pick it up. Walter’s back in school too. But he still works Saturdays at the DMV. They think he’s, like, twenty-five. So far up in them computers now, they can’t stop him.” Ty smiled. “You know Walter just makes up people, man.”
“He makes up licenses.”
“No. He makes people. He made you, Antoine Harris. We talked about this.”
East’s arm smarted. “So how you gonna make money on that?”