My knock was answered by a young boy with hooded eyes who left me to shut the door behind myself as I followed him in. From the room to the left I heard the canned laughter of a TV game show; from upstairs, the floor-shaking boom of a stereo. “Tyrell be in the basement,” the boy told me, pointing without interest to a door under the stairs.
“Who’s that?” a woman’s voice called from above as I opened that door, headed down.
“Man to see Tyrell,” the boy answered, and the household went about its business.
The basement was a weight room. The boiler and hot-water tank had been partitioned off into dimness. On this side of the partition were bright fluorescent lights, mats, weights, jump ropes. The smell of damp concrete mixed with the smell of sweat; the hum of the water heater was punctuated by grunts. Tyrell was on the bench, working his left biceps with what looked like sixty pounds. He lifted his eyes to me when I came down, but he didn’t move his head out of position, and he finished his set. He was shirtless. His muscles were mounds under his glinting skin.
When he was done, he clanked the weights to the floor, ran a towel over his face.
“Yeah?” he said. He took in air in deep, controlled breaths.
“I want to talk about Ayisha,” I said. “And Lomax.”
“Go ahead.” He kept his eyes on me for a few moments. Then, straightening, he picked up the weights with the other hand, started pumping. “Talk.”
“She was your girl once, wasn’t she?”
He smiled, didn’t break his rhythm. “She been everyone’s girl once.”
“Maybe everyone didn’t care.”
“Maybe not.” Nineteen, twenty. He put the weights down, left the bench, moved over to a Universal machine. He loaded it to 210, positioned himself, started working the big muscles in his thighs.
“But you did.”
He stopped, looked at me. He held the weights in position while he spoke. “Yeah. I cared. I was so glad to get rid of her and С at the same time I coulda went to Disney World.” Slowly, in total control, he released the weights. He relaxed but didn’t leave the seal, getting ready for his next set.
“What does that mean, get rid of them?”
Either he really had no idea what I was getting at or he was a terrific actor. “Didn’t have no time for her.” Pump, breathe. “For him neither. С always got something going, some idea.” Hold. Release, relax. “Always talking at you. Get me confused. Lost my whole last season because of him.”
“The gas-station job was his idea?”
He gave me a sly grin. “Charges was dropped.” He strained against the weights again. “C talking about, only way to make it be stealin’ and dealin’.” Pump, release, pump. “I try that, ain’t no good at it. Now Coach be telling me—” pump, breathe “—say, I got a chance, a real chance. But I ain’t got all the time in the world. Got to do it now, you understand?”
He looked at me. I didn’t respond.
“C, he don’t never shut up. Don’t give a man no chance to think.” Hold, release, relax. He swung his legs off the machine, picked up the towel again, wiped his face. “C don’t like to think. Don’t like it quiet. Dude get nervous if horns ain’t honking and sirens going by.” He laughed. “Surprise me him and Ayisha end up where they do.”
“Meaning?”
“C don’t never go to the park. They got nothing there but trees and birds, he say. What I’m gonna do with them?”
“His sister says he was going to meet someone that night.”
Tyrell shrugged. He put his legs bark in position, started another set.
“And that was it?” I said. “You were through with Lomax and his ideas? You weren’t helping him take care of business anymore?”
This time he ran the set straight through before he answered. When he was done, he looked at me, breathing deeply.
“Coach be talking at me. I’m seeing college, the NBA, hotels and honeys and dudes carrying my suitcase. C up in my face. I’m looking at the inside of Rikers. Now what you think I’m gonna do?”
“And that was what you thought of when Lomax took up with Ayisha?”
“Damn sure. They both out my face now. I can take care my business.”
“Your business,” I mused. “You have a gun, right? An automatic. Can I see it?”
“What the hell for?”
“Lomax was a revolver man, wasn’t he?” I asked conversationally. “He had a .32.”
Tyrell shook his head in mild disbelief. “Man, Wyatt Earp coulda carried that piece.”
“Why do you carry yours, Tyrell?”
“Now why the hell you think I carry mine?” He scowled. “You some kind of detective, can’t figure out why a man got to be strapped ’round here?”
“Is it like that around here?” I asked softly. “A man has to have a gun?”
“Goddamn!” Tyrell exploded. “You think I like that? Watching my back just whenever I’m walking? Can’t be going here, can’t be going there, you got beef or your homies got beef and someone out to get you for it, go to school, everybody packing, just in case. You think I like that?” A sharp pulse throbbed in his temples; his eyes were shining and bitter. “Man, you can forget about it! I’m gonna make it, man. I’m gonna be all that. C, he got this idea, that idea, don’t never think about what come next, what gonna happen ’cause of what he do. I tell him, you got Ayisha, now get out my face, leave me be. I got things to do.”
His hard eyes locked on mine. The stereo, two floors up, sent down a pounding, recurring shudder that surrounded us.
“Tyrell,” I said, “I’d like to see your gun.”
For a moment, no reaction. Then a slow smile. He sauntered over to a padlocked steel box on the other side of the room. He ran the combination, creaked the top open, lifted out a .357 Coonan automatic. Wordlessly he handed it to me.
“How long have you had this?” I asked.
“Maybe a year.”
“You sure you didn’t just get it?”
He looked at me without an answer. Then, climbing the stairs to where he could reach the door, he opened it and yelled, “Shaun!” He paused; then again, “Shaun! Haul your ragged ass down here!”
The boy with the hooded eyes appeared in the doorway. “You calling me, Tyrell?” he asked tentatively.
Tyrell moved aside, motioned him downstairs. The boy, with an unsure look at me, started down. He walked like someone trying not to take up too much room.
“Shaun, this my piece?”
The boy looked at the gun I held out. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
“Don’t be guessing,” Tyrell said. “This my piece or ain’t it?”
The boy gave Tyrell a nervous look, then peered more closely at the gun, still without touching it. “Yeah,” he said. “It got that thing, here.”
“What thing?” I asked. I looked where the boy pointed. A wide scrape marred the shiny stock.
Tyrell said, “Shaun, where that come from?”
Shaun answered without looking at Tyrell. “I dropped it.”
“When?”
“Day you got it.”
“What happen?”
“You mean, what you do?”
“Yeah.”
The kid swallowed. “You be cursing at me and you smack me.”
“Broke your nose, didn’t I?”
The kid nodded.
“So you remember that day pretty good, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“When was that?”
“About last year.”
“You touched it since?”
“No, Tyrell.” The kid looked up quickly.
“Good. Now get the hell out of here.”
Shaun scuttled up the stairs and closed the door behind him.
“See?” Tyrell, smiling, took the gun from me. “My heat. Had it a year. How about that?”