That first day, one of Solomon’s carts had been sticking partway out into the alley. Gehdi misjudged his clearance and scraped the Navigator’s fender.
Asad had stood there and watched with his hard black marble eyes while Gehdi and Nadif punched Solomon to the ground then kicked the shit out of him. They threw his carts out into the middle of Wisconsin Avenue. Things he’d collected, his precious things. The Nigerian had saved some, but the rest, his clippings, his notebooks, they’d been swept away with the street trash.
He’d been beaten before. But never in his alley. That they had done those things to him there shamed him. The alley had provided for him, and when danger came, he had been unable to defend the alley in return.
He gonna make the call?
“Sure he is.” Voice didn’t know its ass from apple butter sometimes.
Looking past Solomon and toward Ngame’s stand, Asad reached into the briefcase and pulled out a fat c-phone/walkie-talkie. Flipping it open, he held it in front of his face.
Solomon saw Asad’s lips move. A second or two passed and Solomon heard one crackling reply, then another.
“One more,” he said to Voice.
Asad waited, holding the c-phone out from his face. Gehdi and Nadif swiveled their heads back and forth, searching the alley.
They expectin’ Santy Claus?
A third crackle. Asad replied and stowed the c-phone away in the briefcase. He said something to the two goons and the three began walking toward Solomon.
They gonna hit you? Hurt you today?
Solomon got a tightness in his chest. How it had been came back to him like it had every day since.
Curled up on the alley bricks. Crying and slobbering and puking. Waiting for the goons to swing another steel-capped toe.
They had grunted with the effort and they had cursed Solomon because beating a man while he was down was hard work and it made them sweat and they blamed him for that.
He lowered his head and pretended to doze. Through slitted eyelids, he saw the shoes approach, then pass.
“Not today,” he whispered to Voice. “Not today.”
As soon as he thought it safe, he lifted his eyes and followed the three Somalis approaching Ngame’s stand.
And along Wisconsin, the other vendors watched.
Ngame saw them cross Wisconsin. He turned and busied himself tightening a C-clamp. He started counting silently. At nine, he heard the sliding scuffle of shoe leather on the sidewalk behind him.
“I need a decision,” he heard Asad say.
He didn’t turn, but continued fiddling with the clamp.
“You got mine,” he said, “I don’t need a partner.”
“Every businessman needs a partner. Suppose you get sick?”
“I am healthy.”
A twisting, tearing at his shoulders, and his elbows were pinned behind him as he was spun around to face Asad.
Gehdi stood to Asad’s right, and Nadif held him tight, the goon’s sour breath on his neck.
“You may be healthy,” Asad whispered, smiling, “but men have accidents.”
Gehdi dropped his hand into his jacket pocket.
Ngame flexed his knees and sagged, loosening Nadif’s grip. Then with a violent burst, he straightened up. He raised his heavy boot and brought it down with all his strength on the top of Nadif’s foot. He felt bones grind as Nadif’s arch collapsed.
Nadif was still screaming as Ngame swung his foot forward. His toe caught Gehdi in the crotch, lifting him off the pavement. Gehdi gasped. His hand flew out of his pocket. A switchblade clattered to the sidewalk.
Almost casually, Ngame clenched Asad’s collar with one hand, twisting it tight around his neck. Stooping slightly, he scooped up Gehdi’s switchblade. He held it up before Asad’s bulging eyes. He pressed the release. Asad stared hypnotically as the silver blade flicked open. Ngame slammed Asad up against a lamppost and brought the blade against the Somali’s throat just below the Adam’s apple.
Gehdi lay curled on the sidewalk clutching his balls, and Nadif, sobbing, stood on his undamaged foot, hanging on to a parking meter.
In a swift motion, he pulled the blade away from Asad’s throat, cocked his arm, and brought the knife forward in a stabbing motion.
Asad let out a high-pitched scream. The crotch of his trousers darkened.
A fraction of an inch from Asad’s ear, Ngame drove the knife into the lamppost, snapping its blade.
“You’re right,” Ngame said to Asad in his best BBC voice, “men have accidents.”
The rest of the morning, Solomon watched Ngame at his stand. The Nigerian went about his business as though nothing had happened. Asad and his goons had disappeared into the storefront. The other vendors in sight of Ngame’s corner were careful not to be seen paying attention, but it seemed to Solomon they moved like men tiptoeing around a sleeping beast.
Around three o’clock, Solomon, eyes half-closed, was drowsing in his canvas deck chair. For seconds, he paid no attention to the car that pulled up to the curb by Ngame’s stand, until the driver-side door opened and the black cop got out.
Oh shit, Voice said.
Solomon ignored Voice and sat up to get a better view of the cop and Ngame.
“You already find out who killed Skeeter?” Ngame asked.
José Phelps picked up a pair of Ray Ban knockoffs and examined them. “Not yet.”
“Those are ten dollars.”
José put the shades back, taking care to line them up just
“Little while ago, we were over at Eastern Market,” he said. “Buzz was, you had a run-in with Asad.”
“News travels fast.”
José didn’t say anything but left the question on his face.
Ngame shrugged. “A discussion. A business proposition.”
“You know,” José threw in, “DEA’s interested in him.” Ngame nudged the shades José had held. “That’s good. I’m not.”
“You ever thought to moving somewhere else?”
Ngame gave José a hard look. “I have been here almost ten years. I am somebody here.”
José picked up the Ray Ban knockoffs again. This time he tried them on. He leaned forward to check himself out in a small mirror hooked to the stand. He angled his face one way, then the other.
“Absolutely Hollywood,” Ngame said.
José did another 180 in the mirror and handed over a ten. “You need anything…”
Toward evening the alley was getting dark. Solomon didn’t need a watch to know Ngame would be closing up in an hour unless business was good. And today business hadn’t been good. Not bad, but not good either. He saw Gehdi come out of Asad the Somali’s store, stand in the doorway, and look down the block toward Ngame. Gehdi had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He stood there for a moment as though listening to a reply, then turned and said something to someone in the store. He shut the door and made his way across Wisconsin toward the alley. Solomon slouched in his canvas chair, pulled the American flag he used for a blanket up under his chin, and pretended to sleep.
Gehdi passed within a few feet of Solomon, and Solomon watched him disappear in the darkening alley toward the parking garage. Across the street, Ngame started disassembling his stand. Solomon began his night critique, judging how Ngame stowed the bulky handbags into the nylon sacks, taking care to dust each one carefully before putting it away
Where Gehdi?
Voice surprised him. Feeling a flush of irritation and guilt, Solomon realized he hadn’t been paying attention to his alley. If Gehdi was going to bring the Navigator around, why wasn’t he out by now?
Minutes passed. Ngame was working on the last of the handbags. Solomon squinted down the alley, trying to pierce the deepening darkness.