“Delroy Jones?”
Delroy did not slow. “Who wants to know?”
As Delroy hammered down the next set of steps, Tim rose calmly, walked ten feet to his right, and awaited his return. Delroy was breathing harder when he reached the top again. Tim noticed he winced slightly on his left steps, as if weathering a pulled hamstring.
“How’d you like your coach to hear about you playing lookout on a stickup?”
Never breaking stride, Delroy made a clicking noise of dismissal. “I was twelve years old, five-oh. You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
Across the bleachers, down the stairs. Tim walked ten more feet, set the Gatorade at his feet, and sat. Delroy was panting hard as he approached the top again.
Tim took a shot. “How about this. Present tense. I know your cuz Rhythm has pressured you to open up the college market. A lotta rich kids here, a lotta recreation. I also know you said no, but we have pics of you two together, and we can get those in the hands of your coach. Your scholarship’s coming up for renewal in, what? Four months?”
Delroy ignored him, got halfway across the bleacher, then stopped, still facing away, his shoulders heaving as he caught his breath. He walked back, ran a hand across his forehead, and flicked a spray of sweat down on the concrete. The two men glared at each other, pit bulls squaring off over a rib eye.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m trying to protect your cousin.”
“And I’m a Caucasian orthodontist. Nice to meet you.”
Tim offered the Gatorade bottle, which Delroy ignored. “Rhythm Jones. Where can I find him?”
“He don’t go by Rhythm no more. Goes by G-Smooth.”
“It must be tough explaining the ‘Rhythm’ tattoo across his chest then, huh?” Tim sucked his teeth once, twice, a tic intended to annoy. “Now, listen Delroy, you’re gonna have to do better than that. Don’t throw me false names and bullshit leads. There’s a contract on your cousin, and the hit is closing in. You’re going to help me because you want to save your cousin’s life, and you’re going to help me because if you don’t, I will grip right and squeeze hard. I’ll have your rap sheet all over the Daily Trojan. I’ll distribute photos of you and Rhythm to everyone in the athletic department, everyone in the financial-aid office. Your face next to Rhythm’s infamous mug, it’ll make all the white assholes who run this campus pucker. Now, what’s it gonna be?”
Delroy’s eyes flicked back and forth nervously. “Look, five-oh, I’m trying to train here, mindin’ my own bidness. Why don’t you back off? I ain’t a shot-caller. Shit, everyone interruptin’ me, aksin’-” He caught himself, but Tim was already on his feet.
“Did someone else press you?”
Tim’s reaction brought out an anxious twitch in Delroy’s face. “Shit, man. I thought it was just a bling-bling thing, get resolved. You think those motherfuckers are gonna cap him?”
“I know they are. Did you give up an address?”
Delroy took an uneasy breath, then stepped back and pulled up his sweatshirt, as if showing off a waistband gun. Wide purple bruises had flowered across his ribs on the left side-boot marks, most likely. “Motherfuckers didn’t leave me much of a choice.”
•Tim gunned the Acura through the streets of South Central. He turned right at the waffle and fried-chicken shack, as directed, and slowed to a crawl, counting addresses under his breath. Rhythm’s stash house was blocked from view by a stucco wall, the only one on the block. Tim left the car up the street and circled back, pulling on his lead gloves. The wooden gate was unhooked, the latch resting just outside the catch. He knuckled it open.
Front door ajar. An arm in view, flat on the floor from elbow to wrist. Tim unholstered his. 357, closed the gate behind him to block the view from the street, and entered the house. He moved along the right wall, gun extended, elbows locked, his shoulder brushing a wall-mounted phone by the front door. The arm belonged to an obese body he assumed was Rhythm’s. It lay in the prone position, humped over a considerable belly, the head largely blown off. Residual powder burns, speckling, star-shaped entrance wound-it had been up close and personal.
It must have given Robert and Mitchell gratification to ice a sexual predator like the one who killed Beth Ann. It must have whetted their appetite.
Farther in, a white corpse lay, also facedown, with no visible signs of violence. Tim tilted the already-stiffening body with a toe and took note of the two gunshot wounds in the chest, both high on the breast-plate. Another body lay just out of view in the hall, two shots to the back-one between the shoulder blades, the other in the kidney. A scrawny black kid, no older than twenty, no taller than five-five.
Tim did a protective sweep of the rest of the house. A folding table with a scale and a couple keys of either cocaine or Southeast Asian heroin in the back room. A security camera on a tripod knocked over in the far corner. A cheesy smoked-glass mirror with a gaudy gold frame. Three heavy-duty security bars made the back door impervious to kick-ins.
A fourth corpse lay sprawled across the kitchen linoleum, Caucasian, chest opened up by a larger-caliber round. Joint body-lots of tats, strong lats triangulating a strong torso. An AK-47 lay beside him, the strap still hooked around his neck. Door muscle, from the looks of him. One of his hands held a bleating telephone, his forearm wrapped in coiled black cord.
Standing over the body, Tim closed one eye and peered through the bullet hole in the window, sighting on a burnt and deserted apartment building about 125 yards away, across the house’s surprisingly expansive back lawn and an empty lot. An impressive shot. As a SWAT precision marksman, Robert probably worked with a McMillan. 308 caliber, police model.
Tim returned to the living room and examined the fallen security camera. The tape was missing-no surprise. Tim followed the snake of the electrical cord to a wall outlet behind a minirefrigerator. When Tim opened the refrigerator door, a puff of humid, rotting air sighed out at him. Room temp. Save for a fringe of mold on the plastic shelf, the fridge was empty. Tim pulled the unit out from the wall and swapped the plug for that of a lamp he retrieved from across the room. He clicked the switch. Nothing. A dead outlet.
Dummy security camera.
Tim scanned the room, his eyes resting on the wall-mounted mirror. He walked over and pressed the tip of his front pistol sight against the glass. There was no break between the sight and its reflection. He tugged at the mirror, but it didn’t give, so he shattered the glass, gun-stock leading his gloved hand.
Inside the small cave cut into the drywall and lathing, a handheld video lens stared out at him curiously. He slid the tape from the unit before returning it to the jagged mouth of the mirror. On his way out, he crouched over Rhythm’s body, examining what was left of his famous face.
He would have liked to have felt sorrow.
He drove for fifteen minutes before finding a Circuit City. He went for a TV/VCR combo because they were displayed in the back corner. He rewound the tape about an hour, then fast-forwarded the grainy black-and-white video. The angle covered most of the living room and the front door; the sound was surprisingly good.
Rhythm was bopping around the room, belly jiggling, talking into his cell phone and gesticulating madly with his hand. The doorman whom Tim had found supine in the kitchen was standing perfectly still at the door, arms crossed, one hand clasping the other wrist, AK slung over one shoulder. The other Caucasian emerged from the back room toting two keys, the scrawny black teenager at his side. The kid slapped five with Rhythm and disappeared into the bathroom near the rear door. When white boy held out a brick in offering, Rhythm stuck a fat hand into the bag and ran a powdered fingertip across his gums.
The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted an incipient conversation beatifying Biggie Smalls. The doorman grabbed the wall-mounted phone by the front door. “Yeah?”