“Hey! Hey!”
Nobody had to use a gun for a gun to do its work.
Two of the three on the other side gave it up on the spot, hands going straight into the air, all five fingers spread toward Tony to show they had no intention of swinging at anybody.
“Calm down! Calm down!”
Only the one who had started it was still craning his neck.
He kept sucking in deep breaths, eyes locked on the pistol, refusing to step back out of Tony’s face.
“Go on then. Do it, boy.”
Tony lifted his chin and bared his teeth at him, and shoved his big belly forward on purpose.
The gun rode loose in his waistband.
The move put it a few inches closer to the other man’s hand.
Every player on the court had worked out by now that something was wrong here.
The bouncing stopped.
Silence dropped over the fence all at once.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven — for those seven seconds, time seemed to freeze solid.
“Forget it. Forget it.”
The two who had read the danger first grabbed their friend by the shoulders and hauled him backward.
“Let’s go. Come on, let’s go.” He stood stunned a moment longer, then finally let his breath out, and allowed himself to be half pushed and half dragged away.
“Fuck off! And don’t let me see you around here again!”
Lil Lori came out from behind Tony as he said it and got a hand in too, shoving the man’s head hard as he went past.
The veins in the man’s forehead were standing up and jumping with rage, his eyes gone blood-red, a beast that would swallow a living person whole given half a second.
His friends kept a grip on him the whole way, and at last they got him out of sight.
Thank God nothing actually happened.
Alex let out a breath.
That had been genuinely tense.
He couldn’t even picture how it would have gone if the guy had decided to make a grab for the piece in Tony’s waistband.
America is really something, he muttered inwardly.
Tony pulled his shirt back down over the gun and yelled at the people who were still standing around watching the show.
“It’s over! Okay?”
The bouncing started up again, and Lil Lori grinned over at AK.
“You catch your breath yet? Soon as we’re done, we’re going again.”
AK gave him an answer he liked, and Lori called out to the rest of them: “Same teams?”
“No change. Alex—” Tony jerked his chin at him.
“We’re still playing? What if they come back with people and settle up?” Alex couldn’t believe it.
They had just done that, and the plan was to stay on the court.
“Shut your mouth.” Tony came in close, jaw tight, and said it under his breath.
“Let’s go, then.” Alex had no choice.
He walked out to the top of the arc, set his feet, and squared up against Lil Lori all over again.
There were a lot fewer people playing than before.
Alex noticed a few more of them gathering their things and getting ready to leave.
Guess they can smell it too.
His own nerves were humming; a couple of figures cutting across the far corner of the court, or a siren somewhere out on the street, was enough to pull every string in him tight.
“Huh. That’s not right.”
It came to him that something had gone out of Lil Lori.
No drives to the rim, none of the fancy stuff, the dribble coming off his hand crooked.
No — everyone was off.
They were all acting like nothing had happened, but they talked less, and their movements had gone a little stiff.
Muffler, who hid his feelings worse than anybody, was doing exactly what Alex was doing: letting his eyes drift out past the barbed wire without meaning to.
Alex turned it over and grinned once he had it.
Saving face out here wasn’t the same thing as saving face back home, but watching these guys hold the pose down to the last detail, he found something almost sweet in it.
They stayed on that court another forty, fifty minutes.
Then, under the basket, an electronic chirp went up — dee-dee-dee — from something that sounded about ten years old.
“Sorry.”
AK walked over and dug a pager out of the pile of jackets.
He read the message and shouted over to Lil Lori, “Sounds like the boss is in a hurry!”
“All right.” Lori tossed the ball to Alex and turned to Tony.
“Looks like that’s it for today. We’ll pick it up next time.”
“All right.” Tony hugged him and hammered a fist into his back.
“You know how to find me. Call and I’m there.”
“Yeah. Thanks for today.” Lori gave Muffler a big hug, then Alex.
“Your business is our business,” Tony said.
Lori pounded his own chest once, solemnly.
Then everybody went their own way.
It wasn’t until Muffler had the car started and Tony had tucked the pistol away under the seat, out of sight, that Alex’s heart finally came back down where it belonged.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Shit is going down and you’re just standing there like fucking Bambi!”
Tony turned around in his seat to lay into him.
“Something like that happens again, you come forward and back us up, understand bro? Otherwise you’re cut.”
Cut me out, then.
Alex had never intended to run with them anyway.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why pull a gun over something that small? Why take a risk that big? Is it worth it?”
Neither of them answered.
After a while Muffler produced a whole sentence.
“No scholarship, no college.”
“We don’t run with gangs. We don’t touch drugs. We’ve been out there playing, serious about it, for years. For what?” Tony said.
“To get picked up by a university, get the scholarship, and get out of this fucking place! You think we like squaring off with people out on the street?”
“And in the end? Not one college team wants us. Not even a community college.”
“So if we don’t go to college, what’s left after we graduate? Go work the night shift at a KFC? Go clean toilets over on the shopping strip?”
“No. Lil Lori is the best shot we’ve got, and this time we’re taking it.”
“Once his album’s officially out, he’s gonna need a whole lot of hands around him. He’ll bring us up with him. He promised.” A thread of real hope came into Tony’s eyes.
“I’ve known that man since we were kids. He blows up, he takes us along. Nothing wrong with finally eating good.”
Alex was lost.
“You’ve said a whole lot, but did Lori actually promise you a job? An actual position?”
“Why the fuck did I get stuck with the dumbest brother in Chicago!”
Tony was disgusted.
“You really got a few A-pluses or not? Me and Lori are buddies! You get trouble, we carry it together. You get money, we spend it together—”
“What the hell! Is it you that’s stupid or me?”
Alex was genuinely startled.
Why would anybody else give their money to you?
Well — the stupidity turned out to be his.
Tony explained, and eventually he understood.
There really was a “tradition” here.
Entertainment and sports were the fastest ladder out of a neighborhood like this one, so when a singer or a star got rich overnight, he was expected to reach back down and drag the people he’d come up with — relatives, friends, whoever had been in the hole with him — up behind him.
The part about spending the money together was an exaggeration.
But if Lil Lori really did hit, and was willing to bring Tony and Muffler along, their lives would change in kind, not just in degree.
Of course, they wouldn’t just be sitting around doing nothing.
Stand in as a bodyguard.
Go pick up the takeout.
Play video games with him.
Be his wingman.
Get into a fight like today’s — huh.
Come to think of it, that was plenty of work.
“Hold on. Let me get this straight.”
Alex’s brain, still traveling on its old rails, took the turn slowly.
“So what you’re telling me is, if Lil Lori gets big, the job he’s got for the two of you is… being his patsy?”
“His family,” Tony corrected.
“His brothers.”
Putting it nicely, you call it brother.
Putting it plainly, isn’t that being his flunky?
An attendant?
A gofer?
Alex kept that inside.
“Right. Got it.”
Several possibilities had occurred to him.
“What if Lil Lori doesn’t get big? What if he decides what you did today was too reckless and he’s scared to keep you around? He has to listen to the man at the label, doesn’t he? What if his boss doesn’t want the two of you standing next to him?”
“Uh…”
Tony and Muffler traded a look.
“If it comes to that…” Tony said, half under his breath, “then we only got one road left. The gang.” Both of their faces went dull.
So when you boil it all the way down, there’s no way either of you is ever working a job.
Alex understood the whole thing now, and kept that inside too.