From his snail’s-eye view down the long hall, he catches a partial angle of Papa Z embedded in his venerable armchair, one meaty fist clamped around a Coors tallboy. His face and neck are splotchy red; it is not the first beer of the evening.
A hushed voice emanates from the space across from him, over by the shit-brown corduroy couch with the missing cushion. “—can only take one right now. Sure it’s a way out. But he needs to show an ability to perform.”
“Charles has that,” Papa Z confirms. He draws again from the sweating can, his tree-trunk throat glugging up and down.
Van Sciver has gone stiff in the doorway. Evan can sense him above, as tense as a dog pointing to prey.
Jamal whispers, “Is that…?”
“The Mystery Man,” Ramón confirms before Van Sciver hushes them viciously.
“Charles seems the most likely,” the hushed voice says. “Or the other one. Andre.”
Andre pulls his head back slightly.
Down the hall Papa Z wipes his lips. “What about Evan?”
They strain to make out the Mystery Man’s voice. “The little one?”
“Yup.”
“Too small.”
“But willful,” Papa Z says. “So willful.”
“Nah,” Mystery Man says. “The little one’s no good.”
Muted sneers rain down on Evan. Then cease instantly as the weary floorboards of the living room creak.
Mystery Man steps into view, a facial profile over bony shoulders. Two slender fingers clamp a business card, extended to Papa Z. That gold watch glints. The Ray-Bans are on, even inside, even at night.
“Have Charles Van Sciver call,” he says.
The boys creep back to bed, buzzed on adrenaline. Whispered theories and dirty jokes fly back and forth.
“I’m gonna do it,” Van Sciver says. “Whatever the fuck it is, I’m gonna do it.”
“How ’bout Andre?” Ramón asks. “Mystery Man got his eye on him, too.”
“Oh, no, sir,” Van Sciver says. “Andre’s gonna move in with his mom and pop. Just as soon as he finds ’em. Ain’t that right, Andre?”
“What do you say, Dr. Dre?” Tyrell says. “You find your daddy this time?”
Assorted guffaws.
Andre doesn’t bother to look up from his spiral notebook, the one he draws in constantly, sketches of superheroes and soldiers and curvy girls. He hates being called Dr. Dre, almost as much as he hates being called Dre-Dre or his middle name, some crazy-ass biblical word written on his birth certificate that even he doesn’t know how to pronounce. The home is a perpetual testing ground, every insecurity exposed, every vulnerability jabbed until it broke you or you broke it.
“Least my sister ain’t no whore,” Andre says.
Tyrell’s eyes widen, white against his shiny dark skin. “Least I know who my family is, bitch.”
Ramón laughs, claps his hands quietly, his skinny arms so thin they look like they might snap from the impact. “Always good to know ’zactly who don’t want you.”
“You wait and see, fools,” Andre says, his hand never slowing, the pencil scratching calmingly against paper. “Mystery Man’s gonna choose me, ’cuz he got some taste. Then I’ll drive a big-ass Cadillac and move to Cali. They got palm trees and shit and blond girls with juicy booties who Rollerblade in bikinis all day long.”
Evan thinks about Cali and palm trees and Rollerblading blondes, Andre’s fantasy weaving into his until it’s one big tapestry way up out of reach.
He waits silently until the voices quiet, until the sounds of breathing turn uniform, until the room is still.
Then he creeps out of bed and down the hall toward the blaring TV. Papa Z is snoring operatically, his last Coors nestled in his crotch. Evan peers at the business card balanced on the arm of the chair next to the remote. At first he does not understand.
The card is solid black.
But then a commercial interrupts the Doogie Howser rerun and the changing glow casts the card in a different light. Visible only now, matte black against glossy black, are ten digits. A hidden phone number.
Leaning for a better angle, hands on his knees, Evan commits it to memory.
He swivels back toward the hall, his face nearly colliding with Van Sciver’s chest.
The bigger boy stands perfectly still, arms crossed, blue bandanna perfectly in place. “Don’t even think about it,” he says. His lips move, but his teeth stay clenched, and a snakelike vein swells in the side of his neck.
Papa Z stirs. “Boys? What’s the problem?”
Van Sciver offers a wide grin. “No problem at all, sir.”
* * *
“Who is this?”
“Not Charles Van Sciver.”
“I figured that. What do you want?”
“What do you want?”
“Where’d you get this number?”
“On the card you left.”
“I told him not to give it to anyone else.”
“He didn’t. I sneaked a look.”
Silence. Then, “The park around the block with the outdoor handball courts. Last one on the south side. Behind the wall. Tomorrow at noon.”
Click.
* * *
Evan rounds the handball wall, the weight of the shade falling across him. The Mystery Man is over at the fence, smoking, those slender fingers tangled in the chain-link. He looks up, and his face flickers with disdain. “You?”
He strolls over. Suddenly Evan is acutely aware of how isolated they are here behind the last court on the south side. They face a glass-strewn alley and a burned building, the one that went down when Jalilah’s nana fell asleep smoking a blunt. The only sign of life is a black sedan parked at the edge of the asphalt plane, angled directly at them. The windows are tinted. All of them, even the windshield. Evan figures it might be the Mystery Man’s car, though no one has ever seen the guy drive.
Then again, no one has ever seen the Mystery Man this close. Sallow features, wispy hair, face unshaven enough that it seems a statement, not an oversight. He flicks his cigarette butt with a practiced air as he nears Evan.
Evan feels his heartbeat tick up a notch, his rib cage bump-bump-bumping against his worn-thin T-shirt. In the approaching Ray-Bans, he sees his twinning reflections, small and pathetic. He clears his throat to speak.
The Mystery Man backhands him.
Not with full force, but not holding back either. The blow snaps Evan’s head on the stalk of his neck, spins him down onto all fours, a cord of crimson-lined drool connecting his lower lip to the asphalt.
The voice comes from behind and over him. “Lesson one. Be ready. Now, get the fuck outta here.”
The static clears from Evan’s vision by degrees. He stands up, wipes his lip. “What’s lesson two?”
Mystery Man swallows, surprised. He glances over at the dark sedan, and for the first time Evan senses nervousness in his body language. And Evan realizes: The car doesn’t belong to the Mystery Man.
The Mystery Man hesitates, as if trying to read the dark windshield. Then he shakes his head with disgust. “All right. You want another shot? Tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
As Evan runs home, the shame burns out of him at last, hot tracks down his face. Van Sciver is waiting in the bedroom and no one else. Word has spread. He holds his belt, looped once, the ends clenched in his wide fist.