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  Two others had ganged up on Nap. Another one was draped against the bar, his belly pointing to the ceiling. One of the two spun my way, bringing up an arm like a ref making a call. His gun clacked, but I was already diving behind a fat pillar.

  I hunched there, heard a grunt, and came around the pillar. The gunman and Nap were mixing it up, Nap ramming one of his molded forearms under the dude's throat. The other one had been swatted against a potted plant. He now had a blade out and I lifted one of the small round tables.

  "Yo, man." I threw it and tagged his ass in the sternum. I rushed over and stomped him twice in the face before he could spit.

  "This is not good relations, Napoleon." The dude with the gun was holding one side of his head in pain. The gun was at his feet.

  "Zelmont," Nap said, throwing the cat off his bar. He moaned as he hit the floor. "Help them find the exit." Nap picked up the gun and pointed it at the guy on the floor.

  I made the guy on the bar and the one I'd hit with the ashtray carry the one I'd stepped on outside. The fourth guy, the gunman, Nap roughhoused outside.

  "You must learn to relax," the guy said. "Discuss these matters in a rational manner."

  Nap tossed the gun back to the cat, and I about peed on myself.

  "Nigga, is you crazy?" I screamed, not knowing what to do.

  The four chumps stood there but none of them did anything. Nap walked back inside. I hurried after him, shutting the door and locking it. "What in the fuck was that all about?" I was happy to hear their rides fire up.

  Nap walked to the bar, and for a second it looked like he was gonna actually pour himself a real drink. But he was true to his tofu-loving ways and got one of those liter bottles of ginger ale from underneath.

  "If you want something with more kick, help yourself, brah." One of his knuckles was bleeding. He closed his fist on some ice and tossed the cubes in a thick glass.

  "Naw, I'm cool." I copped a seat on a stool at the bar and watched him.

  Nap tipped his glass and poured his soda carefully, like a scientist mixing a secret formula. He held it up to the electric lights and swished the ice around.

  Nap's gift as a tackle was his calm. His life off the field was as wild as a sixteen-year-old nympho pulling a train in the back of a Monte Carlo. But in the game, Napoleon Graham was famous for not blowing his top. Offensive linemen from various teams compared notes in the off-season on how to get underneath my man's exterior. When he was contained like that, that's when the brain power was churning, his mind snapping shit into place.

  "So who the hell were those guys?" I asked again.

  "Little Hand," he said, taking a gulp from his glass.

  "Your new nickname?"

  Nap leaned on the bar next to me. He scratched the side of his face with a long turquoise nail. "I'm into them for some large green, Zelmont."

  "Your partners in this?" I waved a hand around.

  "Yeah." He tipped his glass, looking at the bottom.

  "Say, Nap. You was the one always advisin' me to get off the pipe and blow and save my scratch. You was the one who made all the good investments."

  He straightened up, his biceps flexing and loosening as he placed his hands flat on the bar. "And I did too. But don't forget I've got two ex-wives and had my share of palimony suitwomen and men." He showed his horse teeth. "I know you understand how it's tough keeping your dick out of trouble when junior gets an itch."

  "That guy on the cell phone the other night, the one with the accent," I said.

  "Chekka. He's the local don, or whatever the hell the Serbs in Little Hand call the leader."

  "And they came to you? Black folks, even brothers like you, don't run in that crowd, do they?"

  "They do if, like me, they've put some money into a certain commercial waste hauling business headquartered in San Pedro." He poured some more ginger ale, letting it sit in the glass. He picked up a swizzle stick whose head was shaped in the Heisman Trophy pose, then started tapping it on the bar.

  I always had a problem learning my playbook. My degree in communications from Long Beach State said more about my worth to the athletic program than it did about my focus on schooling. But once I got my mind around the information, I was on it, baby.

  "You mean Stadanko's in on this?" I said. Stadanko owned a solid-waste retrieval business called Shindar over near the docks. Hell, 'cause of Nap, I used to have some stock in the company myself.

  Nap stopped tapping the swizzle stick. "I'm not sure to what extent Stadanko is involved in the criminal end. Rudy is his cousin and seems to be the one true gangster in the family. Near as I can tell, Chekka launders cash through Shindar and other legitimate fronts."

  "Then Stadanko is his front man," I said. "But he must know what Rudy does and get his cut of the strong-arm stuff."

  "Yeah," Nap agreed, shaking his head, "I think you're right. It appears that on a day-to-day basis, Stadanko runs the franchise and Rudy runs the solid-waste business as a way to control his other enterprises. I checked, and on paper Stadanko is supposed to have sold his shares to Rudy."

  "That would make sense," I said. "Stadanko can't be linked to any thug shit, what with Weems on the warpath."

  "Yeah," the big man added, "gives him plausible deniability."

  I wasn't sure what that meant but I went on. "And he's got the city officials watching his every move too. But why'd you have us invest in his trash business in the first place?"

  Nap made a sound with his tongue. "What better way to get in good with the dude? Remember, back when I said it was a good idea to invest with Shindar, he was only one among several cats hoping they'd get the nod to be majority owner of the Barons."

  "Always keeping that back door option open, huh?" I cracked. Nap gave me a big ol' grin. "Why not? When I got out of football I had enough to live okay on."

  "But you wanted to stay in the zone, still be an operator," I finished.

  He hunched his tackle's shoulders. "You know what I'm talking about, Zelmont. Doing that play-by-play thing on ESPN wasn't gonna get it."

  "And a upscale club kept you high steppin'. But you could have gotten a regular loan, couldn't you?"

  Nap finally drank some more. "That means straightening out some credit them ex-hoes of mine fucked up. That means collateral and a business plan. That means time to line that shit up, get through the bank committee, and so forth. Meanwhile you had some other ballplayers backed by new money kids in Newport Beach salivating to get this land 'cause it's right by the new sports complex."

  I adjusted my butt on the stool. "So you had to move quick. Now what?"

  Nap looked at me dead on. "I need you and Danny to watch my back."

  I laughed. "Why don't you get your brother and his Victoria Avenue poot butts to roll up on this Little Hand?"

  "Come on, Zelmont," he said, irritated. "Those gents ain't got enough discipline to walk in a straight line if there was free Olde English at the other end. But I got to put Danny in on this, otherwise he'd get insulted."

  "We wouldn't want that."

  "But you got the savvy to keep him in line. And we can put him and his boys in motion when it's needed."

  "You soundin' like that's a for sure thing."

  "I expect to get out of this box I'm in. Come on."

  We went into his office. The room was done up in dark woods, and there were different kinds of African carvings, gargoyles, and demon statues all over. On top of a tall bookcase was a row of Nap's trophies. Of course there was a frou frou touch, with a pink and blue toilet set on a marble slab, an umbrella over it. Modern goddamn art. Through a large arched window I could see the Staples Center.

  Nap walked over to a large squat stone head sitting on a thick wood shelf. It had those ancient Mexican features with black blood in its face. He stuck his index finger in each eye, then pressed the nose, followed by flicking something behind the left ear.

  I heard a panel slide open somewhere in the room. Nap crossed to a curtain pulled back from th
e arched window. He reached behind and, like Blackstone the Magician who my mom took me to see once, produced the rabbit that made me smile. He laid a thousand and five in cash on me.

  "Every week I can pay you the same. No reporting, no trace. And if things go right, there'll be a bigger payoff."

  "Like how?"

  "Be in the moment, my brother. All will be revealed."

  It got on my nerves when he spouted that Zen shit. But a thousand and some change was looking good about then, so what could I say? "Now you know I gotta be workin' out, Nap."

  Nap banged his swizzle stick against his bottom lip. He seemed to be considering something else, but said, "That can be handled. You seen Burroughs since you been back?"

  Burroughs was a doc a lot of the guys went to for help in establishing a rehab program. Especially if you needed to be clean in a hurry. He was also useful in several other ways too. But I didn't want to get into why I hadn't. "I ain't gonna be standin' in the entrance in a top hat and one of them long coats like some doorman?"

  "You're repeating yourself, son. And don't change the fuckin' subject."

  "It must be your feminine side which sets you to worryin' so much. I'll take care of my hip."

  Nap pushed his hands up like a homey pulled over by the Highway Patrol on the Harbor Freeway at 3

  "I'm in as long as I ain't got a contract. But once that happens, I'm outta here faster'n one of Madonna's boyfriends."

  Nap bit on the end of the swizzle, breaking it off in his teeth. "That's good, Zelmont," he said, again keeping what he was thinking to himself.

  We shook hands and I went back out into the parking lot, careful like. Maybe Chekka's boys were waiting around, figuring to smoke a brother before lunchtime. They weren't and I got in my ride with no particular place to go. I could have gone to find Davida, try and make up. But she'd see through that. She knew me well enough to know I would just be doing it to get a celebration fuck out of her. She could wait.

  I had butterflies with razor wings doing loop-the-loops in my stomach. I was psyched up and couldn't quite figure out why. The danger of them gangsters had me sharp, but that wasn't it. Motherfuckahs who thought with their guns were cowardly punks anyway. You had to respect a piece, but not the fool packing it. Guns gave 'em a false sense of security. That could be handled.

  Maybe somewhere down below the usual bullshit going on in my brain I felt I had turned a corner down a hall and couldn't come back the same way. I knew I had to get to the end, wanted to get there, in fact. It was the doors along that hall I had to be up on.

  Those doors were going to open any second, and I didn't know what might be spilling out at me.

  I could have gone to the Canyon to work out. Or I could have gone over to Gold's Gym in Venice and done some reps, hit the stationary, maybe catch a bouncy little something looking for an afternoon diversion before she got to her acting class. Yeah, I could have done any one of those things. Instead I went and found me a slanger on Figueroa and bought two vials of crack. Sonofabitch recognized me too. He'd be telling stories to his partners later.

  I didn't wait until I got to the crib to light my shit either. I got a room at a hot sheet motel. The chunky Indian chick behind the glass looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. I'd strolled past two hoes out at the curb like they were invisible and hauled my big ass inside. Standing there alone at the counter, I shoved the twenty under the slot, grinning like I was natural-born country.

  Inside the room the air wasn't moving. It was like all the quickie stranger sex had been soaked into the cinder block walls and was seeping out a little bit at a time, getting absorbed into the skins of the users, then recycled back into the room. And the women like the ones prowling outside were living off the energy like it was antimatter in Star Trek.

  I clicked on the TV. An adult flick came on.

  The stem of the pipe was warm and comforting in my fingers. Narcotic vapors went up from the bowl, and that smell wasn't new in the room either. I took a pull, then another, then let the shit out. Amateurs will try to take in too much on their first suck like crack was marijuana. But the deal is to take it slow, draw it in like you're baiting a trap. Then I took a third pull and, baby, that was the bomb. On the TV two chicks were 69-ing each other.

  The hit had arrived, and I was riding on top of the engine car of the locomotive, the fumes coursing through the corpuscles in my arms, my legs, and into my skull. My ears started tingling. The buzz was on. I laid back on the bed, staring at the mirrored panels attached to the ceiling. The moaning of the couple on the screen became the cheers of the crowd. I was running for the goal line in my Barons uniform, my hip rising and falling like a well-oiled piece of machinery down the moist grass of the Coliseum.

  Nothing could stop me.

  Chapter 4

  I pretty much sleepwalked through my gig the next few days at the Locker Room. It wasn't like I had to roust the clowns looking to grab some booty on the sly or talking too loud at one of the three bars of the club. Nap had plenty of buffed dudes, and a couple of beefed-up bodybuilding chicks, to take care of that. My thing was to float, do a little backslapping, laugh, and nod my head with the out-of-towners, pose for a picture now and then. And keep sharp.

  On the third night I scoped out a couple of dudes that had to be with the Little Hand. They mumbled in that Slovakian language of theirs, and like Chekka they wore way too much Hugo Boss cologne. Like they were trying to hide the rotting smell their corrupt asses must naturally give off.

  But these two laid in the cut, assessing things for Chekka, I figured. Me and Nap watched them on the monitors he had behind a sliding section of wall fronted by those crazy statues in his office. He had several mini-cameras hidden about the club. Nap was a smart cat, always thinking ahead.

  "His name is Ondanian," Nap said, sipping on a glass of fizzy water. He tipped his head at the taller of the two on the monitor screen.

  "That don't sound like one of them Russian names like the rest of them." I wanted a hard drink but didn't want Nap to think I was slipping. My tryout was next week anyway.

  "He's Armenian," Nap said for my education. Like I knew where Armenia was compared to Bosnia. "I understand he and Chekka may be doing some business together."

  ''You mean he ain't on homeboy's payroll?''

  "Freelancer," Nap answered. "Seems he made his money in black market arms dealing to places like North Korea and Iraq."

  The two walked off and Nap killed the power to the wall of monitors. "Let's keep a watch on Ondanian, Zee. Could be he'll prove useful as a block on Chekka."

  "Cool," was all I could say. To me he was just one more hungry mountain lion circling to try to get his piece of the bull. If I got a contract, I intended to buy in with Nap, and then we could open Locker Rooms in other cities. First, though, I had a few brothers who'd kill their mamas for bus fare I was gonna sic on Chekka, Ondanian, or any other chump with a hard-to-pronounce name who was trying to strongarm my man.

  "Davida have any luck on that record thing?" We were walking back to the staircase.

  "Man, I ain't talked to that silly ho since we went at it over her so-called singing career the other day." I started down the stairs. At the main entrance, which was done up like a tunnel into a stadium, a man in a hat like Sinatra used to wear on those album covers came in. He flashed something to Rory, the doorman. Me and Nap exchanged a look.

  "I'll go see what's up." I was already in motion as I talked. I hit the bottom of the staircase and zigzagged my way through the clubbers to where the cop stood near the stage.

  "Can I help you, doc?" He was a little over average height with a wiry build. The way he looked reminded me of Tiger Woods, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Maybe he was Samoan. His pearl gray suit was crisp but out of fashion by years. Somehow, without him even talking, I knew his threads matched his personality.

  "Superstar." He leaned back against the pillar, his coat falling open to show the butt of his piece and the badge he'd reclipped
on his belt. A goofy smile pulled his mouth apart to show the gap in his front teeth.

  "Well," I managed.

  "I caught a couple of your European games on Fox."

  This boy was starting to get on my nerves. "We card 'em if they look under 25." I assumed he was vice the way he was dressed.

  "How old was Davida? Oh yeah, 27."

  "You her new squeeze?" I didn't know if I was relaxed or stressed.

  He played with the top of his hat but didn't take it off. "You been in trouble before, haven't you, Zelmont?"

  I knew that tone meant it was time to lawyer up. "Say what you came here to say, man."

  "Fahrarthat's FA-RAR." The cop squared me up. Until then I hadn't noticed, but it seemed like one of his eyes was darker than the other, or maybe it was just the low lighting.

  "So you come to sweat me?"

  He put a hand on my arm and my first instinct was to pull away. He wasn't applying any pressure, his thumb in the crook of it, his fingers on my elbow. "Davida's dead, Zelmont." He sounded like one of those fake-ass undertakers in an old Western on TNT.

  "That girl's healthy as two horses." I ought to have known, the way I'd been riding her.

  He suddenly pulled himself closer, tugging on my arm. "She was murdered," he whispered into my ear. I could feel his mismatched eyes scanning me, hoping for some sign.

  "I didn't do it, man. That's all I got to say, you understand?" Me and him stared at each other for a few ticks, then he leaned back again.

  "Her neighbors say you were over there four days ago and they could hear you two going at it."

  "Yeah?" Be cool, Zelmont. This is like the time you got busted in that motel in Decatur with the two broads and the coke. Don't say shit.

  "You O.J. her, homeboy?" Fahrar fooled with his hat again, his off-colored eye shining at me.

  "What's the matter, man?" I said, moving closer to him. Cops hate it when you invade their space. They call it challenging their authority or some shit. "You ride the pine in high school and can't stand to see a brother who's successful?"