The girl scared him a little. Her hair stuck up from her head in spikes. Her roots were jet black and the ends purple. She was a beauty, with smooth dusky skin and intense dark eyes. It couldn’t be more than fifty-five degrees today, and the sky was pouring cold rain to boot, but she stood with one hip cocked in a stretchy black sports bra and a very small green leather skirt. A silver ring had been inserted into her belly button. Danny rubbed his own midriff against a reflexive sympathy pain.

One of the boys came forward, his chin jutting, ready to protect his territory. Danny pushed his hands into his jeans pockets, a deliberately nonthreatening gesture. He hadn’t been off the streets so long that he didn’t remember how it was.

“Who’re you?” the kid asked.

“The answer to your prayers. And you would be?”

He didn’t answer but one of the other boys stepped forward. “How come you want to know?”

“So I can call you something besides ‘Hey, you.”’

Glances were exchanged. The girl sidled up to join the other two. “Well, I’m Cia.”

“Hi, Cia. Are you going to play basketball in those boots?”

She looked down at her feet. They were encased in more leather with chunky, killer heels. “Who said anything about basketball?”

He had his work cut out for him, Danny thought.

He kept his eye on the one boy who hadn’t yet come forward. He was bone thin with dark hair that had been cut ruthlessly short. One to watch, Danny thought. There was something about him, something that said he was more desperate than the others. There was a certain hollowness to his eyes.

The other kids scattered as Danny passed by them beneath the awning, but the loner held his ground. Only his eyes moved as Danny walked past him. Danny pulled open the rickety screen door to the center, then he paused to read the graffiti on the bricks to one side of it. It was significantly more creative than it had been in his own youth.

“Is that even physically possible?” He nodded in the direction of the words scrawled in red paint.

The first boy snorted. “Not for you, maybe. I can pull it off.”

Cia laughed. “In your dreams, Lester.”

So he had Cia and Lester, Danny thought. So far so good. “Meet me inside on the court in fifteen minutes.”

“What for?” Lester demanded.

“I’m going to teach you guys basketball.” If not today, then tomorrow, Danny thought, but sooner or later they’d come into his gym.

He stepped through the door into a vestibule floored with cracked blue linoleum. The walls had once been white, but they were filthy now with graffiti of their own. There was a single door to his left and double, swinging doors straight ahead. The door to the side wore a small metal sign that read office. Danny went forward. He pushed through the double doors and stepped into the gym.

A glance around told him that, surprisingly, it wasn’t in total disrepair. He could work with it, and what he couldn’t work with, he could fix. He’d never set foot in this place when he was a kid—he’d had the school gym at his disposal until Ricky had taken him under his wing and had shown him more lucrative ways to spend his time.

Thoughts of Ricky had his heart seizing a little. Best to take care of that little problem straight off the bat, he thought. Otherwise he wouldn’t live long enough to coach anybody.

Beyond a door at the back of the gym were stairs. The light bulb overhead was burned out so Danny made his way up cautiously, finally stepping into a single room, half of it given over to a sofa bed of deep, depressing green. The other half of the room was taken up by a kitchen straight out of the sixties. Danny didn’t have to open the bathroom door to know that the facilities in there would be prehistoric. He spotted an old rotary-type telephone on a coffee table in front of the sofa and he went straight for it.

He dialed in the number from memory, glancing at his watch. It was two o’clock. Ricky would be home. He was the type who did his prowling at night.

The line picked up midway through the second ring. “H’lo.”

“Some problems never go away,” Danny said calmly. “They just lie dormant for a while.”

He was gratified by a pause before Ricky Mercado spoke. “So you’re out. I heard they were going to spring you sometime this week.”

He’d loved the guy like a brother. But Danny didn’t feel like playing games. “You heard about it the instant I stepped through that jailhouse door this morning and you were waiting for this call.” He knew the way it worked. He knew too much. Therein lay the problem.

He was still as much of a threat to Carmine as he had been six years ago, Danny thought, when the mob had framed him and had him put away because he’d left their ranks. The fact that he had remained silent for six years, not singing like a bird to gain his own release, would hold minimum sway with the old man even now. Danny knew he was alive only because Ricky had probably interceded for him back then, convincing his uncle to go for the prison term instead of eliminating the problem of Danny Gates entirely.

Ricky finally laughed. The sound was rich and familiar. “Okay, we kept tabs on you. So I guess you’re not calling me for a lift somewhere.”

“No. I’m already where I need to be.”

He heard Ricky accepting this in the ensuing silence. “You’re definitely still out then.”

“I’m out.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“We need to meet and work out a stalemate.”

This time Ricky didn’t hesitate. “How about tomorrow?”

“No. Friday. I’m going to need a little time.” This, Danny thought, would be the true test of how much of their friendship remained. They both knew what he was going to do with that time. “Can you hold Carmine and the others off until then?”

“I guess I have to.”

Danny let himself breath again. Cautiously.

“I’ll meet you at the country club at one o’clock,” Ricky said.

Danny thought about that. As long as Ricky had kept his nose reasonably clean these past six years, meeting with him wouldn’t be a violation of his parole. It wasn’t against the law for an ex-con to meet with a suspected mobster—yet. “You haven’t been charged with anything while I was gone?”

“Bro, I’m way too clever.”

Same old Ricky, Danny thought. “I thought I was, too.”

Ricky ignored that. “Friday. One o’clock. In the Yellow Rose Café.”

Danny’s eyes narrowed hard and fast, like blinds slapping down to cover a window. It worried him that Ricky hadn’t chosen the Men’s Grill for old time’s sake. “Why the change?” he asked.

“Because the grill isn’t there anymore. Somebody blew it clear to China last month.”

“No kidding?”

“Sky-high, buddy. It’s a pile of rubble.” Ricky laughed again.

Danny didn’t ask if the Mercados had been behind the explosion. It was just one more thing he didn’t need to know. “All right. The Café, then. In the meantime you’ve got my back, right?”

“You’re covered.”

For now, Danny thought. After Friday, who knew?

He disconnected and shifted his shoulders back and forth, trying to rock some of the tension out of them. Then he cocked his head to the side. From downstairs came the thump-thump-thumping sound of a basketball hitting the gym floor. He grinned to himself. The kids had already come inside.

He returned to the stairs and trotted down, then he went still, holding the door to the gym open with one hand. Whatever was going on out there more closely resembled a game of keep-away than basketball. And it didn’t resemble keep-away much at all. He suspected this all had something to do with the woman who had pulled the kids inside onto the court while he’d been upstairs.

As he watched, she more or less tackled Cia on the hard flooring and began tickling her. The two of them came up gasping for breath. Somehow Cia managed to keep her modesty in that tiny skirt. Then the woman sprang to her feet again. Laughing, she scraped her hands through her hair, pulling it back from her face. It was a wild mass of curls that had hidden her features, but when it was swept clear, Danny saw delicate cheekbones and a spattering of freckles across her nose.