Gaskins pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head and checked himself in the mirror. The landscape work was keeping him in shape. He had thrown weights in prison regular, so it wasn't like he'd ever fallen off. Compact and with thick, muscular thighs, he had been a pretty fair back in his youth, a low-to-the-ground Don Nottingham type, hard to grab, hard to bring down. He had played Pop Warner in the city but drifted away from it when he got involved with some corner boys in the Trinidad neighborhood, where he'd come up. Coach had tried to keep him in it, but Gaskins was too smart for that. There was money to be made, and all the things that went with it. And he'd gotten those things, too. For a short while. He could have been a fair halfback, though, if he'd stayed past the tenth grade at Phelps. But he had been too smart.

He walked into Brock's room, as messy as a teenage boy's. Brock was sitting on the bed, checking the load of a Gold Cup.45.

'That new?' said Gaskins.

'Yeah.'

'What happened to your other piece?'

'I traded up,' said Brock.

'Why you got to bring it?'

'I always carry when I work. You gonna need a roscoe, too.'

'Why?'

'I spoke to the man,' said Brock. 'Fishhead gonna give us something for tonight.'

'What kinda somethin?'

'Something good, is all I know. The man say we gonna get us some real.'

'I shouldn't even be in a car with someone got a gun. We get searched, that's an automatic nickel for me.'

'Then stay here. I can find someone else to back me up.'

Gaskins looked him over. Boy was headed for prison or a grave, and neither one of those prospects made him shudder. Long as he left a rep behind. Wasn't like Gaskins was gonna stop it from happening. But he had to try.

'What you got for me?' said Gaskins.

Brock pulled a piece of oilskin out from under his bed. Inside the cloth was a nine-millimeter automatic. He handed it to Gaskins.

'Glock Seventeen,' said Brock.

'Shit is plastic,' said Gaskins.

'It's good enough for the MPD.'

'Where'd you get it?'

'Gun man down there in Landover?'

Gaskins inspected the weapon. 'No serial number?'

'Man filed it off.'

'That there's another automatic fall. You don't even have to be using the motherfucker; they catch you with shaved numbers, you goin back in on a felony charge.'

'Why you so piss-tess?'

'Tryin to teach you somethin.'

Gaskins released the magazine, thumbed the top shell, and felt pressure against the spring. He pushed the magazine back into the grip with his palm. He holstered it behind the waistband of his jeans, grip rightward so that he could reach it naturally with his right hand. It felt familiar against his skin.

'You ready?' said Gaskins.

'Now you talkin,' said Brock.

Ivan Lewis had been called Fishhead most of his life because of his long face and the way his big eyes could see things without his having to turn his neck. It wasn't that he looked like a real fish, but more that he looked liked a cartoon version of one. Even his mother, up to the day she passed, had called him Fish.

He was coming from his sister's place, walking down Quincy Street in Park View, looking at what the new people were doing to the houses he had been knowing his whole life. He never thought Park View would gentrify, but the evidence of it was on every block. Young black and Spanish buyers with down-payment money were fixing up these old row homes, and some pioneer white folks were, too. Shoot, a couple of white boys had opened up a pizza parlor on Georgia earlier in the year. Whites starting up businesses again in the View, that was something Fishhead thought he'd never see.

Not that the gamers had gone away. There was plenty of dirt being done on this side of Georgia, especially down around the Section Eights on Morton. And the Spanish had gripped up much of the avenue's west side, into Columbia Heights. But property owners were making improvements around here, house by house.

Fishhead Lewis wondered how a man like him was gonna fit in this town much longer. Once people put money into their homes, they didn't want to see low-down types walking out front their properties, not even on the public sidewalks. These folks voted, so they could make things happen. Now you had politicians, like that ambitious light-skinned dude, councilman for that area up top of Georgia, trying to make laws about loitering and stopping cats from buying single cans of beer. Shoot, not everyone wanted a six-pack or could afford one. Friends of Fishhead said, 'How they gonna discriminate?' Fishhead had to tell them, with money and power behind you, you damn sure could. The light-skinned dude, he didn't really care about folks hanging out, and he didn't care if a man wanted to enjoy himself one beer on a summer night. But he was running for mayor, so there it was.

He turned into an alley behind Quincy, up by Warder Place. There, idling down at the end of the alley, was a black Impala SS. They were waiting on him where they liked to do.

Fishhead did not have a payroll job. He made money by selling information. Heroin users were perfect for such work. They went places other people couldn't go. They heard dope and murder gossip that went deeper than the ghetto telegraph of the stoop and the barbershop. They seemed harmless and pitiful, but they had ears, a brain, and a mouth that could speak. Addicts, testers, cutters, and prostitutes were inside to the extreme, and the best informants on the street.

Fishhead had got something that morning. He had heard about it from a boy he knew, worked at a cut house in lower LeDroit. Boy said some pure white was coming in tomorrow from New York, to be distributed by a man looking to become a player but not yet there. A man not plugged into a network, what they called a consortium, with other dealers. An independent with no one to watch his back but an underling who was hoping to go along for the ride.

Fishhead was looking to get out of his sister's basement. It had been their mother's house, but the sister had managed to claim it, and the inheritance, with the help of a lawyer. Because she did have a conscience, she allowed him a room downstairs, rent-free but with no kitchen privileges and a lock on the door leading up to the first floor. It was not much more than a mattress, a hot plate for cooking, a cooler, and a toilet with a stand-up shower, had roaches crawling on the floor. He didn't blame her for treating him like a dog you didn't let upstairs. All the shit he'd done to disappoint his family, he could understand it. But no man, not even a low-ass doper like him, should have to live like that.

This information he had today was his way out. He had been getting low that morning with his cut man friend when the dude started talking. Matter of fact, Fishhead had just pushed down on the plunger when the news came his way. He hoped he had heard it right.

Fishhead slipped into the backseat of the SS and settled down on the bench.

'Charlie the mother-fuckin tuna,' said Brock, under the wheel. He did not turn his head but communicated with his eyes via the rear-view. 'What you got for us, slim?'

'Somethin,' said Fishhead. He liked the drama of giving it up slow. Also, he didn't care for Romeo Brock. Slick boy, always looking down from his high horse. The quiet one, his older cousin, he was all right. And tougher than the boy with the mouth.

'Give it up,' said Brock. 'I'm tired of these bullshit plays. Tired of shakin change out the pockets of kids.'

'That's what you do,' said Fishhead. 'Ya'll rob independents got no protection. Most times, they be kids. If they was men, shit, they'd be connected, and it would come back on you.'

'Said I'm ready to move up from that.'

'Well, I got somethin.'