Answering the door was a short, stark-faced woman East had seen once before somewhere. On her hair she wore a jeweled black net. Her mouth was thin and colorless, slashed in. She showed them inside, then retreated, into a kitchen where something bubbled but gave no smell.
The room was empty, bare, brown wood floors. The drawn blinds muted the daylight into purples. A lonely nail on the walls here and there told of people who’d lived here once. There were two guns there too, Circo and Shawn. East had seen them before. It was never good, seeing them.
“Everyone get out your house when it happen?” asked Shawn. He was a tall kid, like Johnny.
“Little bitch didn’t even give us a heads-up,” flared Sidney.
East ignored it. It wasn’t Sidney he had to answer to now. He wondered how much about it everyone knew.
Shawn wiped out the inside of his cheek with a finger and bit his lips unpleasantly.
“Gonna need me in Westwood tomorrow?”
“Depends. See what the day brings,” said Sidney. “Miracles happen.”
Shawn laughed once, more of a cough. He patted the bulk in the pocket of his jeans approvingly.
A security system beeped, and down the hall a door opened—just a click and a whisper of air. The woman exited the kitchen softly, on bare feet, and turned down the hall. She slipped inside the cracked door and shut it. A moment later it beeped open again. East watched the woman. She had a spell about her, like her time in this world was spent arranging things in another.
She pointed at East, Sidney, and Johnny. “You can come,” she said calmly.
East had been in rooms like this before, where guns had talked vaguely amongst themselves. Until today, the day he’d lost the house, he’d found it exciting. Today he was glad to be summoned away. He caught a scent trailing from her body as he followed, and inhaled. Usually if he got this close to a woman, it was a U, heading in or out. Or one working the sidewalk, or stained from the fry grill. This woman was perfumed with something strange that didn’t come out of a bottle. He held his breath.
The net in her hair glistened: tiny black pearls.
The system beeped again as she unsealed the door.
—
Fin’s room: unlit except for two candles. He sat in a corner, barefoot and cross-legged atop a dark ottoman, his head bowed as if in prayer, a candle’s gleam splitting his scalp in two. He was a big man, loose and large, and his shoulders loomed under his shirt.
This room had a dark, soft carpet. A second ottoman sat empty in the center of the room.
Fin raised his head. “Take off your shoes.”
East bent and scuffled with his laces. In the doorway behind them appeared Circo, a boy of nineteen with a cop’s belt, gun on one side and nightstick on the other. He stuck his nose in, looked around, and left. Good. The door beeped as the woman pulled it shut behind her.
Johnny took a cigarette out.
“Don’t smoke in here, man,” Fin said.
Johnny fumbled it back into the pack. “I’m sorry.”
“House is for sale.” Fin wiped the back of his head. “Purchase it if you like. Then you can do whatever you want.”
The three boys arranged their shoes by the door.
Dust curled and floated above the candles. Fin sat waiting, like a schoolteacher. When he spoke, it was with an ominous softness.
“What happened?”
Sidney answered, grievous, wheezing. “No warning, man. Paying a whole crew of boys out there. When the time came, no one made a call. Didn’t shout, didn’t do shit.”
“I did call you,” East protested.
“When there was police already banging on the door.”
So Sidney was here to saw him off.
“Why didn’t they call?” Fin said it quietly, amused, almost as if he were asking himself.
Sidney jostled East forward unnecessarily. This meant him: this was his why.
“There was a lot going on,” East began.
Fin, quizzical: “A lot?”
“Fire trucks. House fire,” East said. “Lots of noise. The ends—Needle, Dap—maybe that’s what they was thinking: police going to the fire. Maybe. I mean, I ain’t spoken to them yet, so I can’t say.”
“I think your boys know to call when they see a police.”
“Oh, yes, they know,” East said. “Oh, yes.”
“And why ain’t you talked to them?”
“Something goes wrong, stay off the phone,” East answered, “like you taught.”
Fin looked from East to Sidney and back.
“Was there a fire for real?”
“I saw smoke. I saw trucks. I didn’t walk and look.”
“Maybe it don’t matter,” said Fin quietly, “but I might like to know.” He gave East a hard look and then veiled his eyes. East felt a beating in his chest like a bird’s wing.
A minute passed before Fin spoke again. “Close every house,” he said. “Tell everybody. Submarine. I don’t want to hear anything. I hate to say it, but people gonna have to look elsewhere a few days.”
“I got it,” said Sidney. “But what are we gonna do?”
“Nothing,” Fin said. “Close my houses down.”