Stony sat next to him on the bed. He touched Albert's chest with an outspread palm. Albert gasped, focused his eyes on his brother.

"Ssh." Stony eased Albert back down on his pillow. Albert fretted and whimpered but fell back to sleep almost immediately, his hand closing around Stony's arm. Stony stared at his brother, then gently ran a hand over his face, his chest, his crotch, his legs. Albert's face had a petulant frown as if he were in the middle of a nightmare. Stony freed his wrist from Albert's grip.

He returned to the living room.

"Ah was talkin'...ah was talkin' to a cat th' other naht, he say what ev-bahdy lookin' for today is escap-ism." The record clicked off and Stony was alone with his thoughts. He collapsed on the couch, one arm flung across his eyes. Take care of his own. One of us. You don't do the hospital Monday, don't come by Monday night. Butler. Bastard. Stony crossed his arms in front of his chest, stared at his biceps. "I'm a man! Mah father's a man! Mah uncle's a man! You, you're a fuckin' pantyhose salesman an' you're tryna fuck me up! Stony ran back into the bedroom and dialed Butler's number. After two rings he quietly replaced the receiver. "Ah, bullshit," he muttered. Fresh air. Need some fresh air. He fumbled for his dungarees and stumbled out of the apartment.

***

Efram Concepción was the security guard on the midnight to 8:00 A.M. shift for the Roosevelt Loop section of Co-op City. For $140 a week he hung around jerking off his nightstick five nights a week while the three high rises and six town houses on his beat slept. Usually he was an easygoing lay-back guy, but tonight he was in a mean and twisted head. Five hours earlier his wife had discovered a diaphragm in his sixteen-year-old daughter's bottom dresser drawer and all hell broke loose. For the first time in his life he struck his daughter—knocked her right out of her platform shoes. Puta! She ran from the house cursing as his wife cried and fluttered around like a bird out of its cage. He took the diaphragm, holding it with delicate disgust as if it were a huge dead roach and dropped it down the incinerator. When he left for work at eleven, his daughter was still out. Now at three-thirty he was sitting on a bench in Roosevelt Loop, his face rigid, his back straight as a ramrod, steadily slapping his nightstick into his open palm, his brain filled with images of low income housing, all-nigger gang bangs, cocksuckings, ass fuckings. Those god-damn platform shoes... He got up and paced his beat like a caged animal. He gripped his nightstick so tightly his knuckles were almost translucent with tension.

He wheeled around at the noise. Thirty yards away a half-naked teen-ager stood in the doorway of one of the high rises. He stepped forward, stopped, then headed for the garage. "Hey! Yo!" Concepción strode toward the lurching form. At the barking command, Stony stopped dead in his tracks. He inhaled, hitched up his pants and slowly turned. Shit. Sergeant Garcia.