“You like being his girl?”

“Sure.”

“Sure,” Ron echoed.

It took a minute for Sylvia to understand what Ron meant. “Hey, I dunno what’s goin’ on inside yer head, Ron. But get one thing down. I always been Al’s girl. Right? Ever since he was chief of th’ gang. Even before that, I was his girl. Catch?”

Ron felt as if a truck had hit him. “But . . . but . . . you and me . . .”

“I like you an awful lot, Ron. Some ways, yer nicer’n Al. Yer awful sweet. But I’m Al’s girl. Nuthin’ we can do about that.”

“Then—what you just said . . .”

She shrugged. “But I’m still his girl.”

Al was gone for three days, and all during that time Ron stayed in his own room. Davey brought him some food, but most of the time Ron stayed hungry. And sleepless. He stared into the darkness each night, thinking of Sylvia and hating himself twice over. Once for thinking of her, and again for not doing anything about it.

When Al finally got back, he was glowing with happiness. He called a council meeting up on the roof. Ron was included in the meeting.

Al paced up and down along the crunching gravel as he talked. The other guys stood or squatted on their heels. Ron stayed on the fringes of the twelve-man council, on his feet.

“Musta been twenty-five, thirty gang chiefs there,” Al said excitedly, waving his hands eagerly as he spoke. “We met in the Empire State buildin’, down on th’ ground floor. Y’know they’s a dozen gangs livin’ right inside the building? On different floors. One of ’em never comes down t’ th’ street at all! Grows its own food up on th’ roofs. Creepy.”

Ron looked at the council members. They didn’t seem very impressed. None of them could think as fast or as far as Al, Ron realized. That’s what had made Al the gang’s leader. He could plan ahead, he could see farther than any of the others. He wasn’t the best fighter among the bunch, but he could get the fighters to work together and do better as a team than they could ever hope to do as individuals.

“Why’n’t we take over th’ whole Empire State buildin’?” Dino asked, grinning. “Make some headquarters, huh?”

Al threw him a sharp glance. “No time fer jokes. The meetin’ was serious business. All th’ chiefs got together t’ figure out some way t’ stop all the raidin’. The gangs’re cuttin’ each other up too much.”

“We’re doin’ okay,” somebody said.

“So far,” Al answered. “Y’know those Muslims uptown . . . they’re all bunched up t’gether now in one big super-gang. Got a leader they call Timmy Jim.”

“Them black bastards.”

“Yeah,” Al agreed. “So far they been pretty quiet. But if they start movin’ all together, and us white gangs’re all split up, the way things are now—we’re dead meat.”

Everyone started muttering.