Malone was called “Bingo” because he liked to say the word so much. Looking at him now, as bad as he was, Devlin had no doubt that “Bingo!” still punctuated his every sentence. It had in 1980, on a gray winter afternoon when Malone caught sight of Devlin walking through Tompkins Square Park. A bitterly cold day: Devlin’s ears rang with it, as brittle as a pair of brass bells.

“Hey, Devlin, my man! Here you down among the downtrodden! Bingo! How the mighty have fallen! What happened to the Toast of Broadway?”

Only then did Devlin place the verbal tic with the man’s name. Thinner than ever, in old war-surplus khakis, shivering against the wind, spittle drying in the corner of his mouth, Malone went on. “You fucker, you know you did me! Look at you lookin’ at me! Goddamn! Well, look where doin’ me got you! You’re no better off than I am, fucker, and I can see it in your motherfuckin’ eyes.”

“Yeah. I know,” Devlin said, moving on toward Avenue A, “I ruined your life.”

Devlin could remember what he’d thought that day: You beat one girl too many. No remorse in 1980, no remorse today, watching Malone in rags, panhandling, tugging at sleeves. He was a few years younger than Devlin, and lucky to have lived this long. Murder was the leading cause of death among young black males, and for a long time, early in his manhood, Malone had made an awful lot of people want to kill him. Women he hit, for the most part, ripped-off and beaten Johns, cornball victims of the Murphy game, their knuckles sore from pounding on doors for girls who weren’t on the other side, drunks Malone mugged, and other targets of opportunity—Malone had nothing but contempt for them all. When Devlin gave him a warning, Malone told Devlin to fuck off. Then Malone beat a girl from Wisconsin—Devlin remembered that much about her, and that she was big, maybe five feet ten, not pretty, not smart. Malone broke her arm, three ribs, her jaw, cheekbone, and nose, knocked out five teeth, and left her eyeball hanging half out of the socket. Devlin saw that. Homely to start with, she was going to wind up looking like an old prizefighter. She wouldn’t say Malone did it, but other girls did, and other pimps couldn’t stop yakking about it. According to Devlin’s informants, Malone all but crowed in his glory, as if he had changed the course of history with his will alone, teaching that bitch a lesson, ushering in a new era in human relations, one in which Clarence “Bingo” Malone would be free to do whatever he wanted to anybody. Eventually he would kill somebody.

So Devlin framed him.