“Same as everybody else. Warned me off the Payton case. I can’t believe Ike the Spike is a deputy. I figured he played pro football or something.”

Sam shrugs. “He was a cop first. After he put in his twenty there, he went to the sheriff’s department. He’s a bad son of a bitch, Penn. Even the blacks don’t like him.”

“What do you mean? He was a hero.”

“Ransom was one of the first black cops. I heard those guys had to prove they’d be tough on their own people to keep their jobs. Some people say Ransom was worse than white cops.”

“Great.”

Sam cranks the Hummer. “Forget Del Payton. Take care of your own. And if somebody fucks with you, give me a call. I can still pull your slack if you need me.”

I squeeze his shoulder. “Sounds like a plan. Thanks.”

He backs out of the driveway and roars away, the echoes reverberating off the houses on the silent street.

I walk into the garage and lean against the trunk of my mother’s Maxima. The high whistling cheeep of crickets rises to a manic drone, overpowering the buzz of the streetlight overhead and giving me a strange sense of peace. Our street looks almost exactly as it did thirty-five years ago, when we moved in. A few houses have changed color, some trees have disappeared, others have grown. But for the most part it’s the same.

In the corner of our yard stands a huge oak. When I was a boy, a wisteria vine grew around its trunk, spiraling around and around until it reached the high branches. My friends and I used to splay our bare feet on that vine, spread our arms wide around the trunk, and see how high we could work our way up and around the tree before we fell. I never won those contests; I had too much imagination to successfully block out my fear. Back then the vine was the thickness of a boy’s wrist. Now it’s thicker than my thigh and looks as though it will soon strangle the old oak like a boa constrictor.

The drone of an engine cuts through the hot night air. As promised, Ike the Spike’s cruiser turns the corner and rolls to a stop at the end of our driveway.

I push off the Maxima and walk toward the street.

CHAPTER 12

The inside of the cruiser smells like a black man sweating. I know the odor from summer jobs digging ditches and riding in trucks with men who gave off a different scent than I did—no worse but harder somehow, distinctive enough for me to know it forever. I pull the door shut, closing myself into an oppressive square completed by the dashboard, a wire mesh screen, and Deputy Ike Ransom.

“Let’s take a ride,” he says.

“How about you tell me what I’m doing here?”