“The developers are at it again, and we are the ones who will pay. Your neighbors are being evicted to make room for luxury condos. Again!” She was fired up and speaking much too fast, but she had a voice like a young Lauren Bacall. Or Barbara Stanwyck. Ted almost stopped to hear her say something else. A voice like that worked directly on the more primitive parts of his brain.

He forced himself to keep going. Beautiful women were a distraction at the least and potentially dangerous. He stuffed the flyer in his pocket.

“Hey. Where’re you going?” she asked.

“Sorry, I don’t speak English.” Her mouth dropped open. He stepped by her before she could close it. “Let’s go, Lester.” Ted took his elbow and propelled him down Sutphin Boulevard.

“If you’re not part of the solution,” she yelled after him, “you’re part of the problem!”

A bodega near the corner was doing a good business in Powerball tickets. A half-dozen believers were queued up for the window on the street. The faces, though ranging in color from pale white through various shades of tan and brown to deep black, all shared the same expression—stony acceptance of defeat combined with the anxiety of hope. Ted passed them and pulled Lester aside outside a stationery store that specialized in leases, deeds, wills, legal forms.

“Where did you come from?” Ted asked, pushing Lester back against the building. “Who the hell sent you to me?” Ted didn’t know exactly what to believe at that point, but finding Lester was no coincidence.

“Take your hands off me,” Lester said, though after the initial push, Ted had kept his hands at his sides.

“Answer me,” Ted said, leaning in and over the smaller man.

“Nobody. I heard about this deal Richie was working, and I wanted in. That’s it.”

“Who tipped you to it?”

“Are you kidding? Richie bragged to anyone who would listen. He was finally hitting a homer, he said.”

Ted backed off. It made perfect sense. That was exactly what Richie would have done; he had always talked a better game than he played. And Lester? Ted couldn’t blame him for having the balls to insinuate himself once Richie was gone.

And Lester had already shown he had potential. Ted needed him. He made a decision.

“I’ll pay a hundred a day—that’s a lot more than Richie ever cleared—and if there is a payout at the end of this, I’ll see you get a cut. Don’t ask me how much, because I don’t want you wasting time calculating it in your head. Odds are, we work this and end up with nothing. Are we good?”

“You pay expenses.”

Ted smiled. Exactly what he had told Cheryl. “Agreed.”