“The doctor said he was stabbed and beaten, that it would have taken hours to inflict that kind of damage.”
“Sure.”
I turned to look at him. “If Gabriel can’t get to Kady, can you?”
It took several minutes for him to answer me. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
He cleared his throat. “Just so you know, it’s a big jump from defending yourself to killing someone. You’re talking about premeditation, right? That’s a whole other thing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, taking a breath.
He cleared his throat. “Did Kady come on to you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I ain’t pretty enough for Ellis Kady, or white enough.”
He scoffed.
“What? I’m not,” I said, holding up my arm, pushing the sweater up so he could see my dark-bronze skin. “I’m darker than you, man.”
He grunted because that was a slight exaggeration.
“And you’re prettier than me,” I teased him. “And you’ve got the cool green eyes; mine are just boring-ass brown.”
Deep annoyed sigh, and I smiled just a little.
“I wonder why that is; your eyes, I mean. I bet there’s a white guy back in your family tree somewhere, huh?”
He was ignoring me.
“I should have the green eyes, since in with the Cuban, there’s Spanish and some German and some French too.”
“Are you still talking?”
“You know, if we were coffee, I’d be something with caramel in it and you’d be, like, a cafe mocha or some shit.”
“Please stop talking.”
I chuckled, turning back to my window, the raindrops hitting it hard now, blurring the world outside.
“Tell me the truth . Did Kady come on to you?”
I coughed softly. “Once.”
“And?”
“He wanted to see what a guy from the hood was like in bed.”
He scoffed.
I turned to look at his profile. “Why is that funny?”
“You? From the hood?” He snickered. “That’s good.”
I grunted because I knew it. My mother had married my father and they had moved to Troy, supposedly away from all the things that could hurt them. After my father was killed walking across the street on his way home, my mother went to work as an office manager for a man who owned a string of dry cleaning stores. She liked it, but it wasn’t enough to take care of her and my sister. So I helped out, putting my sister through college, helping my mother pay the mortgage and her bills, making sure that I stepped in where my father, Donald Bean, would have. I missed the man a lot.
Even after ten years, I still could have used his advice. Mostly I missed that he had never met Landry. I would have liked to see them sit together and talk. I had told him I was gay, and my dad had given me the nod and said okay. He wasn’t sure that I knew everything at fourteen, but he agreed that my sexual orientation was one of those things I could be sure of. He had been surprised but never judgmental or angry or anything. He was the sort of father every kid should have: kind, supportive, and loving.
“Are you listening to me?”
I hadn’t been, I realized. My mind was drifting instead of listening to Conrad. “No, man, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, but look, now, I need you to go into that glove compartment and get the gun there.”
I didn’t really want to, but what was I going to do if somebody broke in during the night? The bat I kept under my bed wouldn’t help if the guys invading my home were armed, and I had to be really close to use my butterfly knife.
“You need a gun.” Conrad shrugged. “The life you have, the life I can’t convince you to leave… you need one.”
“What’s with you and Gabe wanting me to open my restaurant now? You both know I don’t have enough, and I ain’t ready to go yet anyway. I figure three more years, maybe two, I’ll be done, but not right now. I only got sixty saved, man; I need more.”
“Landry can’t—”
“Landry’s money and mine don’t mix for dreams.”
“You used your money to get him started, and then he took out a loan for the