Sinner's Ball Read Free Page B

reason?”
    â€œYou’re an only child, right?”
    â€œWhere’s this going?
    â€œCall it the pull of blood. I’m all he has.”
    â€œYou’ve got to give him that,” DeeDee said.
    â€œI would if this were a debate, DeeDee, but it’s not. It’s that little thing we call life.” She turned back to me. “That’s very noble, Steeg.”
    â€œNot really. Sometimes the law is an axe poised over the wrong bare neck.”
    â€œAnd that’s where you come in.”
    â€œPretty much.”
    Allie thought about that for a few moments, trying hard, I guess, to understand what life with me really meant.
    â€œAll right,” she said. “For now. But there’s one thing you have to promise.”
    With Allie, you were never quite home free.
    â€œName it.”
    She reached over and ran a fingertip across my cheek.
    â€œBe careful,” she said.
    Once again, all was well with the world.
    â€œI can’t believe that warehouse burned down,” DeeDee said.
    â€œThings happen,” I said.
    â€œI was there right after it was closed. Nick took Justin and me there a few months ago. Said he was getting rid of stuff and told us we could have anything we wanted.” She fingered the hem of her tank top. “Where do you think I got this?”
    A tiny little paternal alarm bell went off.
    â€œWho’s Justin?”
    DeeDee’s cheeks reddened just a bit.
    â€œJustin Hapner,” she said, in a way that made his name glow like neon. “He goes to Devereaux Academy with me. He’s a senior.”
    Devereaux was the city’s premier private school and had had the good judgment to give DeeDee a full scholarship.
    â€œWhere does he live?”
    â€œBrooklyn. Bensonhurst.”
    With that address, I figured Justin for a scholarship kid too.
    â€œHow come you never mentioned him?”
    â€œEnough with the questions.”
    â€œI like to know about your friends.”
    She glanced out the window, and jumped up from the table.
    â€œI’ve gotta run.”
    â€œWhere’re you going?” I said. “You haven’t even eaten.”
    â€œJustin’s outside,” she said, pointing to a gangly kid in a hoodie pacing out in the street. “We’re going to a concert at the South Street Seaport.”
    She was out the door in a flash.
    I turned to Allie.
    â€œWhat was that all about? I figured we’d spend the day together.”
    She smiled. “It appears your little girl has grown up.”

3
    O n my way back to Feeney’s, Benny Kim flagged me down.
    Benny was the latest incarnation of the folks who made Hell’s Kitchen vibrate like a Charlie Parker saxophone riff. People of dark melodies whose harmonics were all fluid and harsh. Men who’d left the old country behind and bowed to no one.
    Now the Irish and Germans who’d built the railroad, worked the docks, run the rackets, and operated rotgut bars and whorehouses on every corner were pretty much gone.
    Except for throwbacks like my brother.
    The new kids on the block were Koreans like Benny, and Guineans, Jamaicans, Indians, Somalis, and a sprinkle of yuppies to leaven the mix. All trying to make it. And their music was as dark and rough-edged as that of the hardscrabble people they’d replaced.
    But Benny Kim was one of a kind.
    In a city full of wannabes, he was a true artist. And his greengrocery was his canvas. Fruits and vegetables and flowers in all their glorious hues were nothing more than paints on his palette. A daub of kiwis here, a tumble of Yukon golds there, a splash of blood oranges fronting rolling mounds of Granny Smiths.
    A vibrating work of karmic balance.
    But Benny was also a realist, and he never let art get in the way of commerce. Most of his time was spent stripping week-old roses of their outer petals and peddling them as new.
    I noticed that a fresh helping of scaffolding decorated the building