Chapter One

Izzy wondered what you called a stickup kid who was thirty-eight.

Leaning against a cement rooftop banister, a high wind smacking his ears, he scanned the modest Queens skyline, Manhattan looming behind like a graveyard. The street below was a residential wash of redbrick, from brownstones to small housing complexes with grassy courtyards. Through the misting rain an ethnic jumble of blue-collar and professional city commuters were gridlocked in their rush to unwind. Izzy intermittently glanced at a window through a pair of opera binoculars he had picked up in the West Village. He breathed in the moist evening. The dim gray sun waned as factory smoke became visible against the dark. These were familiar, tedious hours, a deep breath before the push.

“Ben doesn’t show up quick and I’ma cut his ass,” hissed Mal.

“No hurry. Their man’s not there yet,” said Izzy, in his easiest voice. No stress, don’t sweat Benny, relax, Izzy thought to himself. Izzy could always tell Mal to relax, even before they were about to rob somebody.

Izzy had never heard of a stickup man. His people never said it. Cops never said it. An eighty-year-old could rob a drug spot, and they’d call him a stickup kid. Maybe stickup boy. Spot rusher. Jack boy. But again, he’d never heard of a jack man. Cops might say holdup man. But that was for when legitimate spots, like a bank or a convenience store, got held up. Izzy never robbed a legitimate spot before. They didn’t really have cash anyway. Seemed wrong that robbing someone legit made you a man, while Izzy was stuck being called “kid.” He liked “Banger” better, like Mal had said after their first bang. “We the Bangers.” That way he didn’t sound like he was sixteen.

“You ever heard of a stickup man?” asked Izzy.

Mal shook his head. “Maybe someplace. Like in an old seventies cop show or some shit. But people always seem to say stickup kid.”

“You a kid?” asked Izzy.

“I’m whatever.”

Do-rag and hoody over his XXL ironed white tee, Mal would forever dress like he was sixteen.

“How ’bout ‘Banger’?”

“Why you care? You printing business cards or something?” asked Mal.

Izzy shrugged, turning back to face the street and checking his black rubber watch. “The first pitch . . .” he said to himself, annoyed he was missing the game. He immediately regretted saying it, knowing Mal couldn’t stand to watch a moment of baseball.

“The national pas-time is victimless crime,” chanted Mal from behind, drawing out the rhyme. Maybe he heard Izzy, maybe not.

Izzy picked up on the song in Mal’s head, saying the next line to himself. Repeat it to yourself. This is a victimless crime.

The redbrick facade of the brownstone stood shoulder to shoulder with others just like it, nothing to indicate that twelve uniforms had once broken down the door and scaled the fire escape. Only the neighbors could know about the current of characters that Izzy and Mal had seen streaming through—short blacks in Big and Tall white tees; flashy Dominicans with gold sunglasses and cowboy boots; chicken- heads with their hair and clothes in ribbons, popping gum in six-inch heels, pistols in their purses.

Izzy checked on the crew through his brass-rimmed binoculars. Within the oversized living room window Charlie Brown and his dumb hip-hop boys argued while playing video games—another in a series of middlemen who could afford to sell weight, not have to step on it and push vials. Izzy recognized their malaise of hustle and gratification, one second barking orders and making deals on a cell, the next blazing up and playing video games, watching TV, or getting ass; whatever happened to be in front of them. Izzy could see the electronic football play in Charlie Brown’s eyes, his mouth hanging open in focus like a nine-year-old’s. Half a mil in cash was on its way through, and this guy was running the show.

A while ago, Izzy had tried to be a hustler, but the relentless scheming and uncertainty were too much for him. He had known some who were good at it—too good at it. Men like Shea Mason, who kept so many transactions and facades in motion at once it seemed inevitable that gravity would catch up; well-connected men with a deal in every borough and a girl for every deal. That kept Izzy away— doing business meant deals, and deals meant trusting people, which Izzy didn’t do. Yet here he was, partnered up with a man he couldn’t call trustworthy. Not that Mal would snake him on the take; he just liked the violence too much, got reckless. But Izzy could trust him to get reckless, trust him to muscle up when he got scared, the way you could always trust a man to be himself.

The shorter, darker Mal paced the roof with the abruptness of an angry chef, curses announced by his posture. His small eyes restlessly shifted in his elongated head, bottom lip set just to the left of his upper, crooked face too big for his thin frame. Over his hoody, Mal wore a long, black overcoat to conceal his baby, a short-nosed shotgun with a pistol grip and a laser scope. Izzy would tell him it was ridiculous to have a laser scope on a sawed-off, but Mal got off on it, shining it in faces like a traffic cop with a flashlight. Stuck in his belt was a nickel-plated baby .22, with an expensive silencer. Even the shell casings they used were from robberies and wouldn’t help the police any. Izzy had two .22s on him just like Mal’s, wore a shoulder strap with a holster on either side for his pistols, and a pair of all black Gary Sheffield batting gloves.

Izzy bore the weight of the heavy steel naturally. It wasn’t that he loved guns. He figured one would kill him one day, but he was most comfortable with his enemy close by.

One rule was known between Izzy and Mal—you kill one; we kill them all. The only time they had to worry about the cops was if they killed somebody. Somehow, taking drugs, money, and guns off drug dealers never seemed to bother the NYPD. The bodies were the problem.

The only time they had to lay anybody out was on account of a woman. It was in a row house basement deep in East New York. Izzy could still smell that moldy draft, the sweat of panicking hustlers. All was well until the young one pissed himself. Izzy was tying the other’s wrist when Mal caught the scent.