He did not slack pace though. His only friend might be dying back there. He ran down Orchard Lane into the Dominican project and saw two men standing guard with bats and motorcycle helmets on at the end of Rico’s street on either side of a parked car—a car parked sideways like a roadblock—and they moved to stop him.

Dillon cut left, then right, then hurdled the car to their curses of “Whiteboy,” and tore for Uncle Cholo’s front door with one of them hot on his heels, breathing like a fat fiend, as Uncle Cholo came out the front door in his shorts, sandals and wife-beater, pointed a pistol at him—an old kind of revolver—and said with menace to spare, “What da fuck you trespassin’ here for witout my nephew—ha whiteboy!?”

Dillon stopped, put hands to knees and said, panting, “Skinnies sir, five adult males on chem-khat. Rico sent me for you.”

The man roared, “Saddle up, people. It’s on—to the school track.”

He then turned to Dillon and hissed in his ear, “Get da fuck away from me coward whiteboy,” then pushed him along and said, “Let my Rico’s pet whiteboy go—saddle the fuck up!”

The roar of car engines, three, a lot for one block, filled the air [nobody could afford gas on Dillon’s street] and came to a crescendo and then with screeches, they were off and Dillon kept running avoiding the evil stares of the boys his age and older who all curled their lips and narrowed their gaze at him, and ran with even more fear from the dreamy look of Lenita, Rico’s 13-year-old cousin, who eyed him brazenly and blew him a kiss that could only get him killed if he was ever unlucky enough to have caught it.