“On that day that there treasures shall be heated in Hell-fire, and their foreheads, and their sides, and their backs, shall be branded with them…”

The school door eased shut behind him, for he had balanced and oiled it. All of the twenty-odd pair of young eyes were on his sweat-stained form, chest heaving from his run. He nodded to the youths, sitting and doing their homework at the simple pinewood tables he had built and conditioned and that they kept polished. As their eyes all searched out his, smiled, wiggled, and grinned, in anticipation of their evening of training upstairs, he felt guilt for being what he was; what he had been in Oakland and had failed to undo.

Mycala, the tutor, smiled at him and then turned to the class. “Brother Qama will have time for you when your lessons are done. Besides, he is in need of a shower. Get back to work please.”

He was easing his way around the perimeter, the boys looking up from the corner of their eye and saluting. When he hit the bottom of the stairs—the stairs he had built in this hollowed out shell of a crackhouse when Usef had first bought it—the murmur about him was already underway among three boys in the back of the class. He felt guilt again, that he could not recall their names—new names no longer sticking with him since his words had began to slur. These three had not even advanced to the class run by his Young Warriors.

Their preteen minds were aflame though, over the mystery of the man who lived above the vacant ruin next to the gym that rose like a garden of manhood above this stairway to another time: before The Oppressive Man had somehow become a Cruel Woman. He looked over his shoulder at Mycala, which was always a mistake, as her brown eyes had the power to sway him and he had sworn himself to the chaste path. Her smile was like a knife through his loins, a wound which he would cure directly with a cold shower. The snippet of the conversation between the boys made him smile as he continued up the stairs—heavy stairs that did not creak. “You know he runs like a hundred miles a day,” said the youngest boy.

The middle boy corrected him, “No, he don’t just run. That is his cover. He walks the walls and leaps from roof to roof—like Spiderman, Black Spiderman!”

The older boy—of course—stepped in to lay down the law of the weird legend that had grown up around his reclusive habits, “No sir. The man only runs to catch them gang bangers. You know when these corner boys go missing they find a bowtie on the sidewalk! My brother told me…”

He would have liked to stay and listen, but that would have taken some of the shine from his mystique. There was still a little boy on the small side of his brain somewhere that glowed at the thought of wrong-redressing and good-doing heroes about in the night.

The last step did creak, as he had laid it in that way, just out of paranoid habit. As his weight made it moan and he pressed his palm to the warm gym door a fear-eyed face looked up at him from the back of his mind, which appeared to be an asphalt gutter. The indicting voice—he would never be able to erase from the soundtrack of his mind—seemed to echo up from his belly, It’s just monsters stalking a world of wrongs, and the poor fools like me in their way, right, Akbar Qama?

“As you say, Arbese. It is yours to know,” he whispered into the door as he pushed.

The patter of the speed bag, the wong-wong-wong of the string back, the thwacking of the Thai bag, and the buckling chain of the heavy bag soothed his mind somewhat as he pushed through the gym door and saw his four Young Warriors there. There were two other figures as well, Usef Ali, and, and!

He did not like the looks of this Whiteman, who seemed a federal law officer of some sort. There was a shoulder holster impression in the white shirt, the firearm and the suit coat obviously left behind in that Lexus that he should have recognized as not belonging to Usef.

The ghost of the fool boy who had been so brutally wronged by his hand did not answer.

Usef pointed him out to the tall fit Devil—so James Bond looking. Akbar stepped up respectfully, nodded to Usef without looking at him—for he wanted to strangle his greedy chicken neck—and held the gaze of the Devil.

He did not extend his hand.

The boys stopped working the bags.

Usef cleared his mousey throat and whined in his Devil-appeasing way, “Akbar, this is Mister Noble. He has recently been transferred to Baltimore by the Department of Homeland Security. He is a tactical instructor and would like to brush up on his skills. Since we here at The Islamic Children’s Center believe in transparency, and since Mister Noble has paid handsomely for a six week course of instruction under you—”

The words hissed like lava from his mouth as he kept eye contact with the Devil, “‘I am bought and paid for,’ said he in the field.”

The Devil winced visibly and stepped back a half pace as Usef chattered indistinctly in the background. The Devil then extended his hand. His voice was hard and clean, “Mister Poet, the other gyms pointed me in this direction. I do not work in an investigative capacity and am here on my own time, without authorization.”

Akbar took the extended hand and called to his boys, “Jbar, glove this man up and gear him. Bessan, glove me up. Dook, prep the ring, buckets, and man the timer. Gans! Where are you going?”

The boy stammered, for he had been running to get the class and have them come up to watch him stretch out this White Devil. Gans was his best young fighter, but did not possess the quick conspiratorial wit of Usef that would permit such a readymade lie as would be required to mask his impulsive act. He stammered, so Akbar let him off the hook with his most calming voice, “Yes, you were just going over to lock the door to the classroom, before you repaired to the warrior room upstairs to ready our liniments, towels, vests, and sashes for Mister Noble’s after sparring instruction. Did I guess right?”

“Yes, Sir. I’m all over that!”

Usef was mumbling under his breath and Mister Noble was looking at him with a half-stunned—but not frightened—grin.

There was a question in his eyes that held in silence even as Jbar and Bessan began wrapping their hands.

“Mister Noble, we will be keeping it light. This is just an assessment, not some kind of gym fight. Jbar, when we are gloved, please call your hoodlum friends and tell them not to molest the Lexus. We would not want Mister Noble to have to explain to his superiors what became of it.”

Mister Noble cracked a smile and lifted his tie in his left hand. “In my street clothes?”

“The tie is black and offers no offense. Besides, a warrior should represent his tribe at such times as this.”

Usef was beside himself, “Akbar, he is a federal agent and has made a sizeable charitable donation to the children.”

Mister Noble touched the scar tissue over his right eye and reassured the nervous Usef, “It ‘ill be okay. I came here because I was looking for contact.”

He then looked back into Akbar’s eyes and intoned, as if he were some kind of robot, “I think I found what I was looking for.”