The herd of emergency vehicles was thinning. The ambulances left first, followed quickly by the television crews. Who could blame them? The fire had looked promising for the late news, but there were no innocent victims---just body bags and stretchers filled with drug dealers and gang members. No relatives showed up to grieve photogenically. No neighborhood residents wandered by proclaiming that it was about time somebody put a torch to that place.

The fire trucks coiled their hoses and headed back to their stations. Most of the squad cars peeled off when their radios crackled to life with news of the next crisis. There were only two cars left. A black-and-white from the local precinct, and a Fire Inspector keeping watch a little while longer---just in case there was a pocket of fire left inside the smoldering wreck.

They thought they were alone on the scene. They weren't. Five stories up, on a roof, across the street, a black-shrouded, solitary figure watched, waited, and pondered what had gone wrong.

He'd passed through the neighborhood earlier in the night. He'd spotted the abandoned building for what it was: a drug depot, a gang's fortress. It was quiet enough, if you didn't count the four-wheeled boombox parked outside the front door. The gang wasn't going anywhere. He figured to bust it later on, after midnight. Before midnight he liked to stay loose and outside, ready to go where he was needed.