Income from the sale of rock cocaine was estimated by the San Francisco Police Department to be between $1.5 and $3 million per year, broken down to about $50 to $75 per hour per cut, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

So far this year-and it was September-ninety-six percent of the residents of Holly Park over the age of seven had been victims, perpetrators or eyewitnesses of a violent crime.

Police response time to an emergency in Holly Park averaged twenty-one minutes. By contrast, in the posh neighborhood of St Francis Wood, it averaged three and a half minutes, and Police Chief Rigby was upset about how long it took.

Some people believed that the solution to the drug and crime problems in the projects was to put a wall around them and let the residents kill each other off.

There are all kinds of walls.

Louis Baker was cold.

He opened his eyes, awake now, unsure of where he was. It was dark in the room, but a slice of gray light made its way through where the plywood sagged off the window. The box spring he had slept on had a familiar smell. He sat up, pulling the old army blanket around his massive bare shoulders.

At least it not be the joint, he thought. Praise God.

He stood up, shivering in his bare feet, and put on the suit pants they had given him when they let him out the day before. He crossed to the crack at the window and looked down into one of the cuts.

Pretty much the same. Gray building, gray fog, the constant wind. No trees, no grass, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Now it was Rap, already coming up from three, four places. That was cool. Faces changed, music changed, even people sometimes. But it was the same turf, his old turf. Territory, turf. You controlled it you could be happy. The constant.

He pulled the blanket up closer and put his eye to the crack, checking down the cut. Kids standing around. Some business maybe going down.