San Francisco, California

“Pump two,” Leon said. “See it?”

“I see it,” Jamal Thomas replied.

It was just after sunset and the battered old Camry was parked down the block from the Arco station on Mission Street. Jamal squinted through the dirty windshield at a shiny gray Land Rover that had just pulled up to the pumps. The driver had climbed out and crossed to the minimart, wallet in hand. Arab, from the look of him. Not just the skin color but the arrogance, the strut. He reminded Jamal of the movies he’d seen on YouTube of blacks in the 1960s, flexing their new legal rights, amped up by the power of numbers, ready for payback after centuries of being second-class.

“Why that one?” Jamal asked. “Why not a Benz or a Beamer?”

Leon shot him a frown. “This ain’t about the car. It’s about-”

“I know what it’s about,” Jamal said. “But we might as well wait for a sweeter ride.”

Leon shook his head. Jamal continued to look out the window.

What this was about was Jamal and Leon trying to get the rest of the Sawyer Street crew to take Jamal seriously. Jamal was almost seventeen and even his brother, who was just three years older, still treated him like a wannabe. He’d spent two years selling apple jacks at school, but that wasn’t good enough for them. It was time to prove himself. Show them he had a pair that clanged.

Jamal’s hand was resting on his waistband, where he’d tucked the gun. Leon had given him a Glock 9mm for his birthday the week before, a bronze-colored beauty that came in a shipment smuggled from Vietnam, part of the old Ku gunrunning network. The weapon felt solid against Jamal’s belly-not the weight of it but the coiled power, the right it gave him to enforce his will on some rich boy or a chump who looked at him funny or a blonde he just wanted because he wanted that blonde.