and slightly older thuggish types milling about on the sidewalk—a handful of whom he’d seen earlier—and almost that many teens, mostly girls, sitting on the wooden porch and steps. Sasha Bazelon sat in the same rocker she’d been in when he’d wheeled away her grandmother three hours earlier.
At first glance, he mused, someone could easily think that a crowd of troublemakers had swooped in to take advantage of a poor teenage girl right after the death of her only kin.
But Javier now knew they weren’t troublemakers, at least not all of them, because he was very well acquainted with at least one person on the porch—his baby sister, nineteen-year-old Yvette—and was familiar with a handful of the others, including Keesha Cook, who was sitting between Sasha and Yvette.
They’re here supporting Sasha, is what they’re doing.
And not trying to take advantage of her during this dreadful time.
Even these punks, who are looking at me suspiciously.
Javier got out of the car and made eye contact with Yvette. As he started walking across the street, she popped up out of her chair and went quickly down the steps toward him.
He was surprised. What the hell is up with her?
But knowing his baby sister as well as he did, nothing she did should ever have come as a surprise to Javier Iglesia.
What the very petite Yvette Iglesia lacked in physical height—she stood four-feet-ten—she more than made up for with a bubbly, oversize personality. She spoke almost nonstop, mostly in rapid-fire bursts, gesturing wildly with her hands to make her points. She had straight black shoulder-length hair framing a pretty face that clearly showed her Puerto Rican heritage. Her dark eyes were full of life. And her small mouth was impressive not only for its dazzling smile, but also for the raw expletives that came out of it when she was angry, ones that Javier said “would embarrass a Port of Philly longshoreman.”
“Don’t forget,” Yvette often said with a smile, almost as a provocation, “that dynamite comes in small packages.”
Three hours earlier, just as Javier had backed up the van carrying Principal Bazelon’s body to the Medical Examiner’s Office, his cell phone had pinged, alerting him to a new text message.
When he had looked at the phone’s screen, the message surprised him:YVETTE
HEY, BIG BRO . . . SO SAD ABOUT PRINCIPAL BAZELON
MUST BE VERY UPSETTING FOR YOU TO HAVE PICKED HER UP
YOU’RE IN MY THOUGHTS & PRAYERS
LOVE YOU!
His first thought: What a sweetheart.
Then: How the hell did she find out so fast?
After processing the body of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon into the system that was the Medical Examiner’s Office—putting the body bag in one of the stainless-steel refrigerator compartments, then entering the report and photographs taken at the scene into the computer filing system—Javier had called his sister.
“Hey, I got your text. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her usual bubbly tone gone. “It’s . . . it’s all just so awful. . . .”
“Yeah. She was a terrific lady. How’d you find out so fast? And that it was me? I mean, I’d barely left the scene”—he paused and thought, Wrong word—“that is, Principal Bazelon’s house, when you sent that.”
“Some guys walking around the neighborhood saw the ME van and stopped to watch.”
She knows those thugs watching from across the street?
Maybe Kim Soo was right. They were wannabe gangstas-from-the-’hood.
“You know those guys?”
“No, not really. They think they’re bad news. Jorge’s little brother, Paco, he hangs with them, which makes Jorge mad.”
Then I was right and Soo was wrong.
I knew I had that gut feeling they were up to no good. . . .
Yvette went on: “Anyway, Paco told Jorge he saw you at the Bazelons’, and Jorge texted me about the ME van and Principal Bazelon dying and all.”
Javier knew only vaguely of either Ramirez brother.
“And then Keesha called crying.”
“Keesha?”
“Keesha Cook.”
“Oh, that Keesha. How’s she connected?”
“She and Sasha live on the same street. Longtime neighbors and friends. And you know Keesha used to come over and hang out.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Okay, it all makes sense now.”
“Word’s gotten out fast, Javier. I mean there’s already a big memorial at the middle school by the back door. People coming by and leaving flowers and stuffed animals. There’s these big white bedsheets that they’re drawing on and writing poems and memories and stuff about her. And there’s already a memorial page dedicated to her on the Internet. People from around the world—and I mean around the world, Javier, like China and shit—are writing about what an influence she was