Milk Adderley touched his man's arm. "Bells," he said. Then he looked back at me. "I heard what you got to say, Ellison. And I gotta tell you, playa—it ain't enough."

Before I could process the right question, the wrong one came out my mouth. "Enough for what?"

Milk looked at me strangely. I thought I saw pity in his eyes. "We need that disc, Ellison."

"I told you I could get it for you."

"If we gonna wait we can wait on Kayla herself. She'll hand it over once she stops bein' mad."

"And if she don't stop? If she wants to take this to the max? I'm offerin' you a way to avoid all that. She said she'd work with you, through me."

"You got something else we want," Milk said. "We need to talk to that girl."

"I can do that," I replied, "as long as you guarantee she's safe."

"And let her testify?"

"It won't mean shit, Milk. You know it won't."

"But you get something, right? That's why you're mixed up in this. The girl, or maybe Kayla, done offered you something. Maybe something you can put in your magazine. Make your name from. Some way you can benefit from this, right?"

"Maybe." There was no sense in lying.

"You shoulda stayed out of this," Milk told me. The tenor in his voice was gone. Only a grave bass remained and it was as if the music being played from the restaurant's speakers had changed to a different song. All I heard was horns when the man called Bells reached into his pocket, took out a silvery .45 and slipped it underneath one of Blu 47's purple napkins. He kept his hand on it. The barrel was pointed toward me. I didn't know what his expression looked like because I couldn't take my eyes away from his hand.

"Ellison," Milk said. His voice was coming from a block away. "El." I pulled my stare away from Bells' hand; each eye felt like a concrete slab. I looked at Milk. He was still sitting across from me even though it seemed like a year had passed since I'd seen him.

"We not gonna shoot up this restaurant," he told me. "But you're gonna get up and we're gonna go out the back. Then you're gonna tell me where that girl is."

© 2008 ISAAC PERRY

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