Hangman's Game by Bill Syken Page B

his pastor Cheat Sheet (real name, Lewis Whicks, juvenile arrest record for auto theft) showing up to the club much later than the other guys, and in a sedan. The sedan was black, which means it could have been the one I saw speeding away after Cecil and Samuel were shot.
    Jai’s explanation for his delayed arrival at the club was that after leaving Stark’s he was seized by an irresistible craving for a Four-Dollar Feedbag, a fast-food product of which he is a proud endorser. The Four-Dollar Feedbag consists of two small cheeseburgers, a small fries, and a chocolate-chip-and-peanut-butter cookie. “I’ll be honest with ya,” Jai says in his commercials, with a wink at the camera. “I’m in it for the cookies.” When police raised the point that on the night of the shooting Jai was coming from just having eaten a steak dinner, he responded by saying, “When I’m hungry, I eat!” It is an alibi designed both to account for his time and to please a sponsor.
    Seeing the details of Jai’s police interview in these news stories, sourced to anonymous figures close to the investigation, makes me feel justified in being circumspect with Rizotti during our questioning. But Jai has to know that I talked to the police, and that I am the only eyewitness. He is asking me over to his house for that one reason—to find out if I am for him, or against him. He wants to look me in the eye.
    I accept his invitation because I want to look back.

 
    CHAPTER 8
    J AI LIVES IN a gated residential neighborhood in Haddonfield, New Jersey. He resides outside the city for tax reasons. I might be doing that, too, if my superstitions didn’t lash me to the Jefferson.
    Jai’s home is an Etruscan-style mansion on what has to be at least four acres. The house has an electronic gate that opens for me when I arrive; I pull up into a large semicircular drive and park next to a black Mercedes, a white Bentley, a black Cadillac Escalade, a black Range Rover, a dark-green Prius, and, at the end, a true junker—an old boat of a car that looks to be at least fifteen years old and in horrible shape, with one panel of dark maroon, while the rest of the body is baby blue.
    The black Mercedes looks more like the shooter’s car than the Prius, though I find the precise memory of the car is fading quickly. But I look at both cars’ back bumpers, and they are clean. If anyone scraped a sticker off last night, they did a thorough job.
    Jai emerges from the front of his house to greet me. He is shirtless, wearing only black compression pants, casually displaying his broad chest and shoulders. A peacock trails listlessly by his feet.
    â€œNick Gallow,” he says with a broad smile. “Welcome, my brother.”
    â€œSo you do know my name,” I say. “The other night at Stark’s I could have sworn you had no idea who I was.”
    â€œI had no fucking clue,” Jai says, shaking his head and laughing. “But believe me, I know now. I done talked about that bullshit in the restaurant like you wouldn’t believe.”
    Jai says this as if it is amusing—as if one of our teammates isn’t dead, as if he isn’t at the center of a murder investigation, and certainly as if I have no right to be offended at not being recognized by a teammate of five years.
    After a pause I change the subject. “So you have a peacock.”
    â€œThis is Peayoncé,” he says, giving the birds a gentle pat on the head. The bird bobs back and wanly ruffles her tail feathers.
    â€œShe looks a little sad,” I say.
    â€œYeah, she’s a smart gal,” Jai says, looking down at her admiringly. “She knows there’s some shit going down.”
    At least someone in the household is concerned.
    â€œWhose car is that?” I ask, pointing at the older one with the rust spots.
    â€œThat’s mine, man,” Jai says. “One of mine, anyway. I call it my