Read Gotham for Free Online

didn’t hear a message. He smiles to himself. The van turns out of 59th Street into an avenue, heading north. He glances through some photos—blurred selfies, a girl with blonde hair—and starts tapping a message.
    â€˜Okay,’ Smokey says, more to bring Nati back to us than anything. Nati’s focus stays on his screen. ‘Okay, that’s good, LyDell.’
    â€˜I have a visit in mind first,’ Nati says, still texting. ‘A little happy appetiser before the meal.’ He sends the message and twists around in his seat, ducking Smokey’s gaze. He puts his hand on the driver’s shoulder. ‘Candy store, my man.’
    Smokey turns to look out the window at the lights, at nothing at all, his lips pulled shut over his gold grills. The van makes a right at the next intersection, then another, sending us south, back where we’ve come from.
    Nati’s directly opposite me. He catches my eye and grins. ‘Candy store.’
    It’s cryptic, and its mystery is meant for me. I’m not on the inside. He’s welcome to remind me of that as much as he likes. It would not occur to him that I don’t want to be him. It would shock him to learn that I am in his van, writing this piece, solely for the money. It would not shock Smokey, I think. His life is in a hospital somewhere else on this crowded island, eightcentimetres, nine centimetres, ten centimetres, action.
    â€˜I’m sure we can handle the interview, just the two of us, if Smokey has to go.’
    â€˜Really?’ Nati says, his grin now more of a smirk. ‘You’re sure of that?’
    Smokey’s mouth opens as if he’s about to speak, but then he closes it again. His chunky ring taps his window as the van hits a bump.
    Nati’s head is already in his candy store, and Smokey will not jolly him back to me. Nati turns his phone over and over in his hand and stretches out in his seat, an action that requires me to move my feet for his. He sets his phone on the flat plane of his abdomen—he is whippet-lean beneath his rapper’s clothes, I’m betting—and he keeps one hand over it.
    The driver makes several more turns. He has a GPS but doesn’t seem to use it. We pull up outside a rundown building. The driver stepsout and checks the street in an overt way, like someone in a video checking a street, about to be surprised by gunfire or a flash mob of dancers. I can see no one, nothing. He opens the door.
    Nati climbs out, connects the zip on his jacket and looks up high at the brickwork, beyond the graffiti tags, for Rapunzel or a party that’s waiting just for him, piles of coke or ice, like perfect ground glass. A breeze swirls in, a chill on it.
    He steps lightly across the kerb, still fiddling with the zip and saying something like, ‘Back in five,’ without turning his head.
    The driver releases the door handle and decides he should stand next to the open door until directed otherwise. He clasps his hands behind his back and takes his own look at the high windows, perhaps thinking of the party up there that is never for him, or thinking of home, or blankly gazing, just stretching his neck.
    â€˜Five,’ Smokey says, with a distinct lack of conviction. ‘He’s…’ He shrugs and peers out the open door. ‘Excuse me.’
    He finds a number on his phone and taps the green button to make the call. A woman answers, not with hello but with a sentence, in a forceful tone.
    â€˜Yeah, honey,’ he says. ‘It’s LyDell. You know how he—’ Her voice cuts back in, berating him. ‘Yeah…Hmmm…I know, honey, I’d be…’ He puts his hand on his forehead, waiting for the tide to turn, the storm to abate. She tears another piece or two off him. ‘Soon. When LyDell’s eating. But how you doin’? That’s what I want to know.’
    I can hear her telling him about the pain, pulling out some big