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words. She cried out, “Mother, help me!” a couple of times, and once she mumbled a sentence that sounded like poetry. It was pretty strange stuff. But everything about Ariel was strange.
    The most likely explanation, John thought, was that she was connected to the mafia. She was the daughter of some powerful mob boss, maybe. Or maybe she was the boss’s young wife, but she was fooling around on the side. Maybe she’d decided to go out and have some fun tonight, so she took her bodyguards to the bar in Greenwich Village and started looking for a playmate. But her husband figured out what was going on and sent his soldiers to the hotel in Bushwick to punish her and the bodyguards. That would explain the viciousness of the attack. And also why Ariel refused to go to the police or the hospital.
    But it didn’t explain her behavior during the assault, her coolness under fire. Could your average mob wife handle a Glock as well as Ariel could? Or give instructions on how to bandage a bullet wound? And what about the notebook she still clutched against her chest while she slept? What was that all about?
    John let out a long, tired breath. It didn’t make sense. If he were acting rationally, he’d deliver Ariel to the nearest emergency room, whether she liked it or not. But John wasn’t rational. All his life he’d made choices with his heart, not his head. Although he’d just met Ariel, he was powerfully attracted to her. Part of it was sexual attraction, sure, but the sexiest thing about her was that she’d made him feel good about himself. She seemed to see something admirable in him, something rare and fine. And her regard for him, her belief in his goodness, had an enormous effect. Even though Ariel had nearly gotten him killed, he was ready to do anything for her. He wanted to justify her faith in him.
    After crossing the bridge and driving three miles south along the Delaware River, John got off the highway at the Girard Avenue exit. It was a wide street lined with fast-food joints and car-repair shops, but as he drove closer to Kensington the commercial establishments grew scarce. By the time he turned right on Front Street, which ran under the tracks of the elevated train line, the only activity he saw was drug dealing. It was late, even for the dealers, but the cars were still coming in from the suburbs and stopping at the street corners.
    The customers were mostly teenagers, white kids with money, hoping to score some coke or pot and then get the hell out of Philadelphia. The corner crews were also teenagers, but mostly black or Latino or some mix of the two. Swiftly and efficiently, they kept the line of cars moving along. One kid took the money, another ran to the stash house, another delivered the drugs and another kept a lookout for the cops. Every ten minutes or so, an older kid—in his late teens or early twenties—would come around the corner and observe the whole operation, making sure that no one in the crew was slipping any cash into his pockets. That had been John’s job when he ran with the Disciples. The thug, the enforcer.
    He got into the business the same way all the other kids did. At the age of nine he started hanging out at the corners and getting to know the people who worked there. Then he did a few odd jobs for them, getting paid twenty dollars a night to work as a lookout or a decoy. All his friends were doing the same thing, so he didn’t take it too seriously. It was just an easy way to make some money. His real ambition in life was to become a pitcher for the Phillies. He had a pretty good throwing arm.
    His mom knew what he did at night, but she couldn’t stop him. Although her intentions were good, her life had been full of disappointment. She’d had bad luck with men, starting with John’s father, who’d walked out on her as soon as she got pregnant. She’d had bad luck at work, too, drifting from one shitty