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what happened today with you and your partner, Paul Richardson.”
              “Well, I got out of bed at--”
              “Hold up. No need to tell me about your dog or what you had for breakfast, okay? Just the part about you and Paul. How you guys met up today? How you guys met with whatsherface?”
              “Babyboy, I mean, Paul, called me early, said he just got his income tax refund. See, he don’t have a car, so he needed me to chauffeur him around. I picked him up at…I wanna say one o’clock, but it could’ve been two.
              “We picked up a couple chips and smoked them in the car. Babyboy said, ‘Yo, let’s pick up a freak, get a eight ball and go to my place.’ I didn’t have anything else to do I said okay.” He stopped, rubbed his throat. “Can I have some water?”
              “Sure.” Returning with two Styrofoam cups of water, Tasha said, “Was Paul referring to your place or his?”
              Barry gulped the water. “His place.”
              “Okay. Go on.”
              “We went and got a eight ball and then we saw this girl, she was walking down Broadway, and she, you know, looked the type we were interested in. I’d seen her around before, I knew she got high. Babyboy asked if she wanted to ride with us and she said something stupid, you know, ‘For a price,’ or something like that. We were headed back to Babyboy’s place when I said I needed cigarettes and something to drink. We stopped at Seven-Eleven and everybody got out--”
              “Excuse me. What’s this girl’s name?”
              “I think it’s Linda…Linda Faye, I believe.”
              “Okay. Now all of you guys are at Seven-Eleven, right?”
              “Right. We went in and got some stuff and got back in the car. We were riding, Babyboy started patting his pockets and said, ‘Where’s the rock?’ We stopped the car and Babyboy started going off on the girl, you know. ‘Bitch, give me my shit!’ She said she didn’t have it. We tore the car up looking for it…couldn’t find it. We drove off.
              “Babyboy told her she had sixty seconds for the rock to appear or something bad was gonna happen to her. She started crying and Babyboy hit her a couple times with the gun. She tried to jump out the car…All a sudden--Boom!--the window exploded. Blood everywhere and the girl just sitting there with this big hole in her…It was…I couldn’t believe it!”
              A hand covering his eyes. “It was terrible…just terrible!” peering at Tasha through splayed fingers. “Can I go now?”
              “Where did the gun come from? The one found in the glove compartment.”
              “It belongs to Babyboy. I don’t know where he got it.”
              “Who’s driving the car while all the commotion is going on?”
              “I was…Babyboy started…you see, I was high, so I let him drive a little while.”
              “Your partner, Babyboy,” Tasha said, “can assault a passenger, discharge a weapon at close range, and still keep the car between the lines?”
              “He surprised me, too.”
              “By the way, that’s a nice car you have.”
              “Thank you. I try to keep it clean. We were on our way to wash it when y’all stopped us.”
              “A car like that,” Tasha mused, “is not the kind you let everybody drive, is it?”
              “You got that right. People will tear your shit up if you let em. Why I don’t let nobody drive mine.”
              “Unless you’re high, remember?”
              “Yeah.”
              Tasha crossed to the door. “Let me check on something. I’ll be back shortly.”
              “Can I go when you get back?”
              “We’ll