Now You See Her by Cecelia Tishy

jawline says she thinks I’m hopeless. “He delivered what you want. You want Fendi? You got it. Gucci, Manolo.
     What you want.”
    “Stolen? Shoplifted?”
    “Takin’ care of business. Look, if you’re not in school, there’s the elements—the gangs and the streets. Henry didn’t waste
     his time flippin’ burgers. When it comes to something hard-boil, he had his ways.”
    “Was he recruited? Did Big Doc recruit him?”
    “Like in the army?” She shakes her head no. “More like, when it’s cold outside, where’s he gonna stay?”
    “With family?”
    “We got split up a long while back. I don’t know where all Henry stayed. But when it comes down to it, if somebody’s got a
     house, maybe that’s cool.”
    “Shelters?”
    “Shelters,” she says with a sneer. “You get robbed and hit on. Juvie, they treat you bad.”
    “So you think maybe he pretended to be a Rastafarian to have a place to live? He pretended to go along?”
    “Did what he had to do.”
    “With no limits?”
    “Henry didn’t shoot nobody.” Her voice sounds disembodied. “How about drugs?”
    “How ’bout ’em?” She tilts her face, and my own reflects double on the lenses. I try not to fidget.
    “Wasn’t he arrested and charged with narcotics violations?”
    “They never got him on that. If they got him, that’s it. Five years for five grams. If you black, they get you. That’s a fact.
     You know what five grams of crack look like?”
    “No.”
    She reaches for a suede purse, and a wave of dread rises in my stomach. She’s going to show me actual crack. Am I complicit
     in something? Aiding and abetting? Do I glance at the crack, then shut up about it? My palms break a sweat.
    “Look. Look here.”
    Is this entrapment?
    She opens her palm to reveal two pennies. “Weight of five grams of crack. You lookin’ at five years hard time. That’ll get
     you five years stuck away. Five years for sure.”
    A five-year sentence for selling just five grams of crack cocaine, the approximate weight of two pennies?
    “Odds of a black man spending time in prison today is one in four. One in four.”
    Surely an urban legend, but I won’t dispute her. “They get sick in there. They get TB, hepatitis. My brother’s sick.”
    “I heard. Do you visit Henry?”
    “Out there in Norfolk, yeah, I go out Saturday mornings when the ‘F’ visitors are allowed. I go when I got money for the debit
     card.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Henry likes his treats, you know, like everybody. Candy, cologne, soap.”
    “You can’t take him a package?”
    “Lady, what planet you on? They make you buy a debit card.”
    “Who, the guards?”
    “The guards, the warden. Prices jacked way up. Toothpaste, a pair of socks, they got a gold mine goin’ in there. Somebody’s
     making big money out of prisons. No phone cards, no weekend low rates. Henry gets to feelin’ bad, he call us collect, and
     the real crime is the phone bill. You know who ought to do hard time? The phone company.”
    Her lip curls. If she escalates this rant, I’ll lose the moment. “Tell me, was your brother an athlete? Was he a runner?”
    “No.”
    “A stopwatch was found near the gun that killed Peter Wald.”
    “Henry played ball. That white boy got shot by a white man in a running suit. Henry told me true. He wouldn’t touch a gun,
     no, ma’am. That’s how I know he didn’t shoot nobody.”
    “What about the stopwatch?”
    “Watches, now, if you wanted Rolex, he get you one. His price was right. You want Cartier, you got it. Maybe what they found
     is Henry’s merchandise.”
    That cheap plastic thing? Not for a trafficker in Rolexes. No way. “Do you have a picture of Henry? I’d like to see it.”
    She pauses, finally shrugs, and goes to a closet door hung with a thick wedge of clothes. She feels in pockets for a key,
     then unlocks a bureau drawer and returns with a black-and-white school photo of a serious, thin boy in his late teens with
     short