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eight to twelve miles each day. He always aimed to up his speed or add a few more blocks to the day’s tally. He kept his sneakers clean and looking as new as the day he bought them, and he changed his PF Flyers every three months, always going for the black low-cuts with red laces. He ran without a headset or a radio tuned to any particular station. The only sounds he wanted around him were those of the neighborhood shaking itself awake after yet one more night of gunplay and mayhem.
    Julio Aguilera lived for his daily run.
    Now he was running at his fastest clip, gliding over a large crack in the pavement, when the door of a parked car swung open and caught him flush in the center of his belly and legs. The force of the hit sent him spinning, arms out like wings, legs lurching toward the sky, his body free of breath and bristling with pain and confusion. He took a hard landing to the sidewalk, the back of his head knocking the concrete.
    Through a set of glazed and glassy eyes, Julio made out the figure of a man stepping from the passenger door and walking closer to where he lay. The man had on what looked to be a black leather jacket, and there was a slight limp to his gait. He stood over Julio and stared down at him, his head doing a slow shake.
    “I always heard running really wasn’t that good of an exercise,” the man said. “That across the long haul it did a fella more harm than good. I guess maybe there’s some truth to that after all.”
    “I was just hitting my stride until you door-jacked me, shithead.” Julio hissed out the words, the pain in his lungs causing his throat to clench.
    “You must of taken a harder blow than I figured,” the man said, holding a container of coffee in his right hand. “Scramble-egged your brains. That happens, you start to see things that you only think happened.”
    “Think, my ass,” Julio said, his voice fast regaining its strength. “You could have killed me for real. Get my hands on a solid lawyer, sue your ass for any cash you got.”
    A second man walked over from the driver’s side of the car and stood staring down at Julio. He had one foot on the curb and the other on the sidewalk, a half-eaten buttered roll in his left hand. “Shame he didn’t run into the door with his mouth,” he said with a shrug.
    “Little early in the day for a Five-O shakedown, you ask me,” Julio said, lifting himself on his elbows. “And I carry no cash when I walk, forget about it when I run.”
    “This little fucker’s like 1010 news,” Dead-Eye said as he slipped the last of the buttered roll into a corner of his mouth. “You give him twenty-two minutes and he’ll give you his world.”
    “You good enough to stand?” the first man, Boomer, asked. “Maybe even walk it a few feet?”
    “Do I got me a choice in it?” Julio asked.
    “I could say yes,” Boomer said, looking past Julio and down the silent street. “But it would be a lie.”
    “And I could step up and cap both your asses,” Julio said, getting to his feet and wiping the blood from his mouth on his left forearm.
    “Cap us with what, running man?” Dead-Eye asked, moving up to the sidewalk, his voice calm and polite, his eyes hard enough to bend iron.
    Julio did his best to match that stare, held it for several seconds, then backed down. “I still got my ears, and I know you two Kojaks got more than enough lip,” he said with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “So give me what you came to spread. What do you want to jab to me about?”
    “A priest,” Boomer said.

6

    Bobby “Rev. Jim” Scarponi sat on the park bench and snapped open the lid to a can of Coke. He took two long gulps and rested the can between the soles of a pair of tan low-cut desert boots. He was on the west side of Central Park, just a long throw from a Broadway Show League softball game going on to his left. A small throng of people, some sitting in garden chairs with coolers by their side, cheered their team on while taking in