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that night?"
    Latrice shook her head. "I didn't hear nothing about it till the
police came, telling me 'bout how Devin got himself shot."
    "Okay," Myra said. "We don't have to talk about that night
anymore. Just one other thing: do you know Yolanda Miller?"
    "Sure I know Yo-Yo. She live right here in the Gardens."
    "What was her relationship with your brother?"
    "He be with her from time to time, if that's what you asking
'bout."
    "They're dating?" Myra asked.
    "They hook up, sure."
    "Are you friends with Yolanda?"
    "Me and her is fine with one another."
    "You know her pretty well."
    Latrice shrugged. "We both come up here in the Gardens, but
Yo-Yo's got a few years on me. We go back, I guess, but we ain't tight or
nothing."
    "Is she somebody you'd trust?"
    Latrice jerked her head back like she'd been asked if she was willing to give Yolanda a kidney.
"She never done wrong by me. She was doing awright back when she was with Malik.
Things didn't get messed up for her until after she had his boy."
    "Who's Malik?" Myra asked.
    "Malik Taylor," Latrice said, as if that would explain something.
    "Okay, so who's Malik Taylor?"
    "He's from around the way. He and Yolanda were together for a
couple of years, up until she had his boy. Not to say that Malik is like most of
the men in the Gardens—he's awright—but he got up on out of there once that kid
was born."
    "Do you know where we can find Malik?"
    "He run the sports store up on Flatbush."
    "What store is that?"
    "Midwood Sports."
    "He owns it?"
    Latrice laughed at this. "He don't
own
it. He just do the
day-today. You know, like a manager."
    "When did he and Yolanda have a son?"
    "That was almost two years ago now."
    "And has Yolanda not been doing so well since her son was born?"
    "I don't know what all go on with her and Malik," Latrice said. The more she talked to us, the more she'd started to actually say things.
"But I know she started getting high, shit like that."
    "Yolanda started doing drugs after her son was born?"
    Latrice looked away, pursing her lips, clearly regretting telling us.
"Most folks around here get high," she said quickly. "Ain't like that's a big
thing."
    "But something changed in Yolanda, didn't it?" Myra asked, equally quick.
"Otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it."
    "It wasn't just the Buddha no more; she was hitting the powder
too. I know 'cause Devin didn't like that shit. He don't like to be 'round
nobody who's into the serious product."
    I thought back to Yolanda's jittery presence, the sharp edge that glinted out of her demeanor. A budding coke habit would certainly explain it.
    "So you're saying that Yolanda had started doing coke?"
    "That's what I just said, ain't it?" Latrice said, a new sharpness in her voice.
"I shouldn't even be talking to you—it's my brother that got shot. You best just
be getting up out of here."
    MYRA MANAGED to keep a poker face until we were safely outside the building, at which point she turned to me and gave me a big grin.
"That moved the ball up the field," she said.
    "I didn't have you for a football fan."
    "Is that what they do in football?" Myra replied. "I was referring
to one of the DA's prime witnesses punking out the other as a druggie."
    "How many yards does that give us?"
    "It undermines her entire ID."
    "Doing pot or coke wouldn't make you hallucinate."
    Myra was clearly losing patience. "Maybe not. But drugs fuck up
your perceptions, certainly, and they sure as hell make you seem pretty
unreliable. Does any of it mean she didn't actually see what she claims to have
seen? Not necessarily. Does it give us a lot of mud to throw on her, dirty up
her clean little eyewitness testimony? Absolutely."
    "And that's what matters."
    "In law school I took a class with a famous criminal defense
attorney. He had a saying: 'A criminal trial is a search for the truth, but the
defense lawyer isn't a member of the search party.' "

9
    O UR LAST visit of the mission was to see Marcus Riley, our