[ONE] 5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 12:45 P.M. Javier Iglesia parked his silver Dodge Avenger across the street from the Bazelon row house.
He counted at least a dozen teenagers and slightly older thuggish types milling about on the sidewalk-a handful of whom he'd seen earlier-and almost that many teens, mostly girls, sitting on the wooden porch and steps. Sasha Bazelon sat in the same rocker she'd been in when he'd wheeled away her grandmother three hours earlier.
At first glance, he mused, someone could easily think that a crowd of troublemakers had swooped in to take advantage of a poor teenage girl right after the death of her only kin.
But Javier now knew they weren't troublemakers, at least not all of them, because he was very well acquainted with at least one person on the porch-his baby sister, nineteen-year-old Yvette-and was familiar with a handful of the others, including Keesha Cook, who was sitting between Sasha and Yvette.
They're here supporting Sasha, is what they're doing.
And not trying to take advantage of her during this dreadful time.
Even these punks, who are looking at me suspiciously.
Javier got out of the car and made eye contact with Yvette. As he started walking across the street, she popped up out of her chair and went quickly down the steps toward him.
He was surprised. What the hell is up with her?
But knowing his baby sister as well as he did, nothing she did should ever have come as a surprise to Javier Iglesia.
What the very petite Yvette Iglesia lacked in physical height-she stood four-feet-ten-she more than made up for with a bubbly, oversize personality. She spoke almost nonstop, mostly in rapid-fire bursts, gesturing wildly with her hands to make her points. She had straight black shoulder-length hair framing a pretty face that clearly showed her Puerto Rican heritage. Her dark eyes were full of life. And her small mouth was impressive not only for its dazzling smile, but also for the raw expletives that came out of it when she was angry, ones that Javier said "would embarrass a Port of Philly longshoreman."
"Don't forget," Yvette often said with a smile, almost as a provocation, "that dynamite comes in small packages."
Three hours earlier, just as Javier had backed up the van carrying Principal Bazelon's body to the Medical Examiner's Office, his cell phone had pinged, alerting him to a new text message.
When he had looked at the phone's screen, the message surprised him: