They went to the ground together in a sprawl of limbs on the grass verge, which was softer than the path and smelled of cut grass and river mud, and Tomas landed where he had meant to land, across Deacon's hips with his weight settled and his balance gathered, one knee pinning the young man's near thigh to the turf, Deacon's right arm trapped and controlled against Tomas's chest, not cranked, not torqued, simply held, the way you hold a full bucket you do not wish to spill. Deacon bucked once, twice, with real strength and no plan, and each time the movement ran out against Tomas's weight and came back to him as information: he was caught, he was outmatched, and the evening had quietly changed management.
"Deacon," Tomas said, close enough to be heard without shouting, because shouting would have raised the temperature of the other three, and he was managing temperatures now the way he managed everything, "listen to me. You're done. When I let this arm go, you lie still for ten seconds and then you sit up slow. If you come up swinging, we do the whole thing over and I will be less conversational about it. Say yes."
"Yes," Deacon said into the grass. "Yeah. Yes."
Tomas released the arm and rolled clear in one motion and was on his feet before the ten seconds had properly begun, because Ricky Solano had unfolded his arms at last, and Ricky was the one Tomas had been watching since the water fountain, the one whose silence had a floor to it.
Ricky came forward without hurry, and that alone set him apart from the other three, and his hands were up properly, which set him apart further, and for two or three seconds Tomas allowed himself the bleak professional pleasure of finally being in the company of a man who had actually been coached. Frank Oduya had taught Ricky Solano a guard and a distance and the beginnings of patience, and if Frank had failed to teach him the larger and more important lesson, which was the lesson about choosing, that was a failure Tomas recognised, because choosing had been the last thing he himself had learned and the first thing he had retired on.
They circled on the path in the dusk, gravel whispering, while behind Tomas he could hear Kyle getting air back and deciding whether his knee meant what Tomas had told it to mean, and Deacon sitting up slowly and honestly in the grass, a reformed man at least for the duration of his ten seconds. Ricky feinted with his left and Tomas did not buy it, and Ricky smiled slightly, an acknowledgement passing between tradesmen, and then he shot in properly, both hands reaching for Tomas's legs in a takedown attempt that had weight and intent behind it.
Tomas sprawled. It was not elegant; sprawling never was, it was a collapse with opinions. His hips went back and his chest came down across Ricky's shoulders and the top of his head, and his hands found the ground and the back of Ricky's jacket, and for a moment the two of them were a single straining piece of architecture in the middle of Riverside Park while the river went past and the lamps along the path, sensing the dark, began to buzz and consider lighting. Ricky drove twice, grunting, trying to run Tomas over backward. Tomas rode the drive, shifted his weight a quarter turn to the left, caught Ricky's right arm as it reached to regather, and threaded his own arm through and around it, and stepped over and through in a motion so old and simple it did not really have a glamorous name, and Ricky went over sideways, controlled all the way down, and landed on his hip and side in the gravel with Tomas kneeling beside him and then, in the same unbroken courtesy, on top of the moment entirely, one knee across Ricky's near leg, Ricky's right wrist held in both of Tomas's hands against Tomas's own sternum, secure as a parcel.
Neither of them was breathing hard, which somehow made it worse for Ricky, because it left him nothing to blame.
"You can have the arm back whenever you want it," Tomas told him. "The price is you lie there and count to twenty out loud. Loud enough that I can hear you enjoying it."